She has to set her house in order first!

Sonia Gandhi was served with a notice from the Election Commission for her use of language”, merchants of death”(maut ke saudagar) in the Gujarat election   campaign.
Mr.Narendra Modi’s retaliation justifying the “police encounter deaths” as a response to Sonia Gandhi’s this remark also received the EC’s attention and a notice and Mr.Modi’s reply was also under the EC’s scrutiny. Supreme Court also issued a contempt of court notice.

This time, the EC’s action not only against Mrs.Gandhi but also her deputy Mr.Digvijay Singh. Both the leaders were caught off guard, as it were by the sudden activism of the EC, given the tense atmosphere created by Modi’s high-pitched campaign that left him a long mileage vis a vis the Congress, the main rival for the Gujarat honours.
What surprised the observers was the fact that Sonia Gandhi always looked beyond reproach and also beyond reach for anyone to question her actions closely. So, EC’s swift action caused some flutters and to say the least the Congress was quite unprepared for such a point scoring!

Now, is Mrs.Gandhi justified to use such an expression?
And who coined the term? It is attributed to a Bollywood script writer. In the past Mrs.Gandhi’s speech writers were Mani Shankar Aiyar and Jairam Ramesh. These “wordsmiths” after all have some value? For creating political storms? While the TV news channels played the tapes of the two leaders. This time the new entrant is said to be a non-political person, that only could have helped, it is said, to have such a polarising phrase!

One wonders where the limit to civilised speech is in a public discourse, including in a highly charged election season like the current one.

Though she claims she didn’t mean any individual but only to the Gujarat administration and the establishment. Surprisingly, she hasn’t made her reply public and so there would be some speculation what else she has said to plead her case.
After all the EC is a quasi-judicial body and any notice amounts to an indictment. The speeches of Gandhi and Modi were played out on the TV news channels and the viewers can make their own judgements. Yes, Modi’s speeches have all exceeded the limits of Constitutionalism and decency for any society that cares for certain norms and behaviour. Mrs.Gandhi’s speeches were of course different and they in fact dot refer to Modi directly but nevertheless they were said in an election rhetoric that can’t be taken as a great offence to any civilised listener. May be the EC acted in a sense of great responsibility and it is for the competent authorities to arrive at a conclusion.
The point is that Indian election politics under Narendra Modi had reached a dangerous level.

He seems to imagine he can cross any limit and incite the audience frenzy as he wants. This has to be stopped.
And how this can be done is for all to deliberate.

If courts can help then let them do their duty. The best way of course ideally is for the electorate to throw out such undesirable elements.
But then the undesirable elements are multiplying and in all parties, from the CPI (M) to the DMK, key allies in Mrs. Gandhi’s party’s coalition.

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Define your vision for India!

L.K.Advani, 80, is now named by the BJP as the next Prime Minister, if the party wins the next elections. That’s fine. In a democracy, after all, we must have an Opposition party, a strong enough and a united Opposition that is part of any vibrant democracy. Our polity is one such and widely admired all over the world.

The thoughts at a time when the major Opposition party names its Prime Ministerial candidate are likely to react immediately to the major ruling party, namely, the Congress and what it does in a similar situation. It is here there would be tremours in the Congress which has over the years has become a family party; a dynastic party whose sole aim seems to be to preserve the party as a family property and the thought of openly naming the Prime Ministerial candidate is anathema to it. Why?

It is a difficult question to answer, more so for the Congress party itself or for other parties also to see why the Congress party is so blatantly unconcerned about such niceties!

Indian democracy evolved over the past sixty years in an unusual manner that the evolution is owing to the foresight and leadership qualities of our freedom fighters, Gandhi and Nehru and others who were all men of outstanding qualities, sacrifice for the public cause was their hallmark.

Today, we see a totally different scenario. Politics has become caste and chauvinism and a strong dose of cynicism and that is why so much immorality, so much illegitimacy and so much of outward pretences and inward selfishness ness are marked in our leader’s behavioral pattern.

So, given the shortcomings that mark our polity, we have to take the brighter side of our public life and see what best we can make out of it.

