On China, trust less and verify more -- G Parthasarathy

December 8, 2012, 6:02 pm

≪ Previous: Twice-born Nehru-Gandhis -- Kanchan Gupta

07 DEC 2012

On China, trust less and verify more

Author: G Parthasarathy

It is shocking that senior members of our security and defence establishments continue to place their faith in Beijing rather naively. They have seemingly not learned lessons from past experiences

While India has periodically been described as a ‘dynastic democracy’, China can now be described as a ‘dynastic dictatorship’, after its 18th Party Congress. Outgoing leader Hu Jintao alluded to concerns and the growing dissatisfaction in China over political corruption. He warned, “Corruption could even cause the collapse of the (Communist) Party and fall of the State.” The Party Congress had been preceded by the downfall of its rising star Bo Xilai, whose lavish and flamboyant lifestyle had led to the conviction of his wife for murdering a British businessman, and revelations of the billions of dollars of assets that Bo and his family had acquired, This was followed by a well-documented leak, quite evidently by Bo’s supporters, about ill-gotten wealth accumulated by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and his family.

China’s worst kept secrets about dynastic politics in the Communist Party became public when it emerged that four of the seven members of its highest decision making body, the Standing Committee of the Politburo, were ‘Princelings’, or descendants of first generation, Mao-era political leaders. It is no secret that most Princelings, including Party chief Xi Jinping, have lavish lifestyles, with their families having acquired huge assets and extensive business interests. With public awareness increasing, because of extensive internet connectivity, the contradictions between having an open economy linked to foreign markets on the one hand and a one-party, authoritarian political structure perceived to be unresponsive to public grievances on the other, are coming to the fore in China. Interestingly, the 86-year old former President Jiang Zemin, who has two sons with extensive business interests, played a key role in the rise of the Princelings to power, quite evidently to ensure his sons’ ‘interests’ remain protected in the future.

Given the composition of its new leadership, China will inevitably continue to seek new ways to further open up its economy and maintain a high growth rate. But the Princelings are unlikely to bring any changes in the basic authoritarian nature of the State apparatus. Tutored by the approach of Deng Xiao Ping, who was determined not to follow the disastrous path set by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, by experimenting with political reform, the new dispensation will be averse to increasing democratisation. China will inevitably continue on its path of rapid military modernisation, combined with an ‘assertive’ line on its maritime and land boundary claims. One has recently witnessed aggressive Chinese postures resulting in a virtual naval takeover around the disputed Scarborough Shoal, claimed by the Philippines. A similar aggressive approach has been seen in the course of recent tensions with Japan, with Chinese naval vessels entering territorial waters, adjacent to the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. China has evidently been emboldened by the American assertion that, while the US does have a stand on freedom and maintenance of peace and stability in the South China Sea, it “does not take sides in (maritime) disputes”.

China’s recent decision to depict the entire South China Sea, together with Arunachal Pradesh and parts of Ladakh, as Chinese territory in maps on Chinese passports, has to be seen in the light of this growing Chinese readiness to use might and military coercion to enforce its territorial claims. With jingoistic propaganda, together with a military build- up and coercion being used by the Chinese Communist Party leadership to assert territorial claims, evidently to divert public opinion away from domestic issues like high-level corruption, China appears in no mood to show any flexibility on its territorial claims along the Sino-Indian border. As Chinese passports are generally valid for 10 years, there can logically be no change in China’s territorial claims in this period.

Given these developments, one cannot but be surprised by the statement of National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who has brushed aside the serious implications of these Chinese actions, while voicing optimism that “we are in the process of agreeing on a framework to settle the boundary”. Have we forgotten that, after agreeing to delineate the Line of Actual Control, the Chinese backed off on the entire process? Moreover, in 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao agreed that “in reaching a border settlement, the two sides shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in border areas”. This clearly signalled that there was no question of transferring territories containing settled populations and that it addressed Indian concerns on Chinese claims to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. Within a year, however, China was laying claim not merely on Tawang, but the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh as well. One can only conclude that the new ‘framework’ the National Security Adviser has spoken of to settle the boundary issue would be about as successful as the much touted ‘Joint Anti-terror Mechanism’ with Pakistan hadbeen — now unceremoniously buried, following the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai.

Just a day before the NSA spoke, the Chief of Army Staff, General Bikram Singh, grandiosely described bilateral relations with China as “absolutely perfect” and ebulliently added that mechanisms were now in place to solve any issues between the two countries. This was an astonishing comment from the Army chief, coming at a time when the Army wants additional strike formations, artillery and attack helicopters, apart from vastly improved communication techonology, on the border with China. Was it because General Bikram Singh feels that, given the resource crunch and the imperatives for pre-election populist measures, the Army is unlikely to get its wishes fulfilled soon and needs to sound conciliatory to the Chinese? Moreover, do the other two Service Chiefs and the Union Minister for Defence share theoptimism that one can now rest easy as we have “mechanisms” to deal with the “absolutely perfect” relations with China? All these issues need to be debated, now that Parliament is in session.

New Delhi is talking of getting super-fast trains and rail equipment from China, at a time when there is growing concern at our over- dependence on second-rate Chinese power equipment, which has been prone to breakdowns. There are also serious concerns about the dangers to our cyber security and communications infrastructure posed by massive imports from China. Should we not insist on co-production, together with transfer of technology in such strategic sectors, with preference for cooperation with friendly countries like Japan, France and Germany, rather than with China? Moreover, our experiences in 1962 teach us that in dealing with China, wishful thinking, or ill-advised adventurism as adopted in our post 1958 ‘forward policy’, are best avoided.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52967-on-china-trust-less-and-verify-more.html

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India's ocean

December 8, 2012, 6:12 pm

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India's Ocean
Could New Delhi's growing naval force change the balance of power in the Pacific?

BY DHRUVA JAISHANKAR | DECEMBER 6, 2012

Is the Indian Navy about to start mixing it up with China on the high seas? For years, as the Chinese have modernized their naval fleet, Indian strategists have worried about what that might mean for India's political and economic interests. A recent book by C. Raja Mohan, one of India's most influential strategic thinkers, explores the prospect of Sino-Indian competition spilling from the Himalayas to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, risking a struggle for maritime influence in the region among the United States, China, and India.

So it was all the more interesting, when, at a press conference Monday, India's top admiral appeared to suggest that his navy would defend Indo-Vietnamese oil exploration efforts in the South China Sea against Chinese aggression. An Indian state-owned oil company, ONGC Videsh, has been involved in deepwater explorations with Vietnam in the South China Sea since 2006, despite Chinese claims of sovereignty over that area.

But the reality of Admiral D.K. Joshi's statement was far less sensational. Rather than signalling a deployment, he merely reinforced the longstanding Indian position that China's naval modernization concerned India, and that like other maritime powers, India was preparing for worst-case scenarios. It wasn't even a signal to clear the decks, let alone a shot across the bow.

Nonetheless, India is far more likely to become a regular naval presence in the Pacific than many previously imagined, due to its rapidly expanding economy, improving military technologies, and growing energy interests. The Indian Navy has historically been the smallest and most poorly-resourced of India's three military services, in keeping with the country's security preoccupations at home and its unresolved land border disputes with Pakistan and China. It has just 60,000 active personnel and a $7 billion annual budget, roughly a quarter of the strength and resources of China's People's Liberation Army Navy. Its long-range capabilities come from a single aircraft carrier, a second-hand amphibious transport dock, 14 German- or Russian-designed diesel-powered submarines, and about 20 destroyers and frigates.

But power is relative, and this seemingly small flotilla today constitutes the largest naval presence in the Indian Ocean after the U.S. Navy. Beyond the United States and China, only Japan, South Korea, and perhaps Taiwan boast even comparable capacities for the region, although their navies are more narrowly focused. But India's navy dwarfs those of other countries embroiled in territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea. The two strongest rival claimants to China, Vietnam and the Philippines, boast just three active frigates between them. The temporary presence of even a small Indian squadron in the Pacific could make a meaningful difference to the region's balance of power.

India's growing interests, resources, and technological capabilities will likely lead it to increased naval activity east of the Strait of Malacca, the critical junction of the Pacific and Indian Oceans through which 40 percent of the world's trade and most of East Asia's oil imports flow. India is conducting sea trials of an indigenously-designed nuclear-powered submarine, which will significantly increase its navy's operational range. In the next two years, India will induct a second aircraft carrier and modern French submarines into active service, to upgrade its aging fleet. The navy's share of the defense budget has steadily grown from less than 15 percent of India's annual military expenditure in 2000 to 19 percent in 2012, outpacing India's overall defense spending. And the 2009 agreement to purchase P-8 aircraft from the United States, capable of interdicting ships and tracking submarines, signals India's technological ambitions in the high seas.

