|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
In History lessons at the primary school we were told about the penchant of the Afghan King Sher Shah Suri for improving the then-existing administrative set-up. An ethnic Afghan, born in Hissar in Punjab, he took control of the Mogul Empire in 1540 and established the Sur Dynasty after overrunning Bengal. Being far away from the centre of action which used to be Delhi, he was obsessed with better communication with it. He, therefore, organised a postal service and, in order to make it effective, we were told, he built the Grand Trunk Road. What is more important for our purpose is that while building the road Sher Shah spared a thought for the road-users, which included his postal couriers. For their benefit he had plenty of shady trees planted on the road sides under which the tired long-distance travellers could rest and relax and take the strain off their aching feet.
The history of roadside trees in India is that old, if not older. One supposes, even in earlier times paths used to be laid for the sake of establishing connectivity and trees would be planted along them for the benefit of man and animals. This has been the tradition right down to modern times. Emperor Akbar ordered that all avenues and arterial roads be covered with the graceful sheesham tree. The British were tree-lovers too, and the British architect Edwin Lutyens went to great pains to ensure that all the main avenues in New Delhi were lined with handpicked species. Jamun (black berry) trees were planted along the Raj Path and likewise, I remember, some other Lutyen’s Delhi roads having only neem (margosa) and tamarind trees on their respective sides.
During my stay in the Curzon Road Apartments in New Delhi in the early 1970s I had observed that Curzon Road had two rows of trees on each side of the road with a small asphalted strip for movement of two-way traffic with the sides left kutcha, un-asphalted. Compulsions for accommodating the burgeoning vehicular traffic made the authorities asphalt the entire available surface. Within a year or two, however, I noticed, a row of trees was being felled to meet the increasing demands of the Delhi traffic. Thankfully, the British had provided a total of four rows of trees on the road as otherwise Curzon Road, as indeed many other roads in Central Delhi, would have become bereft of any greenery long years ago.
During those very years if one happened to visit the newly-developing areas of, say, South Extension using the still up-‘n’-coming Ring Road one would get that bare and arid feeling. The Ring Road was being laid but none ever thought of planting trees on the sides. That goes as well for numerous other colonies that kept coming up during those years. It was, apparently not in the Public Works Department (PWD) or, shall we say, the Delhi Development Authority culture? Probably they never included the cost of tree-plantation in their projects but, perhaps, would readily include the cost of felling them if these happened to obstruct the road alignment.
In Bhopal in Central India during the construction of the BRTS corridor when trees were being felled right and left to widen the existing roads the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum took up the matter with the Commissioner, Bhopal Municipal Corporation. Strangely, the Commissioner countered the Forum’s objections on felling of trees by saying that compensatory plantation was being undertaken on a hillock outside the town. Apparently, trees on the roadsides for him and his minions had no role and could be dispensed with. That the trees render ecosystem services hosting colonies of birds and other creatures and also beautify the roads seemed to be much beyond their comprehension. Hence no space was provided along the widened tarmac which, most likely, will play havoc with the citizens when the city sizzles in the peak of summer in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F). Worse, he was not aware of the “Actions” adopted under the Urban Environmental Accords signed at San Francisco during the World Mayors’ Conference on June 5, 2005 in pursuant of which the city government was to maintain canopy coverage at least of 50% on all available sidewalk planting sites.
Showing exemplary persistence, the Forum persuaded the Commissioner to consider translocation of the huge, mature, decades-old trees, an enterprise that was reported to have met with success at Indore. Accordingly, as many as eighty-odd trees (against a few thousand felled) were reported to have been translocated with the help of an expert summoned from Indore. Yet, on the day the massive trees in front of Kamla Park, a heritage site, were being uprooted I happened to witness a pathetic sight. Hundreds of bats roosting on those trees were rendered homeless and were flying round and round during the high noon, seemingly not knowing where to go. The effort and the sacrifice of the bats and other creatures, however, seems to have been in vain as recent reports indicate that the survival rate of the translocated trees was very poor – just about 10 to 20 percent.
Perhaps better counsels could have been obtained. The Minister of Urban Administration always used to claim that he would turn Bhopal into another Singapore. That being so, one wonders as to why help in this matter was not sought from that City State which has developed an expertise in replanting imported fully-grown trees. Planting a sapling and nurturing it to grow over many years is too much of a hassle for it. It also wants the trees to decorate and not shed leaves or drop ripe fruits to mess up the roadsides. Only such trees, non-messy and fully grown, were therefore imported and replanted. Despite its rather peculiar attitude none can deny the State’s love for civic aesthetics and the roadside trees, which, it believes, also decorate them.
The role of trees in beautifying roads can also be seen in China and Japan which I happened to see for myself in the spring of 1982. Particularly in Beijing and Nanking roads were lined with trees of uniform heights and width. The trees also branched out from a uniform height. Standing on the pavement one could see the bare stems of the trees and branches radiating from all of them from a pre-determined height. The Chinese and Japanese appear to go to great lengths to care for them. To prevent sprouting of branches up to the desired height the civic workers would tie ropes around the stem then leave the trees to grow. Later controlling the height and width of the tree is, apparently, managed by tree-surgeons or arborists. The then tree-lined empty, almost devoid of automobiles, roads of Beijing and Nanking looked fascinatingly beautiful.
Unfortunately, we in India suffer from lack of concern for citizens as also lack civic aesthetics. Our public bodies are devoid of them, especially those like the municipalities, PWD, housing boards and other urban development organisations. Their big wigs know only beautifying their own offices or those of their bosses – political or civil. What they build for the people is generally bland, which frequently are also ugly. Worse, they refuse to improve.
Photos: Except the one of a Nanking Street that was taken by me the rest are from the Internet
|
2
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Thursday, May 16, 2013
12:04:41 PM
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
9:45:48 PM
Modified on
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
9:48:23 PM
|
|
From
Yogeshwar Dubey
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Hanging fire for decades the Supreme Court resolved the issue the other day. The issue was about relocation of a few Asiatic lions from their only home in the Gir National Park to the already-prepared Kuno Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh (MP). It was stonewalled by Gujarat for all these years claiming, as it did, the lions as its own The Court ordered in favour of the proposal and went by the considerations based on scientific reasoning that one couldn’t really put all one’s all eggs in only one basket. The proposal had been mooted by the wildlife experts of central and the two state governments concerned and the MP government had prepared the Kuno Palpur sanctuary for reception of the Asiatic lions. Gujarat, however, had a change of heart and started opposing the shift with all its might. The Sanctuary patiently waited out the decades nursing its ecosystem in the hope that better counsels would prevail someday.
That day has come now. But, strangely, a matter that is purely administrative in character and should have been decided within the governmental framework had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court at great public expense for the reason of mulish defiance of all scientific reasoning by the Gujarat administration.
Though the Court, as is its wont, gave a decision as logical as it should be, the reactions in Gujarat defy logic. Its people are fuming. The decision sparked protests in Junagadh and a bandh (forced stoppage of all activity – commercial or whatever) has been called at Sasan, close to the Gir Park. One wouldn’t be surprised if some activist adopts the Gandhian method of undertaking a fast unto death. Gir is not far away from Porbandar, the birthplace of the Mahatma. The villagers residing within the Park have been so well brainwashed that they are reported to have said that they would part with their lions only over their dead bodies. The sense of appropriation for themselves and for Gujarat of the rare, critically endangered species appeared to be complete as, indeed, was their instigation at the hands of the propagators of “Gujarat asmita” (Gujarat’s Identity). True, survival and increasing numbers of the Asiatic lions in Gir is a success story worthy of being proud of, yet, the lives of the lions are held together by a slender thread, acutely vulnerable as they happen to be to any mishap – an epidemic, for instance, the like of which had wiped out about 90% of the Tanzanian lions during the last decade of 20th Century.
Once spread over a wide area in India and its neighbouring countries, trophy-hunting and poaching drastically reduced the numbers of Asiatic lions. I recall having read somewhere that a British officer had claimed to have shot as many as half a dozen lions in one outing somewhere close to Hissar, back then in Punjab, in the 19th Century. Much earlier, Mogul Emperor Akbar is reported to have hunted lions near Rewa, now in Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of kilometres away from Gir. Lions shared their extensive habitat in the plains of India with three other big cats – the tiger, leopard and the cheetah – indicating its richness and ampleness of the prey-base in the forests of the country. But over the centuries and decades hunting and poaching took their toll, as also the rapid rise in population necessitating clearing of vast tracts of forests appreciably reducing their once-thriving habitat.
In the process while the cheetah became extinct the three other big cats saw drastic reduction in their numbers. By the last count tigers were around 1700 in number, surviving in a few pockets across the country and are under severe threat of extinction because of persistent poaching and indifferent management. Though the leopard seemed to have somehow survived, its count, though hardly ever methodically taken, is surely not more than in a few hundreds. Due to shrinkage of its habitat it often comes in conflict with humans in almost all corners of the country and reports of its being trapped or being mercilessly done to death by insensitive villagers and urbanites frequently appear in the press. A project for conservation of leopards on the lines of that of the tiger is indicated if the species is to be saved and propagated in the wild.
The Asiatic lions are, however, much worse off. Having lorded over better part of the sub-continent for centuries human insensitivity drove them into a far western corner of India where the late Nawab of Junagarh, having been instrumental in wiping off lots of them and faced with their precariously low numbers in the early parts of the 20th Century, had the sudden realisation that the beasts needed to be conserved. Howsoever rudimentary in nature the conservation effort was it, at least, stopped the animals’ wanton killings. Post-independence conservation efforts, mainly by creation of a sanctuary for the lions at Gir and later converting it into National Park yielded better results. Today they are around 400-odd in number (by a Gujarat count). Packed within the limited confines of the Park they are too many for it and are reported to be wandering out into neighbouring areas of Amreli district. They have also been sighted in other small settlements in Junagarh district outside the Park and even near Diu. The Park is virtually bursting at its seams, so to say, crawling with Asiatic lions as it would seem.
Having once belonged to the entire country the lions could not be justifiably converted into Gujarati lions with the state exercising exclusive rights over them. The animals surely have found succour from the state government which has nursed and cared for them; but the entire nation, and why, even the world has contributed towards their protection and conservation through personnel, expertise and finances. Since they happen to be located in India the country has the right over them as also the duty to ensure that this endangered species endures and enriches the country’s wildernesses with its presence. Appreciating its obligation in this respect the Centre showed unusual alacrity in conducting a countrywide survey to look for a suitable site for a second home for the lions and pitched on Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in 1993-94. It also pumped in the required finances to prepare the Sanctuary over the last two decades to enable it to host the lions. That no mishap occurred during the intervening period has been a matter of luck for Gujarat or else “Gujarat asmita” would have seen the end of this significant species. The loss would have been not of Gujarat alone but of the entire world.
The orders of the apex court place onerous responsibilities on the MP government, especially the Wildlife Wing of its forest department. Its performance in recent times has not been very encouraging and the same had been forcefully argued out at the apex court by Gujarat lawyers against the proposed shifting of the lions to the state. “Panna” still stalks them as also 12 tiger deaths in 10 months of 2012 and 3 in 2013. Poaching of tigers and their electrocution by farmers has gone on unchecked. Reports have also consistently appeared about poaching and hunting of game from the constituency of the state’s forest minister. While his tenure has been crammed with controversies, the chief minister of the state has displayed definite aversion towards wildlife when it comes to a crunch – a crunch that has political overtones. The foresters, therefore, will have to exert their utmost to ensure safety and wellbeing of the lions, as indeed of other animals in the wild, as the history does not quite foster faith in their commitment to the wild.
Gujarat government, on the other hand, is yet to come to terms with the judgement of the Supreme Court and is, quite unwisely, mulling a review petition against the apex court’s orders. One hopes better sense will eventually prevail and the judgement will be accepted, if not for anything else, at least for the sake of the lions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
News came in the other day that the already agitating students of Chennai are going to launch protest rallies when the internationally popular Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty-20 cricket matches take place at the city’s hallowed Chepauk ground. They have also decided to pressurise the Hyderabad Sunrisers, a participating IPL team owned by Kalanidhi Maran, brother of Dayanidhi Maran who represented Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a Tamil party, in the Union Government, to sack Kumar Sangakkara, a Sri Lankan cricketer.
Protest rallies are a democratic right but the demand for sacking a player of a team on whom its franchisee has spent a fortune is surely encroachment on the rights of others. DMK sympathisers of Sri Lankan Tamil’s cause have been encouraged by the BCCI’s (Board of Control for Cricket in India) prompt acceptance of the request of J Jayalalitha, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, sent to Prime Minister to direct the authorities concerned not to play Sri Lankan players in IPL matches in Chennai as she could not assure them their security.
The virtual ban on Sri Lankan players was a curious decision. It is the duty of the state government to provide security to everyone including foreigners. It does not have powers to prohibit their entry or, for that matter, exit unless so advised by the Centre. Constitutionally such a decision has to be that of the Centre. Besides, the illegal ‘ban’ puts quite a few franchisees of IPL to disadvantage eliminating from Chennai matches some key Sri Lankan players. Sangakkara himself is a key player, the captain to boot of Hyderabad Sunrisers and the team will have to keep him out at Chennai. Likewise, there are other Sri Lankans who have been bought by various teams at great cost but will have to cool their heels away from Chennai.
One presumes that the BCCI was advised by the Centre to do the needful. The simplest solution, however, would have been to take the IPL matches away from Chennai. This would have been to the satisfaction of the Tamil Nadu government as also the franchisees concerned. And, it would not have been the first time for the IPL management to have done so. Due to inability of the government of India to provide adequate security on account of the general elections in 2009 the entire tournament was shifted to South Africa. That was an international shift at a short notice; here it would have meant shifting of only the Chennai matches elsewhere in India.
The competitive politics in Tamil Nadu have already caused enormous embarrassment to India. Under DMK’s threat of desertion from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ruling at the Centre, the government voted in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) against Sri Lanka souring up relations with its small neighbour with whom it has had centuries-old ethnic, cultural, political and sporting relationships. Perhaps, the DMK would have parted ways with the UPA anyway, waiting as it seemed for a suitable opportunity. It found this issue handy and it withdrew from the coalition even before the voting in the UNHRC took place. The Indian diplomats were, however, directed to vote in a manner, as senior journalist Swapan Das Gupta said, “to impress upon the DMK and the global Tamil diaspora that India's sympathies lay (strangely) with those who have been trying unceasingly to secure the partition of Sri Lanka... making India a laughing stock in the region”.
The UPA thus sacrificed national interests for observing “coalition dharma”, although the partner for whom the sacrifice was made had already deserted it. It had earlier sacrificed its acknowledged precept of probity and integrity in the government for the same reason just for maintaining itself in power. At that time also members of the same political outfit were in the reckoning.
There was, however, no respite for the UPA; its pummelling continued, this time by the counterpart of the DMK, the Anna DMK, a splinter of the former, which is currently ruling Tamil Nadu. Its chief minister upped the ante and demanded that India should boycott Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet to be held later this year at Colombo. And, politicians being what they are, members of every party joined the chorus in passing of a unanimous resolution in the state assembly wanting India to stop treating Sri Lanka as a friendly nation, to slap sanctions on it demanding a referendum for Tamil Eelam. Thankfully, the government, weak though it is, did not bend and rejected the demands out of hand.
Cho Ramaswamy, a well-known thinker, journalist and editor of Tamil weekly Tughlak feels that Tamil politicians are using Sri Lankan Tamils for their own political gains. According to him, the Tamil question was never an electoral issue in Tamil Nadu. Cho says that even the Sri Lankan Tamils have not made any big noise about declaring President Rajapaksa a war criminal and they never used the word genocide which DMK wanted India to have incorporated in the UNHRC resolution. According to Cho, it is some marginal Tamil parties in the state that have been hammering away at the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. Presuming that their thunder was being stolen away, the two major parties got into the act. Finding a weak Centre, these two parties led by arch political rivals started raising their bids to strengthen their respective support bases.
In a gratuitous article the other day in a prominent newspaper Hardeep Puri, former Permanent India Representative at the UN, justified the recent Indian action at the UNHRC. While doing so he seemed to have been oblivious of India’s unbecoming role in fostering terrorism in Sri Lanka that eventually led to tragic fallout over the country. No wonder, it drew a prompt riposte from Sri Lanka – recalling India’s ill-advised manoeuvres in regard to the recalcitrant Tamil Tigers fighting for what they called Tamil Eelam (Tamil Independence).
The diplomatic muddle at the UNHRC meet impaired the country’s relations with a traditional neighbour that has been ethnically and culturally close to it for ages. The Indian vote against Sri Lanka that was justified by Puri was decided upon without any diplomatic initiatives determined, as it was, by regional political pressures. If internal political compulsions become determinants for the conduct of the country’s foreign relations, why then have a full-fledged highly qualified diplomatic corps?
This is, however, not the first, nor perhaps the last, instance of states influencing the Centre in conduct of foreign relations, especially with neighbours. Foreign relations are a central subject and the states, barring consultative or advisory, generally have had no role to play. What one witnessed in respect of signing of Teesta Waters Treaty with Bangladesh and now in regard to the Sri Lankan Tamil question are extraordinary instances of intransigence of states to the detriment of the Union.
One wonders whether the Indian federalism was being taken advantage of. But, then India has had a federal structure from the inception of the republic and the Centre hardly ever faced, i.e. until the UPA came to power, such a situation where it had to tailor and remodel its foreign policy to suit the extravagant demands born out of exigencies of populism of the politicians of a state. One can think of only two reasons. The first is that the government at the centre is dependent for survival on its powerful regional allies, howsoever unreasonable and demanding they are, and would not let slip power from its hands whatever might be at stake, including adverse national repercussions. Secondly, politics in the country has turned so coarse that the prestige and image of the nation mean nothing to the self-serving politicians, whether at the Centre or in the states.
With the failure so far of the Centre in asserting its powers and authority what comes across is an image of the tail wagging the dog and, curiously, the dog merrily wags.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Occasionally a wrong step may eventually lead to what one may call course-correction. Something similar happened recently in regard to the Upper Lake of Bhopal. The Urban Administration Department (UAD), under the leadership of its minister, rustled up a project of a couple of hundred crores for conservation and beautification, inter-alia, of the Upper Lake for onward transmission to the government of India for approval. The UAD, under the minister, having been used to treating itself as the owner and decider for its development, conservation and beautification, ignored the Empowered Committee for the management of the Lake and overlooked the fact the Centre for Environmental Planning (CEPT), the renowned institution of Ahmedabad, earlier engaged by it for recommending measures for planning, development and conservation of the Lake was yet to submit its report (for reasons attributable not to it but to the state and government).