It is in this sense we welcome L.K.Advani being publicly named as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. That at least would now focus on the man in question. Advani was always seen as a hardliner in the sense he pushes things a bit far to the brinkmanship, the Babrimasjid demolition is directly traced to his rath yatra and also the credit is given to him for having transformed a  rag-tag set of organisations and groups, RSS, VHP and what have you into a unified force  to emerge as a party of power when it became the first NDA  coalition under Vajpayee who won  a rare honor inside and outside India for his moderate visage and also wiser leader of much consequence. The world powers, the USA and Russia saw in Vajpayee a mature leader. So, this legacy would rub off Advani, jhoefully.

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As sugarcane farmers punished by sugar factories and the governments!
Biodiesel policy won’t work if it threatens food security!

PM on his South African tour was publicised as talking of biofuels at the Brazil, S.Africa and India summit. But this is just public rations exercise only.

Ethnol, biodiesel and green diesel! Do you know the various biofuels that are now in the news? For a start, ethnol, biodiesel and green fuel are different energies and also they come from different technologies.

First, let us see why the current buzz about biodiesel. In the Sather President George Bush promised that the USA must substitute 20 % of fuels by biodiesel in 10 years. So, there is lot of activity.

Men like Vinod Khosla, the Venture Capital founder had got into funding biofuel projects in a big way. The USA is the largest consumer of energy, it uses over 15 million barrels a day of liquid fuels for transportation, there are 42 gallons to a barrel and the subsidy currently on ethanol is 51 cents per gallon, while that on biodiesel is 1 dollar a gallon and now that sort of subsidy is clearly not feasible in the long run. Ethanol now accounts for about 2% of US gasoline consumption.

Second, the biodiesel promotion movement has lot of emotional appeal and all sorts of socially conscious sections want to join the biofuel bandwagon for the simple reason it can promote agriculture and the rural economies in a big way by exploiting the agricultural plant wealth and also the biomass. But this is not as simple as it looked. Now, there is a realisation that any such large scale attempt would immediately impact the food security issues in the world and this is already felt as the wheat prices are raising and wheat imports of many countries, including India are hit in a big way. That might also might have lots of political implications and also some other issues on national security and national sovereignty etc.

Third, the current environmental deterioration, climate change etc have also brought about some pressure to cut down green house gases. So, cut down the petroleum use somehow or other and what alternative except the biofuel.

So, a recent visitor to India, Ms.Jennifer Holmgren a chemical scientist and technologist who sits on the advisory boards of Honeywell, a Fortune 500 company says that the new technologies are now offering the possibilities of reverting to new technologies like the second generation technologies, instead of using sugarcane or corn or other food crops use the vegetable oil and add methanol and hydrogen and take all the oxygen out and it is called ‘green diesel’ Ethanol and biodiesel are corrosive while green diesel is by contrast completely fungible. Says the Honeywell lady that they are in the process of building the first commercially viable green diesel plants. Compared with producing biodiesel, green diesel doesn’t cost more, both are the same economically to build and use. Now, the production efficiencies are improved to the extent of 10-20% for ethanol and biodiesel and the ethanol in the US, on the enzyme side, the cost efficiencies have improved as much as 30%.

But there are still obstacles, there is no paradigm shift in the sense that any ethanol and biodiesel has to be produced still only out of corn or sugarcane and that would impact on the food supplies. So, there has to be an alternative to food crops, we have to go for non-edible vegetable oil like jatropha or algae that can be viable commercially on a large scale. The breakthrough will come, say experts, when cellulosic biomass can be economically used as feed stock for biofuels.

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Proceeded by farmer’s suicide in Amravati!

After PM’s Vidarbha package what hopes for farmers even if elections come?
President’s prodding’s must help and the public would be interested to know the results!

Surely, our economic reforms haven’t worked in favour of the farmers, the disadvantaged who live outside the cities. At least in the cities there are the urban corporations and municipalities where some problem or other like public services would be taken care of thanks to the press, the TV channels and the vocal public and civil society groups.

In the rural hinterland, there is complete darkness, literally and metaphorically!
The employment guarantee scheme in Gulbarga district, we are told, has an outstanding payment to the tune of nearly Rs.one crore! You can well imagine the state of affairs in remote Orissa or Bihar. Even in the otherwise politically charged W.Bengal, you see the ration riots and the otherwise well-heeled Brinda Karat and Prakash Karat have the luxury of waxing eloquent at the PDS deficits and stalling the Indo-US nuclear deal!