Perhaps more importantly, India is able to work with other regional navies. Beginning with basic exercises in the early 2000s, the Indian Navy's collaboration with the U.S. Pacific Command has evolved into complex war games. In 2004, India tested its ability to respond to regional crises in coordination with the United States, Japan, and Australia by performing humanitarian relief operations in Southeast Asia following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. And the Malabar series of naval exercises between India and the United States, which have also involved Japan, Australia, and Singapore, has strengthened the Indian Navy's ability to work closely with partners far from its shores. Contrast this to China: Beyond dustups with Southeast Asian countries, and with Japan over disputed islands -- which only generate further suspicion of Chinese military intentions -- Beijing is also quick to break off military ties, like it did after Washington sold weapons to Taiwan in 2010.

None of this means that India is looking to pick a fight with China in the South China Sea, particularly as India has no territorial stakes there. Other facets of the Sino-Indian relationship -- the fragile boundary talks over disputed Himalayan territory and bilateral trade of more than $70 billion and growing -- are of far greater importance to New Delhi. At the same time, renouncing claims to its assets in Vietnam in response to perceived Chinese pressure could embarrass the Indian government, both domestically and internationally. When confronted with pressure from Beijing -- as during the Dalai Lama's 2009 visit to the disputed border town of Tawang or periods when China has refused to issue visas in some Indian passports -- New Delhi's response has generally been to stick to its guns.

India evidently needs to do a better job of managing its message. Its National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, who was in Beijing for border negotiations when Joshi made his statement, countered that the Indian media had "manufactured" the story. For its part, China needs to appreciate that its aggressive pursuit of maritime territory compels India to cooperate more closely with Vietnam and the Philippines. Beijing's issuing of passports this November featuring a map showing the fullest extent of its territorial claims was a remarkably clumsy gesture, provoking simultaneous outrage in India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. China may have only itself to blame if these states find greater common cause with one another, and with other regional maritime powers.

India's steadily growing naval capabilities and its deepening commercial engagements in the Pacific Rim means that it now has the ability to provide security in the region to ensure open and secure sea lines of communication. For many countries invested in the region -- not least the United States -- that is welcome. For China too, this presents another opportunity for improving cooperation with New Delhi, but that would require it to accept India's ability to play the role of a Pacific power.

Dhruva Jaishankar is a transatlantic fellow with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Follow him on Twitter at @d_jaishankar.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/06/indias_ocean?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full

India’s South China Sea Gambit By Zachary Keck
December 5, 2012

India more forcefully asserted itself into the South China Sea dispute on Monday, with a senior naval officer saying New Delhi is prepared to deploy ships to the disputed waters should its oil exploration interests come under threat.

Indian Navy Chief Admiral D.K Joshi said that his country stands ready to intervene in disputes in the South China Sea if Indian state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp’s (ONGC) joint oil exploration venture with Vietnam came under threat.

"Not that we expect to be in those waters very frequently, but when the requirement is there for situations where the country's interests are involved, for example ONGC Videsh, we will be required to go there and we are prepared for that," Joshi told reporters.

The admiral went on to say that the Indian Navy has been holding exercises to prepare for such contingencies.

His comments came in response to Vietnam accusing two Chinese fishing boats of cutting the cables of a Vietnam vessel doing seismic oil exploration in the South China Sea on Friday. Vietnam has increased its own naval patrols in the disputed waters in response to the perceived threat.

Last summer ONGC agreed to a Vietnam proposal to jointly develop oil in an area of the South China Sea that China also claims, and one that Beijing had said it planned to auction off exploration rights to.

In response to the Indo-Vietnamese joint ventures, an editorial in China’s official Global Times stated,“It’s clear that such cooperation between Indian and Vietnamese companies in the South China Sea is motivated more by politics than economic interests.”

The editorial went on to argue, “New Delhi wants to further complicate the issue and seeks to pin down China in the area so it could gain dominance in affairs across the region.”

Also of note, in July 2011 an Indian naval vessel making a port call in Vietnam was contacted on an open radio frequency by someone identifying themselves as the "Chinese Navy" stating that "you are entering Chinese waters."

China has taken India's latest comments in stride, exercising uncharacteristic restraint. When asked about Admiral Joshi's comments this week, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry said, "China opposes unilateral oil and gas development in disputed waters of the South China Sea. We hope that concerned countries respect China's position and rights, and respect efforts made through bilateral talks to resolve disputes."

Joshi’s comments came as India and China began two day of negotiations over their disputed land borders, which led to a brief but bloody war in 1962. Tensions were already running high ahead of the talks after Beijing issued new passports that included a map showing the disputed territory with India as part of China. In response, the Indian embassy had printed its own visas showing the territory as falling within the Indian state. Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan also objected to the new passports, and the United States has pledged to raise the passport issue with China.

Tensions in the South China Sea between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors had also been rising in the weeks leading up to Friday’s incident with Vietnam’s oil exploration vessel. ASEAN and China failed to make any progress on the South China Sea standoff at the recent ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Cambodia, and many ASEAN nations and its general secretary were irked by new regulations China issued which appear to give Chinese maritime border patrol authorities the right to board and search foreign ships in some of the disputed waters.

It’s unlikely that the Indian Navy will become a formidable force within the South China Sea in the near to medium term. The country, after all, is far more concerned with maintaining its primacy over China in the Indian Ocean amid the People Liberation Army-Navy’s (PLAN) continued build-up and modernization. Furthermore, in the not too distant future New Delhi may have to deploy more of its naval forces to its Western front to protect the transit of its oil imports from the Middle East and parts of Africa should the U.S. reduce its own presence in the Persian Gulf as Washington achieves greater energy self-sufficiency in the decades ahead.

Nonetheless, Joshi’s comments reflect a budding naval rivalry between India and China that some experts, like C. Raja Mohan, have been warning about it. India has long spoke of exercising greater influence in East and Southeastern Asia as part of its “Look East” policy, which is almost certainly to include strengthening ties to Chinese neighbors like ASEAN nations and Japan that are also increasingly concerned by Chinese assertiveness. This is almost certain to play into China’s historic and modern fears of strategic encirclement.

Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. You can find him on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.

http://thediplomat.com/indian-decade/2012/12/05/indias-south-china-sea-gambit/

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Parliament bypassed to steal rare atomic minerals

December 9, 2012, 11:30 am

≫ Next: Rs. 125-crore bribe paid for Walmart's passage to India

≪ Previous: India's ocean

December 10, 2012

Parliament bypassed to steal rare atomic minerals

Babus help corporates export banned items, India loses priceless wealth forever

Kumar Chellappan, Chennai

A massive fraud has been perpetrated on Parliament and the people of India by a coterie of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.

The Department of Atomic Energy, the apex body controlling India’s nuclear power sector, blatantly flouted all rules governing civil society and established norms by stealthily throwing open the country’s precious mineral resources to corporate sharks for exploitation. This was done without getting the approval of Parliament.

The Pioneer has been publishing reports on how rare minerals along the Indian coastline were being looted by vested interests with the connivance of powers that be. Rare minerals like Ilmenite, Rutile, Leucoxene and Zircon, which command hefty premium in the international market, were being exported by certain corporate firms without paying a single rupee as royalty to the Government (read people of this country). How did the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) facilitate the exporting of these minerals by private operators though it has a state-of-the-art conglomerate by the name Indian Rare Earth Ltd with units spread across the country?

On January 18, 2006, the DAE vide a notification which was gazetted on January 20, 2006, revised the list of Prescribed Substances, Prescribed Equipment and Technology. Ilmenite, Rutile, Leucoxene and Zircon, which were Prescribed Substances under the Atomic Energy Act till then, were delisted and put into open general category. The order issued by VP Raja, the then additional secretary, DAE said : “This change will become effective only after suitable amendments are carried out to the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act and passed by Parliament.”

Though the order was issued by Raja on January 20, 2006, Parliament is yet to be told about the amendment which had to be made so that the private operators could swindle the natural resources with public approval. Swapnesh Kumar Malhotra, the DAE spokesman, told The Pioneer that there was no need for the DAE to get approval of Parliament. “We can bypass Parliament on certain issues and hence there is no need for us to introduce the Bill and get it passed in the House,” said Malhotra. But he feigned ignorance when he was reminded on the condition set by Raja in his order dated January 20, 2006. To suppress the curiosity of this newspaper, Malhotra sent a copy of the Special Gazette of India dated January 20, 2006 which has reproduced the notification by Raja but without the precondition that Parliament has to approve the amendment.