On being highlighted in the vernacular press, the Mayor, who is also the chairperson of the Empowered Committee, is reported to have expressed her unhappiness. Even the Chief Secretary got into the act and summoned a meeting of the Empowered Committee. At the meeting the UAD, however, got a face-saver in the shape of approval of the project but it seems to have been kept on the back-burner. The good that came about from the imbroglio was about the report of the CEPT. Instead of being delayed until the next assembly elections as was being reported, it will now come out by May next. That will, hopefully, put an end to all unilateralism of the UAD, which under the directions of its minister and in association with State Tourism Development Corporation has converted the shores of the Lake into a museum of sorts, planting there an old steam locomotive, a model of a Indian Navy ship and a squat and ugly representation of the legendary ancient king facing the main artery of the town. The department and its handmaiden, the Tourism Corporation, have played havoc with the water body and its ecosystem in several ways details of which need not be mentioned here.
It might be of interest that the UAD in its project has also proposed development, beautification and conservation of the three other water bodies, famously known as the three “cascading lakes”, a part of unique heritage of the city. While the one at the very top, the Motia Talab, is somewhat alive, the two others in descending order are being choked to death by encroachments. Over the years encroachers have had a free run and houses have been constructed and continue to be constructed even today with the municipal corporation and the UAD acting as bystanders and mute spectators. It seems, the encroachers have secured stay on orders of their removal from the courts and the orders have been in force now for more than a decade. While the municipality, seemingly, is in deep slumber encroachers have gone about grabbing more and more of the two lakes.
Even the so-called marriage-gardens located by the side of the Upper Lake and spewing their waste into it are reported to have obtained stays from the local courts on orders of their removal and these have been in force for years on end. One wonders whether these stays will remain in force till eternity. One can only think of two possibilities: either the lawyers of the municipality are thoroughly incompetent or the whole lot, including lawyers and municipal officials from top to bottom, are corrupt being in the pay of the encroachers. It is astounding that a civic body with all the administrative and financial support it can muster and with all the paraphernalia at its command is unable to get for years the stay(s) vacated to free the lands and structures of the city’s heritage of which it is the custodian. Nothing could be more reprehensible than this.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Even as a layman uninitiated in the intricacies of macro-economics I get an unmistakable sinking feeling, the same which I used to get during the days of our pseudo-socialism. Prices would rise relentlessly while the incomes would by and large remain stagnant. Whether it was the essentials, the utilities, services or whatever – the price of everything would every year register a rise making survival difficult for us ordinary folks. Despite the progressive enlargement of the government it would seem as if it was helpless; the absence of governance was all too palpable. The financial squeeze was mostly on the vast numbers of poor and the slowly developing middle classes, whereas the politicians, commanding the country’s resources and with their nexus with business and industry, made merry.
A similar scenario has again been unfolding for some time. Driven, inter alia, by the oil price hikes and high fiscal deficit of 5.1% due to the profligacy of the government in the social sector, the inflation remains unchecked at a high of more than 12%. The government claims that the wholesale price index has since fallen to around 6% which is meaningless as what affects the people is the consumer price index and that refuses to climb down. Food items, in some cases, have registered around a 15% rise.
Economics and politics have a close inter-relationship and, hence, the current political instability is going to inflict more hardships on the people. The miraculously galloping GDP growth is currently not even on a trot. The growth rate during the last calendar year hovered below 6% with the last quarter registering a mere 4.5% growth – chillingly close to the abysmal “Hindu Rate of Growth” of around 3.5% that persisted for decades during our pseudo-socialist phase. Although reports of emergence of “green shoots” of revival (of the economy) have appeared in the media one cannot put much stock on them as these are all officially engineered to play down the gravity of the economic distress.
One fears the worst for the next fiscal. The parties supporting the ruling coalition - the United Progressive Alliance – from outside are likely to arm-twist the government to nurse their own constituencies. The government will have no qualms in playing along sacrificing vast sums of money just to keep itself in power. Fiscal prudence or bold economic initiatives cannot be expected from an anaemic, virtually a minority, government. Growth is likely to suffer and the deficits may increase and so will the difficulties of the common man.
As it is, investments in the manufacturing sector have dried up. Leave alone foreign direct investments, even the indigenous investments are not forthcoming. The climate in India was never attractive for foreign investors. On top of that the March 2012 budget with its proposal of retrospective taxation and General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) made the foreign investors apprehensive of the government’s intentions. Investments from abroad dried up accompanied by flight of capital. Dollars became scarce and the Rupee declined against all currencies and about 18% against the Dollar. Imports became expensive and the problem got compounded by slow-down in exports. The current account deficit ballooned to around a massive $35 billion.
Unsurprisingly India Inc. finds investments abroad to be attractive. It claims that apart from the policy-paralysis that has set in, the dispensation is utterly opaque. Besides, the cost of capital has climbed sky-high and the extant labour laws are forbidding. Predictably, investments abroad by India Inc. during the 2012-13 have surpassed those made in India. Industrial plants are being set up in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe where mergers and acquisitions, too, have become common. Indian manufacturing base is progressively shifting abroad, especially to China, depriving the country of the benefits of creation of jobs and augmentation of product base. It seems it is cheaper for them to import the finished products from there and sell them in the country. Besides, China is flooding our markets with cheap products of virtually all kinds most of which the country surely has the capability to produce.
The already depressing environment has become more depressing for want of jobs. The nine months of 2012 saw a measly 1% growth in the core industrial sector providing hardly any scope for creation of jobs. Even during the period of rapid growth only about a quarter of 12 million joining the labour force every year had been accommodated. The manufacturing sector had shed 5 million jobs between 2004-05 and 2009-10 but was unable to create jobs for the rural migrants. In absence of significant job-creation one fears social unrest in the future as the “demographic bulge” will pump in ever increasing numbers into the labour markets. The much-touted “demographic dividend” might in fact result in an extended era of crises of joblessness, crimes and social disorder – the “green shoots” of which are already perceivable in the shape of robberies, thefts, snatchings, rapes and murders. The “overarching” goal of 2013-14 budget “to create opportunities for our youth to acquire education and skills that will get them decent jobs or self-employment” will take some time to materialise.
Despite a spate of cases of corruption involving billions of rupees, the government has determinedly not taken steps to institute a strong and independent Lokpal (ombudsman) - quite understandably, as otherwise most of the ministers would find themselves behind the bars. Rampant corruption in high places has encouraged even lower level petty district officials in amassing millions by illegal means. Describing the pervasive corruption the Apex Court very aptly observed recently that it “...accelerates undeserved ambition, kills the conscience...paralyses the economic health ...corrodes the sense of civility and mars the marrows of governance”. No wonder, even clerks and patwaries (lowest level revenue officials) have been nabbed for amassing millions.
The number of crorepaties (millionaires) has multiplied and is far more than the 48000 determined by the Finance Minister for levy of a nominal additional tax. In fact, there are arabpaties (billionaires) numbering more than 48000 whose assets are both concealed and undeclared or are located somewhere in banks abroad. Seeing so many crorepaties everyone wants to become one by hook or by crook. And, on the other hand, numbers of poor and hungry have also ballooned. As the cost of food items escalates a few millions sink below the poverty line every month. Mindboggling sums are being poured into the social sector to mitigate poverty and elevating the level of healthcare but most of it is siphoned off by unscrupulous petty politicians and bureaucrats. Though the fiscal deficit is thus enlarged people do not get respite from poverty and disease.
No efforts are noticeable for price control. While the middlemen in the cartelised mandies (wholesale markets) laugh all the way to the banks the consumers are squeezed dry and the farmers keep committing suicide. Likewise, there is no tangible effort to revive the manufacturing industry and/or bring back the invested capital from abroad. The famed Indian managerial and technical talent, surprisingly, delivers in the US, but not in the country. No effort is being made to harness them for the country’s wellbeing. Worse, the government has made no efforts to have the illegal billions stashed abroad repatriated despite the assurances of help and cooperation by various European governments, including those of Switzerland and Germany. Perhaps, that would have been of help in neutralising the fiscal deficit. But then, it is futile to expect such action from those who themselves are guilty of salting away the country’s stolen wealth abroad. Politics and politicians seem to be devouring this country.
It is such a pity that with renowned economists at the helm for almost a decade there is such all pervasive gloom from which the aam aadmi (common man) can scarcely find escape.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Despite all that happened in the aftermath of the Delhi gang rape last December rapes seem to be continuing in relentless manner. Every morning one comes across at least half a dozen reports of rapes in the newspapers. These are apart from cases of molestations and other instances of gender violence. What would appear alarming is that while the gang rape of Delhi evoked heartfelt responses from all over the world and induced defining developments involving consideration of measures for protection of women gang rapes continue to occur with disquieting regularity.
Blaming the influence of Western culture the self-proclaimed protagonists of Hindutva (Hindu way of life) had asserted after the tumult of the Delhi gang rape that rapes happen only in “India” and not in “Bharat”. The thrust of the argument was that rapes were an urban phenomenon because of pervasive influence of supposedly prurient Western culture and adoption of loose Western moral values in the metropolitan towns and cities. Those who lived in “Bharat”, i.e. in rural India, were yet untouched by them, were more traditional and thus were above such aberrant conduct. Unfortunately for the radical Hindutva brigade, their contention exploded in their face as a spate of reports appeared in the media about rapes in rural India. Rapes are probably as prevalent, if not more, in the country’s villages and hamlets as they are in urban settlements. In fact, whether in the deep South or up in the North dalit (former untouchables) women are routinely violated, singly or collectively or even murdered after having been raped, by the members of the higher castes. The suggestion was, therefore, wholly flawed, presupposing that there were no rapes in the country before the advent of Western mores – a typical instance, if there could be one, of cultural oneupmanship.
Of late, there seems to have been a rise in the number cases of rapes of minors of the ages ranging from three years to seventeen years. A man must be less than human to consciously commit rape on a mere infant. Looks like people have become so sex-starved that they are unable to pause and think of the heinous nature of their crime or even of the rigours of stiff penalties that the commission of it entails. Along with rampant corruption it seems to be another despicable facet of India where violence on the weaker sex is so rampant. Perhaps both are two sides of the same coin. Obviously, the uproar over the Delhi gang rape that was witnessed in most parts of the country did not touch a large section of perverted men.
Regardless of various steps being taken to prevent sexual assaults on women, including stiff jail terms, rapes seem to be uncontrollable. However, by no means India alone suffers from this ill; it is prevalent even in much better policed and economically advanced countries. Like corruption, as Indira Gandhi once described it, rapes, too, are a world phenomenon. They happen everywhere, in every country; in some countries the incidence is low, in some others it is high. None should, therefore, get away with the impression that the perversity is endemic only in this country.
For instance in war-torn Africa rapes are common. In the ongoing strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo women have had the worst. Yes, there have been violence, killings and deaths but there have also been rapes of hapless women in large numbers. The country has seen armed militias playing havoc with it for many years. While violence and killings have been rampant the militias have been raping the women they came across. The usual practice seems to be to take the women into the bush and keep them in captivity for months during which they are raped by one and all in the militia. The Congo, too, is called the rape capital of the world. Revolutions and civil wars do strange things to people.
In the wars that involved Zimbabwe, Angola, Uganda, Chad, Namibia and Burundi, millions died but several hundreds of thousands of women were raped. Rape is stated to be defining the ongoing civil war in Syria which is inching toward replacing the Congo as the world’s rape capital. Women and girls are routinely kidnapped, raped and tortured by the military. At military checkpoints, they have become soldiers’ targets.
Regardless of all this South Africa walks away with the cake. The country has the highest reported incidence of rape in the world. South African police estimates that a woman is raped every 36 seconds. It also has some of the highest incidences of child and baby rape in the world. Numerous reasons that are basically cultural have led to this behavioural aberration. Some 56,272 rapes were recorded in 2010-11, an average of 154 a day and more than double of India's rate. A survey in Gauteng province found more than one in three men admitted to have committed rape. Many cases are known to go unreported and it is estimated that only around one in 200 rapists will be convicted. More than 25% of a sample of 1,738 South African men from the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape Provinces admitted to raping someone, nearly half had raped more than one person.
In China convictions for rape are higher in number but, arguably, only one in ten cases are reported which would amount to a quarter of a million rapes in a year. This figure is also associated with rapes in the US, though researches feel there is pretty much under-reporting as elsewhere. Campus rapes are what seem to be more problematic with about 25000 women having confessed in a survey of either having been raped or suffered an attempted rape in an academic session, drug-use and alcohol being frequently associated with rapes Other researchers have revealed that about 80000 children are sexually abused every year. It has been estimated that one in six women in America has been either raped or will be up against an attempted rape during her lifetime.
In Britain sociologists are worried about rise in teen-age gang rapes. The marauding school or college-going teenagers have been known to have abducted girls, kept them in illegal confinement and raped them under threat of violence. In 2007, while 85000 women were reportedly raped only 800 were convicted – a rather sad ratio. In Europe Sweden has the highest incidence of reported rapes.
Socio-psychologists have, therefore, tried to study why people commit rape and why they collectively rape a single helpless woman. Findings, however, are not very conclusive. Researchers have only theorised that rapists generally can be put in two categories – criminal and psychiatric. The criminal rapists are mostly poorly educated and come from lower socio-economic strata, mostly with a criminal background whereas the psychiatric rapist was found to be well-educated and from a higher income bracket. A more widely accepted theory, nonetheless, is that that most rapists come from a subculture of violence whose values may be different from those of the dominant culture.
As for gang rapes, sociologists feel that that people think it would be easier to get away un- noticed if the crime is committed in a group. Others, however, think that gang rape is explained more by men’s “need” to perform gender for other men than it is by any kind of “irresistible” sexual desire. By American feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem’s “cult of masculinity”, gang rape is aided by numbers, underlying aggression, anger machismo and misogyny and by a culture that does too little to hold perpetrators accountable.
All this is not to say that since rapes are prevalent all over, at some places even more than as in India, nothing need be done. The prescription seems to be clear at least for the present. The State will need to be proactive by enacting stricter laws with heavy penalties and ensure effective policing for protection of women. Acknowledging the existence of “rape culture” that harbours machismo and misogyny, it will have to combat them with resolve inculcating, particularly in rural areas and in dehumanising shanty-towns of urban India, respect for women. The civil society, too, will have a role in helping its dregs to acquire the country’s well-known age-old and now-forgotten values.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Banihal was in the news recently. Northern Railway commissioned a tunnel connecting Qazigund in Kashmir Valley with Banihal in Jammu Region boring through the mighty Pir Panjal Range of the Himalayas. Termed as Asia’s second longest tunnel it is a little more than 11 kilometres long at an average elevation of 5770 ft. Qazigund is already connected with Barammulla in North Kashmir via Srinagar. It is part of the ambitious and somewhat formidable railway project that will connect Kashmir to the rest of India over a series of mountain ranges by rail, perhaps a more challenging project than that of Konkan Railway. This is the third tunnel that has pierced the Pir Panjals.
This is a very vital road as it is the only road that links Kashmir with the country. Before partition the approach to the Valley was via Muree, Muzaffarabad, now Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. This road was of lesser importance, being known as the Banihal Cart Road (BC Road). They say even tongas (horse-drawn carriages) from Jammu occasionally would audaciously use it and cross into the Valley through the Banihal Pass at around 11,000 ft. Now it is the lifeline for the Valley; the old Mogul Road via Poonch and Shopian is yet to be commissioned. The road via Rohtang Pass does connect the country with Kashmir but via Ladakh requiring a difficult detour.
The news reports called Banihal a town. May be it is so today. When I saw it first in 1957 it was no more than a mere village. My parents and we siblings were on our way to Kashmir that summer to visit a brother who was posted at Srinagar. The bus, having been delayed due to landslides on the way, had to stop at Banihal village for the night. Depending on the time of the day the buses would normally go across the Pir Panjal Range to stop at Qasigund which is the first town in Kashmir Valley. Perhaps our bus driver did not consider it safe to climb a few more thousand feet at night over winding rough and bumpy roads to cross over to the Valley through the Jawahar Tunnel that was at an elevation of around 9000 ft.
As it happens in villages, there was scarcity of accommodation for so many people. With great difficulty we could find two rooms that had their walls plastered with clay and cow dung. And they smelt of hay and hookah smoke. With no available alternative we had to put up in them. Right through the night we could hear a few enterprising truck drivers negotiating the treacherous road, pushing their vehicles hard up the mountain over the dangerous mountainous roads.
We got the measure of the height we had to climb only in the morning when we looked up and saw as a tiny spec the mouth of the tunnel way up the mountain, almost touching the turquoise blue morning sky. As we recommenced our journey we came across another tunnel being bored through the Pir Panjal a few kilometres ahead of Banihal at a higher elevation. Those days the country was in its socialistic phase and, therefore, the East Germans (having a communist regime) had been engaged for the work. They were working on two tunnels for up and down traffic in order to avoid jams that used to occur for years at the Jawahar Tunnel during the tourist season. A decade later I had the occasion to drive through this tunnel on my way down from Srinagar.
The Jawahar Tunnel took some time in arriving. The climb appeared to be steeper and the wretched road, at places was too narrow, made it more difficult. Looking out of the windows with the sight of drops of thousands of feet in case of a mishap was scary. Down below the villages looked far too miniaturised – one of them must have been Banihal. After an agonisingly slow climb we entered the little-more-than 2 km long tunnel that took us through the Pir Panjals – avoiding the other road that led to Banihal Pass, hardly used for motorised vehicles then, still higher, at around 11,000 ft. As we emerged from the tunnel we got a fabulous and an unforgettable view of the Valley, green and verdant sprawled a few thousand feet down below in front of us. The visibility was so good that one could see for miles with snow-covered mountains on both sides. As the sides of our bus grazed the mountainside we got the scraped off lumps of snow right inside.
Another hour and we were in Qazigund, elated at having arrived in Kashmir but tired and hungry. Its wayside joints are known for their parathas and omelettes, the aroma of which seemingly permeated the place. We too had our fill of them fortifying ourselves before commencing our onward journey to Srinagar another couple of hours away.
*The photographs are from the Internet
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
For more than sixty five years we have been a democracy and we are even called the largest democracy in the world. Some call our democracy vibrant and some others brand it “raucous”. Whatever one might call it, it is universally accepted that it is indeed a democracy. We have all the elements of a democracy – a parliament, an independent judiciary, a government that acts in the name of a constitutional head and a press or, one might say, the media that claims to be free and independent.
Having all the trappings of a democracy the country should have ensured freedom of every kind to the citizens. But that is not so. The freedoms that one seeks in a democracy – those of speech and expression, thoughts and actions, that of movement within the country and so on – are, of late, being severely restricted. In fact, one tends to feel that our democracy is increasingly becoming restrictive on various counts.
