It is amazing how that tenuous something called culture is very tenacious when it comes to not letting go of you ... despite your earnest attempts at jettisoning it like you would an impoverished relative. Culture and its ramifications are indeed a deep-rooted thing and you just cannot shoo it away on a whim, though you might dislike it much in the interests of an egalitarian society.
These thoughts occurred to me as I was recently watching from the sidelines the brouhaha over the 'satyagraha' of the swamy in saffron, it's quick dispersal by a diktat of (in all likelihood) the home ministry and the ensuing battle royal of words.
But before that a word about our cultural baggage called 'Chathurvarnya', which literally means four 'colours' / classes. ( http://www.hindubooks.org/sudheer_birodkar/hindu_history/castevedic.html )It is common knowledge at least to the yesteryear generations that society in India was divided for convenience (whose, is a moot question) into four classes--the priestly, the ruling, the trading and the labour groups. This, on the whole, was a very convenient arrangement. The priests, naturally, took care of all the poojas, homas etc and did their best to propitiate the Gods with yajnas and other offerings, and it was not a tough task to propitiate the priests if you had the requiste gold coins and other presents ready. The warrior class kept themselves in training and on the strength of their sharp tools of the trade, kept everybody in line and levied taxes, reigned, and lived and loved happily ever after --until perhaps their son/s took it into their heads to 'retire' the father. The traders were not much different from their counterparts of the present times, and as lobbying sirens like Ms Radia were not invented then, resorted to the more mundane ways of rigged weights and measures and some plain adulteration to chalk up sizeable profits, married into 'money' and lived happily. The labour class was kept out of mischief by solid day-long work, either in the fields or under the craftsmen builders etc. As trade-unionism and such like 'emancipating' ideas were not popular yet, they spent most of their time bent to their work and was thankful in the evening to be permitted to go home to a meal that kept body and soul together and some rest. This was a most happy state of affairs.
And the world happily went round and round about its axis and none had any complaints. Brahmins were content to be brahmins, the kshatriyas were more than happy playing their roles, the traders, like always, were blissful so long as the till resounded with the jingle of money, and the poor sudras merely took their fates in their stride. Then what we now call the 'winds of change' started blowing, and from what ensued, one may not be too far from the truth if one believed that it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. The quiet balance of society was lost as the 'colours' and castes were in a hurry to intermingle and, more often, this was to the accompaniment of physical violence.
Then (let me sum up history into one sentence), for good or for bad, we Indians went in for a casteless system, and threw the 'chathurvarna' philosophy into the waste heap of history-- except in the times of elections, weddings and interviews. And in these modern times when Fair & Lovely rules, 'colour' could never hold its own, in a way, try as it might. But there are people who keep insisting that the system has its merits too. ( http://www.echarcha.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1055 ). Personally I thought I did not know enough to take sides in such a complex issue--until I heard some of the wise pronouncements of men who matter in the India of today. This was what I referred to above in the second paragraph.
When a person (and that too a respected Minister at the Centre) with the background and education of Kapil Sibal endorses the merits of the 'Chathurvarnya', one naturally has to listen. ( He is the minister for the most-valued export of India too--human resources!) While commenting on the recent adventures of the saffron-clad sanysi Ramdev poaching on the territory of the professional politician, Mr Sibal was very specific as to where the lines were drawn.
"A swami who teaches yoga to the country should not teach us political aasans (postures)",
said the honourable minister, referring, of course, to the ascetic's 'jumping of the fences' from yoga postures to political posturing. I simply loved the tone and the body language of the minister as he uttered those words. So would most of you when you watch the video: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/stick-to-yoga-not-political-aasans-govt-on-ramdev/201667
Coming from a man who has studied law, and more importantly, history, surely this sounds eminently reasonable to a layman like me. 'Chathurvarnyam' was by and large about keeping the 'purity' of the classes. After all, the word 'caste', pundits tell me, has its roots in 'chaste', and 'Jati', or religion, is derived from the root syllable 'Ja', which means 'to be born'. So it is probably in the best interests of everybody if we kept the 'divisions' clear-cut and separate, and kept to "our" side of the fence when it came to our pursuits in life. Just imagine the chaos that would ensue if the brahmins chose to go (okay, okay, suppose they were pushed ) into the battle field with their mantras and tantras, and no swords and no courage? What about the warrior choosing to don the sacred thread and undertake a major yajna? God forbid! What could you expect if the dapper trader were made to heft the hoe and the pickaxe in the fields? And imagine the poor sudra suddenly finding himself one fine morning on the trader's chair, or for that matter, on the throne of the ruler? With no disrespect meant, let me say this -- it will be ABSOLUTE CHAOS, as chaotic as chaos can be!
What the knowledgeable minister meant was when a sanyasin (either by birth, or in the modern era, by choice and training) trespasses into areas where he has no right to tread, let alone rush in like a foolish angel, he should realize that he is upsetting the fine balance of nature. He should calmly follow his vocation of teaching yoga to all and sundry, including perhaps ministers, prime ministers and corporate honchos. Have we all forgotten the sagely and powerful Dhirendra Brahmachari who was the personal yoga guru of the former PM Indira Gandhi? He never chose to dirty his hands with politics; rather, with aplomb he got politicians to play political games of chess .
Despite all our proclamations of 'modernity', India is, I am glad, at heart, a nation that bows to its cultural past and 'chathurvarnya'. I dont subscribe to the views of those who scream 'dynastic rule' whenever a minister's or a prime minister's son or daughter becomes a political functionary. Nobody cried foul when a trader's son became another, or a labourer's son or daughter went into, ahem!, labour. Even today to be a priest in one of the millions of temples in India, you have to be born the son (no daughters, please!) of a brahmin! Such is the stranglehold of your cultural past. Then why this half-hearted acceptance of a "classy" system?
With such thoughts and the exhortation of our ebullient minister fresh in my mind, I logged onto the website of the Parliament to dig out the antecedents of our worthy 'netas' who steer this country along through the stormy seas of allegations and scams. If we wanted to preserve the 'chaste' nature of our caste system, naturally we had to have a look at the parentage and education of these worthies. Segregation of the 'varnas' according to the professional training was the primary standard, as per the dictum of dear Sibalji. Sadly I could not confirm whether the yoga guru under reference was trained in anything in addition to yoga. But the backgrounds of most of our ministers and MPs left me 'rolling on the ground laughing', if you will permit me to adopt the fav phrase of the 'chat' crowd.
Mr Sibal, the Parliament website informs us, was trained in history and law. Just that? Not even a graduate degree in politics?? Oh, oh, then what the heck is he doing in politics? I dont know, but at least, was his father a practising politician? Sibalji, you ought to be wandering the corridors of law courts looking for clients, and not the corridors of power in the large round building, if you will follow your own prescription. You will have good company there, as our defence minister A K Antony and Mamata Banerjee too are law graduates; and so is Andimuthu Raja! Surely I am given to think that with his astute knowledge of the finer points of law and his charming personality and fantastic body language, in no time Sibalji could be the top legal eagle or legal vulture once he switches to the home turf of law. (When you come to think of law graduates who 'jumped fences', the first name that strikes you is that of Barrister Mohandas Karamchand. A friend was quick to point out that, considering the present state of affairs of the Congress and India, he felt that MK ought to have stayed put with his law practice.)
And what about economists? We have a bevy of economists in the government, beginning with PM SIngh. ( probably that is the reason for all the economic woes of the country... too many cooks!) Mr Singh ought to be enlightening students at some temple of learning instead of taking all the flak by pretending to be a politician. Both Kanimozhi and Dayanidhi Maran are economists, and look at the trouble that erupted when they mixed money, which they know all about, and politics, which was not their rightful turf.
Murli Deora, our former petro minister, is a BBA from Boston University--no wonder he always ran his ministry like a businessman obsessed with profits and little else. Look at Suresh Kalmadi--he has absolutely no background in either sports or politics; he is a graduate of Fergusson College, Pune, and also an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Kharakvasla, and then trained in the Air Force Flying College,Jodhpur and Allahabad. What is he doing in his present position (not inside Tihar jail) instead of serving the country in the field in which he was trained at considerable expense to the taxpayer? We will all have some trouble pinning down Shashi Tharoor --B.A. (Hons), M.A., M.A.L.D, Ph.D., D.Litt (Honorary), Dr. Honoris Causa, educated at St Stephen`s College, Delhi University, New Delhi, and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, U.S.A. What qualifies him to be in politics? Chidambaram, our astute Home minister, has the unbeatable combination of science, law and business administration under his belt (if he wears one over his dhoti should be no concern of ours), but sadly, he too lacks any qualification in politics.
Our future hope, Rahul Gandhi, has an M Phil in development economics from Trinity College, Cambridge University, U.K. But instead of being a member of the committees that attempt to steer the country along lines of economic development, what is he doing jetting/biking around, getting arrested etc and playing the politician? His father was a pilot and his jumping fences into politics was not a wise decision as everybody knows. His mother Sonia's qualifications ( 1. Three year course in foreign languages (English & French) completed in 1964 at Instituto Santa Teresa, Turin, Italy; 2. Certificate in English from Lennox Cook School, Cambridge, UK, completed in 1965) make her eminently suited to an advisory position in one of the many committees on education-- but certainly not politics.
My 'treasure hunt' on the Parliament's website revealed to me one thing beyond any reasonble doubt. Almost all the "sitting politicians", including the perspicacious and amply loquacious Mr Sibal, are "fence jumpers" from one 'varna' to another, and in doing so they have violated the 'chasteness' of caste/varna as defined under the 'chathurvarnya' system, and as upheld by Mr Sibal. It is interesting to note that my hurried search succeeded in unearthing only a couple of "professional" politicians-- Mulayam Singh Yadav [B.A., B.T., M.A. (Political Science)) and our own beloved, omni-present Pranabji [M.A. (History), M.A. (Political Science), LL.B., D. Litt. (Honoris Causa)] You just cannot take an issue with their being present in government--they belong to the "political varna".
What are these other gents (and ladies) doing in the political arena, instead of quietly pursuing their respective professions according to their 'varnas' of belonging/training? Perhaps this should serve as an "instrospection trigger" for them, I guess. At least Mr Sibal owes it to himself (and to all of us) to think seriously about what he himself has stated as the guiding principle of this great nation. I urge him to think nothing of what will happen to the ministry he is holding charge of once he quits, and stand by what he believes in and propel himself with alacrity to the practice of law, and make an exit from politics, which, as things stand, is no place for a gentleman and a lawyer. Perhaps the political field's loss will turn out to be the legal profession's gain. Surely we dont need lawyers to teach us politics or run this country, nor do we want business admins to encroach into the political arena. Since when has politics become the first refuge of so many "out-castes"? Sibalji is right--let each profession keep to its own turf, which would be a healthy practice if ever there was one.
Psst! On second thought (lest I am viewed as a heartless stickler for tradition's 'varna' straitjacket), let me give a private tip to Sibalji: next time when you are about to project a small granite missile at somebody, see that the glass walls around you are lowered out of harm's way-- it is less messier.
Long live 'chathurvarnya' -- only let us hike the 'classes' from four to forty or so to accommodate most of us comfortably!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
OIL MEN, OILY MATTERS ...
Despite being a cynic, I was one who had always believed that even to the darkest cloud, there would be that wee bit of a silver lining.
For once, am I not right?!
If it wasn't for that hefty and hurried post-election hike of Rs 5 in the price of petrol, how many of us would have bothered to stop and ponder the clever money-making tactics of the corporates and their cronies in the ministry? It is a fact that the slow and steady squeeze was on the consumer and the tax payer for long. Those who have a longish memory will recall the "Gulf war surcharge" that was put on fuel by the government when there was the Kuwait war. The knee-jerk protests of the political parties promptly came in its wake. But when the war ended, nobody, not even the 'watchdog' media, remembered to bark against it.
If you rewind a bit and put two and two together, you could very well see when the price decontrol fever started. The Niira Radia tapes had revealed how ministers like Raja and Deora were put into place by the interested corporates. And everybody who knows our corporates --no need to mention names; they are all the chips of the same old block!! -- knows how they go about getting things done with a large bucket of grease for the palms of the ministry honchos.
The other day I heard our FM Pranab whining that it was all the doing of the oil companies. Poor man, he was trying his best to scare the inflation to go away, and here were these heartless oil chaps playing havoc with his well-laid plans to contain inflation and make this India a heaven for the 'aam aadmi'. The FM and the PM (himself a financial wiz!) sadly seem not have noticed that the increase in fuel prices are likely to affect anything and everything, either directly or indirectly. You cant fault them; while studying the economic impact of such measures in minute detail, it may not be possible to notice such 'affects' that might immediately occur to the 'common sense' of the common man in the street.
All I wish to say about it is, with their demonstrated 'acumen' in economics and planning, these guys won't make the grade even if the corner paanshop was recruiting somebody to mind its accounts. Ah, perhaps "scientific economics" was somewhat counter-intuitive! How these guys are continuing to formulate this great Nation's economic 'policies' is a mystery to me. Dont we have some guys who understand "straightforward economics" in this country?
We think these guys are idiots who do not understand profit and loss and inflation and such stuff. But, NO!! On second thoughts, I dare say they ARE intelligent beyond measure; the problem is that we are not wired to see their reasons and reasoning, and their formulae with "secret ingredients" that make them do what we ultimately think is a foolish approach that compounds the problem. A look at a few things that have blended into the background will reveal their very clear thinking and their purpose.
The other day I received an SMS. This is what it said:
Petrol (per litre) prices in:
Pakistan - Rs 26
Bangladesh - Rs 22
Nepal - Rs 34
Burma - Rs 30
Afghanistan - Rs 36
India - Rs 67
-------------------------------------------------
Basic cost - Rs 16.50
Central taxes - Rs 11.80
Excise duty - Rs 9.75
State tax - Rs 8.00
Vat/cess - Rs 4.00
Total - Rs 50.05
-------------------------------------------------
Simple arithmetic (easy! we can work it out ourselves; this is not running into lakh-crores to boggle our minds!) tells us that the cumulative taxes work out to more than TWICE the basic price of the stuff. And as the taxes are computed as a percentage of the price, every time the price goes up, the "cut" of the government too goes up! No wonder like brothers in thievery, there is this unbeatable nexus of the cronies! I haven't bothered to check the comparative pricing in the neighbouring countries. You could do that if you have some contacts here and there. But you dont need to do any comparative study to see that this is a grand rip-off.
I phoned up a couple of friends in the industry and they confirmed most of our worst fears about pricing, about the interntional fuel trading sharp practices, futures trading etc. But ther is really no need for us to go into all that, or understand all that, in order to question the logic of our ministers and their minions when it comes to "policies" on fuel pricing.
There are other little-heard stories to fuel pricing that will take us first to the high altifude games in the aviation fuel sector.
At a time when the "aam aadmi" was charged Rs 60 plus for a litre of the kerosene-laced stuff called petrol all over India, jet fuel was going for less than Rs 45 a litre! By now the country is privy to the heavy and continued losses that Air India have been incurring and how it was the need of the hour to "get rid of it" to save the national waste etc etc. In a magnanimous last-ditch gesture to save the national carrier from its loss trap, the government, in 2008, wrote-off the excise and customs duties on aviation fuel. What a patriotic and timely action, we all thought! However, not only did Air India fail to get out of the red, but they drove the staff into another wave of strikes, pushing the airline into a deeper abyss of loss and debt.
But Air India's loss was the gain of the other airlines--all private players and "cronies" of the government. How? When the government so charitably wrote-off the duties, it was not for Air India alone, or for a limited period. With a fell stroke of the pen, they just abolished the duties on aviation fuel! And all the private airlines were(are still!) flying about on the cheaper fuel and raking in hefty profits --putting the entire subsidy burden indirectly on the poor man in the street who pays dearly! What a Robin Hood-ian technique of robbing poor Peter to pay Paul a grand subsidy!
For the sake of a record here are the prices as on 17th May, 2011:
Petrol - $ 128 / barrel
Aviation fuel - $ 135/ barrel
This is what ultimately translates as Rs 67 for the man in the street and less than Rs 50 for the "high-flyers"! Surely airline companies too, like 'good' businessmen the world over, are willing to "kick back" a percentage of the profits that they make as a result of this largesse at the expense of the tax payer.
Do you still think that our ministers are embodiments of stupidity and they dont understand economics? The laugh, dear reader, is on you ...
If you think that the 'subsidy game' is limited to aviation fuel, think again. Diesel right now happens to enjoy subsidies along with kerosene and cooking gas. When we think of diesel, the common man naturally thinks of the railways, the backbone of the nation, and of the road transportation network, the life-line of the country.
