O P I N I O N S

Touchstones
The Begum, her voice, and ‘Akhtari ka deewana’
Ira Pande
BORN Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, she was groomed in the famed tradition of the Awadhi courtesan who could charm parrots off trees. No one ever forgot a performance by her, whether she sang in a private gathering or to a packed auditorium.

Guest Column
Foreign or Indian, a coach needs at least four years
Rajpal Singh
Players are castigated, coaches thrown out at whim, but does anyone bother to know why the team fared badly? Does anyone raise a finger at the selectors? No.
From time to time the debate over getting a foreign coach for our hockey team has triggered passion among Indian fans of the game. With Australian coach Michael Nobbs, who was in charge of the team for around two years, gone, the debate has reignited.

Good news
Amidst gloom, happy tidings from Uttarkashi
By Neena Sharma
An agro-business enterprise set up by the Shri Jagdamba Samiti in Uttarkashi is benefiting thousands of farmers across 80 villages of Uttarakhand.
The recent Uttarakhand floods brought misery. But with the start of the apple season, farmers of Uttarkashi region, which bore the brunt of nature’s fury, are hopeful that a good crop would uplift their spirits. “We are starting the operations from August.

Touchstones
The Begum, her voice, and ‘Akhtari ka deewana’
Ira Pande

Born Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, she was groomed in the famed tradition of the Awadhi courtesan who could charm parrots off trees. No one ever forgot a performance by her, whether she sang in a private gathering or to a packed auditorium.

Ira Pande

This year marks the centenary of Begum Akhtar, the undisputed queen of what was once called ‘light classical music’ by AIR. As a sometime resident of Lucknow and an ardent admirer, I feel I must recall the power she held over the hearts of her fans for it was a quality that makes her musical legacy unique.

Quite apart from her special voice (of which more later) what I remember most is her million-watt smile. That and the diamond nose-ring that sparkled with every turn of her head as she sang. Born Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, she was groomed in the famed tradition of the Awadhi courtesan who could charm parrots off trees. No one ever forgot a performance by her, whether she sang in a private gathering or to a packed auditorium. This is because each time you attended a Begum Akhtar concert, you came away feeling she had sung to you alone. A few years ago, I chanced upon an old ‘mehfil’ of hers on DD Bharati, where she sang before a small studio audience. Among them was the poet Kaifi Azmi whose ghazals the Begum has immortalised. The rapt attention of her listeners, her easy and confident conversations as she sang, breaking off every now and then to repeat a particular line and her delighted acknowledgement of their spontaneous accolades were as unforgettable as her stunning performance. I could see why her past was littered with broken hearts.

The queen of light classical music.

In Lucknow, her haveli in Havelock Road was close to my mother’s flat in Gulistan Colony and they shared a mutual love and admiration for each other’s work. In fact, until she died my mother wore an opal ring the Begum had given her for good luck. Among the many moving articles she has written, my mother wrote one called ‘Koyaliya mat kar pukaar’, which was a wonderful portrait of the Begum for a local newspaper where she wrote a regular column. Since Begum Akhtar did not read Hindi, she had asked that my mother read it out before it was sent for publishing.

Now before I go further, I have to tell you about an old man who would come every Wednesday to our flat to sell green chillies, lemons and ginger, all carelessly slung from a sack on his shoulder. He would call out, ‘Yehne boo hai, adrak hai, hari mirchi hai…’ from the street outside, and my mother’s maid would say, ‘Bahuji, Akhtari ka deewana aaya hai.’ My mother would promptly ask him to come up and a glass of tea was brought as he sat at the landing mopping his brow. We would chat with him and he would roll up his sleeve to show us children a tattoo on his right forearm that said ‘Akhatri ka deewana’ while we teased him. He began his day by leaving a handful of his ginger-chillies-lemons at the Begum’s doorstep as his ‘bohni’ and start his daily trudge through the streets to earn his daily money. Before leaving our flat, he would empty out some of his wares and my mother would hand him some money. All this was done without any haggling or counting. It was a ritual that was important to them both.

