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When the grid collapses
Victimised minorities |
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Bigoted mindset
Need for new food security law
Memories which fail to fade
Innovation is not just patents and ‘jugaads’
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When the grid collapses
SO dependent are we on electrical power that for a number of hours trains, emergency services, hospitals and life in general came to a standstill in the national capital, and in several north Indian states, including Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh when the national grid, the network supplying electricity, collapsed on Sunday night. Chandigarh too was affected by the most significant outage of the decade. While the exact cause of the collapse of the grid will only come out once a three-member panel constituted by the Power Minister, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde, submits its report, the finger of suspicion points to an excessive demand for power from various state electricity boards. For the the national grid to operate, a frequency has to be maintained at 50 Hz, at all times. Only a tiny variation, 0.5 per cent at the most, is allowed. There are rules that do not allow various electricity boards to draw more power than has been allocated to them. However, of late, there have been so many violations that the New Delhi-based National Regional Load Dispatch Centre formally complained against erring states to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission. On the other hand, delayed and below par monsoon has increased the demand for power from various sectors, including the agricultural sector. Coupled with the fact that most states do not have the resources to generate power, this has been a long difficult summer for people of India, especially for those in the north, who have had to face regular power cuts and blackouts. Lack of power in many states, including Punjab and Haryana, has led to their overdrawing electric power which put a strain on the grid. The Northern Grid serves about 28 per cent of the country’s population. It has had its share of problems, like the failure in January 2010, that was attributed to moisture buildup caused by fog, and a major outage in 2001-02. In the present instance, while the engineers have moved in fast to restore normalcy to the region, the grid collapse is an ominous sign for times to come if long-lasting measures are not taken to build and run power plants that are urgently needed to fulfil the needs of the nation that is consuming more power than it can generate. In the meanwhile, state boards would be well advised to exercise restraint and desist from overdrawing their quotas.
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Victimised minorities
Frequent
incidents of harassment of minorities in Pakistan provide proof that Islamabad is not able to honour its constitutional obligations towards this section of society. The latest such incident occurred in Balochistan where three Hindu traders were abducted on Friday night by some unidentified armed men. It was reported to be a case of demand for ransom. This led to protests by various representative organisations of the community with the support of different political parties. But the victims are yet to be freed. Before this, a television channel beamed a programme showing live how a Hindu boy had reportedly embraced Islam. In March, members of minority communities, including Sikhs and Christians, held a massive protest outside the Karachi Press Club when the news spread of conversion of a 17-year-old girl to Islam under the patronage of a PPP politician in Ghotki district in Sindh. Such incidents are bound to affect the morale of the minorities. Incidents of victimisation of Ahmedis are a routine as they are not considered Muslims in Pakistani society. They are subjected to different kinds of ill-treatment on various pretexts. The problem has assumed such proportions that India had to urge the people and the Government of Pakistan in May to take all possible measures for protecting the constitutional rights of the minorities. Replying to a question in Parliament raised by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna reminded Pakistan that it must “discharge its constitutional duties towards its minority communities”, though India believes in the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. Maintaining law and order, no doubt, is a herculean task in Pakistan, and in such a situation the weaker sections of society like the minorities are bound to suffer. But what is more worrying is the fact that the Pakistan government shows little concern for the rights of its minorities. This encourages non-state actors to indulge in acts of victimisation of these people. It’s a case of human rights, and the organisations concerned must get proactive to fulfil their obligations. |
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Bigoted mindset