RK Sharma, secretary general, Federation of Indian Mineral Industries, who keeps track of even the most obscure legislations and Government orders related to minerals, sands and other natural resources, said no such Bill had been introduced in Parliament. There are companies in Tamil Nadu which have been making billions by exporting the Prescribed Substances since 1988!

Subash Kashyap, the soft spoken former secretary general of the Lok Sabha described the action of the DAE as improper and unreasonable. “It is an impropriety and unreasonable. That’s all I can say,” said Kashyap.

S Kalyanaraman, former IRAS bureaucrat and a former Asian Development Bank, had termed the DAE act as blatant violation of the privilege of Parliament. “The notification could be made effective only after the Act No 67 of 1957 was amended by Parliament. Issuing a notification without mentioning this fundamental condition effectively constitutes a breach of privilege of Parliament. The illegal notification should be withdrawn, all actions taken under the notification declared null and void. The Union Government should order a Commission of Inquiry to prosecute the criminal act of issuing an illegal notification and also to inquire into illegal mining atomic minerals consequent to the illegal notification,” he said.

V Sundaram, a 1965 batch IAS officer from Tamil Nadu who threw up his job in disgust to protest against massive corruption in Government, termed the DAE act as illegal and sacrilegious. “How can you issue notifications and gazette them without first ensuring the prior approval of Parliament to the proposed changes in the list of the Prescribed Substances declared as Atomic Minerals under the Act 67 of 1957?” he asked in a letter addressed to the chairman of DAE. .

“How can anyone issue a Notification and make it appear legal by making it subject to approval of Amendment by Parliament? It is height of irresponsibility to assume Amendment by Parliament. It is unheard of in the annals of gazetting notifications that a notification gets issued without the authority of an enactment by Parliament. This notification of Jan 2006 is patently illegal and actions flowing from the operations of an illegal notification are ipso facto illegal and do not have the force of the rule of law,” said Sundaram who described the action of DAE as a scam of all scams.

He said if every department in the vast machinery of the Government of India proceeds on this cavalier assumption and presumption, the country would have nothing but uncontrolled anarchy and confusion.

On November 30, 2011, V Narayanasamy, Minister of State for Prime Minister’s Office, told the Lok Sabha in reply to a question: “As per the latest notification of Department of Atomic Energy vide ref. S.O.61(E) dated January 20, 2006, these heavy minerals are delisted from the Prescribed Substances list and hence for the handling of these minerals licence from Department of Atomic Energy under the Atomic Energy (Working of the Mines, Minerals and Handling of Prescribed Substance) Rules, 1984 is not required,” said the Minister. He also said that consequent to de-listing of ilmenite, Rutile, Zircon etc. from the list of Prescribed Substances, no licences or permission are required from DAE for these substances.

But what he left unsaid was the amendment and notification had to be ratified by Parliament. What has happened is that the representatives of the people were kept in the dark about the swindling of the rare minerals along the country’s coastline. Had a Bill been introduced in Parliament, at least some members would have questioned the propriety of such an amendment.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/home/online-channel/360-todays-newspaper/114535-parliament-bypassed-to-steal-rare-atomic-minerals.html

Relate links: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/thorium-has-risks-but-has-great.html

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Rs. 125-crore bribe paid for Walmart's passage to India

December 9, 2012, 11:39 am

≫ Next: ...No lessons learnt, Indo-Bangla border still vulnerable -- Kumar Chellappan

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December 10, 2012

WalMart lobby bill hits Rs 125 cr on India entry, other cases
Agencies Posted online: Sun Dec 09 2012, 13:16 hrs
Washington/New Delhi : Global retail giant Wal-Mart -- waiting for years to open its supermarkets in India -- has been lobbying with the US lawmakers since 2008 to facilitate its entry into the highly lucrative Indian market.
As per the lobbying disclosure reports filed by Wal-Mart with the US Senate, the company has spent close to USD 25 million (about Rs 125 crore) since 2008 on its various lobbying activities, including on the issues related to "enhanced market access for investment in India".

In the last quarter ended September 30, 2012 itself, the company spent USD 1.65 million (about Rs 10 crore) on various lobbying issues, which included "discussions related to FDI in India".

During the quarter, Wal-Mart lobbied for its case with the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the US Department of State, as per its latest quarterly disclosure report.

The companies are allowed to lobby for their cases in various departments and agencies in the US, but they are required to file their lobbying disclosure reports every quarter with the US Senate.

So far in 2012, Wal-Mart has spent more than USD three million or about Rs 18 crore on its various lobbying activities, including those related to India.

As per Wal-Mart's lobbying disclosure reports, the company has continuously lobbied for its India entry since 2008, except for a few quarters in 2009.

Indian government recently opened up its multi-brand retail sector for foreign companies after years of political opposition and a Parliament motion against this decision was defeated last week in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

The US-based supermarket chain operator Wal-Mart Stores, which has an annual turnover of USD 444 billion and a world- wide headcount of 2.2 million, has been eyeing for a long time to enter India.

The Indian retail market is estimated to be worth about USD 500 billion currently and is pegged to cross USD one trillion mark by 2020, given the rising personal income and growing consumer spending trends.

According to a report by global consultancy major A T Kearney, the organised retail is expected to reach 25 per cent of the overall market by 2020.

The report also said that India remains one of the most favourable destinations for international retailers and an accelerated retail growth of 15-20 per cent is expected over the next five years.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/1042635/

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...No lessons learnt, Indo-Bangla border still vulnerable -- Kumar Chellappan

December 9, 2012, 5:17 pm

≫ Next: Liberate Indian Universities from Govt. - Swamy in Harvard Alumni meet. Curative petition in SC to make PC co-accused in 2G scam - Swamy

≪ Previous: Rs. 125-crore bribe paid for Walmart's passage to India

...No lessons learnt, Indo-Bangla border still vulnerable

MONDAY, 10 DECEMBER 2012 00:51 KUMAR CHELLAPPAN | CHENNAI

The 2,429 km long India-Bangladesh border and stretches in Jammu which borders Pakistan are as open and as unsafe as the goalpost of the Indian football team. The regions are paradise for smugglers specialised in smuggling cows and pharmaceuticals.

The jawans of the Border Security Force guarding the border with Bangladesh are being held in a tight leash by the government and human right activists. Terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jayesh-e-Mohammed and others with headquarters in Pakistan operate through the safe India-Bangladesh border in West Bengal and Assam. These were the observations made by a group of professionals and students from Tamil Nadu who toured the region last fortnight.

“A vast stretch of the India-Bangladesh border remains unguarded. The BSF jawans do not have basic facilities and instruments for surveillance. They are under strict orders from the government not to open fire at the illegal immigrants who cross the borders for nefarious activities,” Geddi Govindan Chandrasekaran (35), a software engineer from Chennai told The Pioneer.

Chandra and nearly 200 youth from Tamil Nadu toured the west, north and eastern borders of the country for an on the spot assessment. The tour was facilitated by Forum for Integrated National Security (FINS) an organisation promoted by retired defence personnel and civil servants to create an awareness about the grim situation in the country’s borders.

Even the untrained eyes and minds of Chandra and his friends could pick up the disturbing trends in the 150 km long border in the North 24 Pargana district in West Bengal. “We visited Basirhat, a small town and five villages along the border. The villages have the same name, Sahebkhali and are known by their numbers. Bangladeshi smugglers and anti-social elements trespass into the villages and steal the cattle, mainly cows. Since there is a distance of more than 100 meters between each house, the villagers can never seek the help of their neighbours when the Bangladeshi thieves make their night rounds. On an average, they steal more than 100 cows from the border villages every night,” said Chandra.

The cows find their way to slaughter houses in Bangladesh where they are killed and the halal meat is exported to the west Asian countries. Most of the modern slaughter houses in Bangladesh survive on cows stolen and smuggled from India. “Officers of the BSF told us that they have been instructed not to open fire at the smugglers or illegal immigrants. The human right activists and civil liberty movements are not worried over illegal immigration or smuggling. There are village heads offering to help the illegal migrants to get Indian citizenship. Villagers in Bithipada village told us that Rupashi Mondal, a village head, arranges citizenship, ration card and plots of land for illegal immigrants,” said Chandra.