But no, there is another large group of diesel consumers who are quietly consuming all that they can without getting into any loud controversies and without rocking the boat. No prizes for guessing who this new breed is, though I am sure you may not come anywhere near the truth with your guesses. They are the mobile companies. Mobiles ran on 2G or 3G, we all thought. No sir, all their towers run on diesel gensets, and with electricity "service" being what it is in our country, you could imagine the huge quantum of diesel that would be needed to keep the networks alive.
Greenpeace, the environmental NGO, has estimated that the exchequer loses a whopping Rs 2,600 crore annually as a result of the 'subsidy' enjoyed by the mobile companies. (http://www.greenpeace.org/india/Global/india/docs/cool-it/reports/telecom-report-may-2011-web-optimized.pdf ) And are we naive enough to believe that the government is ignorant of all these goings on in the country? If they really are, then it is best that we are rid of such a body of worthies called a government--ASAP!
Add to this the growing trend of "portable power". Thesea are huge diesel gensets mounted on trucks that could be hired and deployed at the point of use. Apparently no rules of noise or other pollution apply to these "portable polluters". If you look around you could see them chugging away from morning till evening, and sometimes through the night, making money for the owners...and all powered by the subsidized diesel! Nobody has as yet done a study on these millions of power units that daily consume millions of liters of diesel; but the figures are likely to be equally mind-boggling as are the mobile tower ones.
And what are subsidies? It is nothing but the common man's tax money, and not anybody's dowry!
Think of the heavy CO2, smoke and noise pollution created by all these millions of heavy gensets and how the carbon footprint is going to be made larger as a result. We have rules to harrass the poor 2-wheeler rider on the strength of the various stages of the Bharat pollution laws. But when the railways or the buses and trucks on the roads, or now these millions of diesel gensets, spew out tons and tons of pollution into the atmosphere, our lawmakers conveniently look the other way.
Now to come to the point as regards fuel pricing, if we are to decontrol prices, let us decontrol fully, and we will pay the international prices. Let the government get out of the equation and give up their "cut" of the taxes, except perhaps a small import tax. Let there be the a rationing of the stuff with a minimum quantity offered at a controlled price. (The government have always decried rationing, arguing that it will bring in black-marketing; but it is the job of the government to see that black-marketers are in prison... or, maybe in the ministry, but certainly not out in the streets!)
There has to be a dual pricing for fuel, particularly diesel, so that the core sectors get diesel at a fair price that will hold inflation in check, and the profit-making private players like mobile tower operators and portable power salesmen will have to pay a higher price, and not ride along happily at the cost of the tax payers of this land.
It is high time the "free market" pricing for fuel was abolished and government controls reinstated on a critical input like fuel. That, whatever our pundits will say, is the only way inflation can be checked and development ushered in this country.The government have to see that there is more transparency about the domestic oil production and how it is tied into the system as regards pricing. If the planners and ministers do not claim to understand such simple and straightforward logic, then they could very well quit and take up profitable employment with those companies whose writ they run now. No sir, the people wont pay you good money to do such disservice as you do now to the nation.
The writing is on the wall; if you can read, well and good. Before the entire nation rises in anger in a fiery revolt, it would be in your own interests to put the record straight in a hurry and price aviation fuel, diesel, petrol, cooking gas, kerosene etc in a rational manner --and NOT according to the whims of your cronies in corporatedom. Such a step might just pour some oil on the troubled waters.
Otherwise it could well be a lot of trouble on exremely oily waters that wouldn't be easy to navigate..... or survive!
The choice, sir, is yours to make !
* * * * * * * * * * * *
For once, am I not right?!
If it wasn't for that hefty and hurried post-election hike of Rs 5 in the price of petrol, how many of us would have bothered to stop and ponder the clever money-making tactics of the corporates and their cronies in the ministry? It is a fact that the slow and steady squeeze was on the consumer and the tax payer for long. Those who have a longish memory will recall the "Gulf war surcharge" that was put on fuel by the government when there was the Kuwait war. The knee-jerk protests of the political parties promptly came in its wake. But when the war ended, nobody, not even the 'watchdog' media, remembered to bark against it.
If you rewind a bit and put two and two together, you could very well see when the price decontrol fever started. The Niira Radia tapes had revealed how ministers like Raja and Deora were put into place by the interested corporates. And everybody who knows our corporates --no need to mention names; they are all the chips of the same old block!! -- knows how they go about getting things done with a large bucket of grease for the palms of the ministry honchos.
The other day I heard our FM Pranab whining that it was all the doing of the oil companies. Poor man, he was trying his best to scare the inflation to go away, and here were these heartless oil chaps playing havoc with his well-laid plans to contain inflation and make this India a heaven for the 'aam aadmi'. The FM and the PM (himself a financial wiz!) sadly seem not have noticed that the increase in fuel prices are likely to affect anything and everything, either directly or indirectly. You cant fault them; while studying the economic impact of such measures in minute detail, it may not be possible to notice such 'affects' that might immediately occur to the 'common sense' of the common man in the street.
All I wish to say about it is, with their demonstrated 'acumen' in economics and planning, these guys won't make the grade even if the corner paanshop was recruiting somebody to mind its accounts. Ah, perhaps "scientific economics" was somewhat counter-intuitive! How these guys are continuing to formulate this great Nation's economic 'policies' is a mystery to me. Dont we have some guys who understand "straightforward economics" in this country?
We think these guys are idiots who do not understand profit and loss and inflation and such stuff. But, NO!! On second thoughts, I dare say they ARE intelligent beyond measure; the problem is that we are not wired to see their reasons and reasoning, and their formulae with "secret ingredients" that make them do what we ultimately think is a foolish approach that compounds the problem. A look at a few things that have blended into the background will reveal their very clear thinking and their purpose.
The other day I received an SMS. This is what it said:
Petrol (per litre) prices in:
Pakistan - Rs 26
Bangladesh - Rs 22
Nepal - Rs 34
Burma - Rs 30
Afghanistan - Rs 36
India - Rs 67
-------------------------------------------------
Basic cost - Rs 16.50
Central taxes - Rs 11.80
Excise duty - Rs 9.75
State tax - Rs 8.00
Vat/cess - Rs 4.00
Total - Rs 50.05
-------------------------------------------------
Simple arithmetic (easy! we can work it out ourselves; this is not running into lakh-crores to boggle our minds!) tells us that the cumulative taxes work out to more than TWICE the basic price of the stuff. And as the taxes are computed as a percentage of the price, every time the price goes up, the "cut" of the government too goes up! No wonder like brothers in thievery, there is this unbeatable nexus of the cronies! I haven't bothered to check the comparative pricing in the neighbouring countries. You could do that if you have some contacts here and there. But you dont need to do any comparative study to see that this is a grand rip-off.
I phoned up a couple of friends in the industry and they confirmed most of our worst fears about pricing, about the interntional fuel trading sharp practices, futures trading etc. But ther is really no need for us to go into all that, or understand all that, in order to question the logic of our ministers and their minions when it comes to "policies" on fuel pricing.
There are other little-heard stories to fuel pricing that will take us first to the high altifude games in the aviation fuel sector.
At a time when the "aam aadmi" was charged Rs 60 plus for a litre of the kerosene-laced stuff called petrol all over India, jet fuel was going for less than Rs 45 a litre! By now the country is privy to the heavy and continued losses that Air India have been incurring and how it was the need of the hour to "get rid of it" to save the national waste etc etc. In a magnanimous last-ditch gesture to save the national carrier from its loss trap, the government, in 2008, wrote-off the excise and customs duties on aviation fuel. What a patriotic and timely action, we all thought! However, not only did Air India fail to get out of the red, but they drove the staff into another wave of strikes, pushing the airline into a deeper abyss of loss and debt.
But Air India's loss was the gain of the other airlines--all private players and "cronies" of the government. How? When the government so charitably wrote-off the duties, it was not for Air India alone, or for a limited period. With a fell stroke of the pen, they just abolished the duties on aviation fuel! And all the private airlines were(are still!) flying about on the cheaper fuel and raking in hefty profits --putting the entire subsidy burden indirectly on the poor man in the street who pays dearly! What a Robin Hood-ian technique of robbing poor Peter to pay Paul a grand subsidy!
For the sake of a record here are the prices as on 17th May, 2011:
Petrol - $ 128 / barrel
Aviation fuel - $ 135/ barrel
This is what ultimately translates as Rs 67 for the man in the street and less than Rs 50 for the "high-flyers"! Surely airline companies too, like 'good' businessmen the world over, are willing to "kick back" a percentage of the profits that they make as a result of this largesse at the expense of the tax payer.
Do you still think that our ministers are embodiments of stupidity and they dont understand economics? The laugh, dear reader, is on you ...
If you think that the 'subsidy game' is limited to aviation fuel, think again. Diesel right now happens to enjoy subsidies along with kerosene and cooking gas. When we think of diesel, the common man naturally thinks of the railways, the backbone of the nation, and of the road transportation network, the life-line of the country.
But no, there is another large group of diesel consumers who are quietly consuming all that they can without getting into any loud controversies and without rocking the boat. No prizes for guessing who this new breed is, though I am sure you may not come anywhere near the truth with your guesses. They are the mobile companies. Mobiles ran on 2G or 3G, we all thought. No sir, all their towers run on diesel gensets, and with electricity "service" being what it is in our country, you could imagine the huge quantum of diesel that would be needed to keep the networks alive.
Greenpeace, the environmental NGO, has estimated that the exchequer loses a whopping Rs 2,600 crore annually as a result of the 'subsidy' enjoyed by the mobile companies. (http://www.greenpeace.org/india/Global/india/docs/cool-it/reports/telecom-report-may-2011-web-optimized.pdf ) And are we naive enough to believe that the government is ignorant of all these goings on in the country? If they really are, then it is best that we are rid of such a body of worthies called a government--ASAP!
Add to this the growing trend of "portable power". Thesea are huge diesel gensets mounted on trucks that could be hired and deployed at the point of use. Apparently no rules of noise or other pollution apply to these "portable polluters". If you look around you could see them chugging away from morning till evening, and sometimes through the night, making money for the owners...and all powered by the subsidized diesel! Nobody has as yet done a study on these millions of power units that daily consume millions of liters of diesel; but the figures are likely to be equally mind-boggling as are the mobile tower ones.
And what are subsidies? It is nothing but the common man's tax money, and not anybody's dowry!
Think of the heavy CO2, smoke and noise pollution created by all these millions of heavy gensets and how the carbon footprint is going to be made larger as a result. We have rules to harrass the poor 2-wheeler rider on the strength of the various stages of the Bharat pollution laws. But when the railways or the buses and trucks on the roads, or now these millions of diesel gensets, spew out tons and tons of pollution into the atmosphere, our lawmakers conveniently look the other way.
Now to come to the point as regards fuel pricing, if we are to decontrol prices, let us decontrol fully, and we will pay the international prices. Let the government get out of the equation and give up their "cut" of the taxes, except perhaps a small import tax. Let there be the a rationing of the stuff with a minimum quantity offered at a controlled price. (The government have always decried rationing, arguing that it will bring in black-marketing; but it is the job of the government to see that black-marketers are in prison... or, maybe in the ministry, but certainly not out in the streets!)
There has to be a dual pricing for fuel, particularly diesel, so that the core sectors get diesel at a fair price that will hold inflation in check, and the profit-making private players like mobile tower operators and portable power salesmen will have to pay a higher price, and not ride along happily at the cost of the tax payers of this land.
It is high time the "free market" pricing for fuel was abolished and government controls reinstated on a critical input like fuel. That, whatever our pundits will say, is the only way inflation can be checked and development ushered in this country.The government have to see that there is more transparency about the domestic oil production and how it is tied into the system as regards pricing. If the planners and ministers do not claim to understand such simple and straightforward logic, then they could very well quit and take up profitable employment with those companies whose writ they run now. No sir, the people wont pay you good money to do such disservice as you do now to the nation.
The writing is on the wall; if you can read, well and good. Before the entire nation rises in anger in a fiery revolt, it would be in your own interests to put the record straight in a hurry and price aviation fuel, diesel, petrol, cooking gas, kerosene etc in a rational manner --and NOT according to the whims of your cronies in corporatedom. Such a step might just pour some oil on the troubled waters.
Otherwise it could well be a lot of trouble on exremely oily waters that wouldn't be easy to navigate..... or survive!
The choice, sir, is yours to make !
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Sunday, May 15, 2011
ADDING FIRE TO THE FUEL ISSUE
Long have the government and the oil companies been playing a hide-and-seek game and avoiding core issues and inconvenient (for them!) questions. It is time we added some fire to the fuel issues so that out of the conflagration the truth would emerge.
This nation was not conceptualized as a market economy where the vagaries of the market forces would determine its direction and fate. Such was NOT the idea of the Founding Fathers and Planners of this great nation, who wanted to give shape to a welfare state where the needs of the citizenry guided its policies and actions. The core systems of this nation were planned and implemented not as profit-and-loss enterprises, but as mechanisms to realize certain needs and meet certain aims, and to contribute to the stable working of this democratic nation. PM Singh and his 'liberalization' brigade are welcome to go to the founding principles of this nation if they wish to update themselves. It is evident that these worthies do not understand, nor care for, stable social systems as mediated by a people-oriented government.
In this context, does the government believe that stability in the fuel sector is key to national developement? And how are they proposing to achieve that in the face of a fickle oil market? For them the best option is to leave the people and the nation at the mercy of the market forces and let them fend for themselves. At the very same moment they are not foregoing the additional monies that accrue to them by way of taxes whenever a price hike is implemented--and that too without any "sweat"! This is something akin to running with the hare and hunting with the hounds!
The Indian taxpayer has made substantial investments in oil exploration and refining and related infrastructure. The Indian refining and processing costs are some of the lowest in the world. What about the Indian crude production? What percentage of the domestic needs could be met by that alone?
Another little publicized fact is that the Indian oil companies process the imported crude into various value-added products and re-export a huge quantity of that, earning sizeable profits. There is no separate import of crude for this; it is clubbed with the total import, and the whole burden is put on the shoulders of the consumer in the street. This has to be stopped.
There is widespread feeling that the government is a willing dancer to the avaricious piping of the oil companies when it comes to the "loss assessment" and the periodic arbitrary hikes in fuel prices. Internationally crude prices rise and fall, but in India the fuel price has only one way to go--UP! Maybe this is the 'progress' that they have in the 'progressive alliance' that is the government...
It is time we got clear answers to at least a dozen questions.
A DOZEN QUESTIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT
1. What was the total quantum of domestic crude production in 2010-11? And its total pricing?
2. What is the final sale price per litre of domestically refined fuel, including nominal profits? (Transportation costs can be considered separately, as it is done now.)
3. What percentage of domestic consumption could be met by processing the domestic crude?
4. What was the quantum of crude imports for the previous year ? Its total cost ?
5. What was the processing cost in the Indian refineries? (As the infrastructural investments in refineries etc have already been made by the taxpayer, that need not be factored in; rather, what are the actual refining/processing costs?)
6. Considering the above (# 4 & 5), and adding a nominal profit, what is the recommended retail price of a litre of the 'imported' fuel? Is it cheaper or costlier than the domestic processed fuel, and by how much?
7. What is the total quantum/value of re-exports of petro products made by the oil companies in the same period as above?
8. Have the above value-added petro products been manufactured from crude imported separately or from the total quantum of imports for the year?
9. What is the profit that has accrued to the oil companies from the above (# 7) export transaction?
10. What are the Central taxes/State taxes respectively on a litre of fuel?
11. What was the tax amount that accrued to the government each time as a result of the last three price hikes? What percentage of the taxes are ploughed back into oil-related fields?
12. What was the total subsidies that were given to the oil companies? On what basis was it computed?
As we all know, these are all 'inconvenient' questions for the "powers that be". Vague statements and obfuscation have been the characteristics of "official speak" in this connection till now.
It is high time a strong mechanism for the rationalization of fuel price (one nation, one price--why Delhi should have the lowest price?) and its maintenance at a stable level has to be evolved as a national priority. Frittering away the precious results of the sizeable investments made of the tax payer's money in building the temples of progress of this nation, sadly, is the unsustainable economic mantra of Singh and his cohorts.
NOBODY has the right to sell off what he has not built or what he doesn't own!