Let us take the fourth pillar of democracy, for instance, the media. Only the other day the Chairperson of the Press Council of India (PCI) advised governments to shun the practice of “blackmailing” the media by stopping the flow of ads to them to counter criticism. Describing the practice as “undemocratic”, he threatened legal action if such practices were brought to his notice. This, however, has been the practice ever since our democratic framework came into existence. No wonder the media houses came in support of the chairman PCI. Ads largely sustain affordable dissemination of information. Governments and their agencies command enormous amounts of funds for advertisements and they have been using this clout with impunity to browbeat the media. Most fall in line but some, made of sterner stuff, choose to plough a lonely furrow at great personal cost. Unable to compete with media houses well-fed with ads of governments they either scrounge around or fold up. In the process, truth and objectivity become casualties, depriving the people at large accurate perspectives of all that happens around them.
I, for one, can quite comprehend the way the governments gag people’s voices. About a decade ago a large number of columnists in Bhopal, including your reporter, used to write comments in the local papers on all that transpired or did not transpire in connection with the town’s civic amenities. The pieces were generally critical of the local government and its agencies. Nonetheless, the local readers and even the bureaucracy used to appreciate the comments. All the columnists, they said, acted as opinion makers. Soon, however, the dailies, including several national ones, stopped publishing what they called unsolicited articles. Even the “letters” column has been banished from the city supplements. One feels so helpless. One cannot air, forget about opinion, even one’s grievances. All are left wondering whether the press has been bought off.
Political corruption spawned by the country’s electoral system also contributes to curtailment of freedom. In the prevailing “first-past-the-post” system votes are purchased by or on behalf of the candidates. Political parties, therefore, collect huge amounts legally or illegally to further their chances of winning elections only by majority of votes polled. Those which capture power would seem to be hitting gold. In this era of coalition politics even a minor political ally can generate enormous amounts of funds through their respective representatives in the governments or in the legislatures. One cannot forget the candid statement given in one unguarded moment by DMK’s Andimuthu Raja of “2G Spectrum”-fame that he had a party to take care of, national interests seeming to be immaterial to him.
Every political party indulges in this practice, the Grand Old Party of India having become a past master in the game. The slush funds are used in electoral campaigns, to buy support or even legislators to enable capture of power or to cling on to it. Mindboggling illegal amounts are collected in dodgy ways only to enable further milking of the system and plunder of public resources depriving common man his freedoms of employment, education, health care and so on. In the midst of rising inequities politicians and industrialists are rapidly becoming billionaires in the country’s liberalised economy while the common man continues to languish in poverty, disease and squalor. The lure of power has converted our politicians into crooks. Not only there are riches that come within one’s grasp but also all that which power alone can secure – whether legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. Self-serving, as they are, they think only of furtherance of their own interests and those of their close relatives and friends. Emergence of dynastic politics is a direct consequence.
Ours is no longer a democracy; it is an oligarchy that uses the public resources to serve only a few, their families and sycophants to the exclusion of the vast majority. General wellbeing of the nation is mostly put on the back-burner. Thus, in repeated quests of power and taking a partisan view a railways minister would approve projects that serve only his own constituency and an industries minister would locate industries despite difficulties of infrastructure and logistics in the area that has returned him to power. In the era of weak governance of the ruling coalitions together with the scourge of what is known as the “coalition-dharma”, this evil has become a full-blown curse affecting the lives of a vast section. In this connection one recalls the resignation of Dinesh Trivedi, Railway Minister, who dared to deviate from his party-line to think of strengthening the railways by way of raising fares that had remained static for years. Despite being applauded by the Prime Minister for his refreshingly new and genuine national perspective the “Coalition Dharma” didn’t allow his continuance even at the risk of the Railways going bankrupt. Everyone takes such aberrations as fait accompli.
In addition, a peculiar phenomenon is being currently witnessed. Small social groups or those from religious fringes have developed the audaciousness and the spunk to torment and curtail liberties of the innocent. In Haryana, for instance, a “khap” bans the use of cell phones by women or prevents them from marrying men of their own choice for the sake of upholding what they consider to be the “tradition” or, far away, in caste-conscious Tamil Nadu a dalit is ostracised for marrying an upper-caste. For a misconceived affront to a faith, a Rushdie is prevented to attend Literary Festivals, a Taslima Nasreen is not only chased out of Kolkata by a fanatical mob, a supposedly secular metropolis, she is also assaulted in Hyderabad and the iconic artist MF Hussain is forced to live his last years abroad and even die there. Likewise, while, three Kashmiri teenagers had to say goodbye to their rock-band in compliance with a fatwa, another set of youngsters were assaulted for partying in a way disliked by “moral policemen” of a small obscure religious group in Karnataka.
In this country today one is not even free to express one’s opinion or lampoon those who happen to be in power. Thus cartoonists are put in prison for their satirical cartoons and cases are filed against those who criticise people in power for their perceived misdemeanours. Drunk with unhindered power the political class has increasingly shed all humour and has become intolerant of criticism. A move was afoot to censor even the social networking sites. Mercifully, the effort was given up owing to the hue and cry raised by the civil society.
Given above is a list which is only illustrative of the ways democratic freedoms of our countrymen guaranteed under the Constitution are being whittled down. What is more, while the traditional liberalism of the country and the freedom to practice it progressively shrinks with small socio-religious groups bullying the rest, the dispensations seem to be unable to move in to stem the obvious rot for fear of losing their political support base. None seems to want to rock the boat, little realising that such indifference, over a period of time, would only nourish a growing monster.
In the absence of strong political formations at the Centre and ascendance of regional political set-ups the future does not hold out any hopes. Dependence on regional satraps has seemingly emasculated the national parties and hence the period of non-governance and ambivalence towards rule of law is likely to get prolonged. In the process, democratic freedoms, as we have known them so far, may also progressively get pared down.
|
4
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Sunday, March 03, 2013
11:20:05 AM
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Friday, March 01, 2013
12:39:42 PM
|
|
From
Dr.rashmi Salil Kumar
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Thursday, February 28, 2013
6:57:21 AM
Modified on
Thursday, February 28, 2013
7:00:42 AM
|
|
From
Prof. Prem Mohan Lakhotia
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
10:12:06 PM
|
|
From
Nani Manna
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
The other day “The Hindu” brought out a feature on the guavas of Allahabad. Allahabad has, seemingly, always been famous for guavas. Since childhood we used to hear hawkers carrying basketfuls of guavas on their heads calling out “Ilahabad ke amrud” (guavas of Allahabad). We did not know whether they used to be really from that blessed place. More than sixty years ago it seems rather farfetched that guavas of Allahabad would travel all the way to Gwalior in Central India where I was growing up the early 1940s and 1950s. But, then the hawkers had their own way of attaching, what has since come to be known as, Geographical Indication of the products that they hawked. Thus, we had “Hoshangabad ke tarmooz” (Water melons from Hoshangabad), “Nagpur ke Santre”, (oranges from Nagpur), “Malihabad ke dussehri” (dussehri mangoes from Malihabad), “Bambai ke hapus” (Alphonso mangoes from Bombay), “Chaman ke angoor” (grapes from Chaman, Afghanistan), and so on. Over the years, this district-wise specialisation in production of fruits seems to have been wiped out with the economic, scientific and agricultural, especially fruiticultural progress that the country has made. Everything virtually is being grown everywhere and numerous places have, as a consequence, lost the tags they earlier had attached to them for production of some specific fruits.
Guavas of Allahabad, however, are different. They stand out even today and, to my knowledge, their production has not been replicated anywhere else. It is indeed unique, like of which I had never seen before. One would normally think that guavas of every place are more or less the same. It is not so; the difference is to be seen to be believed. I could not believe my eyes the first time I set my eyes on them in the main square of Allahabad. A couple of hawkers were hawking them piled up on their baskets. They looked like apples from Himachal or Kashmir – red, either all over or interspersed with yellows, and were well-rounded – a beautiful looking fruit. Inside it has pink meat and as one bites into it one gets a very pleasant fragrance. Red, apple-like guavas are grown in some countries but, I dare say, the ones of Allahabad are unique as far s this country is concerned.
Of course, there are various varieties that orchards around Allahabad produce but the red one is what beats them all. Known as “Surkha”, meaning red, it gets better as the winter chill increases. Now that the cold weather has set in, the fruit, apparently, is available in plenty. I saw videos of Kumbh Mela where Westerners were found biting into the delectable fruit sitting on the sands near the Sangam, the confluence of Ganges, Yamuna and the extinct river Saraswati. Having a very short shelf-life, it is generally not amenable to transportation over long distances. During our visit a few years ago, we did not find it in Varanasi which is a hundred-odd kilometres from Allahabad. At Lucknow it was just not there, presumably, being a little too far out for its comfort.
Allahabad has more to it than just “Surkha” and Kumbh at “Sangam”. It has Khusro Bagh, a 17th Century walled garden, in which are located the mausoleums displaying exquisite architecture of Emperor Jehangir’s son Khusru, his sister Nithar and their mother, Emperor Jehangir’s first wife who was a Hindu. It also has a 16th Century fort built by Emperor Akbar. The University of Allahabad, once known as the Oxford of the East, is located here. Anand Bhawan, the house built by Motilal Nehru is another attraction having been an important scene of action during the country’s freedom struggle. Allahabad also offers in its bustling Chowk some delicious spicy eastern Uttar Pradesh cuisine.
|
5
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
12:30:44 PM
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Monday, February 04, 2013
7:28:37 PM
|
|
From
Yogeshwar Dubey
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Monday, February 04, 2013
5:43:21 PM
|
|
From
Ranjeeta Das
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Monday, February 04, 2013
5:14:48 PM
|
|
From
Trisha Gaur
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Sunday, February 03, 2013
10:28:01 PM
|
|
From
Nani Manna
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
The latest reports say that the LoC (Line of Control) between Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) has cooled down. The cooling has come about after the stern statements made by a mostly mild and a namby pamby Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The brutal decapitation of an Indian soldier on the LoC raised the heckles of the people at large, the Opposition and the media – both print and electronic – and there were shrill demands for retaliation. The denial mode adopted by the Pakistani establishment, both military and civil made things worse. On top of that statements given by the Pakistani foreign minister in Washington stoked further anger in India. Her posturing of Pakistan being an innocent victim of Indian hostility and intransigence aggravated matters.
The government of Dr. Manmohan Singh was left with no alternative but to take serious note of the incident. Demanding that the perpetrator of the brutality should be brought to book, Dr. Singh came out with a statement that roundly said that “after this barbaric act there cannot be business as usual” with Pakistan. This turned out to be one of those rare occasions when the government succumbed to the overwhelming pressure of the people and act according to the prevailing public sentiments.
The “peace process” was the first casualty. The call for dialogues by the Pakistan Foreign Minister after her rants against India made things more difficult. Dialogues seem to have been pushed indefinitely into the future as far as India is concerned. The liberalised visa regime, including visa on arrival for senior citizens, agreed to by the Home Minister with his Pakistani counterpart during the latter’s highly controversial visit to Delhi, was stalled. The cross-border buses stopped plying and trade between two parts of Kashmir remains suspended. Cultural and sporting ties took a hit. Plays to be staged by Pakistani theatre group have been cancelled by the host – the National School of Drama. Pakistani hockey players hired by various franchisees for matches in the Hockey India League have been dispatched home. Reports said that even iconic Pakistani cricketers Wasim Akram and Rameez Raja, currently commentating in the India-England cricket series, had been asked to leave. Although they are still around, former India hockey players have demanded their ouster. Clearly, “aman ki asha” (hope for peace), a campaign for peace between the two countries initiated by the Jung Group of Pakistan and Times of India, essentially a Track III sort of connect between common people of the two countries, is under threat.
It was, however, amazing to see on the TV the number of Pakistani guests staying in India on the invitations of organisations – government and/or private. From singers to artists and actors, to hockey and cricket players and even doctors in large numbers are apparently camping in the country on invitation of some organisation or the other. The “people-to-people” contact apparently has been only a one-way street with hordes of Pakistanis coming to India for programmes of various kinds. Wasim Akrams, Abida Parveens, Ghulam Alis and so on are, more or less, regular fixtures in our sports and cultural spheres. Sur Kshetra, a musical reality show mounted to unearth singing talents in India and Pakistan, was hosted by the Indian Colours channel in which large numbers of Pakistanis participated and an established Pak singer acted as a judge. Indian TV channels routinely get Pakistani commentators on TV shows. No such reciprocity, however, has ever been shown by Pakistan. Even a Pak cricket team was allowed to tour India late last year for the first time after the “26/11” carnage. And, what does the country get in return? A few panches and sarpanches killed in Kashmir and a dead soldier minus his head – followed only by denials despite stark incriminatory evidences?
This is not to suggest that there should be no interaction between the civil societies of the two countries. Unfortunately, however, efforts to bring about vibrancy between them to promote peace and harmony have yielded precious little. The civil society of Pakistan is powerless; it has hardly any influence over the powers-that-be. A democracy it might be but the Pak army has been calling the shots for a long, long time. Now that it and its Inter Services Intelligence have teamed up with anti-India jihadist and terrorist groups that have congenital hatred for India, hoping for peace between the two countries is futile. Regardless of how much India bends backwards to accommodate Pakistan and regardless of the intensity of the “people-to-people” contacts, it would always remain hostile to India, given the power equations within the country. Besides, there are vested interests in nursing the hostility. The Army-jihadist combine is deadly; even Americans have come to realise its lethality.
And, yet there is what is known as a thriving “peace industry” in this country run by peaceniks comprising politicians, former diplomats, journalists, et al, who insist on continuing talks at any cost. Citing Prime Minister Vajpayee’s dictum that Pakistan was our neighbour and we could not wish it away, they say talk we must and in whatever “track” that yields results. None, however, predicts what good will come out of it. Haven’t we seen that after every confrontation – from Kashmir in late 1940s to the sixties and then in the seventies, efforts were made to normalise relations but hardly to any avail. Every time the mischievous elements in the Army, with active collaboration of terrorist and jihadist outfits, disrupted the process. Whether it was “Kargil” or the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu or the attack on Parliament or “26/11” attack on Mumbai, Pakistanis always revelled in harming and destabilising our country. And yet, when confronted with facts Pakistan defends itself with blatant lies, digressions, obfuscations, and indulges in suppressio veri suggestio falsi. Can any civilised country keep talking to such an unscrupulous establishment?
As for talks, in Pakistan whom does one talk to? The civilian government? India could go on talking to it until the cows came home but it would yield no results. At the back of it are the Army and the jihadist-terrorist combine who, together, will never allow any negotiation to fructify and let peace emerge. They can and do scupper everything positive between the two countries.
Having no role in influencing the course of relations between the two countries the civil society is powerless. Hence, where is the point in carrying along with tracks III, IV, and so on and at the same time suffer the beastly acts at the hands of the Pakistani soldiers or jihadists? We have tolerated it earlier – but not anymore. If the government wishes to continue talks let it go ahead with its tortuous diplomatic rigmarole but keep the Pakistanis out of our hair; they are not our well-wishers. It’s now time to treat a spade as a spade and nothing else.
|
1
Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
10:17:22 PM
|
|
From
Nani Manna
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
This should be music to the ears of the environmentalists of Bhopal who have gone hoarse crying for effective conservation of the Upper Lake. A report was recently published about the Jheel Mahotsav (the Lake Festival) that was to be celebrated in mid-January hitting some rough weather. The Mahotsav, reportedly, could not be held as scheduled as some youth programme clashed with it. Now, however, Prayatna, a local environmental advocacy group, has decided to launch protests against the state government’s decisions to hold the Mahotsav and conduct other amusement activities on the banks of the various water bodies, especially the Upper Lake.
Reiterating that the Upper Lake is a vital source of drinking water for the local community and generally called the “lifeline” of the city (despite the availability now of water from the Narmada River) Prayatna has said, any amusement activity near the Lake would be detrimental to it and the quality of its water. If the government does not relent, Prayatna, led by Ajay Dube, is all set to launch an agitation.
Ironically, the Mahotsav was to be held under the aegis of the state government, the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the MP State Tourism Development Corporation (MPSTDC). While the state government is supposedly responsible for conservation of the Lake and has since appointed the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) for suggesting measures for the purpose which it is in the process of finalising, the BMC is the custodian of the water body and ought to be its overall protector. Yet these two authorities have had no qualms about agreeing to hold the Mahotsav. Nothing could be stranger as numerous environmentalists and limnologists have opined during the course of their visits to this Wetland in the past that collection of a large number of visitors in and around it would prove harmful for it. The concerned departments of the government and the BMC are aware of their opinions, yet they seem to be turning a blind eye to them and are seemingly getting carried away by the hype of holding utsavs and mahotsavs.
Already, some researchers have predicted that if business continues as usual the Lake will not remain useful for the local people in another eighty years or so. I had also come across a report that even CEPT has said that the way construction is going on in its catchments and the way unrestricted chemical farming is allowed to be continued the Lake would cease to be in its present form in another sixty years. The man made lake that has survived for a millennium is now going to cease to exist on account of apathy and incompetence of those who are in charge of its care and conservation.
In the meantime, the CEPT made a presentation to the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum in which it is reported to have opined that there is too much human activity near the Lake which is not quite conducive to its proper conservation. As they are yet to submit their report to the government they were requested by members of the Forum to consider suggesting moving away of all the amusement activities from the shores of the Lake or drastically reduce such activities particularly at the Boat Club and Sair Sapata Complex. Many have felt that not only the government is adding to means amusement near the Lake, it is also converting the Lake View Road into a museum of sorts, what with an old steam locomotive and a model of a naval ship parked there. Plans are also afoot to display an air force fighter plane. The basic idea is to get more people to avail of facilities provided by the MPSTDC of motor boats, a floating restaurant and its other eateries – activities that are contra-indicated for effective conservation of the water body.
The local MPSTDC is actually proving to be a bane for the Lake. According to reports, it had planned to get Shankar, Ehsan and Loy, the famous trio who have given musical scores in various popular films, to get hundreds and thousands of people to enjoy the live musical show. The Corporation claims assembly of large number of people will enhance their awareness about need to conserve the Lake. Instead, collection of hundreds of people only generates a lot of waste that generally includes plastic and other such contaminants that later flow into the Lake. It is nothing but a sort of a fig leaf that barely covers the Corporation's commercial motives. It thinks that attaching the tag of “conservation” would make its activities on the Lake shores legitimate.
It also has plans to put the Upper Lake on the national tourism circuit – whatever that means – forgetting that the Upper Lake, and the Bhoj Wetland that it is part of, are an eco-sensitive zone, more so because the Lake happens to be the “lifeline” for the people of Bhopal. Collection of large number of people, having eateries on its shores and even motor-boating should, therefore, be a strict no, no. Unfortunately the Corporation seems to have lost all sense of propriety. For the sake of its bottom-line it has thrown its innate sense of corporate social responsibility out of the window.
One cannot, therefore, but support Prayatna in its efforts to ensure that the trio of the government, the BMC and the MPSTDC are stopped on their tracks are not allowed to hold the Jheel Mahotsav this year or ever in the future. Letters and appeals to the government seldom bring forth the desired results. In crunch situations, it is only mass protests that generally deliver.