There is severe shortage of coins in these villages. “Bangladeshi smugglers collect all Indian coins and send it across the border where it is melted to make blades. It is a profitable venture because of the quality of the metal,” he said. The Bangladeshi smugglers and infiltrators use all the dirty games to hoodwink the BSF jawans, they said. “One of the BSF commanders told us that the infiltrators have deployed call girls to lure the jawans. Since the jawans are not given leave for visiting their families, they fall easy prey to the glamour of the females pushed from across the border,” said Chandra. He pointed out that the BSF jawans work without break or holidays for two years.

Kashi Venkataranan Sivaraman (27), an electrical engineer, led a 200 member team to Jammu and foun that the situation was no different in the north western border. “The border regions could be reached only by walking. We had to walk 15 km per day to reach villages like Bobia, Kirolkrishna and Chakra. There is no public transport to these villages. The villages remain without power and primary health centres,” said Siva.

He said Pakistani Rangers routinely fire at the Indian villagers without any provocation and many deaths have been reported The entire villages close to the border do not have power or primary health centres. “What is disturbing is that our BSF jawans are sitting ducks to Pakistani firing. They do not have proper cover up while moving from one bunker to another,” said Siva. Since the border in the western front is under observation, the terrorists based in Pakistan and Afghanistan are using the eastern border to infiltrate into India, he said.

The India -Bangladesh border along Meghalaya is similar to the one in 24 North Parganas, said Dillaraja (33), an administrative officer from a private engineering college in Chennai. “The jawans are caught between devil and deep sea syndrome. If they fire at illegal immigrants, smugglers or terrorists, they are put into hardships like departmental enquiries and disciplinary proceedings. All they are allowed to do is to politely elicit information from the infiltrators,” said Dilliraja.

Siva, Chandra and Dilliraja are preparing a note on what they have seen and experienced to the handed over to the FINS for furher action. “The report will reflect what the ordinary eyes saw in the country’s borders and the situation is grim,” they said.

http://dailypioneer.com/nation/114507-no-lessons-learnt-indo-bangla-border-still-vulnerable.html

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Liberate Indian Universities from Govt. - Swamy in Harvard Alumni meet. Curative petition in SC to make PC co-accused in 2G scam - Swamy

December 10, 2012, 4:44 pm

≫ Next: Global trends 0 CE to 2030CE, alternative worlds as they get back to 0 CE

≪ Previous: ...No lessons learnt, Indo-Bangla border still vulnerable -- Kumar Chellappan

11 December 2012

‘Indian universities should be run sans governmental interference’
TUESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2012 01:34 PNS | CHENNAI

Indian universities should be liberated from the shackles of the Government and administered by the alumni for better results. “The lost glory of Indian system of education could be regained only by entrusting the management of the universities to the respective alumni,” Dr Subramanian Swamy, former professor of the Harvard University, said here on Sunday. He was addressing the first ever meeting of Harvard Club of Chennai, a new platform promoted by more than 100 alumni of the elite university based in Tamil Nadu.

Elaborating on ‘What they do not teach in Harvard’, Dr Swamy said all US and European Universities focus on one-dimensional intelligence while the need of the hour is teaching based on multi-dimensional and cognitive intelligence. “Harvard University is what it is today because the university is run by intelligence without any Governmental interference. There is complete commitment by the alumni,” he said. He said what made Nalanda and Taxila, the global hub points of higher learning, unique was the academic freedom, freedom of thought and expression enjoyed by the teachers. “This is what replicated by foreign universities. The moment government started meddling with the universities and their academic freedom, they lost their glory,” said Dr Swamy.

Universities in India should focus more on social and spiritual intelligence so that the youth coming out of the institutions are better trained to take up any challenges with prime focus on the country’s development. “Our universities do not encourage the students to develop questioning minds. They should be trained in emotional intelligence, moral intelligence and spiritual intelligence,” he explained.

Dr Swamy pointed out that institutions like Harvard would flourish only in environments which grant full freedom of speech and expression. He recounted an incidence in Harvard University during the tenure of Henry Rosovsky as president. “One of the Saudi Arabian princess approached Prof Rosovsky with a request to set up a Harvard University like institution in the Kingdom. The Prince was willing to spend whatever money Prof Rosovsky demanded. But the professor asked the Saudi royalty whether the faculty would have academic and spiritual freedom. In a country like Saudi Arabia founded on religious conservatism, it is impossible to magine about such freedom and hence it still lacks an institution like Harvard University,” said Dr Swamy.

http://dailypioneer.com/nation/114694-indian-universities-should-be-run-sans-governmental-interference.html

Swamy to file curative petition in SC
TUESDAY, 11 DECEMBER 2012 01:27 KUMAR CHELLAPPAN | CHENNAI

Dr Subramanian Swamy, president, Janata Party, will soon file a curative petition in the Supreme Court against the rejection of his review petition to make P Chidambaram, the Union Finance Minister a co-accused with A Raja in the 2G Spectrum scam trial.

On Friday last, a bench of GS Singvi and K S Radhakrishnan of the Supreme Court had turned down Dr Swamy’s plea to reconsider its August 24 judgement which rejected his plea to make Chidambaram a co-accused in the case.

In a statement released to the media on Monday at Chennai, Dr Swamy said he saw the news about the rejection of his plea for review of the August 24 order in The Indian Express. According to Dr Swamy, the order of dismissal of his petition was based on arguments which he did not make and was not on arguments he made.

“In the Review Petition I had pointed that the Order was substantially flawed to merit review. I had not argued for Chidambaram to be made co-accused on grounds of his taking a bribe [an offence, which requires mens rea, under Section 13(1)(d)(i) & (ii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act] but on the grounds of jointly taking decisions with Raja to enable Swan and Unitech telecom companies to make windfall monetary gains by selling out their spectrum licences to Etisalat and Telenor at several multiple of what they paid the government and this was not in the public interest [an offence which does not require mens rea, under Section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Act].

Therefore the Order of dismissal of my Special Leave Petition was based on arguments I did not make but not on arguments I did make,” Dr Swamy said in the release.

Dr Swamy, a former cabinet minister for law and justice, pointed out that the same error has been committed by the Bench while rejecting the Review petition. He said the Supreme Court order published in the Indian Express, had probably been provided by.Chidambaram himself to the Editor. “On Friday, the Court Master had told my representative that no Order has even reached him,” he said in the release. He said he would appeal against the flawed Review Order by way of a Curative Petition to a new three member Bench. “I shall also seek a Supreme Court inquiry as to how the Indian Express got the Order even before I was given the Order,” he said.

http://dailypioneer.com/nation/114695-swamy-to-file-curative-petition-in-sc.html

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Global trends 0 CE to 2030CE, alternative worlds as they get back to 0 CE

December 10, 2012, 6:27 pm

≫ Next: FDI. Enter, the foreign middleman -- MJ Akbar

≪ Previous: Liberate Indian Universities from Govt. - Swamy in Harvard Alumni meet. Curative petition in SC to make PC co-accused in 2G scam - Swamy

http://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/cleanedall-purpose-generic-le-menu.pdf

On Monday December 10, 2012 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the National Intelligence Council's (NIC) latest Global Trends report, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. The Global Trends project engages expertise from outside government on factors of such as globalization, demography and the environment, producing a forward-looking document to aid policymakers in their long term planning on key issues of worldwide importance. Read Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds.

↧

FDI. Enter, the foreign middleman -- MJ Akbar

December 10, 2012, 7:07 pm

≫ Next: How Tesco will help the India's poor people

≪ Previous: Global trends 0 CE to 2030CE, alternative worlds as they get back to 0 CE

Enter, the foreign middleman
MJ Akbar
09 December 2012, 01:24 AM IST

Kapil Sibal plays many roles, some of them quite well. But he is inimitable when he turns caustic. Sarcasm descended from his heavy eyebrows with the full force of a waterfall when he taunted the Indian middleman during his advocacy for foreign retailers in the Lok Sabha debate on FDI. Shakespeare was never so bitter about Shylock as Sibal was about the "bichauli".

That left one a trifle perplexed. What else is Walmart other than a middleman? Capital resources and management skills have added a dimension: it is both middleman and salesman. Does this make Walmart a compassionate, caring company that should win a Nobel Prize for shopkeeping? Unlikely. Last week the New York Times - not a Marxist newspaper - reported how American onion farmers had been squeezed into despair by Walmart, which was selling their product at nine times the purchase price. (Onions have a devastating electoral history in India.) This week we discover that Walmart was among those responsible for the devastating fire at Bangladesh's Tazreen Fashions factory in which 112 were killed a fortnight ago. According to minutes of company meetings, Walmart's director of ethical sourcing, Sridevi Kalavakolanu, insisted that a low cost of shirts was preferable to the higher cost of workers' safety. Neither patriotism nor altruism is an asset on Walmart's balance sheet.