When she wrote that article, my mother began by saying how popular Begum Akhtar was and that her fans ranged from nawabs and poets to humble vendors. She mentioned the Akhtari ka Deewana man and the Begum stopped her. ‘Don’t write about him,’ she told my mother. ‘The poor man comes from a respectable family and would be embarrassed if people started pointing him out. Let him be.’ Today, I can see that it was precisely this that made her such a unique person: she had the power to madden her listeners and although she was proud of it, somewhere she also knew the destructive power music can wield over human lives. Perhaps this was a reason that after she married her husband, an eminent gentleman-barrister known as Abbasi Sahib, she stopped singing at public places. However, robbed of her music, she became so depressed that he allowed her to resume her career but made her promise that she would never sing in public in Lucknow. It was a promise she never broke.

Finally, a word on her unique voice. Deepened by smoke and drink, it was by far the most intoxicating part of her personality. It had a break that gave her lyrics that special quality and that no one else has quite been able to replicate. Her generosity was legendary and her Lucknow house was always teeming with scores of dependents to whom she was ‘Ammi’. Her love of good food and her prowess at cooking were another special talent and her love of perfumes, expensive shawls and jewellery made her human like all of us. When she suddenly died in Ahmedabad after a concert, her admirers were bereft and inconsolable. There has been none like her and indeed may never be.

Today that lovely Havelock Road haveli is squeezed between high-rise apartments that have sprung up on its once beautiful gardens and orchard. After Abbasi Sahib’s demise a few years ago, there was no one to nurture the house they had built together. Lucknow has almost forgotten its most famous singer and soon there will be no one left to sweep the dust off her grave. However, I believe that there will always be one ghost who will silently sit at her doorstep waiting for her to claim her ‘bohni’.

Guest Column
Foreign or Indian, a coach needs at least four years
Rajpal Singh

Players are castigated, coaches thrown out at whim, but does anyone bother to know why the team fared badly? Does anyone raise a finger at the selectors? No.

Rajpal Singh

From time to time the debate over getting a foreign coach for our hockey team has triggered passion among Indian fans of the game. With Australian coach Michael Nobbs, who was in charge of the team for around two years, gone, the debate has reignited.

It is the ardent desire of Indian fans to see their team do well and almost everybody believes that a foreign coach is an essential ingredient in the recipe for the rejuvenation and success of the team at the world level. This might be true to some extent. But what we forget is this — what exactly are we looking for?

We want our team to do well, and for that we need a good coach, and not necessarily a foreign coach. To those who say that Indians can’t be good coaches, I would like to remind them of Cedric D’Souza, who coached the team in the early years of the new century. M.K. Kaushik was another good coach in the recent past. Their results speak for themselves.

Michael Nobbs too was a good coach. A Tribune file photo

Michael Nobbs too was a good coach. He made us play aggressive hockey, with focus on technique. India started winning right from the very first tournament he coached, but unfortunately, the team broke and we could never get that winning combination back.

Jose Brasa, with more than 30 years of experience, too was an excellent coach. He is one foreign coach India can’t thank enough. Most of the boys in the Indian team learnt the ropes under him.

Once a team starts losing, it is our tendency to blame the coach. Nobody raises a question about the selectors. They get off scot-free. Always.

India have been losing again and again. Players are castigated, coaches thrown out at whim, but does anyone bother to know why the team fared badly? Does anyone raise a finger at the selectors? No.

The selectors have to be accountable for their actions and there has to be transparency in their decision-making. They can’t be let off and allowed to take arbitrary decisions. If they do this, they must also pay for it. Unfortunately in India, it’s the players and coaches who cop most of the blame.

First of all, coaches should be selected after taking into account their credentials, their achievements and, most importantly, their results, especially in their last assignments. The job does not end here. A coach has to be given a time period of a minimum of four years so that he has two big tournaments (the World Cup and the Olympics) to prepare his team for. Patience is applicable not only to the players, but also the coach. Indian hockey lovers too have to be a bit patient. I know this could be asking for too much, but given the state of Indian hockey right now, there is hardly any room for recklessness.

We have to give the coaches a free hand and the resources they need, and then wait before we wield an axe on them. Any coach of the Indian hockey team has the double burden of lifting performance and yielding results simultaneously. Not to forget dealing with the manipulations of establishment. Being a former captain, I can say it’s not an easy task to perform.

If the team does well, it brings relief to the coach and captain as well. In the past, players from the northern region have dominated the Indian side. At one time, half of the team used to be from Punjab and Haryana. It is important to ensure that young talent is not allowed to be frittered away. And the onus is on the young players to deliver on the promise they have been showing in various tournaments. If youngsters take it upon themselves, a big part of the problem can be solved.