Photo: Bandana Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
A recent report in the newspapers about how fumes-spewing vehicles have caused 5, 71, 947 cases of acute respiratory infections (ARI) in the state in a yea was alarming. The figure has been made public by the Central Health Intelligence Bureau (CBHI). Commenting on these figures an Associate Professor of Chest Diseases of Gandhi Medical College said “Increasing cars and two-wheelers in cities and rural areas might have become status symbols but the vehicles are having deadly impact on people. Sudden outbreaks like (that) of swine flu are one(s) to watch out for, as suggested by World Health Organisation (WHO).”
The CBHI has said that chances of deaths due to ARI are more in the state of MP on account of the want of adequate number of trained doctors. The side effects of increased pollution are asthma, cardiovascular diseases, change in lung function and even death. Children are at greater risk. Importantly, ARI is a disease group that includes pneumonia, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus – a respiratory virus and these cause, according to WHO, 4.5 million deaths annually.
While Indore is reported to be more polluted than Bhopal, yet we cannot wait till we catch up with our sister city. The numbers of vehicles, including those propelled by diesel, are rapidly rising in the city. What is worse, in the absence of any emission control old, reconditioned two and three-wheelers, cars, delivery vans, trucks and buses that should have been banished from the roads have currently free rein on them, particularly in the older parts of the town and in commercial zones. Add to that the problem of adulteration of petrol diesel, both for cars and two wheelers and you have a lethal mix, something forbidding that can immensely harm regular commuters exposed to these noxious fumes. All of us have become vulnerable, more so the children and the elderly. Emission control measures will not only protect such groups but will also reduce public expenditure on healthcare.
Some feeble efforts were made to check emission from cars almost a decade back but the whole thing was inexplicably wound up. No reasons were assigned. Eventually one came to know that the question of authority to check the vehicles and to impose penalties had not been finalised. The men and machines were withdrawn and I once came across one of them in the premises of Durga Petrol Pump. The government has never been serious about controlling vehicular emissions. If it does not care about what happens to the Planet Earth owing to global warming, it should at least care about its own people.
Bhopal Citizens' Forum had taken up the matter regarding pollution check of vehicles in Bhopal with the Department of Housing & Environment a few months back. Although a substantial amount of time has elapsed neither has it been apprised of the action taken nor is there is any evidence on the ground of the government’s effort to curb vehicular emissions. Hopefully, the Forum will soon remind the government.
Photo: mounted by Gulrez Raza Khan in Facebook
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
It was different; it was a different kind of gang-rape that shook not only the nation but also the Diaspora, besides evoking strong and sensitive reactions from abroad. It even prompted the Secretary General of the United Nations to write to the Indian Prime Minister for ensuring greater security for women. It was a different kind of rape in that it was not like the ones that are reported almost every day in the newspapers. It was different because it was an uncommonly and excessively brutal and beastly assault, which tore up the insides of the 23-year old bright and ambitious paramedic, eventually taking her life despite the best efforts of medicine men in the country’s capital and abroad.
So much has been written about this unfortunate incident that it is now needless to repeat the details. What, however, matters is that this rape has become a sort of a watershed in the Indian social consciousness. Reports of rapes in the newspapers and the electronic media have been frequent, if not regular, and common people have been taking them in their stride, pursuing their day-to-day activities leaving the rape-victims to fend for themselves in the tortuously protracted (and sometimes gender-biased) investigations followed by adjournments-and-appeals infested legal proceedings. But the mindless brutality exhibited in this particular case of sexual violence seems to have acted as the tipping point that released unprecedented social energy in the shape of protests and strident demands for the lives of the brute rapists who displayed traits worse than those of predatory animals.
The barbaric rape provoked an acute sense of horror, distress and shock stirring up the nation, setting off spontaneous reactions right across the country. Massive peaceful assemblies were held, to start with, in Delhi at a scale much larger than what one had seen in 2011 during Anna Hazare’s Lokpal campaign. Later, it spread all across the country from north to south and east to west. Largely non-violent, barring a few stray incidents of violence engineered by miscreants in Delhi, the demonstrations, though leaderless, exhibited exemplary discipline and restraint. There was no breast-beating, only loud and vociferous demands for, inter alia, change of the laws, meting out prompt justice ending in severe punishment to the perpetrators of the horrific crime. The civil society has never reacted in this manner in the past bewildering, as it did, the political and governmental establishments.
The protestors, with their legitimate demands for harsher punishment for rape and sexual assault, built up such a pressure on the government that it promptly appointed a committee headed by a former chief justice of the apex court to review the existing softer provisions dealing the offences. They had to, as the protestors gave vent to their anger against the MPs who, they said, unanimously enact legislations within three days raising their salaries but amendments to the laws for sexual violence proposed by the Law Commission have been left unattended for more than a decade. Likewise, Delhi Government promptly set up five “fast track” courts to deal with rape cases on the basis of 2003 recommendations of the same Commission. Typically, commissions are created for specific purposes but their recommendations are seldom acted upon with promptitude for the benefit of the society.
The pressure this time was so overwhelming that the government couldn’t tarry any further.
Fearful of the pervasive anger, the political class demanded special session of the parliament to enact the amendments in a hurry when most of them remained dormant earlier, never bothering to raise this vital issue even as rapes and assaults on women were frequently being reported. Clearly, it was not the lapse of the government alone; every political outfit was at fault. When the Home Minister put his proverbial foot in the mouth by saying that the government could not meet protestors all the time, he obviously forgot that three senior ministers had met and spent about three hours meeting the Yoga Guru Ramdev with a view to buying him off during 2011 agitations for enactment of a Lokpal bill. The unforthcoming Prime Minister made a bland statement with a gaffe of a “theek hai?” (all right?) at its tail end and later made amends by remaining present at the Airport with the seemingly insensitive UPA Chairperson when the body of the rape victim arrived from Singapore at the unearthly hour of 3.00 AM.
The Delhi Police never had it so bad, despite the Union Home Secretary’s gratuitous pat on its back for prompt investigations followed by arrests. The Home Secretary’s fatuous praise overlooked the fact that the unfortunate assault would not have taken place had the Delhi Police functioned in accordance with the law. Before the horrific attack there was a series of failures of Delhi Police which are now common knowledge. Recent reports indicate the bus was booked on several occasions for violation of various traffic rules in the past but each time it was somehow let off lightly. Investigations have revealed that the bus-owner was paying “hafta” (weekly bribe) to the Police; an entry to that effect was found in a police diary. Such entries are reportedly communicated to all traffic police officers to enable the buses in question to illegally operate without let or hindrance. The young life of the aspiring paramedic was lost largely because of the utter lack of governance as exemplified by the ineffective and corrupt ways of Delhi Police.
Its strong-arm methods in dealing with the protestors too came in for severe criticism. Its use of batons on unarmed protestors, including elderly women, firing of numerous tear-gas shells and directing high-pressure water cannons in severely cold conditions were condemned by all. Evidently, Delhi Police’s assault on sleeping devotees of Yoga Guru Ramdev Delhi’s Ram Leela Grounds in 2011 was not a one-off action. It has a history of such atrocious conduct. It also came in for heavy criticism for its steps to prevent peaceful assembly of protests at India Gate and Jantar Mantar by blocking all roads and imposition of prohibitory orders, respectively. The Delhi High Court pulled it up asking it to maintain law and desist from curbing basic rights. Later, it has had recently to apologise before the High Court for suppression of the names of delinquent policemen.
Although the print and electronic media called her “Nirbhaya” (fearless) and “Damini” (lightning), respectively, the rape victim has remained faceless and nameless even after her death. The media, however, has been doing outstanding work ferreting out relevant facts connected with the incident. Even the companion of the victim was interviewed who emphasised that instead of lighting candles people should help others who happen to be in distress. Had people promptly responded to appeals made by him while lying on the roadside, he asserted, the victim might have survived. A news channel has, therefore, launched a campaign for change in attitudes of such pervasive callousness prompted by fear of harassment by the Police. A distinct hands-off attitude has been perceptible all over the country in such cases largely because of protracted, virtually interminable police investigations in which witnesses and others who attempt to help the victim are browbeaten and threatened by the corrupt police investigators. The channel’s initiative is indeed praise-worthy but the policemen all over the country also will have to mend their ways.
Even as the nation was virtually on an unofficial mourning for the death of an innocent victim because of a brutal assault some conservative legislators and organisations placed all the blame for her misfortune on the girl. While some felt that she should not have been out on the streets with her boy friend so late in the evening, others blamed only her for the incident. According to them, mostly it is the women who invite trouble either by way of their conduct or by wearing Western dresses that expose far too much. They blamed Westernisation of social mores for whatever was happening to women in the country. The chief of an extreme right wing organisation, while showing utter disconnect with reality in speciously calling rapes an urban phenomenon, asserted that Hindu marriages were a contract under which women were ordained to serve the needs of their husbands. Another self-styled god-man blamed the victim for not seeking mercy from those who attacked her. The media has been proactive in hitting out at and tearing apart those who made regressive statements or sexist, gender-biased comments. The newly elected Congress MP, the son of the President, had to face inquisitional questioning from several channels for his idiotic comment against the protestors whom he contemptuously called “highly dented and painted” socialites.
Rapes were being reported every day from various corners of the country even while the protest against the Delhi rape were continuing. It seemed the rapists were immune to whatever was happening around them and the sub-culture of rape seems to be flourishing unabated. The spate of reports in the dailies made one wonder whether it was the media’s way of trying to project before the country the enormity of the problem. The silver lining, however, was that Police, having shaken away its lethargy, promptly nabbed most of the rapists.
In many ways the gang rape has turned out to be a defining episode. Never before people were brought so close together in sorrow, anguish and anger against the non-functionality of the established system. Shaking the people and the political class alike, it has left a deep impact on the nation’s consciousness. As far as the Establishment is concerned, the cruel and pitiless episode has driven another nail in the coffin of the UPA government.
!5th January 2013
Note: All photographs have been taken from the Internet
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
India is celebrating “80 years of Test cricket”. The country played its first ever Test match in the Lord’s cricket ground in London against England in the summer of 1932 and has since then become a name to reckon with in cricket-playing countries.
Although India lost the Test by 158 runs there were some sterling performances that were acknowledged even by Wisden, the almanac that is reckoned as the “Bible of Cricket”. Playing against the likes of Herbert Sutcliff, Eddie Paynter, Wally Hammond and Douglas Jardine, all big names in international Cricket, the Indians were not quite overawed; in fact they did not do too badly in their first official outing. Even Wisden appreciated the performances of two speedsters Amar Singh and Mohammed Nissar, the agility in the field of Lall Singh who, later in the second innings in partnership with Amar Singh, indulged in some lusty hitting making 74 runs in just 40 minutes. The Indian team would probably have fared better had some of its players, especially the side’s best batsman and officiating skipper, Col. CK Naidu, not been suffering from injuries.
“Tests” are cricket matches between two national teams and came to be known as such as they were of gruelling character that tested the relative strengths of the two sides. They are also the longest form of cricket matches between representative national cricket teams with “Test status”, which is accorded by the International Cricket Council (ICC). Reckoned ultimate in testing a side’s ability, skills of its members and, of course, their endurance, playing a test match even now is an ambition nursed by numerous cricketers despite the growing popularity of lucrative shorter varieties of cricket matches. Tests are now regulated to be played over a period of five days – each side playing two innings. Not many probably are aware that earlier Tests used to be “timeless”, i.e. they were played till completion of both innings regardless of the number of days taken in doing so.
The country had to wait for around six years to play its first official Test after having been invited into the Imperial Cricket Council (ICC’s former avatar) in 1926. Starting as a “minnow” in 1932 – like what Zimbabwe is today – India has developed over the years into a strong cricketing nation. Playing at home and abroad, it has registered wins practically against every other cricket playing country even on foreign soil. In the “Wisden on India”, an anthology brought out in 2011 charting Indian cricket, Jonathan Rice, a respected cricket writer said in his Introduction that by winning the 2011 World Cup India became “the only nation to have won world cricket titles in the 60-over, 50-over and 20-over formats. They are currently ranked as the number one Test nation”.
Cricket was brought to the country by the Englishmen in early 1700s. The first match was, reportedly, played in 1721 between two teams that were made only of Englishmen. Not until 1877 the Englishmen invited the Parsees, who had formed their own club in 1848, to play against them. Later, in the earlier years of the 20th Century teams were formed community-wise and thus Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Parsees used to play Quadrangular tournaments every year with the Europeans. In 1937 a fifth team called “The Rest” including Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Singhalese was allowed into the tournament making it Pentangular. However, to discourage communal divisiveness in the game the pentangular tournaments were discontinued in 1946. By this time, however, Ranji Trophy competitions, instituted in 1934 in the name of Ranjit Singh, Jam Saheb of Nawanagar who used to play for England, had taken off in which teams constituted on geographical basis took part. The competition has been carried forward and is now played among the teams of various states. It is a tournament vital for throwing up players for selection in the national team.
During the early years cricket was played only in small pockets in the country. Big cities like Bombay and Calcutta, Delhi and Lahore (now in Pakistan) had taken the lead. Many princes of the former Indian states like Patiala, Holkar, Baroda also patronised cricket, hence, many cricketers gravitated to some of these states seeking better opportunities to play competitive cricket. Cricket was popular also in the princely states of what were earlier Rajputana and Kathiawad. Kathiawad, in fact, produced two “Greats” – Ranjit Singh, Jam Saheb of Nawanagar and his nephew Kumar Sri Duleep Singhji. Both played for England as did another feudal, Nawab Iftikhar Ali of Pataudi. However, the first two found places in the prestigious Wisden’s Hall of Fame. Nawanagar in Kathiawad also produced another Indian great who is known the world over as Vinoo Mankad. His cricketing exploits in England and India during the post-War and early post-independence years are legendary.
The British Indian government thought it unthinkable to send representative Indian teams abroad unless captained by a Maharaja regardless of his competence in the game. Thus, the Maharaja of Porbandar and Maharaj Kumar of Vizianagaram (popularly known as Vizzy) led the 1932 and 1936 Indian teams, respectively, though each of them never measured up to the standards of a test player. The Indian team’s 1946 tour of England was captained by the Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan of Pataudi, who, however, having been pulled out of retirement, was well past his prime.
Cricket in India was indeed an elitist game, to start with, patronised as it was by the British and the princes. It is an expensive game requiring several accessories as also a specially made pitch to bowl and bat on. Played generally among the urban upper middle classes, it was beyond the affordability of many – individuals, organisations or institutions. Not requiring expensive appurtenances, field hockey was, therefore, more popular and, as is well known, India won a string of gold medals in successive Olympics during those early decades of the 20th Century. Cricket’s ‘democratisation’ commenced even as the country’s political independence came within sniffing distance when Lala Amarnath, an all-rounder of repute, was appointed captain for the first tour of Australia in 1947-48.
During the early post-independence years the overwhelming presence of players from regions where the game had been played for decades, especially Bombay, was significantly manifest in the national team. Slowly, over a few decades things started changing. As cricket’s popularity crept out and away from the urban centres into the hinterland – even to the badlands of North India – a distinct change progressively became apparent in the composition of the national teams. The teams, of late, have players hailing virtually from every region and from even small towns and villages displaying a more representative character. The game has become unbelievably popular in the country so much so that it is played in the open spaces in the villages with crude, improvised equipment. It is now virtually a national obsession.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), despite its several deficiencies, was mostly responsible for spread of cricket to all parts of the country as it methodically promoted the game. The erstwhile government-owned All India Radio also massively chipped in by way of airing running commentary of test matches. In the beginning, the commentating used to be in English that, naturally, restricted its listenership. Later, however, with the introduction of Hindi commentary, coupled with the advent of transistorised cheap and portable radios, cricket reached practically every nook and cranny of the country. The 1983 World Cup victory gave its popularity a tremendous boost. With the proliferation of TV sets live visuals of a cricket match in vibrant colours are taken right into every home enabling even the uninitiated in the game to enjoy it. The shorter versions of the game, especially “Twenty-20”, the bang-bang variety, have opened up cricket for enjoyment to a vast section of spectators generally ignorant about cricket’s technicalities.
The country’s vast population of cricket-obsessed fans constitutes a massive market in which cricket is sold, especially by TV channels, generating mindboggling amounts of ad revenues. In the process, the BCCI has become so rich that it has acquired unprecedented commercial clout in the cricketing world, arousing envy among the game’s former patrons. The cricketers too have gained and are paid such handsome amounts that numerous young men try and make a career of the game.
The preceding eighty years of Indian cricket have been remarkable. Not only numerous players, down the years, acquired international standing, two cricket administrators even became presidents of the ICC. Currently Sachin Tendukar is considered an all-time great having scored 100 centuries in both formats taken together. He has just retired from one day internationals after having scored a staggering 18000 odd runs with 49 centuries including a double ton. Some of the former distinguished players travel the world commentating on matches. The Indian Premier League – a Twenty-20 tournament – played by professionals launched by the BCCI six years ago, is much sought after as the best of foreign players offer themselves in auctions. If picked up, it offers them opportunities to make fast millions.
Although during the last couple of years the performance of the country’s team has been somewhat indifferent, yet hopefully it will soon find its former winning ways and its cricketing ability and performance will rise to greater heights before the time comes to celebrate a Century of Indian Cricket.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
The recent controversy about the (sub) leasing away of the Benazir Palace grounds in Bhopal to Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) for the shooting of Prakash Jha’s next film “Satyagraha” revealed the apathetic and negligent manner the Madhya Pradesh Government deals with its assets. The asset in question is no ordinary landed asset; it is a heritage property to boot, of the Nawabi era.
Built in 1877 by Nawab Shahjehan Begum, a great builder like her namesake Mogul Emperor Shahjehan, the Palace was meant to be a pleasure pavilion. Overlooking the Motiva Talia, one of the three cascading lakes built around the same time to harvest the run-off from the neighbouring Idaho Hills, Benazir Palace is now more than 130 years old and, by all reckoning, should have been treated as a heritage property about thirty years ago. But, no, it was never treated as one and was, very curiously, in the possession of the local medical college. How it went in the possession of the College that is only 57 years old is what beats everyone. Worse, the College, exercising its property rights, leased it out to NCC, which, in turn, leased it out to Prakash Jha’s film outfit, reportedly, for a sum Rs. 5 laky. It is a curious case of a lessee sub-leasing its rights over a property which essentially is public property. Obviously, the district administration was in the know of the transaction as permission for Prakash Jha to shoot in the Palace premises was accorded by the local District Collector.