Top this up with the news that Walmart is under investigation in America, but not in India, for bribing Indian officials. So the debate is not really about the morality of middlemen. Nor is it about the presence of international retailers in India. They are already here, but as partners of Indians. What they wanted, and have now got, is the right to run their companies as they wish, without the implicit fetters of alliance.

This is not about economic reforms either. FDI policy was announced as part of a package, including permission for foreign investment in civil aviation and sections of media. Even the Left did not object. There was a time in the post-reforms era when Tata had to abandon a proposed domestic airline because it wanted Singapore Airlines as a partner. Our skies were considered sacrosanct. But things have moved on, as they have in so many other sectors.

It is not opposition for opposition's sake, or Congress' partners Mulayam Singh Yadav, DMK and NCP would not have either protested or introduced variations - NCP wants this boon anywhere but in Maharashtra. It is certainly not about communalism; if Mayawati thinks BJP is contagious she could have rallied behind Marxists. Mayawati should check with Justice Rajinder Sachar, author of the last major study on the economic plight of Indian Muslims. His commission concluded, as he repeated in a conversation with this columnist, that UP Muslims would be especially vulnerable to FDI in retail, because of multinational sourcing and selling practices.

Retail is a multi-faceted industry held together by a people-centric axis. There are different tiers for separate income levels. Multinationals, driven by a perfectly explicable focus on profit maximisation, squeeze all levels into a common business plan. This sacrifices traditional, generic relationships between source, supply and shop at the altar of an algebra determined by the lowest common denominator in costs, and highest common denominator in prices. They possess the muscle and skill to drive out competition. When the vulnerable are hit, the social cost is high.

Fourteen parties out of the 18 that spoke in the Lok Sabha debate were critical of FDI because they felt the need for some - the stress is on some -protectionism within the farm-retail chain. The new will replace the old; that is a law of time. But sensible nations fashion change through evolution, in phases, not sudden dislocation and displacement. Trust me: the labourer who pushes a sweat-soaked vegetable handcart in the summer of Delhi or Mumbai would much prefer to work in air-conditioned halls. He perspires for very modest returns only because it is better than nothing. He needs a place in another food chain before he is summarily evicted from his present one.

FDI is not about wages or wastage or farmers or prices. Multinationals are not committed to their host countries; they work for their shareholders, and do not hide this fact. It is simply that our government has decided to trust the foreign middleman more than the Indian one.

In 1973, Indira Gandhi was under pressure from inflation and popular anger. She was advised by the Left to recover lost political ground by nationalising the wheat trade. The Left was fashionable then. Nationalisation used to win votes, as it did for Mrs Gandhi in 1971. Mrs Gandhi said no. She understood the possible damage at village level and stopped. When the Left stepped into excess, she applied the brakes. The Right has is on a rampage now.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/enter-the-foreign-middleman

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How Tesco will help the India's poor people

December 10, 2012, 8:15 pm

≫ Next: Is India heading for another economic crisis? -- M.R. Venkatesh

≪ Previous: FDI. Enter, the foreign middleman -- MJ Akbar

December 11, 2012

Tesco is no champion of the poor

Forget the eulogies to Sir Terry Leahy. The legacy of Leahyism has been damage to our towns, countryside and environment, and the promotion of a much poorer diet that we'll all pay for

The supermarket may have halved the price of much of our food, but at what cost? Photograph: Reuters
Sir Terry Leahy is retiring as head of Tesco after 14 years, "to spend more time with his private investments", according to yesterday's Guardian. He got the sort of press that'll make a nice decorative feature in his downstairs loo. He is one of the "10 people who have most helped the poor in recent decades," said the Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie in a Times piece, straplined 'champion of the poor'. "Every little he did helped us," said The Sun. "The outstanding businessman of the decade," saidthe Mail.

Do these people get out at all? They could visit one of the towns in Britain, such as Inverness, where three in every £4 is spent in a Tesco store; take a walk down the high streets reduced to a pathetic straggle of charity shops and tanning parlours. Then Leahy's fans might begin to see why another part of the population - among them farmers, small business people and independent shop owners - don't think Sir Terry helped at all.

Any food lover who thinks further than the rumble in their stomach should join in bidding good riddance to a rich man who's left far behind the Tesco shelf-stackers and floor cleaners from among whom - as the glowing eulogies all tell us - he rose so magnificently. I'd say Sir Terry has done more damage to the fabric of British life than any other businessman in modern times. The papers expect to see him helping out David Cameron and Nick Clegg very soon indeed.

Joanna Blythman, the writer who has been chronicling the retail trade since Sir Terry was starting out in the Tesco boardroom, told me: "I hold him responsible for grave damage to our world and our country. He has a large share of responsibility for the blight of our high streets, for the collapse of the agricultural economy. I think Terry Leahy has been a disaster – he's the face of a phenomenon that has diminished the quality of life of everyone in Britain. The supermarkets devalued our food. He's made us fatter and enjoy food less."

The list of crimes that can be laid at Tesco and its rivals' doorstep is a long one. For me, chief among them is the fact that the giants have used their power and money to convince governments for decades to keep their hands off the industry. Endless scandals - on the land grabbing, the price-fixing, the breaching of planning law, the shameless misleading of millions of customers into grabbing illusory bargains - show just how wrong that policy was.

Our food policy? 'Leave it to Tesco' seems to have been the view of ministers since the 80s. Labour saw no reason to change that. Now Tesco makes over £3bn profit a year, our food supply structure is under threat and we're all paying.

Having investigated the farm-gate price crises in milk and eggs forObserver Food Monthly and others, I know how powerful Tesco and its clones are. Even through the National Farmers Union, their suppliers are generally too scared to talk to journalists - even anonymously - about the problems they face in negotiating with the Big Boxes. But what you discover is that they are not seeing anything like a fair share of those amazing profits.

Now, on a whole range of staples from dairy to bacon, two-thirds of British farmers can no longer make a sustainable living - according to the government's own figures. One example: the supermarkets' profit on a pint of milk is double what it was 10 years ago, and British dairy farmers have been going out of business at the rate of one a day for the last two years.

The core of Leahyism, and its "brilliance", was the relentless forcing down of prices: "value" as the primary marketing tool. That became the chief strategy of all the supermarket chains. Yes, it made food cheaper. There's no doubting that - most households in Britain now spend nearly half, as a proportion of income, what they did 30 years ago. But this notion of the philanthropic Tesco, of St Terry who fed the poor so generously, is nauseating rubbish.

Tesco and the other chains lowered prices because they never paid the real costs of what they sold. And many of us who were not so poor saved on food to finance more foreign holidays, new TVs and more shoes - many of which Tesco could now provide. The expense of that shift has to be counted in terms of damage to our towns and countryside, grotesque cruelty to farm animals, environmental damage and the enormous waste a cheap food system creates. And, of course, the health of our children. We cannot turn the clock back: a million farmers' markets or supermarket ombudsmen will never undo the damage.

I've written enough about this here in the past to know that many of you think that one good - namely lower prices - is worth all the harm. If you oppose Tesco - even when they're opening the third store in your town - you're a rich snob. Their PR team is brilliant and relentless, as every writer on food policy knows. But the increasing numbers of people who are making an effort to abandon the supermarkets know something no marketing guff will ever cover up: they sold us a pup.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jun/10/tesco-terry-leahy-supermarkets

↧

Is India heading for another economic crisis? -- M.R. Venkatesh

December 10, 2012, 9:02 pm

≫ Next: An Indian grammar for International Studies -- Amitabh Mattoo

≪ Previous: How Tesco will help the India's poor people

Is India heading for another economic crisis?
Last updated on: December 11, 2012 06:56 IST

The government thinks that it can buy peace with its own people, not by providing an environment for growth, but by bribing them into silence, writes M R Venkatesh.

The confluence of two arterial roads - Kodambakkam and Nungambakkam High Roads - in Chennai is a huge bottle neck. At that very junction the Tamil Nadu electricity board had set up a transformer which has been converted into an open urinal by passersby.
Adjacent to this transformer, two small shops had sprung up almost a decade ago robbing the pedestrians of walking space. As walkers climb on to the road at great personal risk, the already narrow stretch of road gets much narrower, leading to huge traffic snarls.