This mindlessness has to be stopped--NOW!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
This nation was not conceptualized as a market economy where the vagaries of the market forces would determine its direction and fate. Such was NOT the idea of the Founding Fathers and Planners of this great nation, who wanted to give shape to a welfare state where the needs of the citizenry guided its policies and actions. The core systems of this nation were planned and implemented not as profit-and-loss enterprises, but as mechanisms to realize certain needs and meet certain aims, and to contribute to the stable working of this democratic nation. PM Singh and his 'liberalization' brigade are welcome to go to the founding principles of this nation if they wish to update themselves. It is evident that these worthies do not understand, nor care for, stable social systems as mediated by a people-oriented government.
In this context, does the government believe that stability in the fuel sector is key to national developement? And how are they proposing to achieve that in the face of a fickle oil market? For them the best option is to leave the people and the nation at the mercy of the market forces and let them fend for themselves. At the very same moment they are not foregoing the additional monies that accrue to them by way of taxes whenever a price hike is implemented--and that too without any "sweat"! This is something akin to running with the hare and hunting with the hounds!
The Indian taxpayer has made substantial investments in oil exploration and refining and related infrastructure. The Indian refining and processing costs are some of the lowest in the world. What about the Indian crude production? What percentage of the domestic needs could be met by that alone?
Another little publicized fact is that the Indian oil companies process the imported crude into various value-added products and re-export a huge quantity of that, earning sizeable profits. There is no separate import of crude for this; it is clubbed with the total import, and the whole burden is put on the shoulders of the consumer in the street. This has to be stopped.
There is widespread feeling that the government is a willing dancer to the avaricious piping of the oil companies when it comes to the "loss assessment" and the periodic arbitrary hikes in fuel prices. Internationally crude prices rise and fall, but in India the fuel price has only one way to go--UP! Maybe this is the 'progress' that they have in the 'progressive alliance' that is the government...
It is time we got clear answers to at least a dozen questions.
A DOZEN QUESTIONS TO THE GOVERNMENT
1. What was the total quantum of domestic crude production in 2010-11? And its total pricing?
2. What is the final sale price per litre of domestically refined fuel, including nominal profits? (Transportation costs can be considered separately, as it is done now.)
3. What percentage of domestic consumption could be met by processing the domestic crude?
4. What was the quantum of crude imports for the previous year ? Its total cost ?
5. What was the processing cost in the Indian refineries? (As the infrastructural investments in refineries etc have already been made by the taxpayer, that need not be factored in; rather, what are the actual refining/processing costs?)
6. Considering the above (# 4 & 5), and adding a nominal profit, what is the recommended retail price of a litre of the 'imported' fuel? Is it cheaper or costlier than the domestic processed fuel, and by how much?
7. What is the total quantum/value of re-exports of petro products made by the oil companies in the same period as above?
8. Have the above value-added petro products been manufactured from crude imported separately or from the total quantum of imports for the year?
9. What is the profit that has accrued to the oil companies from the above (# 7) export transaction?
10. What are the Central taxes/State taxes respectively on a litre of fuel?
11. What was the tax amount that accrued to the government each time as a result of the last three price hikes? What percentage of the taxes are ploughed back into oil-related fields?
12. What was the total subsidies that were given to the oil companies? On what basis was it computed?
As we all know, these are all 'inconvenient' questions for the "powers that be". Vague statements and obfuscation have been the characteristics of "official speak" in this connection till now.
It is high time a strong mechanism for the rationalization of fuel price (one nation, one price--why Delhi should have the lowest price?) and its maintenance at a stable level has to be evolved as a national priority. Frittering away the precious results of the sizeable investments made of the tax payer's money in building the temples of progress of this nation, sadly, is the unsustainable economic mantra of Singh and his cohorts.
NOBODY has the right to sell off what he has not built or what he doesn't own!
This mindlessness has to be stopped--NOW!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
WHOSE MONEY IS IT ANYWAY ???
Over the past many weeks, our little group had busied itself mainly with just a couple of questions.
Do we need politics, and do we need a government of the kind we have now.
For our close-knit group, mostly of men, living within our limited means was the only way, whether we were retired or about to retire, employees or honest businessmen (yes, such a tribe do exist in this Mahan Bharat, now better known for its predatory corporates and their cronies for whom dishonesty is the key to success! ) or entrepreneurs. Inflation was very real for us as it squeezed our lives for no fault of ours, and it wouldn't go away despite the admonitions of stalwarts like Pranab Mukherjee or even PM Singh. Nations can easily go into what they term a deficit budget and spend much more than they have. Unfortunately such fiscal magic does not come to bail out the poor man trying to make both ends meet in these hyper-inflationary times.
The above serious questions were triggered mostly by the changing "colour" of recent politics. Gandhiji, as most of us agreed, was perhaps the greatest of politicians. But his type is an extinct breed even in his Congress party, though they took care to wear 'khadi' and the 'Gandhi cap' till recently. Not any longer. In these enlightened and modern times of 'gen text' and social media, khadi has gone God alone knows where. And if anybody wants to have a look at the 'Gandhi cap', s/he could go to Jantar Mantar or wherever else Anna Hazare is --he wears one proudly; and by God, it does suit him! Perhaps it is good that Congress has jettisoned both Gandhi and his cap and khadi at one stroke. But we are likely to agree that politics of the right kind is the fuel that powers any healthy democratic society. But the trouble with today's politics is that it is one hundred per cent party politics --and if you are not a party maniac, there is pretty little for you there.
Now how about governance? Those that are old and experienced will surely know that orderly governance rather than unfettered anarchy is what gives a well-rounded fullness to life. Now what all areas do we need to be governed in as a people? First and foremost, law and order in society; then a happy compromise has to be maintained between the conflicting interests of the billion citizens of this nation, and that calls for some policies that are acceptable to most and that will guarantee the welfare of virtually all. Healthcare and social security/welfare also call for a strong framework of governance. Regulating the economic mechanisms of a teeming nation surely needs perspicacious governance. And, looking outwards, taking care of ourselves and proactively interfacing with the alien nations of today's shrinking world requires great acumen in governance. A closer look would reveal that every collective human activity in society and a nation demands policies of governance which shall put the collective needs and aspirations of its people uppermost.
When you start thinking like that, do we dare to call the bunch of dissembling, opportunistic, arrogant, profiteers manning the machinery of government at the current moment a government? There is likely to be agreement that there need be no great discussion about whose interests they are serving with alacrity at this very moment. The collective citizenry, and their welfare, is far from their minds!
But, just a moment. Who is 'funding' all that tamasha that goes on in the name of government and governance? Who is paying the stratospheric costs of maintaining this expensive bunch of "ministers", whose main job seems to be to minister to the needs of their corporate cronies ? And whose money is being siphoned off when an institution built up as a result of meticulous planning and decades of hard work is "disinvested" in an instant? It is time for us to begin asking that question rather loudly...
Whose money is it anyway?
Handling money with prudence requires fiscal knowledge, experience and integrity--precisely the qualities that we least see in our ministers. The CAG's indictment of the government first on the 2G scam and recently on the Air India scam ( worth about Rs 10,000 crore and surely more, and according to many knowledgeable insiders, the first step in its disinvestment and handing over to a private player who, purely in the interests of National pride probably, is willing to take over a loss-making organization!) makes one thing patently clear--the present crop of ministers should be the ones that we should trust last/least when it comes to handling the tax payer's money.
The last straw was the inordinate hike in fuel prices that came as a post-poll gift to the 'aam aadmi'. According to the oil companies, apparently run by a bunch of retired angels, they are losing about Rs 10 on every litre of fuel sold and yet, they have, in a gesture of love and compassion, hiked the price by only about half of that. Oh, what magnanimity! At this rate, if we are to believe their protestations of loss, they should have gone right under a long time ago. And this country would not have been poorer for that!
What beats all logic is that it is in the midst of this long history of "loss making" that the oil companies are vying with one another to open another 1,000 fuel outlets in a small state like Kerala. It beats me when it comes to understanding their logic. Ah, maybe they want to exhaust all their stock and commit "hara-kiri" and die trying their best to help the motorists..like a candle in the wind that burns itself to nothing. Ho, the poor heart bleeds when one thinks of that... No wonder Murli Deora, the former petro minister always wore a pinched look when he was talking about oil companies and fuel prices. Who knows the heartaches of heading a ministry cursed with perpetual losses and perdition??
It is unlikely that many of us saw a small news item in the papers (no, such small stuff is below the "sensation level" of the TV channels) a few days back. The headlines merely notified us that Rs 20,001 crore was being paid to the oil companies as subsidy by the government. Naturally this was to compensate the losses that the companies had run up. This was in addition to the earlier instalment of Rs 20,911 crore, which took the total subsidy for 2010-11 to Rs 40,912 crore. The total loss for last year was, according to the companies, Rs 78,000 crore, and naturally they demanded their pound of flesh by asking the government to cough up another Rs 30,000 crore. But our beloved government, in a gesture of supportive sympathy to its 'subjects', roundly rejected this demand! What more do you want??!! The figures make for interesting reading -- for those who can understand figures.
But the question that comes to the aam aadmi's mind is, do we trust these guys with such astronomical sums of money? ... our money?? It is a very funny situation. The oil companies import crude, refine and sell it in India for a loss. The government compensates them not fully, but as and how they deem fit, with a subsidy. Both are funded by the tax payer's money-- the public sector oil companies and the government. Now what about all that Indian oil from Indian wells? And who is the loser? And who is the wiser??
Now will somebody tell me how much a litre of fuel will cost if somebody were to import it and sell it like many other imported commodities? I put the question to a few trader friends and they tell me, quoting the prevailing prices, that it should be way cheaper than the price at which we are forced to buy it now. Ah, the taxes, both central and state, on every litre of fuel. What is the tax money on fuel used for? For developing 'infra-structure' in the related fields--that translates as oil wells and refineries, roads, vehicle manufacturing etc etc.
Oh, that means we the tax payers are funding oil exploration, and we own the producing oil wells in India. What returns are we getting for all that "share money" we have pumped into that? Pretty little. The arithmetic of the oil companies become clouded when the question of the quantum/pricing of local crude/refined fuel comes in. But now the trend is for the public sector company to explore and dig productive wells and then give it all away to players like Reliance. Nobody has forgotten the move for handing the Assam refineries to them on a platter by the crony minister. But then the sad truth is that a large percentage of the tax on oil is goes to fund the existence of the top heavy and extravagant "gaddi" of ministers and their coterie.
Those who had been paying some attention to the annual budget for the year would have noticed the crores and crores of corporate subsidies allowed. To what purpose? How does that benefit the 'aam aadmi'? We have to stop this mindless spending of our hard-earned money by an inept bunch of ministers and other functionaries. If oil is to be decontrolled, let it be decontrolled fully so that anybody can buy it for the prevailing international rates and not the "fixed" rates as dictated by the "conglomerate". And whatevery subsidies are given have to be seen to reach and to benefit the end-user. No sir, we dont trust the oil companies, nor our beloved bunch of ministers. So please get off our backs with your complicated fiscal calculations.
In an era when liberalization, globalization and privatization have proved to the bane of the common man in every developing economy, and is seen clearly to favour only the huge corporate players, it is time we asserted ourselves and brought in the necessary changes. Let us keep the CO2 emissions at bay by curtailing oil consumption. Let us develop our public transportation systems which would be mor eficient and cheaper from every angle. And let us see how much oil we have here in our wells, and at what price we can sell that without earning a loss for the public sector firms. Let us ration that fuel so that the public sector and the transportation sector and the public get their due share without driving up inflation. If you want more than your share, you could go for imported fuel at a higher price.
We have to end this conspiracy. They manufacture more cars and drive up the expectations of people with fancy ads. Then they charge you through the nose for the fuel and siphon off our money for their mindless spending and skyhigh profits. Will anybody in their right senses opt for the expense of car and the tedium of traffic jams and gridlock wasting their time, to speak nothing of frayed nerves and health issues breathing in all that pollution, if one had effective public transportation? So whose interests are the government serving with this vicious circle of pricing and increasing demand?
This has got to end.
And the first step in that direction is to make the government sell the product at the correct price and not at an inflated one. The second is to rein in fuel-related inflationary trends by rationing fuel to essential services. The third is to rationalize imports and delink its price from that of the local oil produced.
Enough and more cheating has been going on in this country in the name of many things. A resource-rich country like ours could easily manage itself very well--if we are honest. For Western-educated and western-bribed and western-arm-twisted people like our planner Montek Singh or our PM Singh, this argument may not make much sense. But then on second thoughts it is time we stood up and told them in no uncertain terms that we are not recipients of their charity; rather they are the paid servants of the honest and upright tax-paying people of this country. And we want our country to be run the way WE want.
Sir, it is OUR money, and we guess WE HAVE A SAY in how you spend it for us!
Let us tighten those purse strings a bit and show them who is the boss!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Do we need politics, and do we need a government of the kind we have now.
For our close-knit group, mostly of men, living within our limited means was the only way, whether we were retired or about to retire, employees or honest businessmen (yes, such a tribe do exist in this Mahan Bharat, now better known for its predatory corporates and their cronies for whom dishonesty is the key to success! ) or entrepreneurs. Inflation was very real for us as it squeezed our lives for no fault of ours, and it wouldn't go away despite the admonitions of stalwarts like Pranab Mukherjee or even PM Singh. Nations can easily go into what they term a deficit budget and spend much more than they have. Unfortunately such fiscal magic does not come to bail out the poor man trying to make both ends meet in these hyper-inflationary times.
The above serious questions were triggered mostly by the changing "colour" of recent politics. Gandhiji, as most of us agreed, was perhaps the greatest of politicians. But his type is an extinct breed even in his Congress party, though they took care to wear 'khadi' and the 'Gandhi cap' till recently. Not any longer. In these enlightened and modern times of 'gen text' and social media, khadi has gone God alone knows where. And if anybody wants to have a look at the 'Gandhi cap', s/he could go to Jantar Mantar or wherever else Anna Hazare is --he wears one proudly; and by God, it does suit him! Perhaps it is good that Congress has jettisoned both Gandhi and his cap and khadi at one stroke. But we are likely to agree that politics of the right kind is the fuel that powers any healthy democratic society. But the trouble with today's politics is that it is one hundred per cent party politics --and if you are not a party maniac, there is pretty little for you there.
Now how about governance? Those that are old and experienced will surely know that orderly governance rather than unfettered anarchy is what gives a well-rounded fullness to life. Now what all areas do we need to be governed in as a people? First and foremost, law and order in society; then a happy compromise has to be maintained between the conflicting interests of the billion citizens of this nation, and that calls for some policies that are acceptable to most and that will guarantee the welfare of virtually all. Healthcare and social security/welfare also call for a strong framework of governance. Regulating the economic mechanisms of a teeming nation surely needs perspicacious governance. And, looking outwards, taking care of ourselves and proactively interfacing with the alien nations of today's shrinking world requires great acumen in governance. A closer look would reveal that every collective human activity in society and a nation demands policies of governance which shall put the collective needs and aspirations of its people uppermost.
When you start thinking like that, do we dare to call the bunch of dissembling, opportunistic, arrogant, profiteers manning the machinery of government at the current moment a government? There is likely to be agreement that there need be no great discussion about whose interests they are serving with alacrity at this very moment. The collective citizenry, and their welfare, is far from their minds!
But, just a moment. Who is 'funding' all that tamasha that goes on in the name of government and governance? Who is paying the stratospheric costs of maintaining this expensive bunch of "ministers", whose main job seems to be to minister to the needs of their corporate cronies ? And whose money is being siphoned off when an institution built up as a result of meticulous planning and decades of hard work is "disinvested" in an instant? It is time for us to begin asking that question rather loudly...
Whose money is it anyway?
Handling money with prudence requires fiscal knowledge, experience and integrity--precisely the qualities that we least see in our ministers. The CAG's indictment of the government first on the 2G scam and recently on the Air India scam ( worth about Rs 10,000 crore and surely more, and according to many knowledgeable insiders, the first step in its disinvestment and handing over to a private player who, purely in the interests of National pride probably, is willing to take over a loss-making organization!) makes one thing patently clear--the present crop of ministers should be the ones that we should trust last/least when it comes to handling the tax payer's money.
The last straw was the inordinate hike in fuel prices that came as a post-poll gift to the 'aam aadmi'. According to the oil companies, apparently run by a bunch of retired angels, they are losing about Rs 10 on every litre of fuel sold and yet, they have, in a gesture of love and compassion, hiked the price by only about half of that. Oh, what magnanimity! At this rate, if we are to believe their protestations of loss, they should have gone right under a long time ago. And this country would not have been poorer for that!