It was only when the media and the Bhopal Citizen’s Forum raised a furore that the government woke up to the mess that had been created. The Medical College did not have a clue that what it had in its possession was a heritage property and no less. It seemed to have had no qualms in palming off the Benazir grounds to the NCC for a paltry sum for the specious reason that it was involved in some construction on a nearby site. When Prakash Jha came along the lessee must have found it a god-sent opportunity to make some money on the side. Thankfully as a result of the big splash in the Times of India all the irregularities in dealing with the matter have been done away with. The government worked overtime to ready a notification indicating the Palace as a “Protected Monument”. The small delegation of Bhopal Citizens’ Forum had occasion to see it when it met the Commissioner Archaeology. The notification must have been issued by now.
It is not the Benazir Palace alone that the state government has been found to be wanting in protecting Bhopal’s heritage structures. Over the years several such structures, including several gates of the former walled city of Shahjehanabad, were allowed to be occupied by unauthorised people. Worse, the Taj Mahal Palace, so lovingly built by Shahjehan Begum which later earned kudos from the British high and mighty, too, was most unwisely allowed to be used as a refuge for post-independence migrants from Pakistan. This single thoughtless act of the then government of the province virtually destroyed the Palace. Likewise, Gol Ghar, once an aviary for the Begum and now has mercifully been restored and renovated, was also handed over to police outfits one after the other without the structure ever being cared for. The case of Benazir Palace has been no different. It was allowed to be used as a College. A fire in its laboratory badly damaged some of its parts.
As reports say it is not quite clear about who owns the Palace. However, now that the Department of Archaeology is going to take it over, it is hoped it will be better cared for. Commissioner Archaeology has assured the Citizens’ Forum that even Prakash Jha’s film will be shot in the Palace premises under expert supervision (presumably of archaeologists).
In Madhya Pradesh the mess in maintenance of heritage properties has been created because the state has so far not created in various cities and towns Heritage Conservation Committees. Under the rules for conservation of heritage sites, buildings etc. such committees are to be constituted. One does not know how many heritage sites of historical and cultural significance have been lost to posterity for identification and recognition of their heritage value for want of such committees. It is not too late; perhaps even now the department of culture could initiate the process and constitute such committees at least for cities that have numerous heritage structures and sites located in them or in their vicinity.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
This year it has been an extended Diwali. The fireworks on the night of 28th – almost 15 days after Diwali – starting off after 10.00 PM, continued well into the night. I couldn’t fathom whether it was because of the Gur-parb, Guru Nanak’s birthday, or because of the Hindu holy day of Kartik Poornima (full noon of the month of Kartik) or the day on which the Hindu gods and goddesses wake up after months’ of slumber heralding the marriage season.
Whatever the reason this year life was miserable for around a fortnight in our parts. On the night before Diwali somebody close-by decided to try his hand on singing some folksy devotional stuff on the loudspeaker. Clearly a raw hand at the business of singing and that too in front of a microphone, he ended up screaming into mike and that carried through to hit my ears and presumably those of others’ too. Though somewhat hearing-impaired, the loud and jarring music kept me awake during the better part of the night. Worse, he decided to take to the mike well past eleven at night and continued right through until early hours of the morning. Curiously, there is a police station close to where the singer had stationed himself but the policemen, if awake during that hour, were dead to whatever was happening around.
On three succeeding post-Diwali nights also fireworks kept everyone in the neighbourhood awake. The loud reports of crackers and “bombs” continued intermittently until the early hours. Surprisingly, those who are fond of pyrotechnics do not believe in pursuing their activities at a decent hour. Looking for maximum effect of their pursuit they relish the quietude of the advancing night when people normally prepare to retire for the day. The idea is to get the biggest bang for the bucks that they spend in acquiring the explosives so that all the sleepy imbeciles and ninnies are shaken out of their beds. Commencing their activities only after 11.00 PM they would go on until an indecent hour.
Obviously, the economic slowdown has had no impact on people in the neighbourhood. Annually rising cost of fireworks is not a matter of concern for them at all. Mostly traders, money is never a problem for them. Indulgent as they are with their children, they shop for enormous numbers of crackers and, that too, of the kind that produces the maximum decibels. For them the laws or orders of the Supreme Court are of no consequence. They have no qualms in letting loose their children in the progressing night with sack-loads of loud crackers to torment others.
Unmindful, as they are, of the breach of the orders of the Supreme Court or the laws regarding the permissible limits of decibel levels of fireworks, it is futile to expect from them concern for others. They hardly ever think of others; what matters to them is their own pleasure. That their thoughtless activities avoidably cause air and noise pollution is something that never crosses their mind. They expect everyone, young and old, sick and suffering to enthusiastically get into the Diwali spirit and endure the torment that they revel in inflicting on others. As I lay awake through these nights I wondered whether we in this city have progressively become more uncivilized.
The supposedly long arm of the law never reaches anywhere near them as the same, inexplicably, remains cosily retracted and is never extended to prevent the commission of the activities that are decidedly illegal and uncivil, if not anti-social. The enforcers of the laws, along with the perpetrators of the uncivil acts, seemingly think that the laws are only for the statute books and should remain buried in them and never exhumed to be used to bring about order and civility in the society.
A somewhat similar attitude becomes evident as soon as one steps on to the city roads. It is like a vibrant and pulsating jungle with anarchic vehicular traffic, whether of two or four wheelers. Everyone seems to be in a big hurry to reach wherever they are headed for and in the process they don’t give two hoots for the traffic rules and the right-of-way of other commuters. Separate carriage ways for up-and-down traffic or the roundabouts have long ceased to have any meaning for them. The proliferating massive, predatory and overbearing SUVs and MUVs driven by half-educated and untrained chauffeurs muscle in by dint of sheer bulk and heft scattering the humble lesser species of vehicles affirming that it is still “might is right” on the city roads. Again, the guardians of the law are either absent or inept if they happen to be present,
Rules and courtesies of the roads are matters that most either are ignorant about or do not bother about just as they do not care about parking their vehicles in ways that do not inconvenience others. There are markets in the city where it is difficult to shop as two wheelers clog the approaches leaving no space for shoppers even to squeeze through. So what if the shopkeepers lose business?
One wonders where this country is heading for. A couple of decades of economic reforms seems to have put a lot of money into the pockets of many who, unfortunately, are not equipped by education or training to handle their disposable incomes without becoming pests for others. Worse, with the progressively declining influence of the law-enforcers the situation is only likely to get worse. One tends to thank one’s stars that mercifully the economic growth has slowed down quite a bit. Had it continued in the same break-neck pace for another few years breeding many more millions of fresh upstarts small-town India would have become by now a living hell for the law-abiding, decent, sober and sedate as also the elderly.
|
5
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Monday, December 10, 2012
3:41:02 PM
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Sunday, December 09, 2012
8:47:17 PM
|
|
From
Zamiruddin .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Sunday, December 09, 2012
4:05:42 PM
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Saturday, December 08, 2012
7:29:38 AM
|
|
From
Prof. Prem Mohan Lakhotia
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Friday, December 07, 2012
5:32:12 PM
|
|
From
Piyush Chandra Sharma
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Arvind Kejriwal, of the erstwhile NGO India Against Corruption, has made quite a splash since he went political. Even before he named his outfit as “Aam Aadmi Party” (AAP) he had commenced his campaign against the entrenched political establishment. His exposes, virtually like serial ‘bombs’, have already scorched Robert Vadra, the son in-law of Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of the ruling formation United Progressive Alliance, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, the suave but loyal to the point of being a sycophant of Sonia Gandhi, Nitin Gadkari, the reigning president of the principal Opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Reliance Chief and the richest Indian Mukesh Ambani, and, lately, sugar mill owners of Western Maharashtra, presumably targeting the Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar, currently Agriculture Minister at the Centre. The Ambanis came in for further treatment in Kejriwal’s accusations regarding their alleged unaccounted wealth in foreign banks details of which, though suppressed, were allegedly available with the government.
Widely reported, discussed and debated in the print and electronic media, Kejriwal’s accusations need no repetition here. Suffice to say that most of his allegations, like those against Vadra, Khurshid, Gadkari etc., were on the basis of documentary evidences either ferreted out by him/his colleagues or given to him by people who got adversely impacted by the wrong-doings of the accused. By administering practically a weekly dose of accusations against some politician or the other or people of substance, he literally put fear of God in the corrupt among them. Setting a veritable cat among the pigeons, he made many politicians anxious making them wonder whether they would be next in line for the crucifixion.
Predictably, the social activist-turned politician came in for choicest of abuses from politicians, especially those of the Congress. While Khurshid called him a guttersnipe, they felt their prognostications about Kejriwal’s political ambitions had come true. But they were not quite prepared for his, what they called, “hit and run” tactics – throwing allegations at the chosen target and then moving on. His singular crime, however, was that he exposed the machinations of Robert Vadra in his new-found business of real estate that helped him in accumulating, what people claimed, the fastest billions. Congressmen, displaying classical sycophancy, came out in droves to defend Vadra although they confessed that he was not a Congressman. Yet, instead of asking the government to investigate the allegations, they hurled invectives at Kejriwal.
Probably for the first time ever somebody had the gall, the insolence and the chutzpah to make accusations against a ‘personage’ belonging to the (Gandhi) “Dynasty”. Associating Kejriwal with the BJP and accusing him of impropriety, Digvijay Singh, Congress General Secretary, revealed that his party knew about all along the wheeling and dealing of the son in-law of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee but always acted “appropriately”, never breathing a word about it – a confessional as queer as one could be.
Going political for Kejriwal was, apparently, a necessity. His 9-day fast in July earlier this year failed to achieve any result. The political class just ignored it and the government did not yield to his demand of creation of a special investigation team for investigating the 15 Central ministers who were alleged to have had cases of corruption against them. Perhaps, it was ill-timed, too, as Parliament was yet to meet. Realising that the government was intractable and that it was best to fight the politicians politically and beat them in their own game he decided to create an apolitical party to fight elections.
That, however, meant severance of the ties with the Gandhian, Anna Hazare, who has always been averse to politics and politicking. Parting ways with Anna, while Kejriwal got busy in his weekly exposes Anna was trying to collect like-minded people around him for his own brand of anti-corruption movement. Sadly, in the process the movement that mobilised the middle classes for the first time ever in 2011 got not only divided losing its innate strength but also lost focus.
The IAC movement of April and August 2011 led by Anna had a singular aim, that of eradication of corruption through the instrumentality of enactment of a law for creation of an independent and powerful Lokpal (ombudsman). In the backdrop of reports of massive corruption in conducting the Commonwealth Games and allocation of 2G spectrum it caught the imagination of the people, firing the youth and the rising numbers of middle classes. As the movement gathered strength the media, too, got into the act and gave extensive 24-hour coverage. The tech-savvy members of the IAC made deft use of the social media making the movement somewhat akin to the campaigns in North Africa and West Asia for regime change that eventually came to be known collectively as “Arab Spring”. The government at the Centre was flustered and indulged in nervous acts exemplified, inter alia, by the attempt to wean away from the movement yoga-guru Ramdev who too had muscled in into it. The attempt boomeranged and the political class was virtually brought to its knees. A “sense of the house” resolution was quickly rustled up and unanimously passed agreeing action by the government on some sticking points and communicated to Anna.
Acquiring a larger than life image, Anna broke his 11-day fast and retired to fight for the cause another day. Standing as a colossus, he along with his IAC activists had mobilised public opinion charging up the whole nation against political and bureaucratic corruption. A patently middle class movement, IAC’s offshoots cropped up virtually in every nook and urban corner of the country. Young and old joined it putting the government on the back foot.
Journals abroad connected it with other such movements of the middle classes in emerging markets. From Chile to China to North Africa and Middle East to India middle classes rose against the established systems for reasons as varied as environmental degradation (in China), overbearing role of public sector in the field of education (in Chile), against autocratic dictatorships in “Arab Spring” countries and rampant political and bureaucratic corruption in India. The rise of middle classes, especially in developing Asia, has given them a new-found power to swing changes in their respective polities. The most rapid rise has been in India and China they are restive and want a good life. The political class, unlike in the past, has been compelled to pay greater attention to their views as the same is backed up by significant strength.
From the run-away success of the movement one had hoped that the IAC would eventually emerge somewhat like The Tea Party in the US – minus its ideology – playing a significant role in choosing and canvassing for clean and incorruptible candidates and try and have those who were suspect defeated at the hustings. By itself the IAC clearly had no way of getting round the prevailing electoral system. For it the best option, therefore, seemed to have been to bring as many clean candidates from the existing political parties into the parliament as possible to get rid of the scourge of corruption.
Alas, that was not to be. A set of circumstances, from Anna’s failing health to alleged manipulation of the media by the government against the IAC to an ill-timed campaign in July 2012 and eventually its coming apart ensured the death of the movement that had raised such hopes. The dramatis personae of the movement are all intelligent and committed people and yet they somehow could not see eye to eye about its progression. With two branches of it going their separate ways their respective strengths got mitigated and, so has been their impact. Losing steam, the ‘Indian Spring’ came to an end.
With the formation the AAP the last nail in the coffin of the IAC (as people knew it) has been hammered in. The 2014 elections not being far away, Kejriwal has given himself a daunting task to organise his outfit well enough to enter the money-centric Indian electoral process. Only time will tell how he fares in his enterprise.
The IAC split, however, was a big let-down for the people, a severe jolt to the civil society which had rallied round in strength and gave it its unstinted support. It is highly unlikely that such massive support would ever be conjured up for an anti-corruption movement in the foreseeable future.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
The Madhya Pradesh bureaucrats are not quite happy about the current arrangements regarding provision of vehicle beacon lights in the state. Displaying their ingrained sense of entitlement, they have demanded that all the senior members of the IAS working in the Secretariat should be allowed to use beacon lights atop their official vehicles. They argue that the police officials of much junior levels are authorised to use the beacons but those at the helm, i.e. those of the IAS cadre, are deprived their use. Most of the bureaucrats commute to their respective offices in official vehicles – no longer the squat and stocky white Ambassador but newer, bigger and swankier luxurious sedans – devoid of any beacon. This not only is not fair as it detracts from the superior position they occupy in the official hierarchy, it also, apparently, reduces them in the estimation of the hoi polloi as they have to commute in vehicles that have no trappings of their importance, influence and power.
Apparently, the whole thing is a well-considered proposition as it has been put across not by an individual officer or even a small group but the august IAS Association of the State. It, therefore, must have been made after due deliberation and after weighing the pros and cons. Only after that the Association went public about the demand. Soon enough, a retired chief secretary of the state weighed in with a comment in favour of the proposal and asked, “What is the harm if the beacons are provided to all senior IAS officers?”
Yes, indeed, what is the harm? Beacons atop the bureaucrats’ official vehicles would, after all, be only an insignificant addition to the numerous other more substantial privileges that they have extracted over the years at substantial public expense. What could then be th harm with this inconsequential addition? There is, however, a small snag. Were the IAS officers to be allowed the privilege, other members of the All India Services – Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service – would also demand it which the government would be hard put to resist. If that were to be agreed to the rising numbers of government vehicles with beacons atop, instead of unhindered commutes, would have to jostle for road-spaces which, in any case, are likely to shrink in course of time on completion of the ongoing BRTS project.
It is surely common knowledge that lights atop vehicles are considered emergency vehicle lighting to indicate to other road users, as Wikipedia says, “the urgency of their journey, to provide additional warning of a hazard when stationary, or in the case of law enforcement as a means of signalling another driver to stop for interaction with an officer.” Road-users have to afford right-of-way to an ambulance rushing a patient to a hospital or a fire tender that is on its way to put out a fire or to a policeman chasing a hard core criminal or even a VIP rushing to the local airport.
Laws regarding restricting the use of these lights vary according to jurisdictions. In India, however, the laws, though restrictive, have been progressively relaxed (as in everything else that has anything to do with governance) and lights atop vehicles allotted to politicians and bureaucrats of the central government or governments of states have become more an item of prestige, an instrument to flaunt to the general public the user’s power and importance. Hence, there is a veritable scramble for these lights by politicians and bureaucrats. A few months ago a Parliamentary Committee had recommended affixing of these lights on vehicles of all members of Parliament. Mercifully, the chairperson of the UPA had the good sense to have the proposal rejected. The latest demand of the MP IAS Association in this regard is not different in character.
Apart from such indiscriminate and thoughtless relaxation of the law there is widespread unauthorised use of these lights. Almost all the petty politicians have now acquired vehicles and they think nothing of having a beacons affixed on their roofs. Even some officials have had the enterprise to have them irregularly attached on their vehicles. Not too long ago the state’s home minister launched a campaign to clamp down on unauthorised use of yellow beacons. He gave instructions that the drive should commence with the official vehicles of the state secretariat before non-officials were tackled. Obviously, there is misuse – some say massive – of these lights even by government officials. The minister’s directions to target the officials first must have put the wind up of the IAS fraternity and provoked it to put across the demand before they lost their unauthorised privilege. Besides, while covering the minister’s statement, the media reported that numerous junior field officers of the police and other vital departments (lowly by IAS standards) are entitled to beacon lights. The members of the IAS may have taken umbrage even at that.
One would think that such petty one-upmanship doesn’t quite befit the members of the premier service of the country. They are expected to serve the interests of the people and not lord over them. The semantics, unfortunately, have lately undergone drastic changes and everything has become topsy-turvy. Instead of rendering service to the people the so-called public servants now demand more and more privileges for themselves and obeisance and respect from the public, their pay-masters.
I personally wouldn’t have any issue about the additional privilege. Let them go ahead and put as many lights as they wanted atop their official vehicles, but, for heaven’s sake, they should deliver. Let them go out in their beacon-flashing vehicles and see how from highways to city roads, to hospitals, to schools are crying for attention. Practically every kind of public service is being denied to the people. If they did that, that would be recompense enough for the sacrifice that people make in making available various privileges in cash and kind to them.
|
1
Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted on
Friday, December 07, 2012
6:37:03 PM
Modified on
Friday, December 07, 2012
8:07:44 PM
|
|
From
Piyush Chandra Sharma
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
According to a recent report the Madhya Pradesh forest department happened to have re- discovered the Kerwa and Kathotia forests that adjoin Bhopal. A 15-day operation by it with the help of as many as six elephants borrowed from different tiger reserves to track down three tigers that were moving around the jungles helped in the “startling rediscovery”. The officials who participated in the operation, necessarily, on elephant backs went deep inside the forests with a view to catching the tigers to radio-collar them and, later, to relocate them were astonished to find a forest pulsating with life and amazing natural features They, however, inexplicably terminated the fortnight-long operation and returned to base.
The report, quoting a forest official who participated in the operation, said, “The forest is very healthy, it’s a mixed – mosaic forest. It is open, still dense with very good undercover. There are good natural shelters for the animals and some amazing gorges inside the woods...Not much was known about the jungle till we started the operation.” For the three tigers there is, reportedly, a good prey base. Various other animals like leopards, bears, hyenas, jackals, foxes, porcupines, jungle cats and civets were also spotted.