Strangely, the administration that allowed these shops to come up in the first place has failed to demonstrate spine in removing these encroachment. Government machinery that remains unsuccessful in clearing roadside encroachments in the centre of a metro is supposed to fight against Chinese or Pakistani encroachments in distant Arunachal Pradesh or Siachen!

What is galling is that the Hon'ble Madras high court has granted a stay on this encroachment. With due respects, I am pretty sure that if only the Lordships were compelled to use these roads, the verdict in such cases would obviously be different.
And the UPA leadership assumes that reforms - read FDI in retail, Insurance or Airlines - will widen roads, clear roadside bottlenecks and provide walking space to pedestrians. Crucially, it is also assumed to provide employment to the two shop keepers, provide toilets below the transformers and make our dirty cities look pretty.

The mess at this Chennai-junction epitomizes all that is wrong with our economy. It is all about skewed priorities. It is about poor governance. It is the story of India being beset with a billion such bottlenecks, lack of infrastructure and administrative will.

Contrary to the expectations that our government addresses these issues up-front, from ports to airports, education to electricity, employment to environment, it assumes that foreign capital, foreign technology and worse still foreign initiative that will do the trick.

Fascinatingly, this is packaged as "reforms" by our government! It is indeed surprising that sections of the media and intelligentsia fall for such crass attempts of our government and gulp the nonsense.

Little do we or our government realize that barring tin-pot banana republics, there is no instance in recorded history of foreign capital, initiative and technology becoming the engine of domestic growth. Worse still, this psychology of depending on foreigners to address our internal mess is stifling domestic private initiative too.
It is not out of place to mention that psychology is crucial to investments. Policies that dampen psychology of local entrepreneurs choke domestic private initiatives and investments. That explains why several corporate are sitting on piles of cash (and refusing to invest) while domestic household savings get channeled into gold.
And where local businessmen are loath to do business, why should foreign businessmen invest in India? Elementary Watson!

Worse still, the government thinks that it can buy peace with its own people, not by providing an environment for growth, but by bribing them into silence. It believes in crony capitalism for the rich, slogans for the middle class and subsidies for the poor will do the trick. And that is the crux of the issue.

The net result is that it is no longer an issue of productivity. Rather it all about production. It is no longer about manufacture. It is all about infrastructure. It is no longer about competitiveness. It is all about psychology.

Believe me it is now no longer about fiscal reforms but all about physical side of reforms.

Something has terribly gone wrong

It was not so long ago that economists believed that an eight percent growth in India was sustainable. With bottlenecks as explained above, forget productivity for the moment, physical production of goods and services has dropped significantly.

These supply side shortages fuel inflationary pressures. That in turn necessitates huge imports into India. That makes Rupee extremely vulnerable. Equally that results in India being dependent on foreign money to fund its imports.

With eighty per cent of our fuel requirements being imported, Rupee depreciation in turns makes (imported) fuel costlier. Coupled with a weak physical infrastructure, this means that we are actually becoming a high cost, inefficient, vulnerable and import dependent economy - just as we were in the late eighties.

Surely all this is bound to have a profound impact on the Indian economy, notably its financial sector. According to well-researched and documented reports of Credit Suisse:

Of a sample of over 3,500 companies (with aggregate USD 330 bn debt in FY11-12), earnings of 28% of such loans were insufficient to meet interest liabilities (much less principle) in the fourth quarter of FY12. Moreover, 50% of these corporates had earning lesser than its interest cost for more than 4 quarters in the last 7 quarters.

Obviously high interest rates are not the sole cause of this stress. And as press reports suggest, this has only worsened in FY 12-13.

Restructured loans in FY12 are estimated to be at a high of 7-11% of total loans. With many of stressed corporates yet to be recognized as one, such levels can rise to over 20% shortly.

This is frightening to say the least and can have profound impact on the financial sector, rupee and the Indian economy.

Over last five years, Indian banks have witnessed strong (20% CAGR) loan growth. However, this has increasingly been driven by select ten corporate groups; (evidence of crony capitalism?). While the aggregate debt of these ten groups has jumped 5 times in the past five years and now equates to 13% of bank loans and 98% of the banking system's net worth.

Therefore, surprisingly now in terms of the concentration risk, Indian banks rank higher than most of their global peers.

Economic slowdown has in turn resulted in significant stress to specific sectors (power & metals).

Consequently, financials of these groups are also stretched with four of the above-mentioned ten having earnings insufficient to payout interest for their borrowings.
Over past three years, bank loans, the reports points out to power sector having grown approximately three times and now aggregate in excess of USD 60 bn. With our thrust on power sector, bank exposure to this sector is now significantly high at 10% of total loans.

However with weak physical reforms carried out by the Government, stress on these loans comes from poor off-take, erratic fuel supply and sundry developer risk.
If the Plant Load Factor of these new plants falls anywhere below 65% of its rated capacity it would be inadequate to meet its debt servicing needs. The 54 GW of capacity planned to come up in the next 24 months could be the tipping point for these risks to come to a fore as none of it is supported by appropriate sale agreement.

All these are surely bound to have significant impact on the asset quality with our banks.

In denial mode

While petroleum import is understandable in India, with billions of tons of coal reserves, importing coal (obviously out of a flawed coal mine allocation policy) is sheer madness.

Yet the government is in denial mode. So is our media. Interestingly, the stock market that boasts of several "analysts" is at a high. As is their wont intelligentsia is playing a perfect cheerleader to this hara-kiri.
The government assumes that it can cure psychology of domestic entrepreneurs by announcing "reforms" - one that intriguingly makes India dependent. While surely foreign capital (as is technology) is welcome, let us not forget that foreign capital can at best supplement not replace domestic capital, entrepreneurs and their initiatives.

If the experience of the past two-decades of reforms is any indication, approximately ninety-eight - yes ninety-eight - percent of the total investments made in India has come from domestic savings with the balance two coming from abroad as foreign capital. What is forgotten in the melee is that given the state of global economy, where is the mythical foreign capital?

Given this paradigm, naturally, foreign capital is loath to enter India. If foreign capital has to enter India, there must be a steady assured flow of the same in foreseeable future. For that to happen, Indians must invest in India. And for that to happen, India requires different set of "Reforms."

We have come to a stage where reforms need no longer directed at an international audience. It can neither be elitist, nor can it be exclusive. It has to be physical. It has to be inclusive. Unfortunately, a government headed by an economist Prime Minister is economical about this fundamental aspect of economics.

Surely, we are in a catch-22 situation. We need foreign capital to fund our imports, not fund investments. Nevertheless this makes foreign capital wield a disproportionate influence on the domestic economy. Obviously to get even this foreign capital, we are forced to sell our family silver? Even for sloganeering, time has run out. Hasn't it?

PS: Given this scenario, the Rupee runs the risk of depreciating sharply and abruptly. Should that happen, the 1991 economic crisis would look, like a walk in a park.

The author is a Chennai-based Chartered Accountant. He can be contacted at mrv@mrv.net.in

http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-special-is-india-heading-for-another-economic-crisis/20121211.htm

↧

An Indian grammar for International Studies -- Amitabh Mattoo

December 10, 2012, 9:16 pm

≫ Next: Parliament live ! Reveal names of Walmart bribe recipients - Demand in Parliament

≪ Previous: Is India heading for another economic crisis? -- M.R. Venkatesh

Published: December 11, 2012 02:09 IST | Updated: December 11, 2012 02:15 IST

An Indian grammar for International Studies

Amitabh Mattoo

The Hindu

Exploring our rich past can offer a vocabulary to understand the world in nuanced ways that go beyond the western constructs of realism and liberalism

A little over three years ago I wrote in The Hindu that at a time when interest in India and India’s interest in the world are arguably at their highest, Indian scholarship on global issues is showing few signs of responding to this challenge and that this could well stunt India’s ability to influence the international system.

As we meet here now, at the first real convention of scholars (and practitioners) of International Studies from throughout India, we can take some comfort. A quick, albeit anecdotal, audit of the study of International Studies would suggest that the last three years have been unusually productive. So much so, that we are now, I believe, at a veritable “tipping point” in our emergence as an intellectual power in the discipline.

Stanley Hoffman, Professor of International Relations (IR) at Harvard, once famously remarked that IR was an American social science. The blinding nexus between knowledge and power (particularly stark in the case of IR in the United States) perhaps made him forget that while the first modern IR departments were created in Aberystwyth and in Geneva, thinking on international relations went back, in the case of the Indian, Chinese and other great civilizations, to well before the West even began to think of the world outside their living space.