What beats all logic is that it is in the midst of this long history of "loss making" that the oil companies are vying with one another to open another 1,000 fuel outlets in a small state like Kerala. It beats me when it comes to understanding their logic. Ah, maybe they want to exhaust all their stock and commit "hara-kiri" and die trying their best to help the motorists..like a candle in the wind that burns itself to nothing. Ho, the poor heart bleeds when one thinks of that... No wonder Murli Deora, the former petro minister always wore a pinched look when he was talking about oil companies and fuel prices. Who knows the heartaches of heading a ministry cursed with perpetual losses and perdition??
It is unlikely that many of us saw a small news item in the papers (no, such small stuff is below the "sensation level" of the TV channels) a few days back. The headlines merely notified us that Rs 20,001 crore was being paid to the oil companies as subsidy by the government. Naturally this was to compensate the losses that the companies had run up. This was in addition to the earlier instalment of Rs 20,911 crore, which took the total subsidy for 2010-11 to Rs 40,912 crore. The total loss for last year was, according to the companies, Rs 78,000 crore, and naturally they demanded their pound of flesh by asking the government to cough up another Rs 30,000 crore. But our beloved government, in a gesture of supportive sympathy to its 'subjects', roundly rejected this demand! What more do you want??!! The figures make for interesting reading -- for those who can understand figures.
But the question that comes to the aam aadmi's mind is, do we trust these guys with such astronomical sums of money? ... our money?? It is a very funny situation. The oil companies import crude, refine and sell it in India for a loss. The government compensates them not fully, but as and how they deem fit, with a subsidy. Both are funded by the tax payer's money-- the public sector oil companies and the government. Now what about all that Indian oil from Indian wells? And who is the loser? And who is the wiser??
Now will somebody tell me how much a litre of fuel will cost if somebody were to import it and sell it like many other imported commodities? I put the question to a few trader friends and they tell me, quoting the prevailing prices, that it should be way cheaper than the price at which we are forced to buy it now. Ah, the taxes, both central and state, on every litre of fuel. What is the tax money on fuel used for? For developing 'infra-structure' in the related fields--that translates as oil wells and refineries, roads, vehicle manufacturing etc etc.
Oh, that means we the tax payers are funding oil exploration, and we own the producing oil wells in India. What returns are we getting for all that "share money" we have pumped into that? Pretty little. The arithmetic of the oil companies become clouded when the question of the quantum/pricing of local crude/refined fuel comes in. But now the trend is for the public sector company to explore and dig productive wells and then give it all away to players like Reliance. Nobody has forgotten the move for handing the Assam refineries to them on a platter by the crony minister. But then the sad truth is that a large percentage of the tax on oil is goes to fund the existence of the top heavy and extravagant "gaddi" of ministers and their coterie.
Those who had been paying some attention to the annual budget for the year would have noticed the crores and crores of corporate subsidies allowed. To what purpose? How does that benefit the 'aam aadmi'? We have to stop this mindless spending of our hard-earned money by an inept bunch of ministers and other functionaries. If oil is to be decontrolled, let it be decontrolled fully so that anybody can buy it for the prevailing international rates and not the "fixed" rates as dictated by the "conglomerate". And whatevery subsidies are given have to be seen to reach and to benefit the end-user. No sir, we dont trust the oil companies, nor our beloved bunch of ministers. So please get off our backs with your complicated fiscal calculations.
In an era when liberalization, globalization and privatization have proved to the bane of the common man in every developing economy, and is seen clearly to favour only the huge corporate players, it is time we asserted ourselves and brought in the necessary changes. Let us keep the CO2 emissions at bay by curtailing oil consumption. Let us develop our public transportation systems which would be mor eficient and cheaper from every angle. And let us see how much oil we have here in our wells, and at what price we can sell that without earning a loss for the public sector firms. Let us ration that fuel so that the public sector and the transportation sector and the public get their due share without driving up inflation. If you want more than your share, you could go for imported fuel at a higher price.
We have to end this conspiracy. They manufacture more cars and drive up the expectations of people with fancy ads. Then they charge you through the nose for the fuel and siphon off our money for their mindless spending and skyhigh profits. Will anybody in their right senses opt for the expense of car and the tedium of traffic jams and gridlock wasting their time, to speak nothing of frayed nerves and health issues breathing in all that pollution, if one had effective public transportation? So whose interests are the government serving with this vicious circle of pricing and increasing demand?
This has got to end.
And the first step in that direction is to make the government sell the product at the correct price and not at an inflated one. The second is to rein in fuel-related inflationary trends by rationing fuel to essential services. The third is to rationalize imports and delink its price from that of the local oil produced.
Enough and more cheating has been going on in this country in the name of many things. A resource-rich country like ours could easily manage itself very well--if we are honest. For Western-educated and western-bribed and western-arm-twisted people like our planner Montek Singh or our PM Singh, this argument may not make much sense. But then on second thoughts it is time we stood up and told them in no uncertain terms that we are not recipients of their charity; rather they are the paid servants of the honest and upright tax-paying people of this country. And we want our country to be run the way WE want.
Sir, it is OUR money, and we guess WE HAVE A SAY in how you spend it for us!
Let us tighten those purse strings a bit and show them who is the boss!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Monday, April 11, 2011
GETTING A 'NUKE' EDUCATION
While 'channel suffering' (some of my friends also call it channel surfing) a few days back, I was arrested by the face of Anil Kakodkar, the former chief of the Atomic Energy Commission and perhaps the last word in things nuclear in India. Sadly (for me), the interview was in its last few frames and I was chagrined that I couldn't follow what the learned man was saying about things that had caught the public's imagination in a scary manner in the post-Fukushima weeks. However, one phrase caught my ear, and that was "educating the public" about nuclear energy and its advantages, and perhaps about its other long-term plus points.
That was the note on which the presenter too wound up the discussion, and with these words ringing in my ear, I came to a decision--get some nuke education, ASAP. So I set out trawling the Net and talking to 'educated' people, mostly my friends who are scientists with the space organization, some knowledgeable medical doctors and army officers, and any and every body who could/would give me some additional nuggets of information and knowledge about the somewhat mystical science of the nucleus in its split avatar.
One thing that struck me (perhaps because of a thick skull and little within that) was that it is an esoteric science that is not very clear about matter/s when you get down to the nitty-gritty and also it has more questions than answers to critical issues--most of which get grouped under the broad rubric of things that science will 'soon' have answers for. Nu-clear is 'clear' enough, but it is not the old-world clarity that we all know and cherish, but something totally 'nu' that only the cognoscenti (pretend to!) understand fully.
When you travel back in time, you could see that it all started in Germany back in the late 1930s with the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and others. Germany was into serious nuclear research from then on, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project) with scientists seeking to understand matter and energy and such mysteries. At the end of WW-II, the rocket and atomic scientists and equipment were quietly transplanted to the US (the Russians too got their share), with gifted scientists like Oppenheimer (the 'father' of the A-bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer ) and others leading the research. But for a government that was seeking the ultimate weapon of mass destruction to dominate the world with an unprecedented fear factor, the development of the A-bomb was top priority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project). While developing a weapon to kill, one doesn't stand on fine considerations and try to understand the subtler nuances. You then are not far from the shady terrorist fabricating a home-made IED (Improvised Explosive Device) for nefarious purposes--you want to carry it about with some amount of safety, but once it is out of your hand, you dont bother how it kills -- so long as it kills effectively. We all know what this kind of 'research' led to. The first A-bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_weapons ) Hardly a month later, in August, the US 'tested' the little-understood technology at the earliest opportunity in Japan--twice.
This sort of a 'shady' past is inseparably tied to nuclear science. ( 'Old Configuration, New Context' -- K S Jacob, The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article1685224.ece?homepage=true )The primarily military nature of nuclear R & D had created this aura of mystery. Transparency was something that was missing all along and safety was an afterthought in the military sector, despite what the 'insiders' will tell you. In the post cold-war era, the substantial investments made in the nuclear field were set to be recouped by companies mainly in the West by re-engineering the systems for power production. That nuclear power was touted as a 'clean' and 'advanced' option was in itself one of the best PR coups of the modern era orchestrated by the nuclear corporates. How quickly the world had forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki ! It was now fashionable to 'go nuclear'. Obviously, as is often the case with "developmental decisions" worldwide, the questions here were not technological, but 'economical', which in simple terms meant "commissions".
But the complacency of the world was shaken by the Three Mile Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident) and Chernobyl (http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/index.htm ) nuclear accidents. But the "fallout" was short-lived. The nuclear industry PR wizards were able to 'contain' the information damage much before the nuclear spill itself could be contained fully! Ultimately they succeeded in fully dismissing safety and other concerns from the minds of the public, and promoting nuke power again, brushing aside risks and anxieties. And the governments (translation: greedy politicians) once again embarked on a spree of 'going nuke'. And the latest and perhaps the greatest victim of that PR barrage was Japan itself. As a people, it had experienced the horrors of the nuclear holocaust and have suffered for generations. But watch how their pacifist and anti-nuclear stand was watered down and how they were 'sold' so many nuclear power plants as a 'safe' option to power their burgeoning power needs. Japan has once again been cursed by the nuclear genie unleashed from the proverbial bottle. Post-Fukushima, many questions remain unanswered.
Where are the experts now who said that it was all safer than the safest? Where are all those nuke wizards who knew how to get the nuclear 'genie' back into the bottle when it sort of misbehaved? What are their definite answers to the worried questions of the public at the receiving end? What is the difference between an A-bomb and the radiation from a nuke plant that has gone haywire? Well, they will tell you one is military and it is part of an act of war; this is pure civilian...and as a result probably a lot 'softer' in its fallout... God!
It is in the post-Fukushima context that one has to take the words of pundits that the general public needs to be "educated" about the nuclear options. ( http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1557377.ece )
If one is to go by the volume of 'education' that the nuclear lobby has till date foisted upon the world's vulnerable public, and its quality vis-a-vis the truth about the nuclear option, one would term it not exactly education. Fortunately the English language has many words to convey different shades of meaning. In totalitarian states and such other places, they speak of "re-education" to make the citizen tread 'happily' the line of new thoughts and ideologies. Nuclear 'education' too is somewhat in that class. Indoctrination, in my humble opinion, would be a more honest and a more truthful word to denote that.
But I do not want to be a member of the 'thought police' and so I do not think it is my duty to 'educate' you regarding the ideal nature of nuke power. Rather, permit me share with you what all I learned in the meantime.
The Indian government's brinkmanship at the time of the nuke deal with the US and how it survived and went ahead with the deal by forging new local deals by 'spending good money' has been leaked well and truly by Wikileaks. Another hurried nuke deal was struck with France in order to prop up the troubled French AREVA and this led to the brouhaha over the Jaitapur power project. In a country like India where "cut and paste" artists supply any number of environmental impact assessments (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607058.ece) and other 'studies', including seismic and other critical data, it is not difficult for the 'powers that be' to paint a rosy picture of all being safe and environment friendly and pro-people and pro-development on the strength of such 'cooked-up' studies and reports. This has happened in the case of Jaitapur too despite massive public protests led by people like retired Supreme Court Judge P B Sawant and others. (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/interview_we-dont-want-to-negotiate-on-jaitapur-plant_1517634)
Jaitapur is a quiet place with a great diversity of wildlife and with Nature probably at her best. The Madhban plateau on which the giant nuclear plants will be built is the largest coastal plateau in the Konkan with a unique biodiversity. But it will no more be like that if we let the energy Czars have their way. 40,000 people will be displaced from their homes and lands, their livlihoods destroyed, countless tigers, elephants and hundreds of other species 'erased' and the landscape levelled into an arid moonscape. All in the rush to build the mega EPR (the European Pressurized-water Reactor, also called Evolutionary Power Reactor)... which has NOT YET been built or tested fully ANYWHERE in the world ??!!!??? A ticking time-bomb waiting for a seismic incident or a tsunami to unleash its destruction far and wide. Do we need to be the guinea pigs in this mega experiment, this mega-disaster-in-the-making???
Each of the giant Jaitapur reactors will have a capacity of 1,650 Megawatts of electrical power, and the six reactors together will output just short of 10,000 MW of electricity. Great! But there is another side to it too. Atomic reactors are "hot" devices; REALLY hot ones. The thermal output of each reactor is about 5,000 Megawatts, and that means a total of 30,000 Megawatts of heat will be generated. Since their conversion efficiency is at best between 25 and 30 per cent, approximately two-thirds of their energy will be dumped into the sea and a smaller per centage into the air as waste heat. Did you say global warming? This will be some sort of a massive local 'warming' that will play havoc with fisheries (the livelihood of most of Jaitapur's poor locals; but then you have GOT to make some sacrifices for development!) and affect the weather and our lives in unprecedented and unforeseen ways.
Experts have warned that the higher 'burnup' in the EPR, a design ploy to increase the 'productivity' of the reactor, may result in a thinning of the fuel cladding, making it prone to early failure. A study by the French power utility EDF has reported that the toxicity from the radioactive waste of the EPR is four times that of ordinary reactors, and is especially high in radioactive Iodine and Bromine, which stay at dangerous levels of radioactivity for over...no, not a hundred years, but more like a million years.
Today in almost every 'civilized' country (including India!) they have rules and regulations against dumping waste. Before you junk your car or even your PC, you have to conform to many rules that specify how to get rid of all that dangerous waste material without damaging the environment. But all those pollutants are "chicken feed" when you compare them to nuclear waste. Nature can in certain ways tackle even worst pollutants. Areas devastated by giant oil spills have shown a re-emergence of life forms and 'normalcy' after just a few years. Man-made chemicals are perhaps the exception here (including plastics) when Nature concedes total defeat. But what about the accumulating cache of nuclear waste that goes on piling up over the years as the plants operate? Even without any tsunami or quakes to complicate issues, the accumulated nuclear waste challenges safe storage and safe disposal/re-use/recycling. The nuke lobby says they will be safely stored until science finds a solution/use "tomorrow". A team of Japanese anti-nuke pacifists on a global mission has compared the nuke plants to houses without toilets for waste disposal. What will be the quality of life in such a place? But lack of toilets will only drive you nuts or give you dysentery, not maim you for life right from the womb, and till Kingdom come.
In the case of Jaitapur too it is not clear where the nuclear waste emanating from all the reactors will be dumped. The plant is estimated to generate 300 tonnes of waste each year. And the French EPR reactor waste will have about four times as much radioactive Bromine, Iodine, Caesium, etc, compared to that from an ordinary pressurized water reactor like India's Trombay unit. In fact details slowly emerging out of Fukushima (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sci-tech-and-agri/article1566421.ece) speak of a ten year gap of safety regimes being tested or verified. Also, reports speak now of the dangers posed by the massive storage of nuclear waste --stored "casually" near the reactor in small pools. One expert has called that a greater threat than if the reactor itself were to melt. The details of neglect that have slowly 'leaked out' are worse than the radiation leaks, and they are appalling in the extreme. And, mind you, all that has happened in Japan; a technology-minded and disciplined society like Japan, and one with a 'healthy respect' for things nuclear. But bureaucratic short-cuts and industrial apathy oriented to mere profitability played havoc at Fukushima, and an emergency of frightening proportions is unreeling fast before our very eyes--one that the world has been reassured again and again will never happen.
In the context of Jaitapur, right from the beginning there were voices of concern that were brushed aside by the "powers that be", the foremost of which is the PMO, and then the nuke lobby and its middle men. The Tata Insitute of Social Sciences came down heavily on the project for its negative social and environmental impact. ( http://www.indianexpress.com/news/jaitapur-nproject-sitting-on-high-severity-quake-zonetiss/730737/ ) But the study has been rubbished by the NPCIL, the Nuclear Power Coporation, which will build and operate the plants. (http://www.hindu.com/2011/01/10/stories/2011011058922000.htm)
It is interesting in this context to listen to the eye-opening revelations of Dr Gopalakrishnan, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board:
“... The AERB's disaster preparedness oversight is mostly on paper and the drills they once in a while conduct are half-hearted efforts which amount more to a sham.....
In the case of earthquake engineering, the Nuclear Power Corporation strategy is to have their favourite consultants cook up the kind of seismicity data which suit them.....
There is practically no independent verification of their data or design methodologies. A captive AERB which reports to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) makes the overall nuclear safety management in India worthless.....”
That, coming from a person like him who was definitely in the know of things, should shock us into some sort of action against the casual, "at-any-cost" approach of the nuke lobby. The 'cut-and-paste experts' are active to serve the interests of the 'government' and the nuke lobby, whether it is environmental impact or seismic safety or nuclear dangers.