While the findings of the forest officials during the operation have not been officially disclosed one can only surmise the reason for its abrupt termination. There seem to be two possibilities: either the foresters failed to trap and radio-collar the tigers or they were so impressed by the quality of the forest that they gave up the thought of trapping for eventual trans-location of the tigers and decided to allow them to remain where they were in their comfort zone.
But the outstanding revelation by the report cited above is that the Forest Division of Bhopal was unaware of the kind of forest that thrived in its jurisdiction. It is a strange situation where a field forest unit has remained oblivious of the kind of forests it was presiding over and apparently did not care to know or ascertain the assets it was supposed to guard and conserve. And, yet, what is a fact is that without knowing its quality it became passive spectator to the progressive human encroachments in it. Over the years, it did not prevent or even protest against the construction of massive legal institutions like the Law Institute University, the National Judicial Academy and establishment of the Sanskar Valley School in the midst of the jungles under its charge. It also did not prevent the construction of assorted farm houses and mansions of the powerful and influential.
Not only would the ignorance about the quality of the forest seem to be criminal, the passive indifference to the progressive encroachments in it would seem to be more so, which, in fact, amount to dereliction of duty of massive proportions. If it was because of the prevailing will of the bureaucracy or its political masters that wouldn’t mitigate the criminality of the apathy and indifference. Whoever, was responsible had attempted to needlessly colonise a healthy tract of forest for no apparent rhyme or reason in these days of increasingly depleting forest wealth of the country and progressive disappearance of wildlife. After all, there is lot of land available around the city in almost all other directions where these massive institutions could be located.
With such a rich forest and such abundance of wildlife therein no wonder the felines as also other animals come in (often violent) contact with the humans who have encroached into their domain. Quite clearly, it is not they who are straying into human habitation; it is the humans who should not have been where they happen to be in the forests.
Sometime ago I had written about “Bhopal’s elusive leopard”, a wandering leopard that was eventually captured after a week-long effort by the officials of the forest department. It was later released in the Satpura National Park. My piece, published in one of the domestic citizen journalists site (merinews.com – India section; 14th October 2012), had elicited adverse criticism from one of the readers, presumably a member of the forest department of the state of Madhya Pradesh, who found that I had needlessly used the Department as a punching bag. Now that a confession of sorts has come from the forest department about its utter lack of knowledge and awareness of the Kerwa and Kathotia forests, hopefully, the critic will realise that what I wrote was largely true. Not always can the handicaps of the forest department be dished out for its inability to protect either the forests or the flora and fauna they host and shelter.
Now that the Kerwa and Kathotia forests have been found to be rich and vibrant with life the state government needs to include them in a “conservation area” to enable their proper care. Steps need to be taken for their effective conservation, restricting tourism and other avoidable human activities, enabling the inmates of the jungles to be safe and at peace in their own environment. It is not every day that a city finds a lively wilderness next to it; in that manner Bhopal would seem to be so lucky to be so well endowed. (In this connection also see “Bhopal - with tigers in its peripheries” in http://bagchiblog.blogspot.com)
Photo taken from the Internet of a tiger in the Kerwa-Kaliasot forests
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
One really marvels at the blunders of our judicial system. A murder convict was let off from Bhopal Jail on parole and then, soon enough, he was apprehended at another far-away town trafficking in counterfeit currency. The reasons because of which he was set free on parole were not reported. But one cannot rule out a false or even a flimsy one for the court to be taken in to grant temporary freedom to him on parole – to go and commit another crime.
Cases of Indian courts showing sympathy, often misplaced, for convicts are slowly acquiring legendary proportions. One can recall the parole given to Vikas Yadav, son of the “criminal politician” from Uttar Pradesh. He abused the temporary freedom allowed to him for personal reasons and was found beating it up in a night club. He seemed to have clocked a sort of a record by in and out of the jail as many as 66 times between May 2008 and February 2010 – averaging five trips out of the jail a month.
Congressman Sukh Ram, a one-time Minister of Communications and a convict for having taken a few lakhs (hundred thousands) as bribe for doling out favours to a private firm, was released from prison under court orders for his ill-health due to old age. At the time he was convicted he was past 80 years in age. But the other day he was reported to have been sharing the rostrum at an election rally conducted by one of the Congress candidates for elections last Sunday to the legislative assembly of Himachal Pradesh. Obviously he was too sick and old to serve out his prison term but, once freed, he was fit enough to participate in election campaign meetings. One wonders whether the concerned court took notice of the newspaper report. None knows what happened to the case of recovery of unaccounted Rs. 3 crore (three billion) from his house during his tenure as a minister.
Another report showed that Samajwadi Party chieftain, Mulayam Singh Yadav, conducting parlays with Amar Singh – his one-time right-hand man. Amar Singh was arrested and sent into judicial custody for his role in attempted bribing of members of Parliament in 2008 to save the Manmohan Singh government that lost its majority on withdrawal of support by the Left parties over the signing of the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Amar Singh, however, was in jail only for a few days as he was supposed to have been suffering from kidney ailments and was lodged in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Eventually, however, the Delhi High Court got persuaded to grant him bail in October 2011 in the cash-for-votes scam on humanitarian grounds because of his poor health. He seems to have regained his health well enough to commence his usual political shenanigans. Surprisingly, his physical condition has been monitored neither by the prosecuting agency nor by the Delhi High Court. The accused, therefore, is free to indulge in his favourite pastime of political machinations despite his alleged involvement in a serious scam that attempted to undermine the basic tenets of the country’s democratic polity. The case seemingly is nowhere near its final stages.
Not only the governments at the Centre and in the states are soft even the courts have caught the infection and have softened up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
The other day while listening to a noisy programme on the fm of Radio Mirchi my mind travelled back long years to 1948 when we got the first radio in our house. My late second brother got a first division in his intermediate examination. The examinations were held then by the Ajmer Board of Secondary education to which a number colleges in Rajputana, United Provinces, Central India, etc were affiliated. With thousands of candidates competing, getting a first division in those days in any board or university examination was no ordinary matter. Elated by the distinction achieved by him, my father went and bought a radio as a gift for him – a small one, of five valves made by Phillips of Holland. Its price was Rs. 350/-, an amount that was more than my father’s monthly salary.
Radios were a, sort of, rarity those days, more so in a small town like Gwalior where we grew up. Not many people owned one. I remember our entire family walked quite a distance to a Bengali family’s house to listen to the broadcast of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose from Singapore. This must have been around 1942 when I was a small kid. Amid a lot of disturbing noises like those of lightning and thunder I just heard somebody speaking out. But I remember the radio which was a boxy type, something like the one that Tom tunes in to in Walt Disney’s “Tom & Jerry” cartoons.
One could easily make out who all had radios in the town. The tell-tale sign was a pair of bamboo poles sticking up into the skies from the terrace, joined by a wire that came down to a lower floor and entered the house through an available inlet. These were the antennas that one had to have to receive broadcasts and were also indicative of the family’s financial wellbeing. Radios being uncommon, one would find them, maybe, on top of one or two houses in a locality. Consumerism was far, far away. While salaries were low, the prices were constantly rising. Even in those early post-independence days Nehru would frequently harangue people about tackling the “monster of rising prices”. Were he to re-appear today and check out the prices, he wouldn’t know where to hide.
Although there were only very few broadcasting stations in the country – mostly in metro and other bigger towns – one could roam all over the world with the receiving set. The air waves were free and, unlike the TV or fm transmissions, one could tap them to tune in to the fare offered by any station in the world that one fancied. It all depended on the power and capability of the set one possessed.
Our five-valve, three-band radio, one medium and two short-wave bands (many of the current generation may not have heard of these bands, fed on fm as they are), had limited capabilities. Yet we could tune in to, apart from Indian stations, distant broadcasts from, say, Radio Australia, on 16 or 19 metre bands to listen to the running commentaries on cricket test matches played there. Likewise, when cricket was on in England we would tune in to BBC, again, on the 19 metre band. I clearly remember the disastrous second Indian innings at Headingley, Leeds in the summer of 1952. India lost four wickets for no runs on the board, the new young speedster Freddie Truman knocking off three of his four wickets in the innings in the first two or three overs. The din that the Indian debacle raised at distant Headingley was carried over the air-waves to us through the radio.
Even the news bulletins broadcast at night were worth listening to. Among the English newscasters was the legendary Melville De Mello with his impeccable English delivered in his deep baritone. He was the one who gave non-stop running commentary from a moving van for around hours while accompanying the funeral cortege of Mahatma Gandhi. He was also handpicked by the British Government for broadcasting running commentary on Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1952. It’s such a pity that his 95-year old widow has had to fight for her measly pension.
The medium wave-band broadcasting those days was of low power hence the weak signals of distant stations like Cuttack or Patna would only be faintly audible. The short wave broadcasts, capable as they are of reaching any part of the earth, were clearer and largely devoid of atmospheric disturbances. Good for receiving musical programmes, we would tune in on short-wave to the Delhi station for various musical programmes. Most of the ustaads (maestros) of Indian classical vocal or instrumental music were given breaks by the government-owned All India Radio (AIR).
For us the most attractive programmes used to be of Hindi (non-film) songs of Pankaj Mullick, Talat Mahmood, Jagmohan, Hemant Kumar as also the weekly programme of film songs “Aapki farmaish”. We would even tune in to Radio Pakistan, Dhaka to listen to Firoza Begum sing Tagore songs, a favourite of my father those days. Around the early 1950s Radio Ceylon literally gate-crashed into the Hindi film-music listening audience. The broadcasts available right through the day, they remained a great favourite for a very large section of the people who were light music enthusiasts until AIR’s Vividh Bharati, a film-songs based programme commercialised on the pattern of Radio Ceylon, gave it a run for its money. By then, of course, Radio Ceylon’s disc jockeys (DJs) Amin Sayani and, later, Sheila Tiwari had become household names in India.
Western music has virtually disappeared from the Indian airwaves. In our times we could tune in to Delhi to listen to chamber and dance music, a programme of Western orchestras, and “A date with you” anchored by Ms Preminda Premchand every Friday night. She played on demand popular Western light vocal and instrumental music. Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Patty Page, Nat King Cole, Perry Como etc., the trumpet of Eddie Calvert and the numbers of Billy Vaughn and his orchestra were favourites of most of us. Radio Ceylon, too, used to broadcast Western light music and its DJ, Greg, was very popular in India.
Because of the growing clutter of broadcasting stations on short waves at 16, 25, 31 and 41 metre bands radios with band-spreads for accurate tuning of closely spaced frequencies became available. We acquired in mid-fifties an 8-band radio with a more powerful speaker. The music flowing out of it was sheer pleasure. Much later, the tuner-amplifiers with fm band made their appearance with a bank of 10 press-button tuning knobs, detached speakers and stereophonic sound system. I was sold one by Philips in Chandigarh in 1975 in beautiful rosewood-finish with the assurance that stereo broadcasts were to commence soon. AIR, with the monopoly that it had, however, took around 10 years to bring fm broadcasts on stream and, that too, for very limited hours. Nonetheless, even in mono state the big powerful speakers produced delectable sound of music.
In the meantime, advances in technology radically changed the scene and democratised the radio, taking them even to the villages. Invention of transistors made it cheap and portable – shorn of the heavy and fragile valves and powered by dry battery cells. In the early sixties the Mall of Mussourie lost its quietude, with tourists walking around with battery-powered transistor radios slung from their shoulders, film music blaring out of them. These also became powerful means of dissemination of information to the remotest corners of the country where electricity had not reached.
Though millions are still in use, their popularity waned with miniaturisation and advent of portable cassette players. Nonetheless, in the later avatar of bulky radiograms that combined a valve radio and a gramophone, radios used to feature in much smaller early two-in-ones or three-in-ones which even had a cassette deck. Then, in the ‘80s radio lost out to the TV that combined audio and video broadcasts. Admittedly, a mere audio receiver could have had no chance of survival in front of a medium that could also receive live and vibrant lifelike pictures.
Fm broadcasts came along in the early nineties and soon the government broke its monopoly over the radio waves. Privatisation of fm broadcasts enabled controlled increase in the number of broadcasters. Arrival of cheap radio-enabled cell phones has kept fm broadcasters busy but today what one gets is mostly a mix of loud music and gibberish. Doing even better, smart phones have gone ahead and put in the pockets of people not only a radio but also a television and a computer with internet connectivity.
No wonder radios of yore in beautiful shiny wooden cabinets with their illuminated dials capable of tuning on to any station in the world have had to make a quiet, unobtrusive exit from Indian homes. Young India hasn’t seen them; those who are curious can find them only in museums.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Regardless of the tons of toxic wastes littered in the Union Carbide factory site, the Madhya Pradesh government has been pursuing with the Centre a proposal for awarding the status of Global Environment City on Bhopal. The city already has a few of its components, such as some lakes – one of them even a Ramsar Site – hills and, of course, a lot of greenery which, though, of late has appreciably diminished at a rapid pace. Nonetheless, the government continues to pursue the ambition of having the city declared as an Environment City. What should strengthen the government’s claims in this regard is occurrence of a recent phenomenon – that of the big cats trying to convert the city into their haunt. With the wildest of wildlife in the city none would ever think of denying the sobriquet that the government so earnestly seeks, more so after the state lost its “Tiger State” sobriquet.
A tiger has been roaming the jungles near the town for a couple of years now. It strayed from the nearby Ratapani Sanctuary and came close to the town near the dam known as Kerwa. It had on occasions been seen wandering around in the massive complex of the local Judicial Academy. It would, however, retrace its steps and get back to the jungles close to Chandanpura near Kerwa and make meals of a few livestock in the forest villages. Sighted with two cubs in April last, the state Forest Department made all possible arrangements to ensure that they did not come to harm. Yet the tigress met its inevitable fate last June at the hands of poachers who cruelly electrocuted it. One was, however, expecting such a denouement, given the efficiency and commitment of our foresters. It seems, the poor creature was raising a family but was ruthlessly eliminated.
That, however, was not the end of the story. A few days ago a badly wounded tiger cub, presumably one of the two that were sighted in April, was found in the jungles close to Kerwa near Kathotia. Kathotia, incidentally, also has caves and rock-shelters with primitive rock-paintings like those in Bhimbetka, a World Heritage Site, around 30 kilometres away from Bhopal. The poachers seemed to have attempted trapping it and in trying to free itself the cub got severely wounded; its hind legs even got paralysed. It was rescued and brought for treatment to Van Vihar, an open zoo in the middle of the town that has somehow been given the status of a National Park. The vets there couldn’t save it and it died the other day.
The forest department has confessed that it failed in monitoring the movement of the tiger family. In fact, it did not even get whiff of them. No wonder the tigress and one of her cubs were lost to poachers. This is despite that there is an intense campaign to save tigers. Recall the NDTV “Save our tiger” campaign only a few weeks ago! The department is investigating the killing of the tigress but there has been very tardy progress. Even the National Tiger Conservation Authority has asked for a report in this regard. Clearly, because of ineptitude of the forest department precious wildlife outside the protected areas continue to remain unsafe.
To add to the discomfort of the Forest Department recent unconfirmed reports indicate that there are as many as three tigers – a male, a female and a cub (apparently the one that somehow escaped the poachers’ attention) –roaming around in these forests. The cub seems to be old enough but is unable to make a proper killing. The forest department is not yet clear about their numbers and are, therefore, collecting pug marks. One wonders whether all these tigers are heading for the same fate as the ones earlier.
The department has a stock argument of inadequacy of staff. It says that proper protection could be provided to the straying tigers only when the Kerwa and adjoining areas are converted into a “conservation area” which would ensure funding for appointment of the required personnel. Can one buy such an argument? After all, the strength of foresters is determined according to the spread of forests and there must be personnel for guarding these very forests. Why can’t they take care of the wildlife as well? If their strength is inadequate why more forest guards cannot be recruited? There is enough money and countless unemployed men and women available for appointment. It’s a pity that despite the Prime Minister’s directions about a year ago the Tiger Protection Force has not been created so far in the state.
According to the Forest Department Ratapani Sanctuary has become a little crowded for tigers on account of increase in their numbers and hence they are straying into the Kerwa area. That could be so. But that could also not be so. Maybe, the prey base has shrunk in the sanctuary with not enough ungulates to go round, forcing tigers to wander out of the Sanctuary for greener pastures. Not that Kerwa has a big enough prey base but at least cattle of the villagers, easy preys, are available. Whatever the reason, the tigers seem to be here to stay, having been here for well over two years now.
It is not tigers alone that seem to like Bhopal. Leopards, too, make frequent forays into it. They have been sighted in the Indian Institute of Forest Management Complex, the National Judicial Academy, in the vast grounds of the Indira Gandhi National Museum of Man and, of course, in Kerwa.
It seems like the old times when, growing up in Gwalior in the midst of tiger-county in 1940s, we would hear frequent reports of tiger-sightings in the outskirts of the town. My eldest brother even claims to have seen one along with his friends around the mid-forties on the hillock near the Medical College that has a Scindia deity and another in the Tigra Dam area that is now being intensely colonised.
With tigers and leopards in its periphery, Bhopal is acquiring a certain uniqueness. Whether the status of Global Environment City is awarded or not, one wishes to God that these creatures and their new habitat in Kerwa are protected with all the resources that the government can muster.
Photo: 1, Lush forests of Kerwa; 2. Tiger with a cub (From the net); 3. Kerwa Dam
(Photos 1 & 2 were taken by Ms. Bandana Bagchi)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Many would not know that Bhopal too has a Taj Mahal. Although, now neglected and dilapidated, yet it stands dominating a large pond overlooking what is reputed to be the largest mosque in Asia – Tajul Masajid. It was built by Nawab Shahjehan Begum who, like her namesake Mogul Emperor Shahjehan, was a great builder. Constructed over a period of 13 years from 1871 to 1884 it was considered one of the largest palaces in the world. It was so magnificent that the resident representative in Bhopal of the Viceroy was highly impressed and suggested to the Begum to change its name from its original Raj Mahal to Taj Mahal. There are recorded reports of the unqualified praise that was showered on the Bhopal monarch by the visiting Viceroys for the excellence that the palace displayed in its architecture and intricate interior decorations.
After independence the palace was unfortunately given away rather thoughtlessly by Nawab Hamidullah Khan for relocating the Sindhi refugees who flocked to Bhopal after the partition of the country. Not a very wise decision, it induced unmitigated damage to the palace and, what’s more, after the refugees vacated it, it has been subject of abject apathy and neglect. Progressively going to seed, the state government woke up as late as in 2005 to list it as a heritage property so that the Department of Archaeology could try and restore it to a semblance of its original glory.
Nothing much, however, happened except some partial restoration – nonavailability of adequate funds being the biggest drag. In 2011 because of the interest shown by the local tourism corporation for reusing it as a hotel the palace was de-notified to get over the obstructive rules and regulations governing a heritage structure. This too, however, did not yield desired results as no corporate house seems to have evinced any interest.