THE Mangalore incident has once again brought into sharp focus the misguided zeal of self-styled custodians of culture. In fact, as has been happening in the past with each incident, activists of right wing organisations are becoming more and more brazen. The attack on young men and women at a homestay in Mangalore, allegedly by activists of a Hindu fundamentalist group is no more than an act of hooliganism. That more than 50 men had the gall to barge into a private party and beat up girls and boys only underlines that intolerance has become second nature of certain sections of society. Coming close on the heels of the molestation of a girl in Assam, it only proves that such rowdy elements care two hoots about what the country thinks and are unafraid of the law. Mangalore is not new to the virus of intolerance. It was in this city alone that Sri Ram Sene activists had beaten up hapless girls in a pub. It was here again that a young girl allegedly committed suicide. She was unable to take the harassment meted out to her by vigilantes who troubled her for being with a Muslim boy. Of course, the rest of India is not free from this convoluted style of thinking and aggressive way of functioning. Valentine Day celebrations are often vitiated by incidents of goondaism. It’s not the moral brigade alone that deems it fit to inflict punishment in the name of morality. Those in positions of power often betray a mindset inimical to women’s safety and individual’s dignity. As the tribe of “protectors” of virtue and morality is fast growing, individual rights and freedom are being forsaken. Merely arresting a few men is not going to change the psyche of those who endorse the viewpoint of disruptive elements. Till the political class, which seems to have abdicated its social responsibility, takes a firm stance against such incidents, those involved in moral policing will continue to have a free run. |
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Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf. — Rabindranath Tagore
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Need for new food security law
THE UPA government’s Food Security Bill (FSB) has managed to draw flak from almost every quarter, starting with agencies within the government led by the Minister of Agriculture himself, followed by several experts and public interest groups. This controversial law originates from the National Advisory Council which has drafted it without consultations with scientists, experts, farmers or civil society groups working on agriculture and food issues. Because it has the powerful backing of Sonia Gandhi, this imperfect draft legislation is being pushed in Parliament. The Bill exists in a vacuum and makes no effort to correct any of the problems in the existing food support schemes. It merely suggests another way of distributing food under the PDS and could legitimately be called a Revised Public Distribution System (PDS) Bill rather than a Food Security Bill. To achieve food security, the Bill proposes to revise the PDS and provide 7 kg of rice and wheat at Rs 3 and Rs 2 per kg, respectively, per person to people below the poverty line. More recently, the government is suggesting that the priority and general categories should be done away with and only one category of people retained for support. These people should be provided 5 kg grain per individual. Not unexpectedly, this has been met with stiff opposition. The country already has several food support schemes to tackle hunger. These are principally the (PDS), the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. In addition, there is the Annapurna Scheme for old people and Antodaya for the very poor. The implementation of most of these schemes is highly problematic and there are several leakages. PDS grain lands up in the black market, eligible women and children are not able to get their full entitlements from the ICDS and many of the really poor do not have BPL (Below the Poverty Line) cards because the well-off and influential in villages have had them made in their own names. We don’t really need new Bills, we need to plug the loopholes in the existing laws and policies. The new Bill makes absolutely no effort to correct any of the defects in current schemes; it just goes ahead with its own, not necessarily better, version of doing things. It is understood by people in the know that food security has three essential components. These are food production, food distribution and food absorption. The National Advisory Council draft is faulty because it addresses just one issue — food distribution. It does not touch upon the crucial aspect of food production, nor does it deal with food absorption, which is necessary to ensure that the food that is eaten is absorbed by the body and provides nutrition. To enable proper absorption, we need clean drinking water and sanitation so that people do not suffer from diarrhoea and other stomach infections. Clean drinking water and sanitation will, therefore, have to be essential components of a law that aims to provide food security. Possibly, the most challenging aspect of achieving food security is the cultivation aspect. Farmers are abandoning farming because it does not pay any more. Farming is the riskiest business in the world, but in India it is also a loss-making enterprise. Input costs have gone through the roof but the minimum support price (MSP) has not. In most states, the MSP does not cover the cost of production of the crops which are procured by the government. This applies to all the major food crops: paddy, wheat, jowar, bajra, maize,
ragi, arhar, moong, urad, chana (gram) and barley. The Food Security Bill fails to respond to the enormous disaster in the making as the agrarian crisis worsens. In the kharif season of 2011, tomato farmers in Karnataka hired tractor- trolleys to dump their produce on the highways because they could not get a price for it. In the same season, farmers in Andhra Pradesh declared a crop holiday and refused to plant their fields since under the present conditions, they end up losing money. In rain-fed regions like Jharkhand, farmers have been leaving their upland fields fallow for the last several years. Now even the more productive lowland fields are not cultivated because the maths simply does not add up. The current Food Security Bill appears to be a political gimmick rather than an honest effort to tackle the problem. If we are serious and mean to do the right thing, we must start afresh and draft a new piece of food security legislation which is comprehensive. It must address the three main aspects: the production of food, its distribution, and its absorption by the
body.