---> http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/comment_why-should-jaitapur-be-made-a-guinea-pig-for-untested-reactor_1520843
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1555422.ece
Now what about even a truthful and factual study? Have we achieved that scientific certainty when we could with some amount of surety predict the ways of nature? The present conditions, including seismic and weather, are no guarantees for future safety. It is interesting to listen to a voice of sanity as Gopalkrishna Gandhi examines the need for 'long-term learning' from the Fukushima fallout. (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1586399.ece ). Surely the public will learn from history and will be guided by their more knowledgeable peers. But our 'leaders' want to 'sell' us progress at any cost, and pocket their 'share' with no qualms.
Have the proponents of nuke power seriously looked at alternatives? India is so placed that she is rich in many sources of power. Hydel (not environment-threatening mega dams, but mini- and micro-hydel power plants for local needs), wind, solar and now hydrogen-based power. All these are safer at any time than nukes, and with some focussed research, could be harnessed to supply enough power for our immediate and future needs. What is needed is the will, the political will to do that. Instead, in our country the political will is to pursue easy money from 'imports', whether we need it or not, whether it is a white elephant or a mammoth of some other hue. The Indian setup is full of such intentional 'starvation deaths' of successful indigenous enterprises in order to benefit somebody somewhere far away...of course, with the right kind of 'commissions'. The latest such casualties were the Indian vaccine manufactories, prestigious institutions working to full satisfaction and with an enviable track record, that were closed down on the whim of our "minister for health"! (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1510997.ece ) So let us strongly root for an exploration of alternative energy strategies with redoubled vigour--NOW.
When it comes to nuke power, the French are in the forefront, with most of their energy needs supplied by nuke plants. They have no choice as their other energy resources are virtually nil. But when you look at the nuke 'market', the US has a strong presence, with the French being only a second-level player. (Remember, practically all the Japanese nuke plants were supplied by US firms, including the ill-fated ones at Fukushima.) Both the French and the Americans fall over each other to reassure the purchasers about the safety and superiority of their systems. But look at what happens when the French try to sell their 'third generation' advanced nuke power plants to the US. There is a huge hue and cry (http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_59795.shtml ) about endangering the lives of Americans with sub-standard and untested technology! This is probably the best example of doublespeak that one may come across--the Americans are pushing their own 'Fukushima-standard' technology around the world, but when it comes to building one on their soil, they are scared stiff ! If only there was the sale of a US reactor to France would we learn of its inherent dangers from a suitably strident French outcry!
However, disinterested readers could easily glean critical information after a careful reading of the above article and afterwards they will be in a "better educated" position so far as the unproven technology of EPR is concerned, and how dangerous advocacy for them can be. I must urge you to spend quality time reading the above article by Ms Cathy Garger at Axis of Logic.
However, what stood out like a sore thumb was the fact that the concern of the US goverment for 'people' (and, for that matter, democracy and other high-flown ideals) is confined to within their nation's borders, and when it comes to protecting the commercial interests of American companies even at the risk of millions of lives of innocents, they play another tune. If someone could dig up the 'deals' made by GE with Japan for the sale of Fukushima and other reactors, it would make for some sordid reading. This is obvious when you look at the lengths to which they went to twist the arm of the Indian government - I am sure you had your favourite reads of the Wikileaks "India cable-gate" series. Activist Gopal Krishna has made a good case against the Jaitapur project, and I guess your nuke eduction wont be complete without a look at it. (http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-the-jaitapur-nuclear-plant-must-be-opposed/20101229.htm )
Advocates for nuke power say that it is the most viable and cost-effective approach for clean power. How true is that? The cost per mega watt of installed capacity for the EPR is over Rs 20 crore, compared to Rs 4 crore to Rs 5 crore for a coal-based plant and Rs 7-9 crore for Indian-designed boiling water reactors, according to Delhi Science Forum chief Prabir Purakayastha. But one look at the trouble-plagued and delayed first French EPR at Olkiluoto in Finland, begun in 2005 and still not completed nor commissioned, tells you that cost over-runs and escalations will ultimately make the energy economically unviable. You can imagine how the whole thing will materialize in a country like India.
A glow of hope in this dark scenario is that the German financier has backed out of the Jaitapur project on account of "reputational risk"--that means, they dont want to be seen supporting such 'anti-people' projects. (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/145949/german-bank-pulls-jaitapur-nuclear.html ) Germany till recently was an advocate of nuke power. But the policy has cost the present government dearly in the wake of increasing public protest against extending the service life of existing nuke plants in Germany. Now the German policy is to take everything nucler with a large pinch of salt. Greenpeace, the pro-environment protest group too has interesting details about the project. (http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2010/03/nuclear_news_edf_nuclear_react.html )
Whatever be the negatives you or anybody can dish up, the govenment remains "committed" to providing its people with the latest and the greatest. (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_congress-signals-commitment-for-jaitapur-nuclear-power-project_1519966 ) How could one fault such altruism?! Forget the commissions they have pocketed, and look at the growth rate the country will achieve with all that cheap and abundant power!! Our ministers, from the top down, are singing the praises of nuke power and are set to worship at these modern temples of power, come what may. Politicians are naturally power crazy, and Megawatts of nuclear 'power' are likely to supercharge them with a strange 'high' and make them forget all else. But when ultimately the reactor core starts going 'hyper-critical' and radiation comes leaking invisibly in search of living, breathing flesh to sear it into the agony of a painful death for no fault of yours, don't look around for all those 'yeah-sayers' to save you. Even if they are around, they are sure to survive somehow as their thick skin is likely to be impervious even to the nuclear radiation; at worst, you could expect a mutation of the political species into something much more abominable.
So take your nuclear education seriously and make up your mind whether you need it. REALLY need it in your soil, in your backyard. If the Americans or the French are so keen to build nuke power stations, let them build it in THEIR backyards and sell us the power. (It will be easier to invent a way to transmit power over great distances using some new-fangled tech than inventing a safe use for nuke waste!)Do you want to be a guinea pig in the biggest nuke experiment of all time?
It is your life, and the lives of your loved ones...and also the lives of your dear, beloved countrymen. Don't play dangerous nuclear roulette with your lives and with Nature and make this beautiful earth a radiation graveyard. And dont be too sure Anna Hazare will undertake another fast to save you and the country!
IT IS ONE FOR ALL, AND ALL FOR ONE --all, except the above thick-skinned ones!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
That was the note on which the presenter too wound up the discussion, and with these words ringing in my ear, I came to a decision--get some nuke education, ASAP. So I set out trawling the Net and talking to 'educated' people, mostly my friends who are scientists with the space organization, some knowledgeable medical doctors and army officers, and any and every body who could/would give me some additional nuggets of information and knowledge about the somewhat mystical science of the nucleus in its split avatar.
One thing that struck me (perhaps because of a thick skull and little within that) was that it is an esoteric science that is not very clear about matter/s when you get down to the nitty-gritty and also it has more questions than answers to critical issues--most of which get grouped under the broad rubric of things that science will 'soon' have answers for. Nu-clear is 'clear' enough, but it is not the old-world clarity that we all know and cherish, but something totally 'nu' that only the cognoscenti (pretend to!) understand fully.
When you travel back in time, you could see that it all started in Germany back in the late 1930s with the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and others. Germany was into serious nuclear research from then on, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project) with scientists seeking to understand matter and energy and such mysteries. At the end of WW-II, the rocket and atomic scientists and equipment were quietly transplanted to the US (the Russians too got their share), with gifted scientists like Oppenheimer (the 'father' of the A-bomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer ) and others leading the research. But for a government that was seeking the ultimate weapon of mass destruction to dominate the world with an unprecedented fear factor, the development of the A-bomb was top priority (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project). While developing a weapon to kill, one doesn't stand on fine considerations and try to understand the subtler nuances. You then are not far from the shady terrorist fabricating a home-made IED (Improvised Explosive Device) for nefarious purposes--you want to carry it about with some amount of safety, but once it is out of your hand, you dont bother how it kills -- so long as it kills effectively. We all know what this kind of 'research' led to. The first A-bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, in New Mexico.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_weapons ) Hardly a month later, in August, the US 'tested' the little-understood technology at the earliest opportunity in Japan--twice.
This sort of a 'shady' past is inseparably tied to nuclear science. ( 'Old Configuration, New Context' -- K S Jacob, The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article1685224.ece?homepage=true )The primarily military nature of nuclear R & D had created this aura of mystery. Transparency was something that was missing all along and safety was an afterthought in the military sector, despite what the 'insiders' will tell you. In the post cold-war era, the substantial investments made in the nuclear field were set to be recouped by companies mainly in the West by re-engineering the systems for power production. That nuclear power was touted as a 'clean' and 'advanced' option was in itself one of the best PR coups of the modern era orchestrated by the nuclear corporates. How quickly the world had forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki ! It was now fashionable to 'go nuclear'. Obviously, as is often the case with "developmental decisions" worldwide, the questions here were not technological, but 'economical', which in simple terms meant "commissions".
But the complacency of the world was shaken by the Three Mile Island (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident) and Chernobyl (http://www.greenfacts.org/en/chernobyl/index.htm ) nuclear accidents. But the "fallout" was short-lived. The nuclear industry PR wizards were able to 'contain' the information damage much before the nuclear spill itself could be contained fully! Ultimately they succeeded in fully dismissing safety and other concerns from the minds of the public, and promoting nuke power again, brushing aside risks and anxieties. And the governments (translation: greedy politicians) once again embarked on a spree of 'going nuke'. And the latest and perhaps the greatest victim of that PR barrage was Japan itself. As a people, it had experienced the horrors of the nuclear holocaust and have suffered for generations. But watch how their pacifist and anti-nuclear stand was watered down and how they were 'sold' so many nuclear power plants as a 'safe' option to power their burgeoning power needs. Japan has once again been cursed by the nuclear genie unleashed from the proverbial bottle. Post-Fukushima, many questions remain unanswered.
Where are the experts now who said that it was all safer than the safest? Where are all those nuke wizards who knew how to get the nuclear 'genie' back into the bottle when it sort of misbehaved? What are their definite answers to the worried questions of the public at the receiving end? What is the difference between an A-bomb and the radiation from a nuke plant that has gone haywire? Well, they will tell you one is military and it is part of an act of war; this is pure civilian...and as a result probably a lot 'softer' in its fallout... God!
It is in the post-Fukushima context that one has to take the words of pundits that the general public needs to be "educated" about the nuclear options. ( http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1557377.ece )
If one is to go by the volume of 'education' that the nuclear lobby has till date foisted upon the world's vulnerable public, and its quality vis-a-vis the truth about the nuclear option, one would term it not exactly education. Fortunately the English language has many words to convey different shades of meaning. In totalitarian states and such other places, they speak of "re-education" to make the citizen tread 'happily' the line of new thoughts and ideologies. Nuclear 'education' too is somewhat in that class. Indoctrination, in my humble opinion, would be a more honest and a more truthful word to denote that.
But I do not want to be a member of the 'thought police' and so I do not think it is my duty to 'educate' you regarding the ideal nature of nuke power. Rather, permit me share with you what all I learned in the meantime.
The Indian government's brinkmanship at the time of the nuke deal with the US and how it survived and went ahead with the deal by forging new local deals by 'spending good money' has been leaked well and truly by Wikileaks. Another hurried nuke deal was struck with France in order to prop up the troubled French AREVA and this led to the brouhaha over the Jaitapur power project. In a country like India where "cut and paste" artists supply any number of environmental impact assessments (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607058.ece) and other 'studies', including seismic and other critical data, it is not difficult for the 'powers that be' to paint a rosy picture of all being safe and environment friendly and pro-people and pro-development on the strength of such 'cooked-up' studies and reports. This has happened in the case of Jaitapur too despite massive public protests led by people like retired Supreme Court Judge P B Sawant and others. (http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/interview_we-dont-want-to-negotiate-on-jaitapur-plant_1517634)
Jaitapur is a quiet place with a great diversity of wildlife and with Nature probably at her best. The Madhban plateau on which the giant nuclear plants will be built is the largest coastal plateau in the Konkan with a unique biodiversity. But it will no more be like that if we let the energy Czars have their way. 40,000 people will be displaced from their homes and lands, their livlihoods destroyed, countless tigers, elephants and hundreds of other species 'erased' and the landscape levelled into an arid moonscape. All in the rush to build the mega EPR (the European Pressurized-water Reactor, also called Evolutionary Power Reactor)... which has NOT YET been built or tested fully ANYWHERE in the world ??!!!??? A ticking time-bomb waiting for a seismic incident or a tsunami to unleash its destruction far and wide. Do we need to be the guinea pigs in this mega experiment, this mega-disaster-in-the-making???
Each of the giant Jaitapur reactors will have a capacity of 1,650 Megawatts of electrical power, and the six reactors together will output just short of 10,000 MW of electricity. Great! But there is another side to it too. Atomic reactors are "hot" devices; REALLY hot ones. The thermal output of each reactor is about 5,000 Megawatts, and that means a total of 30,000 Megawatts of heat will be generated. Since their conversion efficiency is at best between 25 and 30 per cent, approximately two-thirds of their energy will be dumped into the sea and a smaller per centage into the air as waste heat. Did you say global warming? This will be some sort of a massive local 'warming' that will play havoc with fisheries (the livelihood of most of Jaitapur's poor locals; but then you have GOT to make some sacrifices for development!) and affect the weather and our lives in unprecedented and unforeseen ways.
Experts have warned that the higher 'burnup' in the EPR, a design ploy to increase the 'productivity' of the reactor, may result in a thinning of the fuel cladding, making it prone to early failure. A study by the French power utility EDF has reported that the toxicity from the radioactive waste of the EPR is four times that of ordinary reactors, and is especially high in radioactive Iodine and Bromine, which stay at dangerous levels of radioactivity for over...no, not a hundred years, but more like a million years.
Today in almost every 'civilized' country (including India!) they have rules and regulations against dumping waste. Before you junk your car or even your PC, you have to conform to many rules that specify how to get rid of all that dangerous waste material without damaging the environment. But all those pollutants are "chicken feed" when you compare them to nuclear waste. Nature can in certain ways tackle even worst pollutants. Areas devastated by giant oil spills have shown a re-emergence of life forms and 'normalcy' after just a few years. Man-made chemicals are perhaps the exception here (including plastics) when Nature concedes total defeat. But what about the accumulating cache of nuclear waste that goes on piling up over the years as the plants operate? Even without any tsunami or quakes to complicate issues, the accumulated nuclear waste challenges safe storage and safe disposal/re-use/recycling. The nuke lobby says they will be safely stored until science finds a solution/use "tomorrow". A team of Japanese anti-nuke pacifists on a global mission has compared the nuke plants to houses without toilets for waste disposal. What will be the quality of life in such a place? But lack of toilets will only drive you nuts or give you dysentery, not maim you for life right from the womb, and till Kingdom come.
In the case of Jaitapur too it is not clear where the nuclear waste emanating from all the reactors will be dumped. The plant is estimated to generate 300 tonnes of waste each year. And the French EPR reactor waste will have about four times as much radioactive Bromine, Iodine, Caesium, etc, compared to that from an ordinary pressurized water reactor like India's Trombay unit. In fact details slowly emerging out of Fukushima (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sci-tech-and-agri/article1566421.ece) speak of a ten year gap of safety regimes being tested or verified. Also, reports speak now of the dangers posed by the massive storage of nuclear waste --stored "casually" near the reactor in small pools. One expert has called that a greater threat than if the reactor itself were to melt. The details of neglect that have slowly 'leaked out' are worse than the radiation leaks, and they are appalling in the extreme. And, mind you, all that has happened in Japan; a technology-minded and disciplined society like Japan, and one with a 'healthy respect' for things nuclear. But bureaucratic short-cuts and industrial apathy oriented to mere profitability played havoc at Fukushima, and an emergency of frightening proportions is unreeling fast before our very eyes--one that the world has been reassured again and again will never happen.
In the context of Jaitapur, right from the beginning there were voices of concern that were brushed aside by the "powers that be", the foremost of which is the PMO, and then the nuke lobby and its middle men. The Tata Insitute of Social Sciences came down heavily on the project for its negative social and environmental impact. ( http://www.indianexpress.com/news/jaitapur-nproject-sitting-on-high-severity-quake-zonetiss/730737/ ) But the study has been rubbished by the NPCIL, the Nuclear Power Coporation, which will build and operate the plants. (http://www.hindu.com/2011/01/10/stories/2011011058922000.htm)
It is interesting in this context to listen to the eye-opening revelations of Dr Gopalakrishnan, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board:
“... The AERB's disaster preparedness oversight is mostly on paper and the drills they once in a while conduct are half-hearted efforts which amount more to a sham.....