In the meantime, a few committed conservationists have been working overtime to prepare proposals for the palace’s revival. The Bhopal Citizens’ Forum has also been pursuing the matter with the Commissioner Archaeology. Last Sunday, Ms. Sheuli Mitra, Associate Professor in the local School of Planning & Architecture made a presentation for “adaptive reuse of Taj Mahal, Bhopal” to the Citizens’ Forum. A very well conceived plan, it not only proposes to re-use a very valuable property of immense proportions right in the middle of the town with excellent connectivity to the city’s outlets it also attempts to expose the unique mix of Hindu, Islamic and Western architectural designs of the palace to the outside world. Branding its architecture as Indian barque, Ms. Mitra highlighted the building’s environmental responsiveness by way architectural designing and the much-ahead-of-time water harvesting system using the surrounding landscape and ingenious civil engineering.
The proposal contains use of some suitable portions for the hospitality sector and others for restaurants overlooking the fairly decent-sized water body specifically for offering delectable Bhopali cuisine. It proposes exposure of Bhopal’s traditional arts and crafts by way of exhibition and marketing them in the manner that was prevalent during the Nawabi era. It also proposes to use the adjoining Benazir Palace for a convention centre and market to the outside world its ready-to-use hamams.
The proposal was submitted to the state government about a year and a half back and is, apparently, gathering dust in some musty office. The Citizens’ Forum is going to chase the proposal
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Before the commencement of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the gas-affected people of Union Carbide, Bhopal and their several organisations mounted a protracted campaign against the Dow’s sponsorship of it. The Dow funded the £7 million wrap around the Olympic Stadium and also has negotiated a 10-year £100 million sponsorship with the International Olympic Committee. The Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is now a subsidiary of The Dow Chemicals, the latter having bought it in the late ‘90s.
It is well-known that in December 1984 a lethal gas, methyl isocyanate, leaked out of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and killed thousands and maimed many more for life. The protesters’ contention was that while the company poured millions in the Olympics it did not sufficiently compensate the victims of the gas leak. It has also refused to clean up the factory site on which its subsidiary had dumped toxic material which polluted the soil, the environment and the ground-water in the area inflicting misery on the people.
While there was muted support for the Bhopal protesters from the Indian politicians those in Britain went after the matter more seriously. Senior Labour Party leaders demanded an audit of Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics and the Chief of its Ethics Committee, Meredith Alexander, resigned over Dow’s sponsorship. Five different protest groups presented London Olympic Games communications director Jackie Brock Doyle with five boxes of signatures – a 28,000-strong petition on Change.org and a 30,000-strong petition on SumOfUs – calling for a public apology from Games organisers. They also demanded from Dow a financial contribution of £7 million to help remediate the contaminated land and water supply.
The Dow, however, steadfastly denied its responsibility in the tragedy as, it contended, it bought the UCC 15 years after the tragedy and that by then all legal claims were resolved. UCC had paid $470 million as compensation to the Indian Government and that the matter was settled at the highest court of the land which after the settlement had exempted the Indian arm of the Corporation from any further litigation in the matter. It went on to say that the responsibility for the clean-up of the site now lay with the Indian Government. Paul Deighton, Chief Executive of the Games and Sabastian Coe, Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) found no substance in the protests and the Games went on with the Dow connection.
One cannot really fault the Gas Affected for their persistent campaign against the Dow as they, numbering thousands, continue to suffer the consequences of the lapses of the UCC and its erstwhile Indian subsidiary. Its system of waste disposal has proved to be lethal. Not only it left barrels of wastes in the complex, it dumped toxic wastes around it. These have leached into the soil not only contaminating it, these have also contaminated the sub-soil water which the inhabitants of the nearby settlements use, inter alia, for drinking purposes. A recent test report of the ground water has revealed excessive amounts of dichloro and hexachloro benzene, mercury and lead in the drinking water used by the residents of the adjoining colonies. The complications these could cause in human systems on regular ingestion need hardly be mentioned.
The entire row of the sponsorship of the Games by the Dow brought forth its uncompassionate, uncompromising and indifferent attitude to human misery. It has also displayed its callous indifference to the environment which its subsidiary happened to have fouled up harming the people and their habitat. That would truly be a justifiable conclusion. However, the truth now is different. Of late, Dow has turned a new leaf. Bryan Walsh, a senior writer with the Time magazine, recently reported that the CEO of Dow Chemicals negotiated with the head of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the biggest green groups based in Washington, a collaborative effort to maximise the environmental value of the Corporation’s operations with a view to enabling it to go green. It has announced “a five-year, $10 million collaboration with TNC to eventually tally up the ecosystem costs and benefits of every business decision” and to make environmental factors part of its profit-and-loss statements. The Dow chief Andrew Liveris is reported to have stated “Our planet’s natural resources are more and more under threat” and “protecting nature can be a profitable corporate priority and a smart global business strategy”, a statement , though hardly could ever be expected from him at least in India, should be music to the ears of environmentalists.
The change of heart has not come just like that. It has a lot to do, as Walsh said, with the threat of government action on emissions on which a price has now been fixed, insistent share-holder pressures on green issues and a growing concern over the limits of available natural resources. In a well- researched piece entitled “Three faces of Dow” in Garbage Magazine, supposedly a ground-breaking environmental publication, Art Kleiner, a journalist and author of note, has described three past and present identities of The Dow. “First, there is the ‘traditional’ Dow: the frugal, small-town chemical company founded a century ago... close-knit and egalitarian, where chemistry PhDs stay from college until retirement... and where the toxicology labs date back to the 1930s.” There is also the "antagonistic" Dow – “the Dow of napalm and Agent Orange... the Dow that bitterly fought Oregon housewives and Vietnam veterans over herbicide sprays”. The third is the "learning" Dow, the company with a change of heart about environmentalism. That is where the collaboration with TNC comes in. TNC’s scientists, Walsh says, will advise Dow on how the company’s business decisions impact the environment—and in turn, how the environment affects Dow’s business. The ecosystem will become a new and major component for Dow’s bottom line, putting environmental sustainability on par with business sustainability.
Surprisingly, despite this change of heart The Dow did not budge from its rigid stand that it had nothing to do with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. After all, whatever happened in Bhopal, terminating and disrupting the lives of thousands of locals, was the result of the callousness and indifference of its subsidiary, UCC, currently somewhat like a kid-brother to it. True, a final settlement was reached way back in the 1980s but, like everybody, both Dow and the UCC are aware how and why a shoddy settlement was arrived at with the Indian Government to the great disadvantage of the victims of the gas leak. Its new-found environmentalism has to have elements of Humanism embedded in it. If it had millions to pour into the Olympics The Dow could certainly use a few of them to mitigate the human misery authored by its subsidiary and to restore the destroyed human habitat in Bhopal. That would have been admirable and, perhaps, more ethical act and appropriate way of discharging its corporate social responsibility. That would, perhaps, also have endeared it to Indians who would have become more welcoming and offered it greater opportunities for industry and commerce. Sadly, it never seemed to have occurred to it!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
A few of the local newspapers which are concerned about the quality of life in Bhopal have been publishing photographs of the deplorable condition of roads in the city which have taken a plunge after the recent spells of heavy rains. Whether it is a major road or one inside a residential colony, all are in frightful condition – pot-holed with ditches, mucky fluids flowing from leaking sewers or freshwater lines creating channels across them making treading on them risky not only for those in vehicles but also those who happen to use their two lower limbs. In fact, a newspaper advised commuters not to use a particular road in the city for their own safety, supporting the report with a few alarming photographs. Even newly built roads are damaged with the first few spells of rain. The main road in the important suburb of Kolar, built not even a year ago lost its metalled top during the current wet season. Most of the roads have been in shoddy condition and continue to be so, more so in the older parts of the city.
Come to think of it, we are at the fag end of the first phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission that commenced in 2005. Under it a total investment of $20 billion was made for seven years to basically improve the quality of life and infrastructure of cities. Bhopal is one of the cities which is a beneficiary of this programme and has received enormous sums under it from the Central Government. The kind of improvement in quality of life that has been wrought by the administration during these seven years is there for all to see. Every day new tales are told in the newspapers about the distress of the citizens in respect of degradation of their quality of life. The horrible city roads have made no mean contribution to it. The last few heavy spells of rains have taken such a heavy toll of the roads that unless another urban renewal mission is implemented specifically for Bhopal its citizens, barring the so-called VIPs, will have no respite from the scourge of horrid roads.
The roads, apparently, are never constructed in accordance with the specifications and prescribed standards and, therefore, their quality is always poor. It is a well-known fact that there is enormous amount of money that is being made in constructing roads. It is said that 40%, if not more, of the amounts allocated for road-building is siphoned off by contractors in connivance of and collaboration with the politicians, officials, etc. who too have a share in the loot. The recent Income Tax raids on a highly-connected road-building contractor have amply proved it. All those wads of currency notes, gold and diamond jewellery are out of tax-payers’ money – money that is yours and mine.
As many as three agencies, viz the Municipal Corporation, the Capital Project Authority and the PWD build the roads in this town. Even the municipal councillors sometimes chip in with their area development funds. If one adds the funds available with the MLAs for local area development, it would make a huge amount. But corruption eats away most of it. There is, therefore, no dearth of money for road-construction. Though enough money is being spent every year, yet the citizens have all along been up against awful roads that contribute to inconveniences, ill-health, diseases, accidents and injuries that are, on occasions, fatal.
The ongoing works right across the city for the Bus Rapid Transit System has inflicted additional misery on the people. The work has made very tardy progress during the last four years and the end is nowhere in sight. Not one stretch of the road is complete and there are sections that have become intractable. While the roads have been widened at the cost of numerous trees, they are being narrowed down again by the bus corridor that is being built although currently there are not enough buses to run on it. It would have been desirable to build the corridor only after revamping the public transport system by introduction of more decent and AC buses to attract the personalised vehicle-using public. In the meantime a more stringent management of traffic would have taken care of the chaotic traffic.
Recently the Collector Bhopal is reported to have visited the roads in the old city which happened to go under water during the recent heavy rains. On enquiries by him the engineers accompanying him explained away their bad quality by mentioning the reason of water collecting and stagnating on them. One does not know how the Collector responded but water collects on the roads because they are not made scientifically and as per specifications by the same engineers. What prevents the engineers from providing drains of the sides of the roads and designing them for ensuring that rain water flows into them? It’s not that the officials are incapable or ignorant; only they lack commitment and integrity.
They are encouraged to be so by those who are in responsible positions. The Minister for Urban Administration and Development recently remarked that road-building is a continuous process; they are built, they break down and get stripped and are built again. According to him, that is how the process goes on and on. Obviously he is not concerned about the corruption in the process, enormous wastage of tax-payers’ money and the plight of the people. This is the same man who as chief minister had once said he would convert the town into Singapore. He seems to have forgotten all that and is happy with the distress he inflicts on the people. The shoddy roads his organisations build break down soon enough but it takes years to have them repaired and rebuilt. There is a lot of money to be made by everyone concerned in building and rebuilding the roads.
While the print media is doing a great job in highlighting the predicament of the people, the social media also needs to be activated. We all need to mobilise opinion through it against the lackadaisical and corrupt ways of the government, its neglect and apathy vis-a-vis our progressively deteriorating quality of life. We all have to remember that it is a rip-off that we are continuously being subjected to.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Looking around one comes across a kind of darkness that seems to be descending on the country. It is somewhat like what the Nobel Laureate, VS Naipaul, described in his travelogue, “An Area of Darkness”, but, perhaps is more forbidding as it is occurring in the second decade of the 21st Century. Ominous, as it seems, the thought processes of our people seem to be consciously and unrelentingly heading towards the medieval ages. Although it cannot be reckoned as the sign of the times when serious efforts are under way to achieve material progress, yet many societal aberrations strongly suggest that regressive tendencies are getting free play.
Suppression of women’s freedom and their abuse appears to be gathering strength. The “Khaps”, a sort of socio-political village grouping, have become active again and are issuing dictat that are reactionary to the core in the prevailing atmosphere of freedom in a modern democratic society. The “Khaps” and their agglomerations, “Sarv Khaps”, were, for ages, instruments of administration in the village republics of north-western India comprising the modern northern Indian states of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. From time immemorial the Indian society has been organised around the village unit and the republican fabric of the village administration did not die out despite the emergence of subsequent systems of administrations. However, with the establishment of panchayats (village councils) “Khaps” lost much of their significance.
Yet, these seem to be functioning in some pockets and from time to time are issuing uncompromising dictat, mostly on norms of marriages and against women. Though archaic, their power and influence continues to be formidable. A young couple of Kaithal district in Haryana was done to death in 2007 for marrying for love. They happened to be from the same gotra (clan), and were from the same village. Unacceptable to the “Khap”, the couple was murdered despite an order from the state high court for provision of police protection for them. Recently, in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh (UP), in a Taliban-like fatwa, the “Khap” of Asara village banned love marriages, prohibited women below 40 from shopping and from using cell phones outside their respective homes. Appallingly, some local political parties came out in support of the “Khap”. Even the new young and well-educated chief Minister of the province parried questions and avoided condemning the fatwa, thus indirectly turning a blind eye to the sinister system that could take the community back to the dark, medieval ages of patriarchy.
Women, generally, are at the receiving end all around the country. Earlier this month a 20-year old girl was molested and stripped by a gang of around fifty hoodlums as she came out of a bar with friends in the eastern city of Guwahati in Assam. A Hindu extreme right wing outfit, Sri Ram Sene (Army of Lord Ram) had organised an assault in 2009 on girls in a pub in Mangalore. One couldn’t believe the visuals as the rowdies physically attacked girls injuring some of them, whose fault was that they had gone to the pub – something the Sene, apparently, consider being against the tenets of Hinduism. Its aim is to bring back the traditional Hindu society in which women were properly wrapped up in yards of cloth and confined to the kitchen, obediently serving every need of the husbands and their families.
A similar tradition-bound society is what Naipaul encountered during his travels through the country that he undertook to discover his roots. He put down his observations, in his travelogue “An area of darkness” published in 1964. That was more than fifty years ago, only about a decade and a half after the country’s independence when it was emerging out of centuries of imperial rule and was still in search of an identity. Highly religious, caste-ridden and tradition-bound, he found India stagnating and bogged down. Gloating over its ancient glory, it was indifferent to material progress. Guided by the theory of Karma, the country wallowed in poverty, squalor and filth. Its leaders were disinterested in progress and oblivious of the economic revival taking place apace in the war-ravaged countries. Contented with the “Hindu rate of growth” of around 3.5%, they appeared to be blind to the human misery that surrounded them. For a Trinidad-Indian living in England, brought up on the staple of Indian folk-lore that were laid on with layers and layers of romanticism, the actuality of the physical, social and spiritual visuals of his mother-country that Naipaul got hit with was a big let-down.
That very same construct appears to be making a re-appearance. The society seems to be getting radicalised and religious bigotry is striving to occupy centre stage. Radicalised fringe elements of both the major religious groupings have had successes in brow-beating the government into submission. While, the same Sri Ram Sene goons raided in 2008 an exhibition of the paintings of internationally famous Indian artist MF Hussain and vandalised them, some Hindu extremist groups, by way of threats to his life, ensured that the artist lived out the rest of his life in exile.
Taslima Nasreen, a Bangladeshi doctor-turned-author, exiled from her country for authoring an allegedly undesirable literary work was forced out of India – her country of refuge – in 2008. After having come under physical attack from a Muslim political group in Hyderabad in 2007 she was forced out of Kolkata by radical Muslims under the threat of death. Kept under what she described as “unendurable” (virtual) house-arrest in New Delhi for months by the Centre, Nasreen later thought it best to leave the country. India-born Booker-prize winning author Salman Rushdie came in for somewhat similar treatment in 2012 for authoring Satanic Verses 24 years ago that allegedly mocked Prophet Mohammed. Under pressure of Islamic fundamentalists he was prevented from attending the “Jaipur Lit Fest”. In all these instances the weak-kneed governments of the states and the Centre deliberately did not adopt their avowed secular stand and played along with the fundamentalists for reasons that were patently political.
Apart from competitive radicalism pervasive corruption is overwhelming the country; it has spread like a virus infecting every segment of the society – from industrialists to businessmen, from traders to tradesmen, from politicians to the bureaucracy right across their various levels. Billions from public funds have been siphoned off by politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists, throwing cold water on the much-acclaimed sizzling “GDP growth”. Ethical values had, probably, never plumbed such depths. With hardly any sign of governance law and order are on a long holiday. Loots, abductions, thefts, molestations and rape are routine. Dalits are tormented, even murdered; their women are humiliated and frequently raped
.
The country seems to have hit a dark, portentous patch. The future appears to be menacing and sinister and foretells a kind of darkness much worse than what Naipaul happened to observe.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Despite a dire warning issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) about the catastrophe that Planet Earth was headed for, the recent United Nations Rio+20 Conference at Rio de Janeiro on sustainable development proved to be a damp squib.
Branding the current era as the “Age of Irresponsibility”, the UNEP, in a 525-page report, warned that “the earth’s environmental systems are being pushed towards their biophysical limits beyond which loom sudden, irreversible and potentially catastrophic changes.” Painting a grim picture, the report indicated melting of the polar ice caps, desertification in Africa, deforestation of tropical jungles, spiralling use of chemicals and the emptying out of the world's seas of fish as some of the myriad environmental disasters that pose a threat to life as we know it. The report adds that “several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded... Once these have been passed, abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet are likely to occur, with significant adverse implications for human well-being."
One such threshold was crossed only recently. Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring detected more than 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Readings of 400ppm and higher have been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. Currently, only the Arctic has attained the 400 level, but the unrestrained way the things are going there is no reason why the rest of the world will not follow soon. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising apace for some decades. It is a disconcerting new milestone. Years ago, it passed the 350ppm mark that many scientists consider the highest safe level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for restricting the rise of global surface temperature below 20 C (over pre-industrial level) to save the planet from catastrophic changes. But, globally it now stands at 395 and already rising seas and extreme weather patterns are much in evidence.
Indicating the gravity of the problem, climate scientists say it's been at least 800,000 years since the Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s. Before the industrial age the level was around 275-280 ppm. It has been in 300s during the last sixty years. Scientists say that increasing use of fossil fuels like coal and oil caused the alarming rise in the levels of CO2. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2%, the International Energy Agency announced the other day.
Those who are committed to 350ppm say that it was the upper limit for the planet if we wished to have it "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." The figure is virtually irrefutable as a constant flow of additional evidence from many directions supports it. They claim that though the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was around 390 parts per million and the temperature increase is still a shade below 10 C yet it would be prudent to restrict it to 350 ppm to completely obviate the risk of surface temperature rising to and beyond 20 C. Already, they claim, the world has witnessed rapid melt of the Arctic ice, high-altitude glacial systems and perennial snowpack in Asia, Europe, South America and North America, the rapid and unexpected acidification of seawater, warming of seas and rise in their levels, excessive intense short-spell rains, frequent violent storms and damage to coral reefs disrupting the marine eco-system and depriving numerous fish of their habitat.