So, we have a national scenario where the PM goes about his usual routine overseas tours, talks of biofuels and alternative energy, oblivious of the ground realities in his own country! The economic reforms have done much good for the country. But how many among the urban elite take time to ponder that how much of this reforms is the handiwork of the PM and his team and how much is really the outcome of globalisation and international capital movements and the coming of the information technology and communication revolutions?

As for the government’s hand, you can just see the latest survey of the International Food Policy Research Institute that  Global Hunger Index gives India a score of 25.73 in 2000-2003.Virtually unchanged from what the index gave in 1995-97.
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Why not in agriculture and peoples’ growth?

This year’s human development index lets down India. India falls two steps downward! From 126 Indian slips to 128 rank! A national shame?

We ask the decision makers, the leaders in politics and the corporate world!
We read, day in and day out, in the urban press, in the business press, about the various corporate success stories. But India is a vast country, a vast population, over 60 per cent still engaged in agriculture, rural enterprises, our own micro, small and medium business are so large numbers. But there is the distressing daily reporting, again, in the urban press about farmers suicides. Distress in agri sector, the SMEs is crowded with sickness and there are no success stories to celebrate nationally?

You don’t read about the President or the Prime Minister celebrating any such people-centric growth successes, no award functions, no agro-entrepreneurs awards, no padmabhusams to any co-operatives or  co-operators, no more Amul is spoken about. Does this mean that no visionaries are available outside the cosy corporates, the five star hotel lobby halls or the well-dressed and well-heeled only can make success in India?

Yes, it is a rather disappointing thought to think that neither our President nor Prime Minister of the various party leaders have any imagination whatever. They don’t celebrate where celebrations must be in order!

They don’t find it worthwhile they have to spot talents and achievements beyond a very narrow number of persons and corporates. Why you only celebrate the billionaires? Why only you reward the bureaucrats and big businessmen with padmabhusans?

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You dont need a Nobel Prize winner to tell you what to do to abolish poverty and raise living standards!

UPA government led by Manmohan Singh might be better than the NDA government led by Vajpayee. But the over all economic development was initiated by the NDA and it is the same road the UPA is also trailing. We mean the road infrastructure, National Highways Authority was the first big infrastructure project that triggered the visible changes in the physical landscape in the eyes of the common man. So too our nuclear programme, Vajpayee regime exploded the nuclear bomb and also initiated the nuclear power agreement.

What is worrying the common man is the question of how the future developments in the nuclear power fields would evolve. Whether India would pursue its foreign policy of peace and non-aligned movement so that the Third World countries, also Russia would be poised towards a peace-dictated direction or India would be more drawn towards a unilateral USA superpower syndrome.

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Puts India lower this year!

India falls to rank 128, two places below than last year!
The UN Human Development index is a clear measurable independent index on any country in the world to look at itself about what is happening in the world.

India has been the source for much of the work to construct this index. Prof.Amartya Sen got the Nobel Prize for this work also.
Yet, we see a paradox of sorts. We have eminent economist Prof. and Doc. Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister. Amartya Sen is very much active on the India scene. His home state of W.Bengal is in flames on Nandigram!

All these facts and developments have a bearing on why India is slipping on the development front. On the human development front, we mean?

The UPA has been very active on the social sector development, funds allocations are also in place. And yet, why we failed?

ur education, more so the very critical elementary education system, the very special scheme, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has been our success story so far. SSA provides relevant and useful elementary education to the age group 6-14 years and we are supposed to reach a 100 per cent enrolment by 2010.

During 2006-07 around 242,876 teachers have been recruited taking the total teachers  to a staggering 825,702.There is  still a shortfall of teachers, as much as 18% and the Central government levies 2 % education cess specially to fund the SSA and the midday meals scheme, another new incentive to ensure hundred per cent enrolment. Then, as every educator knows it is a very difficult thing at the bottom level to bring the children from poor strata to the school stream. There are one thousand reasons why some won’t come into the system and also why even those who came in the first place won’t stay on in the system.

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Anyone cares for such state of affairs?
Certainly not Manmohan Singh or Arjun Singh!

This year’s annual rankings of the world’s best universities are out! What is news? What do Indian universities know about such news? There was no reaction whatever from whatever quarters you expect to have!