The writer is a scientist with several years of research and teaching experience. She works with Gene Campaign, a research and advocacy organisation, working on food and livelihood security and can be reached at mail@genecampaign.org and www.genecampaign.org
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Memories which fail to fade
It was 1972 when I took admission to MBBS in Government Medical College, Srinagar. Those days ragging of freshers used to be quite a torturous and humiliating experience. There were no anti-ragging measures taken by the college authorities. For new-comers, away from their homes for the first time, ragging would go on for many days and had a negative effect on their psyche. New ragging techniques were devised every day in Bemina Hostel situated on the outskirts of Srinagar city. Ragging gave sleepless nights even to the bravest of freshers. Seniors would indulge in a large number of torturous activities. A naked parade on the hostel grounds in winter nights was one of the most horrifying experiences. Many stories about new methods of ragging used to circulate on the campus. Freshers remained outside the hostel till late in the evening to escape ragging. We had heard many more such horrifying stories of ragging in the hostel. Along with my two batchmates, Yudhishter and Avinash Abrol, I decided to go in for private rented accommodation in Karan Nagar, adjoining the medical college. However, we had no idea about the availability of rented accommodation in the city. On the first day of our admission, all three of us deposited only college fees and did not opt for hostel accommodation. For the next three days it appeared like hunting for a water spring in the Sahara Desert. The moment we approached a house to enquire about rented accommodation, we were asked one question: “Are you married?” On getting a negative reply, the owner family would immediately slam its doors. For the next three days we visited innumerable houses but received the same kind of hostile glances. The moment youngsters saw us looking for accommodation they too raised the same question. Finally, we decided that ragging or no ragging, we must move to a hostel. That was the only option left with us. Next day all three of us applied for hostel accommodation to the Principal, Dr Nasir Ahmed. Dr Nasir was a well-built Punjabi Muslim. He had an impressive personality. He put his signature on the applications of Yudhishter and Avinash with little hesitation. But in my case, the peon of the principal asked me to appear before him. The moment I entered the principal’s room, I found Dr Nasir shouting at me, “You people are dishonest; you bribe my clerks. When you did not opt for the hostel on the first day of admission how dare you get the application forwarded from my clerk without my permission? I will throw you out of the college. You have started cheating us from day one.” I was completely shaken by his sudden aggressive behaviour. When he had already permitted my other two friends, how was my case different, I rued? Living outside the college and that also alone was an impossible option. My adrenalin release was at its highest. My heart was thumping. My hands and feet turned numb. Suddenly, my brain started working like a supercomputer and in a low voice I said, “Sir, I had no money and hence could not deposit hostel fees on the first day. I have arranged the money now with a lot of difficulty.” Suddenly, Dr Nasir cooled down and got up from his chair, hugged me and said, “Putterji, jad twade kol paise nahi si hege, tusi jama kithun karande?” (My son, if you did not have money, from where would you have deposited it?). Eh gal tusi mennu pele kyon ni si dassi? (Why did you not tell this to me earlier?). Jad pese dee lorh pave mere kol aa jana (When ever you need money, do come to me.)” He immediately put his signature on my application and I left his office feeling like a victorious army general, who was on the verge of losing war. And my throbbing heart regained normal beat and my limbs turned a little
warmer.
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Innovation is not just patents and ‘jugaads’ Seeing that innovation is a key index of developed societies, creation of a climate which fosters innovation was one of the key missions for the Knowledge Commission chaired by Sam Pitroda. Participation of both the Prime Minister and Finance Minister in a National Conference on Innovation last year reflected the priority. It is high time we realised that innovation is far beyond ideas, patents or even jugaad’s. Ideas and patents are both mere dreams. Patent only provides legal protection to the commercial interests of the originator. Jugaad, for which Indians, Punjabis in particular, are globally recognised, are low-cost shortcuts for meeting exigencies. One of its most quoted examples is Punjab’s famous “Maruta” of the Seventies, which lasted for nearly 30 years. A 5hp engine mounted on a Jeep-chassis condemned by the Army became a multi-purpose public transport, portable pump-set, thresher driver, etc, for farms. Every component was a local contraption or from the scrap heap. Thousands plied on Punjab and Haryana roads. It was the only rural transport after dark during Punjab’s decade of terrorism. While the Maruta certainly filled a public need, it flaunted every public motor-vehicle Law: lighting, braking distances, direction indicators, reliability. Every poor developing society comes up with such cheap jugaads: Jeepney of the Philippines or power-tillers of Thailand. A list of thousands of jugaads was also compiled by Prof Anil Gupta of IIM-Ahmedabad via a village-level initiative through Gujarat called GIAN (Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network) in the early Nineties. Liberally supported by the Department of Science and Technology, it has led to the creation of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) to help upscale these innovations into commercial products. IIT-Mumbai has been roped in for engineering support. Annual conferences of the NIF have also been held with great fanfare. But the impact of this entire effort is insignificant. Let us remember that innovation by its definition is “something different which makes an impact on society.” Making an impact on society broadens the scope to including social innovations that have no commercial value. Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank of Mohammad Yunus, Sulabh Shauchalaya of our own Bindeshwari Pathak of Bihar are examples of outstanding social innovations. Innovation, therefore, includes the long, arduous and risky slog of giving life and rearing the foetus into a successful adult that has an impact on society. This second leg is obviously far more difficult: there are unknown risks, unforeseen hurdles, soiling of hands, frustrations and disappointments galore.