Having absorbed the grammar of Western international relations, and transited to a phase of greater self-confidence, it is now opportune for us to also use the vocabulary of our past as a guide to the future.

2011 survey

Recovery of these Indian ideas should not be seen as part of a revivalist project or as an exercise that seeks to reify so-called Indian exceptionalism. Rather, interrogating our rich past with its deeply argumentative tradition is, as Amartya Sen put it, “partly a celebration, partly an invitation to criticality, partly a reason for further exploration, and partly also an incitement to get more people into the argument.” In the context of international relations it offers the intellectual promise of going beyond the Manichean opposition between power and principle; and between the world of ideas and norms on the one hand, and that of statecraft and even machtpolitik, on the other.

In doing so we are not being particularly subversive. A 2011 survey of American IR scholars by Foreign Policy found that 22 per cent adopted a Constructivist approach (with its privileging of ideas and identity in shaping state preferences and international outcomes), 21 per cent adopted a Liberal approach, only 16 per cent a Realist approach, and a tiny two per cent a Marxist approach. When academics were asked to “list their peers who have had the greatest influence on them and the discipline,” the most influential was Alexander Wendt, the Constructivist, and neither the Liberal, Robert Koehane, nor the Realists, Kenneth Waltz or James Mearisheimer.

Mohandas Gandhi once said that “if all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.” Let me make what may seem like another astounding claim, and which I hope, in the best argumentative tradition, will be heavily contested. If all the books on war and peace were to suddenly disappear from the world, and only the Mahabharata remained, it would be good enough to capture almost all the possible debates on order, justice, force and the moral dilemmas associated with choices that are made on these issues within the realm of international politics.

Uncertainty in the region

Beyond theory, we are faced with a period of extraordinary uncertainty in the international system and in our region. Multilateralism is in serious crisis. While the U.N. Security Council remains deadlocked on key issues, there is little progress on most other issues of global concern, be it trade, sustainable development or climate change. As academics, we cannot remain unconcerned about these critical failures.

Our continent is being defined and redefined over time. Regions are, after all, as much shaped by the powerful whose interests they seek to advance as by any objective reality. Whatever nomenclature we adopt, and whatever definition we accept, we are faced with, what Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning described as two Asias: the ‘Economic Asia’ whose $19 trillion regional economy drives global growth; the “Security Asia,” a “dysfunctional region of mistrustful powers, prone to nationalism and irredentism, escalating their territorial disputes over tiny rocks and shoals, and arming for conflict.”

The Asian Development Bank says that by nearly doubling its share of global GDP to 52 per cent by 2050, Asia could regain the dominant economic position it held 300 years ago. Yet, as several academics have pointed out “it is beset by interstate rivalries that resemble 19th century Europe,” as well the new challenges of the 21st century: environmental catastrophes, natural disasters, climate change, terrorism, cyber security and maritime issues. An increasingly assertive China that has abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character strategy of hiding its light and keeping its head low, adds to the uncertainty of the prevailing strategic environment.

India’s military and economic prowess are greater than ever before, yet its ability to influence South Asian countries is less than what it was, say, 30 years ago. An unstable Nepal with widespread anti-India sentiment, a triumphalist Sri Lanka where Sinhalese chauvinism shows no signs of accommodating legitimate Tamil aspirations, a chaotic Pakistan unwilling to even reassure New Delhi on future terrorist strikes, are symptomatic of a region being pulled in different directions.

Can our thinking from the past help us navigate through this troubled present? Pankaj Mishra, in his brilliant book, From the Ruins of Empire: the Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, describes how three 19th century thinkers, the Persian Jamal-al Din al-Afghani, Liang Qichao from China and India’s Rabindranath Tagore, navigated through Eastern tradition and the Western onslaught to think of creative ways to strike a balance and find harmony. In many ways, these ideas remain relevant today as well. For if Asia merely mimics the West in its quest for economic growth and conspicuous consumption, and the attendant conflict over economic resources and military prowess, the “revenge of the East” in the Asian century and “all its victories” will remain “truly Pyrrhic.”

(Professor Amitabh Mattoo is President of the Indian Association of International Studies. This is an edited version of his presidential address to the Annual Convention of the Association in New Delhi on December 10, 2012.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-indian-grammar-for-international-studies/article4185358.ece?homepage=true&css=print

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Parliament live ! Reveal names of Walmart bribe recipients - Demand in Parliament

December 10, 2012, 10:07 pm

≫ Next: Norway begins four year test of thorium nuclear reactor

≪ Previous: An Indian grammar for International Studies -- Amitabh Mattoo

Parliament live: ‘Just get rid of question hour’ says furious Ansari
by FP Politics 19 mins ago

11.11 am: Livid Hamid Ansari proposes dispensing with question hour altogether

And in the Rajya Sabha, Chairman Hamid Ansari has had enough! After exhorting MPs to sit down and let question hour proceed, a visibly furious Ansari got up and made a short speech saying,

“For many days now the chair has had to watch helplessly while question hour is disrupted again and again. So I propose a meeting of the rules committee and put before the members, two options. One, that we move question hour to another part of the day, or two, seeing that no one is interested in having their questions answered, we dispense with question hour altogther. This house is adjourned for thirty minutes!”

He then got up and walked off, leaving a stunned Rajya Sabha in his wake.

11.04 am: Lok Sabha adjourned till noon

And we all saw this coming. The Lok Sabha began and ended in the blink of an eye, after BJP MPs stormed the well of the house, demanding the suspension of question hour to bring up the Wal-Mart lobbying report that revealed it had spent $25 million, lobbying for access in to India.

Speaker Meira Kumar tried telling the MPs that she would give them zero hour for the discussion, but to no avail. The house will now meet again at noon.

10.52 am: BJP gives notice for suspension of question hour

The BJP Parliamentary board meeting has ended, and it has been decided to raise the Wal-Mart lobbying report in both houses of Parliament. The party has already given notice for the suspension of question hour. Always an ominous sign, because that is often the precursor to sloganeering and adjournment.

Speaking to reporters after the parliamentary meeting, BJP spokesman Venkiah Naidu said, “In the US lobbying may be legal, but in India it is not. We want an independent probe in to the matter”.

The government which has been dismissing the BJP’s charges of ‘benign bribery’, are saying that they are willing to give the BJP a reply on the floor of the house.

10:30 am: BJP demands independent probe into Wal-Mart report, Congress goes into a huddle

CNN IBN reports that the BJP is seeking an independent probe into the report that alleged Wal-Mart had spent crores to lobby for an entry into the Indian retail market.

Like in the past, expect the BJP to settle for nothing less than their demand and it could mean a noisy day in Parliament again.

The channel reports that the BJP has given a notice for suspension of question hour in both Houses to debate the matter.

Meanwhile, the Congress core committee is meeting in Parliament to decide their course of action. Too early to predict a washed out day in Parliament?

9.30 am: BJP to bring up Wal-Mart lobbying report in Lok Sabha

The UPA government was probably hoping that last week’s vote would put an end to the uproar around FDI in multi-brand retail and Wal-Mart, but clearly that is not to be. Armed with a disclosure report that revealed that Wal-Mart had spent a whopping $25 million lobbying for access to India, the BJP is all set to storm the Lok Sabha after bringing it up in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.

The stance of the BJP is that ‘lobbying’ is a more ‘benign’ form of bribery and is demanding to know into whose pockets that money went.

Reuters
BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad told the Rajya Sabha yesterday that in 2012 alone, Wal-Mart spent $3 million in India. “Lobbying is illegal in India. This is a case of bribery,” he said.

Prasad demanded names of the recipients of Rs 125 crore spent by Wal-Mart for lobbying in India be made public.

“If Walmart can disclose to the US Senate on lobbying money, then India should exert pressure on it to reveal the names of recipients here,” he said.

The opposition party is using the report as another platform from which to launch their demand that the decision to introduce 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail be scrapped altogether, or postponed at the very least.
The upper house of Parliament was adjourned repeatedly over the issue, with the opposition shouting down the arguments of Minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs, Rajiv Shukla.

The US has come out in defence of Wal-Mart, saying that the company had not violated any US law in its lobbying activities, while local joint venture Bharti Wal-Mart said that the expenditures are a compilation of expenses associated with staff, association dues, consultants and contributions spent in the US.