Yes, no reaction from the Prime Minister, supposedly the most learned university man at the top of the honours! Not also from the next best bet, we mean the education minister of the country, the very venerable Arjun Singh who enjoys the distinct honour of presiding over the HRD ministry twice! What qualifies him to have that double honour? His learning or erudition or his political clout? Or, his track record? On any conceivable ground he is no performer, may be someone over-estimates his political clout or he himself imagines? One can’t be sure!

Then, in the order of our education hierarchy. UDC? When you last heard of such a body in existence? Or, the newly created AICTE? Its clout also had fallen, once the country realised that the private sector players, the most unscrupulous in the country had now joined hands to create education empires, vast complexes of campuses, almost rivaling the newly coming SEZs. Yes, it is literally vast real estates these private self-financing ventures that spin money Ratan Tata might envy. In TN, you can see the full play of this highly unscrupulous elements, each has a notorious story about himself, vast encroachments urban land, even encroaching the waterways and riverbeds and also adopting all the know rules to break all rules and conventions in establishing these complexes and literally collecting money through a water tap-like system!

The education standards you can expect from these establishments. They are also now all deemed universities; they don’t respect the UGC, AICTE or the state governments. In TN, it is an open scandal. No less in Kerala where the powerful private education lobby threatens the very Achudananadan government!

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The new land rights in the time of Nandigrams and SEZs!

Yes, so many new developments in the last few months! The Nandigram fires are not yet out. There is an undercurrent of new fermament. Across a wide spectrum of opinion and political self-survival! The CPI (M) could not have dreamt of such a turnout for its very morally indefensible positions and postures.

It is a great pity that it took some 30 years of such mistaken ideology to get exposed so thoroughly and so unexpectedly! The CPI (M) has the audacity to question the High Court, the office of the Governor and even the clutch of intellectuals and artists it counted for so long to keep mum and fall in silence whenever its credibility was questioned.
Why Nandigram had become a watershed in the evolution of politics in India? There are so many strands to a clear articulation or formation of a rational opinion. First, it was the long history of Stalinism. When that ghost had been laid by the very Soviet Union, it is here in the last bastion of W.Bengal, it is Stalinism that was still held as a piece of wisdom and now that stands exposed. It is the legacy of leftover Bengal renaissance to sustain an imagined intellectual consistency that drew the unsuspect and even the most suspect bunch of intellectuals, academics, the journalists and a wide variety of artists and others to stand by a party that had all the ingredients of authoritarian and even fascist tendencies.

That is the famous slogan of the right to the tillers of the soil to own land. Now, what are the land rights today? No one can dare to spell out. If the land is to the tillers then a whole gamut of opinion has to be questions. Land to the tiller in the countryside, in the villages and also land for the encroachers in the urban centers?

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FDI is growing in a big way. Projected to be Rs.1,300 crore by 2009!
VC funds, innovative agro technologies can change the face of Indian agri/food sectors.
Subodh Kant Sahay, Minister for food processing. Wants to create more agro-entrepreneurs!

All agri universities must start agro entrepreneur’s courses! One of the unsung heroes of the Indian agricultural sector is the minister for food processing, namely, Mr.Subodh Kant Sahay. For one reason or other, he or his ministry is not hitting the news headlines! It is high time he does takes his role seriously and gets all that is within his powers to get his ministry’s work  noticed by the public.

Why the food processing ministry is not taken notice of? See what his ministry’s potential is.
India has over 1.10 billion consumers and there is a fast growing high income earning middle class. There is a largely untapped domestic market of 1,000 million consumers for the food processing sector. 200 million middle class ,urban based and otherwise, high income earning workers and professions and they are expected to shift to processed foods in one form or other ,given the fact there is a faster urbanisation of life and lifestyle for these vast millions of consumers.

he minister has set out a number of potential invest schemes for the new age entrepreneurs in food processing. Mega food parks, agri infrastructure from cold chains to supply chains and logistics, vegetables and fruit processing to ready to eat foods, in dairy to animal products to seafood to cereals to wine and beer and machinery for packaging. In fact, there are various stages in food processing, from primary processing to specific processing for specific food segments. Milk processing in itself is a vast enterprise, given the fact that India is the top milk producer and the per capita consumption of milk is still low and the potential for dairy industry is almost unlimited in the foreseeable future. So too in every other agri segment.
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