In the case of earthquake engineering, the Nuclear Power Corporation strategy is to have their favourite consultants cook up the kind of seismicity data which suit them.....
There is practically no independent verification of their data or design methodologies. A captive AERB which reports to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) makes the overall nuclear safety management in India worthless.....”
That, coming from a person like him who was definitely in the know of things, should shock us into some sort of action against the casual, "at-any-cost" approach of the nuke lobby. The 'cut-and-paste experts' are active to serve the interests of the 'government' and the nuke lobby, whether it is environmental impact or seismic safety or nuclear dangers.
---> http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/comment_why-should-jaitapur-be-made-a-guinea-pig-for-untested-reactor_1520843
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1555422.ece
Now what about even a truthful and factual study? Have we achieved that scientific certainty when we could with some amount of surety predict the ways of nature? The present conditions, including seismic and weather, are no guarantees for future safety. It is interesting to listen to a voice of sanity as Gopalkrishna Gandhi examines the need for 'long-term learning' from the Fukushima fallout. (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1586399.ece ). Surely the public will learn from history and will be guided by their more knowledgeable peers. But our 'leaders' want to 'sell' us progress at any cost, and pocket their 'share' with no qualms.
Have the proponents of nuke power seriously looked at alternatives? India is so placed that she is rich in many sources of power. Hydel (not environment-threatening mega dams, but mini- and micro-hydel power plants for local needs), wind, solar and now hydrogen-based power. All these are safer at any time than nukes, and with some focussed research, could be harnessed to supply enough power for our immediate and future needs. What is needed is the will, the political will to do that. Instead, in our country the political will is to pursue easy money from 'imports', whether we need it or not, whether it is a white elephant or a mammoth of some other hue. The Indian setup is full of such intentional 'starvation deaths' of successful indigenous enterprises in order to benefit somebody somewhere far away...of course, with the right kind of 'commissions'. The latest such casualties were the Indian vaccine manufactories, prestigious institutions working to full satisfaction and with an enviable track record, that were closed down on the whim of our "minister for health"! (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1510997.ece ) So let us strongly root for an exploration of alternative energy strategies with redoubled vigour--NOW.
When it comes to nuke power, the French are in the forefront, with most of their energy needs supplied by nuke plants. They have no choice as their other energy resources are virtually nil. But when you look at the nuke 'market', the US has a strong presence, with the French being only a second-level player. (Remember, practically all the Japanese nuke plants were supplied by US firms, including the ill-fated ones at Fukushima.) Both the French and the Americans fall over each other to reassure the purchasers about the safety and superiority of their systems. But look at what happens when the French try to sell their 'third generation' advanced nuke power plants to the US. There is a huge hue and cry (http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_59795.shtml ) about endangering the lives of Americans with sub-standard and untested technology! This is probably the best example of doublespeak that one may come across--the Americans are pushing their own 'Fukushima-standard' technology around the world, but when it comes to building one on their soil, they are scared stiff ! If only there was the sale of a US reactor to France would we learn of its inherent dangers from a suitably strident French outcry!
However, disinterested readers could easily glean critical information after a careful reading of the above article and afterwards they will be in a "better educated" position so far as the unproven technology of EPR is concerned, and how dangerous advocacy for them can be. I must urge you to spend quality time reading the above article by Ms Cathy Garger at Axis of Logic.
However, what stood out like a sore thumb was the fact that the concern of the US goverment for 'people' (and, for that matter, democracy and other high-flown ideals) is confined to within their nation's borders, and when it comes to protecting the commercial interests of American companies even at the risk of millions of lives of innocents, they play another tune. If someone could dig up the 'deals' made by GE with Japan for the sale of Fukushima and other reactors, it would make for some sordid reading. This is obvious when you look at the lengths to which they went to twist the arm of the Indian government - I am sure you had your favourite reads of the Wikileaks "India cable-gate" series. Activist Gopal Krishna has made a good case against the Jaitapur project, and I guess your nuke eduction wont be complete without a look at it. (http://www.rediff.com/news/column/why-the-jaitapur-nuclear-plant-must-be-opposed/20101229.htm )
Advocates for nuke power say that it is the most viable and cost-effective approach for clean power. How true is that? The cost per mega watt of installed capacity for the EPR is over Rs 20 crore, compared to Rs 4 crore to Rs 5 crore for a coal-based plant and Rs 7-9 crore for Indian-designed boiling water reactors, according to Delhi Science Forum chief Prabir Purakayastha. But one look at the trouble-plagued and delayed first French EPR at Olkiluoto in Finland, begun in 2005 and still not completed nor commissioned, tells you that cost over-runs and escalations will ultimately make the energy economically unviable. You can imagine how the whole thing will materialize in a country like India.
A glow of hope in this dark scenario is that the German financier has backed out of the Jaitapur project on account of "reputational risk"--that means, they dont want to be seen supporting such 'anti-people' projects. (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/145949/german-bank-pulls-jaitapur-nuclear.html ) Germany till recently was an advocate of nuke power. But the policy has cost the present government dearly in the wake of increasing public protest against extending the service life of existing nuke plants in Germany. Now the German policy is to take everything nucler with a large pinch of salt. Greenpeace, the pro-environment protest group too has interesting details about the project. (http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2010/03/nuclear_news_edf_nuclear_react.html )
Whatever be the negatives you or anybody can dish up, the govenment remains "committed" to providing its people with the latest and the greatest. (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_congress-signals-commitment-for-jaitapur-nuclear-power-project_1519966 ) How could one fault such altruism?! Forget the commissions they have pocketed, and look at the growth rate the country will achieve with all that cheap and abundant power!! Our ministers, from the top down, are singing the praises of nuke power and are set to worship at these modern temples of power, come what may. Politicians are naturally power crazy, and Megawatts of nuclear 'power' are likely to supercharge them with a strange 'high' and make them forget all else. But when ultimately the reactor core starts going 'hyper-critical' and radiation comes leaking invisibly in search of living, breathing flesh to sear it into the agony of a painful death for no fault of yours, don't look around for all those 'yeah-sayers' to save you. Even if they are around, they are sure to survive somehow as their thick skin is likely to be impervious even to the nuclear radiation; at worst, you could expect a mutation of the political species into something much more abominable.
So take your nuclear education seriously and make up your mind whether you need it. REALLY need it in your soil, in your backyard. If the Americans or the French are so keen to build nuke power stations, let them build it in THEIR backyards and sell us the power. (It will be easier to invent a way to transmit power over great distances using some new-fangled tech than inventing a safe use for nuke waste!)Do you want to be a guinea pig in the biggest nuke experiment of all time?
It is your life, and the lives of your loved ones...and also the lives of your dear, beloved countrymen. Don't play dangerous nuclear roulette with your lives and with Nature and make this beautiful earth a radiation graveyard. And dont be too sure Anna Hazare will undertake another fast to save you and the country!
IT IS ONE FOR ALL, AND ALL FOR ONE --all, except the above thick-skinned ones!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Thursday, April 7, 2011
TRYST WITH DESTINY -- A SEQUEL
Fast rewind to another century, another time, another situation -- and another man!
But the similarities with the present should shock any upright, right-thinking, honest Indian.
--- A selfish and autocratic government that ignores and suppresses the rights and aspirations of its citizens, a siphoning away of the vast resources of the country into alien coffers, rampant 'double-speak', tricks of the trade like 'divide and rule', a "democratic championing" of the downtrodden minorities, laws rules and regulations to protect the government's own interests, threats of rightful protests being treated as sedition ..... the list could go on and on.
Surely we are talking of the India of the British Raj days. But it is not difficult to detect the similarities with the present situation or the tenor of the government. At the most what one would need to do is to rephrase some of the things to put them into the proper choronological perspective.
To those of a generation now somewhat long in the tooth, the pre-Independence scenario is all too familiar. Today those very epochal events that served to shape this great nation are only vague commentaries in the cavalierly textbooks that students cram to somehow get through the ten/twelve years of schooling so that they could sit for the "Entrance" exam and fulfil their destiny of being little better than info-coolies or medics to hand-hold the aging West. For today's "gen-text" (most of whose fathers were little more than mischievous gleams in the eyes of THEIR fathers and mothers at the time all that and the famous Tryst with Destiny happened!), it is mere text that has no contemporary relevance, especially in today's neo-liberal world without walls where chasing their destinies means being ready with skill-sets that have a demand. The parents who egg on their beloved children (oops! child!) sadly have no idea about how over the past decades a liberal education has deteriorated to little more than mere specialized training to impart 'skill-sets'. Add to that the Government's knee-jerk reactions to things like Lelyveld's book on the Mahatma, and the alacrity with which a ban order is slapped on it--which somehow promote the implanted poisonous comment that Gandhiji is "not all that great as he is made out to be" as he too was open to many "things". Dont blame the younger generation if they think that the past was not all that great. For them it is at best a distant unreal chimera.
But as they say, history repeats itself and historians repeat each other, ad nauseum. But unfortunately it is not the lot of mankind to learn from history. And today's 'truant' schoolboy has only his parents to blame if he is a stranger to history, and is more at home with other more 'utilitarian' studies. But he is fortunate that he has better and more "connected" tools to enable him to explore history and more, and share and interact with his peers. I urge the younger generation to do that NOW with a vengeance and come to their own conclusions. My job is merely to tell you what to look for, to ask to you look again and think again and see "the wood for the trees", to make comparisons and then, well, to ACT !!
If you read that first para again, and put it into the present context, you would agree that it pretty well reflects what is happening around us. Period. But I had in mind what the Brits were doing in pre-Independent India. Believe me, history is more entertaining than any fanciful novel you might have read recently. Just look at the example of the ridiculous "salt legislation" that the Brits dreamed up--so that their ships could sail with stabilizing cheap ballast of salt from London. But the salt would fetch a price in India only if there was acute scarcity of that normally plentiful commodity in India. Ah, easy. Legislate that no one should make salt in India, and if anybody broke that rule, nothing less than the "cooler" for him. The Dandi March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha) taken out by a determined Gandhiji is today the stuff of legends. The few crystals of salt that Gandhiji made in symbolic protest on the seashore of the obscure village of Dandi ultimately crystallized into Independence for this nation and its people, and earned the little village a name in the annals of history.
Today the caucus of politicians and their corporate cronies who style themselves as the government is enacting more draconian laws against its own people at the behest of "the powers that be". ( I dont have to ask you if you have read the India cables part of the Wikileaks.) They thrust "development" in your face--whether you want it or not. The Tehri Dam and the Jaitapur nuclear power stations are only a couple of examples that spring to mind. If today you so much as travel to Jaitapur, you will end up in jail as you have broken some law! Whose law is it anyway? Whose country is it anyway??
While the Brits siphoned off the money {John Keay's "The Honourable Company" is a delightful/shocking account of the legerdemain of the Brits in India: http://www.indiaclub.com/Shop/SearchResults.asp?ProdStock=6447. Keay paints a detailed picture of the Company "... a band of South China Seas buccaneers who helped create the London money market, controlled half the world's trade, recruited armed forces larger than those of most states and became a private empire that was the jewel in the British crown. Founded in 1600 to challenge the Dutch monopoly of the hugely profitable spice trade, the Company was built on hardship, greed and savagery... } largely into the coffers of the East India Company and indirecty into the British government treasury (and a proportionately smaller share into the pockets of the functionaries of the Company!), today's corporate and political buccaneers siphon it into numbered accounts in the many havens of black money like Switzerland. I am sure every Indian in every far off corner of the world is familiar with the flood of scams that marked the New Year, which surely would have contributed billions into the hoard. The echoes of the loud expostulation from the Supreme Temple of Justice in reaction to the apathy of the government vis-a-vis chasing the black money and the people behind it ("What the hell is happening in this country...") have hardly died down.
One thing is painfully plain. The 'government' is playing a game of obfuscation and delay and doublespeak. You cant blame them, in a way; it is their bread and butter (and more!) that is being threatened! We will be fools if we for a moment think that they are serious about ending corruption and sleaze and slush money; they are frantically looking for ways to "re-channel" all that money. Witness the 'legislation' that is planned to bring back to India all that black money by way of individual FDI, and the loud protestations of 'agreements' with many foreign governments that will be jeopardized if we publish a few names and clamp a few into jail in India on clear charges of grave economic offences. In this democracy they want us to believe that and more! It is a lark... At least the Brits in their day considered the public to be lesser fools and not absolute nincompoops!
It is all a big 'eye-wash' and the proposed Lokpal Bill too will be like many other Indian Bills--legislation without any "teeth", and with enough and more loops and holes--that is, if the government has its way. The 'watchdog' that is supposed to bite the wrongdoer or the thief, will instead be administering a "massage" to his fat bum! (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/134429/latest-headlines/lokpal-vs-jan-lokpal-a-study-in-contrast.html) The whole thing is a laugh--if you can laugh at serious things. And they have been sitting on the Bill for very nearly half a century, and yet they have the gumption to ask us for more time!
We have had enough of "crony-corruption" in this land, and this has to stop. And that is where the relevance of this second Tryst with Destiny lies. And this is where the Gandhian protest of Anna Hazare assumes new significance.
The last century had thrown up an immortal man who gave us the freedom to speak our minds and to live proudly as free Indians. Today the poor soul lies (safely) buried under the mountains of black money amassed by his own 'followers', and his memory has been sullied by the lies and half-truths that fuel that party to which once he too belonged. Yes, I have the Congress party and Gandhiji in mind. If Gandhiji were to return today, just as King Mahabali does during Onam as Malayalis believe, he shall in all probability eschew non-violence when it came to "handling" his own partymen! In the India of today, the politicians and their cronies know for sure that Gandhiji, conveniently forgotten except on October 2nd, and safely ensconced in the protraits that line their rooms and their offices, could not come down to put a spoke in their well-oiled wheels of sleaze and corruption.
But Destiny works in strange ways. The 21st Century needed another Gandhi to spearhead our Second Liberation Struggle--this time not from the Brits, but from our own so-called elected, democratic government. Wasn't it the great American writer Edward Abbey, an umcompromising and honest humanist, who said that “...a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government” ? Yes, the time has come for every Indian patriot to rally to do precisely that. Today the great Gandhian Anna Hazare has thrown down the gauntlet before the government and has signalled the start of an unrelenting, uncompromising struggle to wipe out corruption in government and public life. Surely this is already showing signs of building up into a groundswell that will shake and topple the thrones of corruption.
The noble Hazare put it like this: "... This is the next struggle for our independence. Even though the British have left, only the colour of the rulers' skin has changed, nothing else has." How true!! Our 'babus' and 'netas' are more British than the Brits when it comes to pure hauteur! Already there is growing concern and support for Hazare and the idea that he champions. The young and the young at heart are using the social media to reach out to one another and to put more steam into the iconic struggle, the likes of which we haven't witnessed for a long long time. Here is crusade which any average Indian can identify with and join while forgetting all other personal affiliations and preferences. Surely there is every chance the movement will beat with the pulse of all Indians and culminate in the 'liberation' of this nation from the octopus-like clutches of corruption.
Who is this humble man Hazare? He is a one-man army against corruption. The other day while launching his fast unto death at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi he said:
“I have been working for the society for long time. For the past 35 years, I have not gone home. I have three brothers and I don’t know the names of their children. I don’t have any bank balance.... the public takes to satyagraha when all the doors are shut. If he [a Congress party spokesperson] says that this is wrong, does he mean to say that people should continue to suffer? The public will have to protest when there is a threat to their independence." Hazare is an ex-soldier and in him we can see a humble, yet strong and determined man who is in every way suited to wear the mantle of Gandhiji. Read all about him and his crusade at: < http://www.annahazare.org/ >
Who are the people who are sharing the experience and fasting along with him? Hundreds have joined the symbolic crusade. Here are just a couple of stories of supreme sacrifice for the sake of the nation:
Sixty-year-old Geeta Gupta, one of the protesters who had come from Dehradun to participate in the fast, said, "My son came to take me back home and requested that I should end the hunger-strike , but I told him that my responsibilities for the family are over. I am ready to die for the country, if that is the sacrifice required to get rid of the menace of corruption." She said that sitting idle and thinking that what difference a joint committee or renewed draft bill on corruption would make is not going to help. "We cannot sit idle. Anna has shown us the way and it is the right moment to do something ," said Gupta.