Many scientists feel that since the CO2 level has reached the 400 mark it would be impossible to immediately arrest its further rise. One cannot shut down all thermal power plants and stop use of gasoline all at once. Over 80% of world’s energy sources emit large amounts of CO2. During the last few decades the rate of emissions has gone up, particularly since the 1970′s as a result of increased consumption and growth in population. High economic growth rate in the emerging economies has further boosted up the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. None of these countries would like to cutback on its developmental effort as uplift of millions of poor is involved.
The CO2 level is, therefore, set to rise. Kevin Anderson, a climate scientist, feels that avoiding dangerous climate change is no longer possible because the temperature rise is already close to 10 Celsius “with effects formerly assumed for 2°C”. According to him, temperature rise of 40 C by 2060 is very likely “given the level of action taken so far on climate, world’s economic realities and the short window of time remaining for limiting the average surface temperature rise to 2°C or even 3°C” – a frightful scenario. If a rise of 10 C is causing such havoc, widespread death and destruction that is likely to occur on the rise of 40 C just cannot be imagined. It will be Apocalypse itself.
Some climate researchers, however, offer consolation. They feel that that 2 °C was likely to be exceeded at the level of 550 ppm, at 450 ppm there would be a 50% likelihood of limiting global warming to 2 °C and that it would be necessary to achieve stabilisation below 400 ppm to give a relatively high degree of certainty of not exceeding 2 °C. With the global CO2 level pushing 400ppm restricting its rise to 450 seems to be an impossibility. Perhaps, 475 or 500ppm would be a better target (with all the risks involved) from where humanity, with a concerted effort, could try and bring CO2 concentrations back to 350. But that would require significant reduction in emissions.
Unfortunately, that concerted effort of world leaders is not quite visible. The much-heralded Rio+20 proved to be a fiasco. Martin Khor, executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre, said "We've sunk so low in our expectations that reaffirming what we did 20 years ago is now considered a success". "Everything has been kicked down the lane a few years”, said another participant from G 77. Nothing was agreed upon; what was agreed upon is to have a few more conferences even if, in the mean time, the planet gets saturated with CO2.
World leaders having failed them, many in Rio believed that progress on environmental issues must be made locally without the help of international accords. That probably is the only way ahead to avoid the approaching catastrophe. The time has come when every country, every state, every local body, every individual and every organisation – public or private – needs to work towards a greener, low-carbon and a safer world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
|
All is surely not well with the Health Administration of the country. The other day two shocking revelations were made in the press. One of them related to detection of serious irregularities by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on health and family welfare in respect of advices and letters of recommendations from some experts submitted to the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) regarding several drugs. These recommendations, apparently, read the same, word-for-word, as those submitted by the drug companies concerned. Experts' endorsements are crucial testimony for country's Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for allowing launch of drugs in the market. The disclosure revealed a nexus between some experts and a few drug companies enabling unquestioned endorsement of the scientific recommendations of their own products for onward transmission to DGCI. These are required to be submitted by the experts after due consideration of the drugs content and their efficacy. Evidence, however, has been unearthed indicating that the experts merely affixed their signatures to the recommendations submitted by the companies concerned. Worse, some were submitted on the day of their receipt by the experts, obviously without according to them due consideration. More alarming was the fact that the experts are from a few iconic medical institutions of the country and some of them happen to be working as professors in these institutions. The innocent, ignorant and unwary patients will be at the receiving end if drugs are pushed in such a manner by the drug companies in collusion with highly placed medical experts without being evaluated in regard to their therapeutic potential. Suspect efficacy of drugs will hit all classes of people across the board and with high drug prices it would be a sort of double whammy for them. Already, people are suffering under the weight of their medical bills. A recent report said that the 'out-of-pocket' expenditure ' the percentage of expenditure incurred by households on medicines ' has increased by 75% during the past couple of years. High medical costs, along with rising prices of essentials, are biting the common man. According to 2011 World Health Organisation estimates about 70% Indians spend their entire income on healthcare and purchase of drugs. With the prices of drugs for common ailments like cardiac disease, hypertension, diabetes creeping up northwards, market watchers are asking for State intervention. Poor are simply unable to afford many drugs. Decrying the ineffectiveness of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy even ruling party politicians are concerned about common man's woes. Such improperly evaluated medicines can also adversely impact exports once they fail to live up to their claims. India is considered the pharmacy of the world. While the domestic retail market in 2008 was estimated to be valued at more than Rs. 55000 crores ($10 billion app.), exports were worth around Rs. 38000 crores ($6 billion app). Unless checked, corrupt practices at the stage of approving and launching a drug in the market would amount to shooting oneself in the foot. The health sector is somehow saturated with corruption, whether at the Centre or in the states. A former central minister of Health & Family Welfare was involved in several scandals during his tenure, including what is known as the 'vaccines scam'. He ordered the public sector units to discontinue manufacture of various essential vaccines only to throw open the entire market to one of his cronies for easy pickings. Ultimately, the other day he was charged by the Central Bureau of Investigations in a Delhi court for abusing his authority and permitting a medical college to admit students without having necessary faculty and clinical facilities. Establishment of medical colleges has become a very paying proposition. Politicians, in collusion with money bags, bribe their way into acquiring prime lands for establishing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
A time seems to have come when people should give up cooking. A recent report said that a domestic LPG cylinder is soon going to cost Rs. 996/-, virtually a thousand rupees, for those who have an income of more than Rs.6 lakhs per annum. The Standing Committee on the matters relating to petroleum ministry has made the recommendation indicating that those who are rich should not be supplied the subsidised LPG. For all one knows, the recommendation may even get accepted regardless of the fact that identification of those who are in receipt of the specified income is going to be a tough proposition. If implemented, only the salaried class would get trapped while others, who are professionals, traders and self-employed, etc. and have to declare their own incomes (which most don’t do entirely) are likely to continue to get subsidised LPG.
The scenario that is unfolding is quite frightful. As the rupee continues to lose value vis-a-vis` the dollar one cannot really imagine where all it is going to end up. In another year or two a LPG cylinder could hit Rs. 2000/- taking it well beyond the reach of many. With the growing trade gap, rising fiscal deficit, astronomical sums poured into the social sector (mostly siphoned off) and flight of foreign investment from the country things have gone from bad to worse. Dollars have become so scarce in the foreign exchange market that the currency has been constantly appreciating against the rupee – one of the major factors which has made prices of petro-products go through the roof.
LPG has been the standard domestic fuel for the last few decades and has been instrumental in changing urban lifestyle. Modern Indian kitchens are not made for the kind of fuel that, for example, my mother used to use – soft coke, fire wood and cow-dung cakes. Besides, they have disappeared from most cities and towns. Unfortunately, for an urban household currently there is no alternative to LPG except electricity as energy source. That, too, has been becoming expensive virtually every year. With the distribution companies unable to check persistent power theft and the prevailing rampant corruption in their ranks power tariffs are hiked annually. Using electrical appliances of high-wattage is, therefore, beyond the reach of many middle-class households. One could perhaps tap solar power but not all houses get enough sunshine. In rural areas women and children forage around for fire wood, dried twigs or whatever, being unable to afford even the subsidised LPG. Only the rural rich now can afford kerosene or LPG. Soon they too may have to give them up as the government progressively loosens its hold over fuel pricing.
Cooking food at home may soon become a thing of the past. That will be a great tragedy. Indians cannot do without food cooked at home. Besides, influenced as they have been over hundreds of years by different cultures, the recipes are such that food has to be cooked in oil and fried with colourful and aromatic spices. Every meal, from breakfast to lunch and from afternoon snacks to dinner, has to be cooked. If cooking fuel becomes unaffordable, Indians wouldn’t know what to do. Very few Indians can survive on raw vegetables or processed meats. In fact, in many regions of the south and the east none would ever have raw vegetables barring tomatoes and onions. Westerners, perhaps, can manage with their salads and mass-produced cold cuts, but not Indians.
Then, there is another emerging problem. Even if one is able to somehow manage the fuel the question that remains is what does one cook – prices of everything edible having gone impossibly high? Prices of edible oil and vegetables, for instance, are sky high. Prices seldom come down even in the season when availability peaks. What is more, there are hardly any seasonal vegetables now which, in season, used to be cheap. Every vegetable, whether of summer or winter, is available right through the year. Hence one finds okra in winter and cauliflowers in summers – thanks to advancement in horticulture and a little more easy availability of cold-storage facilities. But prices always rule high despite the fact that India is one of the top producers of vegetables in the world. According to the figures of the Ministry of Agriculture India is at the top of the world in production of peas, second in production of aubergines, cabbages, cauliflowers and onions and third in potatoes and tomatoes. Yet, the prices rule high because of the middlemen and the evil of cartelisation. While middlemen push up the prices of all food items –vegetables, lentils and food grains – cartels don’t allow the prices to come down. Farmers and consumers are at the receiving end of their intervention.
Some farmers, however, have become smart. They have taken to injecting chemicals into vegetables to ripen them quickly to get a better turnover. That, in the process, they inject toxins which, on ingestion, could be a health hazard is of no concern to them. This aberration is of recent origin but has continued unchecked for want of effective governance. Likewise, colouring agents and sweeteners are routinely injected in fruits like papayas, watermelons, melons, pomegranates, etc. Wellness-gurus recommend steady consumption of fruits and vegetables without realising that most of them carry contaminants that could prove to be toxic. In any case, the prices have shot up to such astronomical heights that they have become unaffordable for a large section of the population. Supplies may not be matching the demand, stimulated as it is by rising incomes but, if one goes by ads, fresh vegetables and fruits are also being increasingly used in manufacturing of cosmetics – moisturisers, fairness creams, feeding the craze for a fairer complexion. No wonder, even the lowly banana, once a fruit for penniless sadhus wandering in the wildernesses for moksha, are going for Rs.40/- a dozen.
Non-vegetarian stuff, too, has not remained behind. In a decade and a half mutton prices have shot up five fold, from Rs.60/- a kilo to Rs.300/-. The same has been the case for fish and poultry. While fish could carry deadly heavy metals, poultry in many parts has been detected with heavy dosage of harmful antibiotics. Nonetheless, once again the rise of the middle classes has fuelled the demand that has further been stoked by television channels showing foodies cooking and hogging non-vegetarian stuff. The way things are going, soon non-vegetarian food may become unaffordable for a vast segment.
The country has certainly witnessed rapid GDP growth. But, so have the prices of fuel and edibles risen exponentially in tandem. Largely a poor country, with widespread hunger and malnourishment, no wonder India is scraping the bottom of several social sector indices.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From
Proloy Kumar Bagchi
|
|
|
Once again a fresh city development plan (CDP) is in the making. It should have come in 2005 but, as usual, there has been a delay. A plan published in 2009 under the influence and, presumably, guidance of the real estate lobby was such a disaster that it was rejected at the highest level in the state. One, therefore, awaits the fresh one with trepidation. Every plan plans for expansion of the town at the cost of thousands of hectares of forests and farmlands. Bhopal already has expanded in all directions without the necessary civic infrastructure. Yet none seems to be keen to cry a halt and say “this far and no further”. What is more, the 2005 Plan that is still current has not been fully implemented. In any case, it does not seem to have improved the quality of life of the people, reduced poverty or improved their productivity which should be and are the objectives of CDPs. And yet a fresh plan is under preparation. Regardless of that, builders and colonisers are relentlessly expanding the city’s limits. One does not know whether their expansion is covered by the ongoing CDP or ad-hoc permissions.
Nonetheless, the “First Citizens’ Agenda” on Bhopal’s Real Estate was organised in November 2011 by Hindustan Times in which ministers and senior bureaucrats of relevant departments had a brain storming session with builders and developers in respect of CDP 2031. No such Citizens’ Agenda seems to have been organised later by the newspaper regarding, say, agenda for environmental conservation or for transport, healthcare and educational facilities. One wonders whether the real estate lobby, along with builders and colonisers, will again eventually become prime movers of the CDP.
The points that emerged from the discussions are mentioned in brief below:
1) According to the UAD minister, Babulal Gaur, Bhopal has “all the elements, be it lakes, hills, greenery, road, rail and air connectivity”, which make it an attractive real estate investment destination. Likewise, the minister for Housing and Environment (H&E) felt that when returns from the stock market are not encouraging investments in real estate and bullion appeared to be viable alternatives – thus pushing for more investments in real estate.
2) While saying so the minister for H&E admitted that with the relentless influx of migrants civic infrastructure of the city has come under tremendous pressure which, according to his Principal Secretary, would require eight times more of expenditure than what is being spent now if the demands were to be met. This kind of money is difficult to find.
3) A mention was made of housing for economically weaker sections of the population generally living in slums and a suggestion was made that every project had to have a component for them to ensure prospects of work and employment for them close to their residences.
4) One of the builders raised the issue of vertical vs horizontal development. He said that colonies and complexes have come up 25 to 30 kilometres away from the city centre where the authorities have not been able to reach civic infrastructure like roads, water supply lighting and facilities of healthcare and police. Fear was expressed that a time might come when a trip to airport will take 6 to 7 hours for a flight of an hour to Delhi or Mumbai.
The concerns expressed are genuine but, unfortunately, there was no attempt to arrive at a consensus. The ministers’ meet with the real-estate tycoons seemed to indicate that the latter will play a major role in the development and expansion of the town. One does not know whether, like other media houses, Hindustan Times is also eyeing a piece of the cake that would be on offer when CDP 2031 materialises.
Be that as it may, Sunita Narain, the noted Indian environmentalist, in one of her pieces expressed a sort of a truism when she said, “The real-estate lobby has a vice-like grip on Indian cities. All too often land use decisions are based on what will make a quick profit for the real estate developers. And without fail, the decisions disregard common sense. The casualties are social and environmental.” One, therefore, is left wondering why those in the government sought partnership of the builders, developers and colonisers who are generally not concerned about larger social benefits and have only personal gains in mind.
Nonetheless, certain issues that were highlighted need to be considered to determine whether the municipal area should further be expanded under the new CDP. One is, of course, the distances that one has to cover now to get out of the town as colonies and complexes have come up and are coming up all around the town at great distances from the city’s outlets. The second is lack of civic infrastructure for the residents of such colonies/complexes. When the city, currently with its smaller confines and a smaller population, suffers from utter lack of civic facilities and services, it is quite unlikely that the municipal corporation would be able extended them, whatever their quality, to these colonies/complexes in the foreseeable future, given the massive costs involved as indicated by a senior government official.
What perhaps is a more pertinent reason against further expansion of city limits is that the current 2005 CDP still remains unimplemented to a pretty large extent. No work has been done on as many as 24 roads that were planned and there is no hope of work relating to them starting in the near future.
In the circumstances one feels that the new CDP should tackle following issues that touch the lives of the people and refrain from planning, as far as possible, to bring more and more farmlands and forests within an enlarged municipal area:
1. First of all the attempt should be made to implement unfinished part of the current plan
2. The new plan should upgrade the (progressively deteriorating) quality of life of the citizens by taking up the following:
i) Improve quality of roads all over in the town, including those that are within the old and new residential colonies
ii) Revamp the sewerage of the town to expand the capacity of the system to meet the needs of the next twenty years. Despite the money spent in the Bhoj Wetland Project and that taken on loan from ADB sewers still keep leaking and one can even now find manholes in dangerous and deplorable condition
iii) Planners have to contend with the problem of effective management and disposal of solid wastes. In the course of next few decades it may become far more acute. As landfills create more problems than they solve using the solid wastes for generating power is environmentally a far better alternative. Many countries are doing so and even Delhi has now got a plant
iv) Provision of adequate water for a burgeoning population is going to be a major issue during the coming decades. Upgrading the supply system obviating the chances of major and minor leaks that occur so frequently involving in losses of hundreds and thousands of litres of scarce water is imperative. Besides, recycling of waste water and rain-harvesting should be planned in a big way and implemented. Speeding up of meterisation of supply should be prioritised with planning for equitable water supply all across the town
v) The new plan should focus on eradication of slums. The government had projected in 2005 that Bhopal would be slum-free by 2012. That has not happened. Resettlement of slum-dwellers in low cost housing should be a priority. Likewise, with projections of an enhanced rate of migration into the cities during the next few decades the plan should also provide for meeting the influx by making arrangements that avoid further slumming
vi) Besides, a comprehensive plan involving development of trade and commerce, education and healthcare in the neighbouring smaller towns could be thought of to entice migrants from their respective catchment areas to prevent their crowding in Bhopal
vii) Public transport needs to be planned in a manner that it eases pressure of private vehicles on the roads. Already some buses have been introduced under the JNNURM but they are not optimally used. Their quality and efficiency needs much improvement. Besides feeder services have not been planned so far. Unless buses running on the main arteries are fed from hinterland of the stops public transport would never become popular and the roads will progressively get choked. Even the BRTS might not be of any help
viii) Planners have also to think of providing a system of mobility to the commuters comprising roads, railways, metro or light-rail or monorail or sky trains, cycle tracks and pedestrian pathways to control the vehicular emissions. World over efforts are on to reduce vehicular emissions, automobile sector contributing about 30% of the greenhouse gases. So far there has been no attempt in Bhopal to control it despite the relentless increase in the number of vehicles and even check on polluting vehicles is conspicuous by its absence.
ix) Regardless of the acts of omissions and commissions in respect of the city’s water bodies a new plan should indicate measures over the next two decades for their sustainable use and conservation in a scientific manner. Likewise plans should be made to revive the city’s streams which have now become worse than drains. Many cities in West and the East have revived dead urban rivers and streams for improving the environment. Measures should also be formulated to prevent further colonisation of the surrounding ecologically important hills and forests.
x) The city is known for its green ambience but it has lost a great deal of its roadside canopy which needs to be fully restored. From the Nawabi era, it has also been known for its parks and gardens which have constantly been encroached upon or are being degraded. The master plan for the city should provide for their revival and upkeep in order to extend to the citizens a better and green habitat.
xi) The older part of the city is littered with heritage structures which need to be taken care of. The plan should provide for their aesthetic conservation and beautification of their surroundings with suitable facilities for tourists. In fact, these structures need to be properly marketed.
xii) Above all, for effective governance in the city the CDP should determine the extent to which it should be expanded and allowed to grow. Planners need to make an objective assessment of the critical lack of civic governance in the city’s current smaller avatar and, given the unlikelihood of any significant improvement, therefore, need to set a limit to its growth. They should, nevertheless, plan for strengthening the civic governance to provide clean, healthy, secure, productive and fulfilling life to the citizens of the city.
|
|
|
|
|
| | |