Treacherous road The worst part is that the innovator’s struggle does not end with a successful launch. It is lifelong and there is never a moment of respite. A competitor could knock it off that pedestal at any time, with a ‘cooler’ product. Could you have ever imagined the century-old global icon Kodak being knocked out bankrupt by digital photography? Tata Nano illustrates the risks. With all the resources of Tata Motors, Chairman Ratan Tata’s vision of a Rs 1-lakh car mooted in 1996 matured into the frozen-design Nano only in 2006 and first commercial sale in July 2009 — 13 years of effort and thousands of crores of risk-investment in converting that dream into a deliverable shape. Priced at 50 per cent of competing models, Nano was hyped globally as the entry-level car for the rising middle-class of developing countries. But Nano too is facing hurdles with sales dropping. Nano’s protracted struggle has given competitors enough time to ready their models. Today’s globally-exposed customer seeks ‘total oomph’. Lowest price alone is not enough. Another recent example is the computer tablets, for which our present market of 80,000 is expected to grow to 15 million by 2015. The Akash tablet developed by Datawind — an NRI company of Canada — and priced at Rs 2,500 hit national headlines last year. Its Indian launch at a subsidised price of Rs 1,800 for student buyers was announced by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal with great fanfare. Quantities in millions were touted. Technical glitches in the first trial order of Jaipur University unfortunately destroyed the euphoria. Half a dozen global players spanning the entire feature and price spectrum ranging from Rs 3,000 of Ubislate to the global heartthrob Apple at Rs 29,000 have in the meantime joined the fray. Datawind has been left holding the can. Failure is a lifelong stigma in India.
Total ecology It is high time we realised that flowering of innovation is not disjointed kneejerk steps. It needs creation and nurturing of a total ecology. Why and how did Stanford become the unchallenged magnet of innovation in the US? How has Germany fostered hundreds of family-owned medium-scale companies to become global leaders of innovation in their field and made Germany an economic powerhouse? Stanford’s romance with innovation began with the post-war establishment of HP by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in a campus garage for making new electronic instruments for its labs. Spiralling post-War industrial demand for electronic instruments soon turned HP into a global powerhouse. Scientists that they were, Bill and Dave helped young entrepreneurs freely in their tinkering. The university provided the ground to experiment and later, even some seed money. Nurtured closely by both, this informal partnership flowered into a magnet for innovators. By the Eighties, faculty began to understand the nuances and risks of business, and private venture finance from across the US flooded in to join the party. Financial success emboldened higher risks and turned Stanford into a Mecca for innovation. Strength of German medium businesses is rooted in the century-old partnership between higher education and industry forged by Robert Bosch. These family-owned businesses have not only survived two World Wars, but grown into unchallenged global leaders of technology. In like fashion, our edifice of innovation will be successful only if it is founded in an un-tinted understanding of ground realities — which have been bred by an age-old culture wherein prayer and renunciation are the salvation of life, dirtying of hands is infra-dig and meant for inferior mortals; education, even technical, is totally theoretical and by rote; and faculty, even for higher technical education, has zero contact with industry and application. Torch-bearer IITs are no different. It is unfortunate that this culture of isolation has also permeated deep into our CSIR and defence labs. Scientists live in their isolated ivory towers with no interaction with industry. Projects, therefore, stretch on and on; cost-effective commercial production figures nowhere.
Fertile ground Radical change in governance, recruitment and promotion policies of institutions of higher technical education and national labs would alone pull them out of this groove. Creation of a ground fertile for innovation would require: Since even an entrepreneurial society like the US has only been able to create an innovation ecology at a few places, and India is too vast and diverse, the best course would be to begin with pilot initiatives in technical institutions which proven connect with industry, and learn our way to success. Experiment can be refined and escalated as we learn. Creation of 150+ successful entrepreneurs in first four years should be the objective of each institution. To my judgment, a grant of Rs 3 crore to each institution should be adequate to set the ball rolling. PTU’s first advanced school in Mohali (dedicated to ‘total quality management’ (TQM) and entrepreneurship) is one such institution. Its connect with over 500 industries is well known. The historical link of PSG Institute in Coimbatore with industry is again renowned. Deeper search will reveal more such examples. Pilot experiments are the tools for entering a new domain. Let us not be in a hurry, and adopt the well-trodden path. Punjab's famous contraption called 'Maruta' may seem a good example of ingenuity, but it fails to meet the requirement of innovation being something that makes an impact on society.
What is innovation
IT’s TOUGH The writer, a technologist and entrepreneurial professional, retired as Managing Director of the
Mohali-based Punjab Tractors in 1997.
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Announcements at this conference included establishment of a net-based “national knowledge network” and liberal funding of innovation. Large funds have already been placed at the disposal of every State Council of Technology, out of which Rs 1 crore has been passed on to each district. Following standard government practice, deputy commissioners have been assigned the responsibility for nurturing innovation in districts. The commission’s report specially commended our ‘jugaad’ culture.
What’s
not innovation
Hewlett-Packard, backed by Stanford University in research, innovated and transformed itself many times over, starting from a garage on the campus, and overcoming varied challenges along the way.
Tata Nano car and the tablet Akash were sincere efforts at innovation, but are facing rough weather owing to unpredictable outcomes.