I hope players from Punjab and Haryana realise this and do well in the crucial time left for World Cup qualification. While I advocate patience for the coaches, players and fans, I also believe that immediate performance too holds the key. There has to be more urgency in the drive to qualify for the World Cup. The present dispensation needs to deliver it now. If we fail to qualify now, it would be too late. There will be no point left in putting up the processes and systems in place if we have no target. The Indian team must lift its performance and qualify for next year’s World Cup in The Hague, Netherlands.

The writer is a former captain of the Indian hockey team.

Good news
Amidst gloom, happy tidings from Uttarkashi
By Neena Sharma

An agro-business enterprise set up by the Shri Jagdamba Samiti in Uttarkashi is benefiting thousands of farmers across 80 villages of Uttarakhand.

Farmers now have cold storage facilities and are members of an agro-business enterprise.

The recent Uttarakhand floods brought misery. But with the start of the apple season, farmers of Uttarkashi region, which bore the brunt of nature’s fury, are hopeful that a good crop would uplift their spirits. “We are starting the operations from August. We are thankful to the Almighty that all our facilities, barring one collection centre at Dharali, have remained intact,” says Laxmi Prasad Semwal from the Shri Jagdamba Samiti (SJS), an NGO that empowers small farmers through an apple project launched in 2007.

Not long ago, a bumper apple crop spelt trouble for small farmers in the apple producing belt of Uttarkashi and parts of Chakrata in Uttarkhand. In the absence of cold storage facilities for surplus produce, distress sale and dumping of crop on the roads was common, and the only way out. But since 2001, things have begun to brighten up for these farmers, who now not only possess a cold storage facility for their produce, but also are members of an agro-business enterprise, whose full ownership is within their grasp.

Since 2009, the NGO has reached out to 5,470 farmers in 80 villages of the state, covering around 7,000 hectares of the apple-producing belt in the state.

Dutch connect

“Our intervention along with the funding agency Stichting Het Groene Woutd (SHGW), a family foundation of the Netherlands, was primarily aimed at building leadership and business skills among the small farmers through a business model that tried to break the monopoly of the middle men and mandis,” says Semwal.

The farmer-friendly business model comprising farmer-owned companies and cold chain for storing apples has come about through a tripartite partnership of the SJS, farmers’ trusts (companies) and the SHGW in Uttarakhand. In this business model, the farmers’ organisations become equal business partners with the private sector parties and a social investor, who pools in for agro-businesses. This can create sufficient value addition to the farmers’ produce in order to become healthy, self-sustaining joint companies of participating farmers.

Farmers’ companies have been set up at Dhari, Naugaon, Purola, Taknor, Harsil and Tyuni. Out of these, six companies comprise collection centres, one juice centre by the name of Him Fresh Juice, and other a storage centre (Him Fresh Produce Pvt Ltd) where C-grade apples are used for producing juice.

The companies began operation in 2009, while the cold storage chain, provided by another Dutch company Fresh Fruit Technology (FFT), started functioning in 2011.

Making profits

On behalf of the farmers, the SHGW has invested Rs 20 crore to be repaid by the companies as loans. Out of this amount, Rs 2 crore has already been paid back by the farmers and whenever the enterprise becomes profitable, the remaining Rs 18 crore would pass on to them in the form of shares, making them shareholders. As of now, the farmers own 10 per cent shares in all these companies.

“In recognition of the immense contribution made by the women folk in farming, they too have been given shareholding in the juice company. The women had come to us with a request to be given a bigger role in the enterprise. A total of 1,200 women farmers are involved in this enterprise,” says Semwal.

Experts say the turnaround for the farmers came with the understanding that their involvement in the enterprise was complete, right from the plucking stage to the sale of the produce. “Earlier, we fretted about the condition of our produce, now rotting does not trouble us at all. We possess a controlled atmosphere storage facility with a capacity of 1,000 MT at Naugaon to store apples for off-season sales. Even the transportation of apples is being undertaken by refrigerated trucks,” says Amar Singh Kufola, a farmer.

During a normal season, around three lakh boxes of apples are sold by the farmers through the enterprise. The strategically located collection centres helped the farmers in quick transportation of the produce from different points while ensuring adequate cooling. “Next year, we plan to set up an air-conditioned refrigerated sale counter that would give long shelf life to the juices and apples sold at the counter,” says Emmy, programme officer of the foundation. There is a reason to cheer for the apple growers. The model can be replicated in other areas to benefit small farmers.