Dr Praveen Sharma, a professor of neurosurgery at MGM College in Mumbai, is also on fast. "I have treated many patients and will continue to do that till I live. But this is the moment to treat the malaise of corruption . I have taken off from my duties to participate in the protest.
(Do check out the full story at <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Groundswell-of-support-for-Anna/articleshow/7894607.cms > )
For the curious and the uninformed, here are other links worth reading:
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article1604213.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1607789.ece
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/ready-to-talk-but-can%E2%80%99t-take-rash-decision/263294.html
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/show-courage-to-fight-graft-hazare-tells-pm/263166.html
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/hazare-caught-in-pmo-nac-crossfire/262996.html
---> http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607058.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607073.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603784.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603787.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603791.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1603879.ece
The time has come for all Indians to rally round the iconic figure of Anna Hazare as he takes on the powerful and arrogant Goliath of our government in perhaps a fitting replay of the true Gandhian approach. In these modern times, if we are to take a cue from what happened in Egypt and other countries where the regimes had stopped listening to the peoples' voices, the tools of social networking will demonstrate that they are also powerful tools for social change. The new tools will empower the people to interact in a more meaningful and powerful manner. It is up to all of us to fuel the wave of protests that will gather strength and, tsunami-like, break down the bulwarks of corruption and obfuscation that the politicians and their cronies have erected around themselves over the past decades.
The winds of change have indeed started blowing. It is only a matter of time before they will attain unstoppable gale force. The entire nation is waiting for the dirt and filth of corruption to be blown away. India is waiting for a rebirth into a nation founded solidly on truth, ahimsa and co-existence.
Destiny leads the nation and its people to a new tryst with its real future.
Are YOU ready?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
But the similarities with the present should shock any upright, right-thinking, honest Indian.
--- A selfish and autocratic government that ignores and suppresses the rights and aspirations of its citizens, a siphoning away of the vast resources of the country into alien coffers, rampant 'double-speak', tricks of the trade like 'divide and rule', a "democratic championing" of the downtrodden minorities, laws rules and regulations to protect the government's own interests, threats of rightful protests being treated as sedition ..... the list could go on and on.
Surely we are talking of the India of the British Raj days. But it is not difficult to detect the similarities with the present situation or the tenor of the government. At the most what one would need to do is to rephrase some of the things to put them into the proper choronological perspective.
To those of a generation now somewhat long in the tooth, the pre-Independence scenario is all too familiar. Today those very epochal events that served to shape this great nation are only vague commentaries in the cavalierly textbooks that students cram to somehow get through the ten/twelve years of schooling so that they could sit for the "Entrance" exam and fulfil their destiny of being little better than info-coolies or medics to hand-hold the aging West. For today's "gen-text" (most of whose fathers were little more than mischievous gleams in the eyes of THEIR fathers and mothers at the time all that and the famous Tryst with Destiny happened!), it is mere text that has no contemporary relevance, especially in today's neo-liberal world without walls where chasing their destinies means being ready with skill-sets that have a demand. The parents who egg on their beloved children (oops! child!) sadly have no idea about how over the past decades a liberal education has deteriorated to little more than mere specialized training to impart 'skill-sets'. Add to that the Government's knee-jerk reactions to things like Lelyveld's book on the Mahatma, and the alacrity with which a ban order is slapped on it--which somehow promote the implanted poisonous comment that Gandhiji is "not all that great as he is made out to be" as he too was open to many "things". Dont blame the younger generation if they think that the past was not all that great. For them it is at best a distant unreal chimera.
But as they say, history repeats itself and historians repeat each other, ad nauseum. But unfortunately it is not the lot of mankind to learn from history. And today's 'truant' schoolboy has only his parents to blame if he is a stranger to history, and is more at home with other more 'utilitarian' studies. But he is fortunate that he has better and more "connected" tools to enable him to explore history and more, and share and interact with his peers. I urge the younger generation to do that NOW with a vengeance and come to their own conclusions. My job is merely to tell you what to look for, to ask to you look again and think again and see "the wood for the trees", to make comparisons and then, well, to ACT !!
If you read that first para again, and put it into the present context, you would agree that it pretty well reflects what is happening around us. Period. But I had in mind what the Brits were doing in pre-Independent India. Believe me, history is more entertaining than any fanciful novel you might have read recently. Just look at the example of the ridiculous "salt legislation" that the Brits dreamed up--so that their ships could sail with stabilizing cheap ballast of salt from London. But the salt would fetch a price in India only if there was acute scarcity of that normally plentiful commodity in India. Ah, easy. Legislate that no one should make salt in India, and if anybody broke that rule, nothing less than the "cooler" for him. The Dandi March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha) taken out by a determined Gandhiji is today the stuff of legends. The few crystals of salt that Gandhiji made in symbolic protest on the seashore of the obscure village of Dandi ultimately crystallized into Independence for this nation and its people, and earned the little village a name in the annals of history.
Today the caucus of politicians and their corporate cronies who style themselves as the government is enacting more draconian laws against its own people at the behest of "the powers that be". ( I dont have to ask you if you have read the India cables part of the Wikileaks.) They thrust "development" in your face--whether you want it or not. The Tehri Dam and the Jaitapur nuclear power stations are only a couple of examples that spring to mind. If today you so much as travel to Jaitapur, you will end up in jail as you have broken some law! Whose law is it anyway? Whose country is it anyway??
While the Brits siphoned off the money {John Keay's "The Honourable Company" is a delightful/shocking account of the legerdemain of the Brits in India: http://www.indiaclub.com/Shop/SearchResults.asp?ProdStock=6447. Keay paints a detailed picture of the Company "... a band of South China Seas buccaneers who helped create the London money market, controlled half the world's trade, recruited armed forces larger than those of most states and became a private empire that was the jewel in the British crown. Founded in 1600 to challenge the Dutch monopoly of the hugely profitable spice trade, the Company was built on hardship, greed and savagery... } largely into the coffers of the East India Company and indirecty into the British government treasury (and a proportionately smaller share into the pockets of the functionaries of the Company!), today's corporate and political buccaneers siphon it into numbered accounts in the many havens of black money like Switzerland. I am sure every Indian in every far off corner of the world is familiar with the flood of scams that marked the New Year, which surely would have contributed billions into the hoard. The echoes of the loud expostulation from the Supreme Temple of Justice in reaction to the apathy of the government vis-a-vis chasing the black money and the people behind it ("What the hell is happening in this country...") have hardly died down.
One thing is painfully plain. The 'government' is playing a game of obfuscation and delay and doublespeak. You cant blame them, in a way; it is their bread and butter (and more!) that is being threatened! We will be fools if we for a moment think that they are serious about ending corruption and sleaze and slush money; they are frantically looking for ways to "re-channel" all that money. Witness the 'legislation' that is planned to bring back to India all that black money by way of individual FDI, and the loud protestations of 'agreements' with many foreign governments that will be jeopardized if we publish a few names and clamp a few into jail in India on clear charges of grave economic offences. In this democracy they want us to believe that and more! It is a lark... At least the Brits in their day considered the public to be lesser fools and not absolute nincompoops!
It is all a big 'eye-wash' and the proposed Lokpal Bill too will be like many other Indian Bills--legislation without any "teeth", and with enough and more loops and holes--that is, if the government has its way. The 'watchdog' that is supposed to bite the wrongdoer or the thief, will instead be administering a "massage" to his fat bum! (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/134429/latest-headlines/lokpal-vs-jan-lokpal-a-study-in-contrast.html) The whole thing is a laugh--if you can laugh at serious things. And they have been sitting on the Bill for very nearly half a century, and yet they have the gumption to ask us for more time!
We have had enough of "crony-corruption" in this land, and this has to stop. And that is where the relevance of this second Tryst with Destiny lies. And this is where the Gandhian protest of Anna Hazare assumes new significance.
The last century had thrown up an immortal man who gave us the freedom to speak our minds and to live proudly as free Indians. Today the poor soul lies (safely) buried under the mountains of black money amassed by his own 'followers', and his memory has been sullied by the lies and half-truths that fuel that party to which once he too belonged. Yes, I have the Congress party and Gandhiji in mind. If Gandhiji were to return today, just as King Mahabali does during Onam as Malayalis believe, he shall in all probability eschew non-violence when it came to "handling" his own partymen! In the India of today, the politicians and their cronies know for sure that Gandhiji, conveniently forgotten except on October 2nd, and safely ensconced in the protraits that line their rooms and their offices, could not come down to put a spoke in their well-oiled wheels of sleaze and corruption.
But Destiny works in strange ways. The 21st Century needed another Gandhi to spearhead our Second Liberation Struggle--this time not from the Brits, but from our own so-called elected, democratic government. Wasn't it the great American writer Edward Abbey, an umcompromising and honest humanist, who said that “...a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government” ? Yes, the time has come for every Indian patriot to rally to do precisely that. Today the great Gandhian Anna Hazare has thrown down the gauntlet before the government and has signalled the start of an unrelenting, uncompromising struggle to wipe out corruption in government and public life. Surely this is already showing signs of building up into a groundswell that will shake and topple the thrones of corruption.
The noble Hazare put it like this: "... This is the next struggle for our independence. Even though the British have left, only the colour of the rulers' skin has changed, nothing else has." How true!! Our 'babus' and 'netas' are more British than the Brits when it comes to pure hauteur! Already there is growing concern and support for Hazare and the idea that he champions. The young and the young at heart are using the social media to reach out to one another and to put more steam into the iconic struggle, the likes of which we haven't witnessed for a long long time. Here is crusade which any average Indian can identify with and join while forgetting all other personal affiliations and preferences. Surely there is every chance the movement will beat with the pulse of all Indians and culminate in the 'liberation' of this nation from the octopus-like clutches of corruption.
Who is this humble man Hazare? He is a one-man army against corruption. The other day while launching his fast unto death at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi he said:
“I have been working for the society for long time. For the past 35 years, I have not gone home. I have three brothers and I don’t know the names of their children. I don’t have any bank balance.... the public takes to satyagraha when all the doors are shut. If he [a Congress party spokesperson] says that this is wrong, does he mean to say that people should continue to suffer? The public will have to protest when there is a threat to their independence." Hazare is an ex-soldier and in him we can see a humble, yet strong and determined man who is in every way suited to wear the mantle of Gandhiji. Read all about him and his crusade at: < http://www.annahazare.org/ >
Who are the people who are sharing the experience and fasting along with him? Hundreds have joined the symbolic crusade. Here are just a couple of stories of supreme sacrifice for the sake of the nation:
Sixty-year-old Geeta Gupta, one of the protesters who had come from Dehradun to participate in the fast, said, "My son came to take me back home and requested that I should end the hunger-strike , but I told him that my responsibilities for the family are over. I am ready to die for the country, if that is the sacrifice required to get rid of the menace of corruption." She said that sitting idle and thinking that what difference a joint committee or renewed draft bill on corruption would make is not going to help. "We cannot sit idle. Anna has shown us the way and it is the right moment to do something ," said Gupta.
Dr Praveen Sharma, a professor of neurosurgery at MGM College in Mumbai, is also on fast. "I have treated many patients and will continue to do that till I live. But this is the moment to treat the malaise of corruption . I have taken off from my duties to participate in the protest.
(Do check out the full story at <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Groundswell-of-support-for-Anna/articleshow/7894607.cms > )
For the curious and the uninformed, here are other links worth reading:
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article1604213.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1607789.ece
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/ready-to-talk-but-can%E2%80%99t-take-rash-decision/263294.html
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/show-courage-to-fight-graft-hazare-tells-pm/263166.html
---> http://expressbuzz.com/nation/hazare-caught-in-pmo-nac-crossfire/262996.html
---> http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607058.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1607073.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603784.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603787.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1603791.ece
---> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1603879.ece
The time has come for all Indians to rally round the iconic figure of Anna Hazare as he takes on the powerful and arrogant Goliath of our government in perhaps a fitting replay of the true Gandhian approach. In these modern times, if we are to take a cue from what happened in Egypt and other countries where the regimes had stopped listening to the peoples' voices, the tools of social networking will demonstrate that they are also powerful tools for social change. The new tools will empower the people to interact in a more meaningful and powerful manner. It is up to all of us to fuel the wave of protests that will gather strength and, tsunami-like, break down the bulwarks of corruption and obfuscation that the politicians and their cronies have erected around themselves over the past decades.
The winds of change have indeed started blowing. It is only a matter of time before they will attain unstoppable gale force. The entire nation is waiting for the dirt and filth of corruption to be blown away. India is waiting for a rebirth into a nation founded solidly on truth, ahimsa and co-existence.
Destiny leads the nation and its people to a new tryst with its real future.
Are YOU ready?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Thursday, March 24, 2011
SABARIMALA -- A RECAP
The media is a "one-trick pony"-- more, or less.....
A sensation-a-day is the mantra on which the media celebrates its existence. A sensation at least once in a few days is the formula on which it manages to thrive. No sensation for a couple of weeks, and that is the sure-fire blight for "media-wilt"! Idle thoughts these are not. Anybody who has perhaps a less than average memory, but who is careful about keeping a note of half-a-dozen sensations from the previous month, and checking for its "progress" for about three months would come to the above conclusion. Then there is another interesting side to sensations too-- you just can't have a couple of simultaneous sensations! One of them will get relegated to the back of nowhere in no time!
Such being the curious nature of media "attention" on issues that are more than mere sensations, it behoves the responsible citizen to "recap" and "revisit" topics and issues that demand more than a cursory attention. The recent tragedy at Sabarimala on the occasion of the Makarajyothi (in mid-January) is fresh in the minds of at least some of us, and surely the date is etched indelibly in the minds of the poor souls who lost a father, a husband, a son or a brother in the melee at Pulmedu on that fateful day. Do have a look at my earlier post "Sense and Sabarimala". ( http://2ndthinker.blogspot.com/2011/01/sense-and-sabarimala.html )
The weeks that followed the tragedy saw a tapering off of interest in the matter despite a rather spirited slanging match between the Forest Department, the Electricity Board and, of course, the Devaswam Board. Now the brouhaha has virtually died down and we (and surely the media!) are waiting for something else to happen before we start our response engines!
I was in the meantime keeping track of the post-tragedy fallout.
It was interesting, nay amusing, to see the government (which means the clever politicians!) playing hide-and-seek with the question of whether the Makara Jyothi was man-made or not, and in the event that it was man-made, who was/were the man/men who made it! The Chief Minister, an adroit old hand, easily side-stepped the issue by saying that it was a matter of 'faith' into which the government was loath to enter! No question of any enquiry of fact-finding regarding a question that was debated ad-nauseum by all and sundry, including the rationalists. It is fated to remain a mystery.
The sad fact remains that the Makara Sankranthi pilgrim rush is mostly as a result of the pilgrims' wish to witness the 'divine jyothi'. What goes without saying is that the creation and perpetuation of the "cash cow" that the Makara jyothi was a legerdemain that was being accomplished with the tacit knowledge and connivance of the "powers that be". Those who have been following the developments are sure to remember the many revelations in the media as regards the truth about this "magical flickering light that appeared on cue" at Ponnambalamedu, and for a glimpse of which hundreds of poor pilgrims had paid for with their precious lives.
Here are a few links of interest:
"...The ‘Makarajyothi' issue has taken a new turn with a former Commissioner of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) writing to the Devaswom Ombudsman in Kerala, asserting that the TDB had indeed been lighting the fire seen atop Ponnambalamedu..." Read more at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1117779.ece >
"...Contending that Makarajyothi was not a miracle but a man-made fire, the Supreme Court was moved on Saturday to stop lighting it at Ponnambalamedu near the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala in January every year... More at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1117782.ece >
"...The Hindu on Friday posed the question (is the Makara Jyothi man-made) before a number of prominent persons closely associated with, or seek to represent the interests of, the revered and ancient forest-shrine. The answer: it is indeed man-made...." Follow the story at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1110275.ece >
The clincher, however, was the statement made by the Pandalam Raja himself in a letter to the Editor of The Hindu newspaper. ( http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1110364.ece ) The Pandalam Royal family is part and parcel of the legend of Lord Ayyappa and even today the Raja retains many privileges, including being the official custodian of the Lord's festive ornaments and paraphernalia. The Pandalam Royal family has been involved with the rituals of the Ayyappa temple from the very beginning. But apparently the Devaswam Board's clever stratagem for making some solid quick money did not "gel" with the rather orthodox Raja, and he has now come out with a categoric denial of there being any "divinity" associated with the flame that flickers at Ponnambalamedu.
The Raja being the accepted authority as regards many customs and rituals of the Sabarimala temple, there does not seem to be the need for any further authority to accept the truth that the "divine jyothi" is a man-made sham jyothi, lit in order to deceive the poor pilgrim. We have to educate the pilgrims about the truth of the jyothi before the next Makara Sankranthi day. Tout it as a part of the temple ritual, if you will. If the environment and forest ministries will permit, the Devaswam Board can open a trekking path to Ponnambalamedu and make some good money by selling a limited number of passes to pilgrims so that they could witness the "deeparadhana" and the "jyothi" being lit at the hilltop. Well, why not??
If that is not possible, maybe for the present, the Board and the government have to see that no "clandestine jyothi" is lit there, throwing the pilgrims into another dangerous convulsion. It may be recalled that the Indian Space Organization had promised detailed satellite maps of the terrain to the government and the Board. It would be interesting to keep track by satellite of the presence of any "human agency" lighting the "divine fire"! Why can't a body of selected public figures, Board officials, Forest and government reps and a few rationalists be permitted to be present at the Ponnambalamedu venue on the Makara Sankranthi evening so that the issue could be settled once and for all???
That, precisely, is the rub!! Nobody wants to "settle" the issue for good! Why? There is good (?) money in it! That, dear reader, is the sad truth behind all that apathy...
Another curious development that was briefly reported was the claim made by a group representing the "malayarayans" and "malappandarams" and other hill tribes that they traditionally had the claim to light the Makara Jyothi at Ponnambalamedu. They were driven off when the forest area came under the Electricity Board after the commissioning of the Sabarigiri hydel project. The tribals are vocal about wanting their claim restored. A very interesting development indeed. I dont know, but they do not seem to have moved the court yet in this connection. This would tie in with my earlier suggestion. Restore the tribals' right and also start a new 'pilgrimage' to Ponnambalamedu and "market" the jyothi as a part of the Sabarimala rituals. This definitely would save lives and unnecessary rush and madness that have increasingly come to be a mark of the Sabarimala pilgrimage as the years go by.
Yet another aspect that led to the tragedy that received the attention of many officials and functionaries was the unprecedented burgeoning of crowds at the hilltop temple. Not only that the mechanism of crowd control had miserably failed at the Sanctum and all along the trekking paths, there was another 'phenomenon' this year. All the roads leading to Sabarimala were clogged with vehicles and irate pilgrims.
It will be easy to understand if you approached the whole 'phenomenon' from the 'result' and did some 'reverse engineering' to arrive at what had caused all this. The 'result' this year was that the waiting period for everything, be it 'darshan' of the Lord, be it the time in the last-leg queue before the temple, be it in the trekking paths, be it on the roads.... the waiting period could be counted in hours...something like eight to fifteen or more hours...and sometimes, in the far off approaches, almost 20 plus hours.
This was an unusual phenomenon. The usual mechanisms of traffic and vehicle movement and parking and other controls were not working effectively, with the result that vehicles and pilgrims were "pouring in" and clogging every inch of space for miles and miles around. And they were right royally stuck there, mostly in the mountain roads, and far away from anything or anybody. With wait periods growing into something like half a day, or more, these pilgrims became a body of "captive customers" for the "vultures" who moved in, charging at times Rs 50 for a bottle of water, Rs 25 for a snack or other unimaginable sums for paltry products and services.
This was an appalling 'phenomenon' noticed and confirmed by many officials, of course, "off the record", and by many pilgrims, who wanted to be very much on record. So what is the conclusion that any dimwit can come to in the light of this shocking revelation? The whole crowd situation was, to a large part, "engineered" this time by another avaricious bunch--the traders and shopkeepers who "service" the pilgrims. It is common knowledge how every trader, every jeep and other private vehicle driver is squeezed for "commissions" by reps of parties and power groups. There is no need to try and identify these 'extra-constitutional' powers. They are as real as real can be, and they span all political colours and affiliations. Forest officials, particularly, mention this nexus between the local political functionaries and the traders. And anybody who knows anything about at least the abkari and real estate and other "mafias" of God's Own Country only know too well that when it comes to 'milking' the people, pilgrims or non-pilgrims, there is consensus and nexus and what not between the (here, micro) "corporate" players and the political players--which, after all, happens to be a nationally accepted reality these days!
It would take some spirited and impartial enquiries to bring to light the "real truth/s" behind the Sabarimala tragedy. As I suggested at the very beginning of my earlier post, right now that seems like a possible outcome only if Lord Ayyappa himself listens to the pleas of the faithful and "calls the shots", so to speak. The rest of us, if we remember to bother, can be satisfied with a vague report that might have good company while gathering dust in the repositories of the government -- where all such reports eventually go upon their submission.
In the meantime there was some mention of a master plan made and submitted to the State Government by that Master Builder, Laurie Baker. [ "...A pictorial report prepared by the late architect Laurie Baker on creating essential amenities for Sabarimala pilgrims without harming nature has been gathering dust for the past 15 years..." Read more at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article1118038.ece > ]
Naturally, from what I heard, Baker, ever the man of sensibility and unmatched love for nature, favoured the hill temple to be maintained in a spartan manner, with all the concrete monstrosities that have mushroomed around the sanctum, dwarfing it beyond belief, to be razed to the ground. Pilgrims would be permitted to trek up the hill path, again maintained in a natural manner without concrete walkways, with the Pampa Ganapathy Temple serving as a gateway point. This is an eminently sensible and practical suggestion. But the master plan, prepared after a first-hand visit by the Master himself, lies gathering dust in the shelves of the Secretariat.
Will the authorities publish that precious document?? PLEASE! And invite comments from architects, the general public, pilgrims and priests and also from planners so that some kind of a practical solution could be arrived at as soon as possible. But then that would call for a serious 'purpose' in the 'mind' of the government, at best an inanimate and inhuman mechanism.
I have been, on the side, talking to many knowledgeable and gifted people who shared their ideas and concepts to "streamline" the Sabarimala pilgrimage as a unique experience that could even be marketed as a " spiritual destination". The details, like the pieces of a large and complex jigsaw puzzle, are now slowly falling into place. But I am sure of one thing--when a group of live minds with sincerity and enthusiasm come to concentrate on a problem, the solution is likely to be simple and elegant and beautiful.
On second thought, that's what WE ALL want with regard to the Sabarimala situation, whether we are believers ourselves or not. I am looking forward to sharing with you that final shape/solution of the 'jigsaw puzzle' in a future post.
So, here is to a sensible Sabarimala pilgrimage!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
A sensation-a-day is the mantra on which the media celebrates its existence. A sensation at least once in a few days is the formula on which it manages to thrive. No sensation for a couple of weeks, and that is the sure-fire blight for "media-wilt"! Idle thoughts these are not. Anybody who has perhaps a less than average memory, but who is careful about keeping a note of half-a-dozen sensations from the previous month, and checking for its "progress" for about three months would come to the above conclusion. Then there is another interesting side to sensations too-- you just can't have a couple of simultaneous sensations! One of them will get relegated to the back of nowhere in no time!
Such being the curious nature of media "attention" on issues that are more than mere sensations, it behoves the responsible citizen to "recap" and "revisit" topics and issues that demand more than a cursory attention. The recent tragedy at Sabarimala on the occasion of the Makarajyothi (in mid-January) is fresh in the minds of at least some of us, and surely the date is etched indelibly in the minds of the poor souls who lost a father, a husband, a son or a brother in the melee at Pulmedu on that fateful day. Do have a look at my earlier post "Sense and Sabarimala". ( http://2ndthinker.blogspot.com/2011/01/sense-and-sabarimala.html )
The weeks that followed the tragedy saw a tapering off of interest in the matter despite a rather spirited slanging match between the Forest Department, the Electricity Board and, of course, the Devaswam Board. Now the brouhaha has virtually died down and we (and surely the media!) are waiting for something else to happen before we start our response engines!
I was in the meantime keeping track of the post-tragedy fallout.
It was interesting, nay amusing, to see the government (which means the clever politicians!) playing hide-and-seek with the question of whether the Makara Jyothi was man-made or not, and in the event that it was man-made, who was/were the man/men who made it! The Chief Minister, an adroit old hand, easily side-stepped the issue by saying that it was a matter of 'faith' into which the government was loath to enter! No question of any enquiry of fact-finding regarding a question that was debated ad-nauseum by all and sundry, including the rationalists. It is fated to remain a mystery.
The sad fact remains that the Makara Sankranthi pilgrim rush is mostly as a result of the pilgrims' wish to witness the 'divine jyothi'. What goes without saying is that the creation and perpetuation of the "cash cow" that the Makara jyothi was a legerdemain that was being accomplished with the tacit knowledge and connivance of the "powers that be". Those who have been following the developments are sure to remember the many revelations in the media as regards the truth about this "magical flickering light that appeared on cue" at Ponnambalamedu, and for a glimpse of which hundreds of poor pilgrims had paid for with their precious lives.
Here are a few links of interest:
"...The ‘Makarajyothi' issue has taken a new turn with a former Commissioner of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) writing to the Devaswom Ombudsman in Kerala, asserting that the TDB had indeed been lighting the fire seen atop Ponnambalamedu..." Read more at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1117779.ece >
"...Contending that Makarajyothi was not a miracle but a man-made fire, the Supreme Court was moved on Saturday to stop lighting it at Ponnambalamedu near the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala in January every year... More at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1117782.ece >
"...The Hindu on Friday posed the question (is the Makara Jyothi man-made) before a number of prominent persons closely associated with, or seek to represent the interests of, the revered and ancient forest-shrine. The answer: it is indeed man-made...." Follow the story at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1110275.ece >
The clincher, however, was the statement made by the Pandalam Raja himself in a letter to the Editor of The Hindu newspaper. ( http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/article1110364.ece ) The Pandalam Royal family is part and parcel of the legend of Lord Ayyappa and even today the Raja retains many privileges, including being the official custodian of the Lord's festive ornaments and paraphernalia. The Pandalam Royal family has been involved with the rituals of the Ayyappa temple from the very beginning. But apparently the Devaswam Board's clever stratagem for making some solid quick money did not "gel" with the rather orthodox Raja, and he has now come out with a categoric denial of there being any "divinity" associated with the flame that flickers at Ponnambalamedu.
The Raja being the accepted authority as regards many customs and rituals of the Sabarimala temple, there does not seem to be the need for any further authority to accept the truth that the "divine jyothi" is a man-made sham jyothi, lit in order to deceive the poor pilgrim. We have to educate the pilgrims about the truth of the jyothi before the next Makara Sankranthi day. Tout it as a part of the temple ritual, if you will. If the environment and forest ministries will permit, the Devaswam Board can open a trekking path to Ponnambalamedu and make some good money by selling a limited number of passes to pilgrims so that they could witness the "deeparadhana" and the "jyothi" being lit at the hilltop. Well, why not??
If that is not possible, maybe for the present, the Board and the government have to see that no "clandestine jyothi" is lit there, throwing the pilgrims into another dangerous convulsion. It may be recalled that the Indian Space Organization had promised detailed satellite maps of the terrain to the government and the Board. It would be interesting to keep track by satellite of the presence of any "human agency" lighting the "divine fire"! Why can't a body of selected public figures, Board officials, Forest and government reps and a few rationalists be permitted to be present at the Ponnambalamedu venue on the Makara Sankranthi evening so that the issue could be settled once and for all???
That, precisely, is the rub!! Nobody wants to "settle" the issue for good! Why? There is good (?) money in it! That, dear reader, is the sad truth behind all that apathy...
Another curious development that was briefly reported was the claim made by a group representing the "malayarayans" and "malappandarams" and other hill tribes that they traditionally had the claim to light the Makara Jyothi at Ponnambalamedu. They were driven off when the forest area came under the Electricity Board after the commissioning of the Sabarigiri hydel project. The tribals are vocal about wanting their claim restored. A very interesting development indeed. I dont know, but they do not seem to have moved the court yet in this connection. This would tie in with my earlier suggestion. Restore the tribals' right and also start a new 'pilgrimage' to Ponnambalamedu and "market" the jyothi as a part of the Sabarimala rituals. This definitely would save lives and unnecessary rush and madness that have increasingly come to be a mark of the Sabarimala pilgrimage as the years go by.
Yet another aspect that led to the tragedy that received the attention of many officials and functionaries was the unprecedented burgeoning of crowds at the hilltop temple. Not only that the mechanism of crowd control had miserably failed at the Sanctum and all along the trekking paths, there was another 'phenomenon' this year. All the roads leading to Sabarimala were clogged with vehicles and irate pilgrims.
It will be easy to understand if you approached the whole 'phenomenon' from the 'result' and did some 'reverse engineering' to arrive at what had caused all this. The 'result' this year was that the waiting period for everything, be it 'darshan' of the Lord, be it the time in the last-leg queue before the temple, be it in the trekking paths, be it on the roads.... the waiting period could be counted in hours...something like eight to fifteen or more hours...and sometimes, in the far off approaches, almost 20 plus hours.
This was an unusual phenomenon. The usual mechanisms of traffic and vehicle movement and parking and other controls were not working effectively, with the result that vehicles and pilgrims were "pouring in" and clogging every inch of space for miles and miles around. And they were right royally stuck there, mostly in the mountain roads, and far away from anything or anybody. With wait periods growing into something like half a day, or more, these pilgrims became a body of "captive customers" for the "vultures" who moved in, charging at times Rs 50 for a bottle of water, Rs 25 for a snack or other unimaginable sums for paltry products and services.
This was an appalling 'phenomenon' noticed and confirmed by many officials, of course, "off the record", and by many pilgrims, who wanted to be very much on record. So what is the conclusion that any dimwit can come to in the light of this shocking revelation? The whole crowd situation was, to a large part, "engineered" this time by another avaricious bunch--the traders and shopkeepers who "service" the pilgrims. It is common knowledge how every trader, every jeep and other private vehicle driver is squeezed for "commissions" by reps of parties and power groups. There is no need to try and identify these 'extra-constitutional' powers. They are as real as real can be, and they span all political colours and affiliations. Forest officials, particularly, mention this nexus between the local political functionaries and the traders. And anybody who knows anything about at least the abkari and real estate and other "mafias" of God's Own Country only know too well that when it comes to 'milking' the people, pilgrims or non-pilgrims, there is consensus and nexus and what not between the (here, micro) "corporate" players and the political players--which, after all, happens to be a nationally accepted reality these days!
It would take some spirited and impartial enquiries to bring to light the "real truth/s" behind the Sabarimala tragedy. As I suggested at the very beginning of my earlier post, right now that seems like a possible outcome only if Lord Ayyappa himself listens to the pleas of the faithful and "calls the shots", so to speak. The rest of us, if we remember to bother, can be satisfied with a vague report that might have good company while gathering dust in the repositories of the government -- where all such reports eventually go upon their submission.
In the meantime there was some mention of a master plan made and submitted to the State Government by that Master Builder, Laurie Baker. [ "...A pictorial report prepared by the late architect Laurie Baker on creating essential amenities for Sabarimala pilgrims without harming nature has been gathering dust for the past 15 years..." Read more at < http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article1118038.ece > ]
Naturally, from what I heard, Baker, ever the man of sensibility and unmatched love for nature, favoured the hill temple to be maintained in a spartan manner, with all the concrete monstrosities that have mushroomed around the sanctum, dwarfing it beyond belief, to be razed to the ground. Pilgrims would be permitted to trek up the hill path, again maintained in a natural manner without concrete walkways, with the Pampa Ganapathy Temple serving as a gateway point. This is an eminently sensible and practical suggestion. But the master plan, prepared after a first-hand visit by the Master himself, lies gathering dust in the shelves of the Secretariat.
Will the authorities publish that precious document?? PLEASE! And invite comments from architects, the general public, pilgrims and priests and also from planners so that some kind of a practical solution could be arrived at as soon as possible. But then that would call for a serious 'purpose' in the 'mind' of the government, at best an inanimate and inhuman mechanism.
I have been, on the side, talking to many knowledgeable and gifted people who shared their ideas and concepts to "streamline" the Sabarimala pilgrimage as a unique experience that could even be marketed as a " spiritual destination". The details, like the pieces of a large and complex jigsaw puzzle, are now slowly falling into place. But I am sure of one thing--when a group of live minds with sincerity and enthusiasm come to concentrate on a problem, the solution is likely to be simple and elegant and beautiful.
On second thought, that's what WE ALL want with regard to the Sabarimala situation, whether we are believers ourselves or not. I am looking forward to sharing with you that final shape/solution of the 'jigsaw puzzle' in a future post.
So, here is to a sensible Sabarimala pilgrimage!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)