With inputs from agencies

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/parliament-live-just-get-rid-of-question-hour-says-furious-ansari-552811.html

↧

Norway begins four year test of thorium nuclear reactor

December 11, 2012, 3:10 pm

≫ Next: Dharmapuri incident unravels: distorted reports, sermons of caste unity (Translation of a Tamil blogpost)

≪ Previous: Parliament live ! Reveal names of Walmart bribe recipients - Demand in Parliament

Written By: Peter Murray
Posted: 12/11/12 8:38 AM

A Norwegian company is breaking with convention and switching to an alternative energy it hopes will be safer, cleaner and more efficient. But this isn’t about ditching fossil fuels, but rather about making the switch from uranium to thorium. Oslo based Thor Energy is pairing up with the Norwegian government and US-based (but Japanese/Toshiba owned)Westinghouse to begin a four year test that they hope will dispel doubts and make thorium the rule rather than the exception. The thorium will run at a government reactor in Halden.

Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Swedish chemist Jons Jakob Berzelius who named it after the Norse god of thunder, Thor. Found in trace amounts in rocks and soil, thorium is actually about three times more abundant than uranium.

The attractiveness of thorium has led others in the past to build their own thorium reactors. A reactor operated in Germany between 1983 and 1989, and three operated in the US between the late sixties and early eighties. These plants were abandoned, some think, because the plutonium produced at uranium reactors was deemed indispensable to many in a Cold War world.

Almost all of the world’s nuclear power plants are uranium reactors. But interest in thorium reactors is strong, particularly in nuclear happy China.

Thorium is ‘fertile,’ unlike ‘fissile’ uranium, which means it can’t be used as is but must first be converted to uranium-233. A good deal of research has been conducted to determine if fuel production, processing and waste management for thorium is safe and cost effective. For decades many have argued that thorium is superior to the uranium in nearly all of the world’s nuclear reactors, providing 14 percent of the world’s electricity. Proponents argue that thorium reacts more efficiently than uranium does, that the waste thorium produces is shorter lived than waste from uranium, and that, because of its much higher melting point, is meltdown proof. An added plus is the fact that thorium reactors do not produce plutonium and thus reduce the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Some experts maintain that the benefits of thorium would be maximized in molten salt reactors or pebble bed reactors. The reactor at Halden is not ideal for thorium as it is a ‘heavy water’ reactor, built for running uranium. But it is also a reactor that has already received regulatory approval. Many thorium supporters argue that, rather than wait for ideal molten salt or pebble bed reactors tests should be performed in approved reactors so that their benefits can be more quickly demonstrated to the world.

But is thorium really cheaper, cleaner and more efficient than uranium? And if so, do the added benefits really warrant the cost and effort to make the switch? Data is still pretty scarce, but at least one report is urging us to not believe the hype.

Through their National Nuclear Laboratory the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change released a report in September that stated: “thorium has theoretical advantages regarding sustainability, reducing radiotoxicity and reducing proliferation risk. While there is some justification for these benefits, they are often overstated.” The report goes on to acknowledge that worldwide interest in thorium is likely to remain high and they recommend that the UK maintain a “low level” of research and development into thorium fuel.

The place where thorium is proven either way could be China. The country is serious about weaning itself off of fossil fuels and making nuclear power their primary energy source. Fourteen nuclear power reactors are in operation in China today, another 25 under construction, and there are plans to build more. And in 2011 they announced plans to build a thorium, molten salt reactor. So whether it be Norway, the UK, China, or some other forward-thinking countries, we’ll soon find out if thorium reactors are better than uranium ones, at which point more countries may want to join the thorium chain reaction.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/11/norway-begins-four-year-test-of-thorium-nuclear-reactor/

Cumulative list of blogposts with label 'Thorium' (December 12, 2012):

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/norway-begins-four-year-test-of-thorium.html
Norway begins four year test of thorium nuclear reactorhttp://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/parliament-bypassed-to-steal-rare.html

Parliament bypassed to steal rare atomic minerals

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/thorium-will-help-shape-chinas-energy.html

Thorium will help shape China’s energy future

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/thorium-has-risks-but-has-great.html

Thorium Has Risks, But Has Great Possibilities For Power Production

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/thorium-to-be-tested-in-working-nuclear.html

Thorium to be tested in a working nuclear reactor -- oilprice.com. GOI, protect India's thorium resources.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/peak-oil-security-policy-implications.html

Peak oil, security policy implications of scarce resources (Bundeswehr study, 2010)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/illegal-notification-of-18-jan-2006-on.html

Illegal notification of 18 Jan. 2006 on Atomic Minerals and loot of Rs. 96,120 Crores worth Atomic Minerals - Complaints

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/govt.html

Govt. of India should act now to stop illegal mining of Atomic Minerals

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/india-announces-plan-to-build-thorium.html

India announces plan to build thorium reactor. Congrats to India's nuclear scientists.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/letter-to-chairman-atomic-energy.html

Illegal mining of Atomic minerals worth Rs. 96,120 crores

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/submit-viewssuggestions-on-mines-and.html

Submit views/suggestions on Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Bill No. 110 of 2011

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/cause-and-effect-case-study-in-and.html

Cause and effect: a case study in and dossiers on Rare earths/Atomic Minerals of India

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/dae-cancel-and-withdraw-illegal.html

DAE, cancel and withdraw an illegal notification issued in January 2006.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/atomic-minerals-include-thorium-uranium.html

Atomic minerals include thorium, uranium, monazite, zircon, ilmenite, rutile and leucoxene (Part B of First Schedule of the Act 1957)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/pm-should-ban-placer-sands-mining.html

PM should ban placer sands mining, nationalise minerals of national importance consistent with Shah Commission recommendations on manganese/iron ore mining

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/11/our-nuclear-program-will-be-thorium.html

Our nuclear program will be thorium based - APJ Abdul Kalam

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/protection-of-thorium-other-rare-earth.html

Protection of thorium & other rare earth minerals - Swamy refutes DAE claims

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/our-policy-is-to-reprocess-all-fuel-put.html

‘Our policy is to reprocess all the fuel put into a nuclear reactor’ -- Sekhar Basu

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/protection-of-thorium-reserves-in.html

Protection of thorium and rare earth reserves in the country

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/cheap-nuclear-energy-is-illusion-kumar.html

Cheap nuclear energy is an illusion -- Kumar Chellappan

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/dae-press-release-xport-of-monazite.html

DAE Press release : Export of Monazite from India. India backtracks on involving private miners in monazite - Ajoy K Das

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/thorium-loot-no-private-parties.html

Thorium loot: No private parties permitted to produce monazite, says DAE

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/cheapabundant-very-safe-nuclear.html

Cheap,abundant & very safe nuclear power.....Thorium

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2012/10/protection-of-thorium-reserves-in_14.html

Protection of thorium reserves in the country

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/thorium-loot-spells-strategic-loss.html

Thorium loot spells strategic loss

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/kerala-metals-and-minerals-ltd-causing.html

Kerala Metals and Minerals Ltd causing radiation: PIL

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/separation-of-monazite-from-placer.html

Separation of monazite from placer sands and strategic needs of India's energy programme.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/nuclear-thorium-country-needs-thorium.html

Nuclear Thorium: Country needs thorium-based fast breeders -- Dr. Kalam

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/near-monopoly-position-of-company-in.html

Near monopoly position of a company in garnet placer sands

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/estimated-value-of-thorium-loot-in.html

Estimated value of Manavalakurichi placer sands loot in a decade: Rs. 1 lakh crore

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/placer-sands-exports-detailed-in.html

Placer sands exports detailed in a Criminal Petition in Hon’ble Supreme Court

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/govt-misled-parliament-on-thorium-loot.html

Govt. misled Parliament on thorium loot. Thorium a game changer for India's power needs?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/export-profiles-of-placer-sands-of.html

Power of Thorium - two books reviewed. 'Super Fuel':Martin. ‘Thorium: energy cheaper than coal’: Robert Hargraves

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/10/thorium-upas-new-coalgate.html

Thorium UPA's new coalgate?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/how-far-off-is-thorium-energy-it-is.html

How far off is thorium energy? It is producing energy already -- in many reactors of India...

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/india-all-set-to-tap-thorium-resources.html

India all set to tap thorium resources

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/india-canada-nuke-pact-days-are-gone-we.html

India-Canada Nuke pact. "Those days are gone. We're not so stupid," Dr. Chaitanyamoy Ganguly, Nuclear scientist.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-to-transform-nuclear-power-pair.html Thorium to transform nuclear power. A pair of MIT students set up Transatomic Power

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/cumulative-list-of-blogposts-with-label.html

Cumulative list of blogposts with label "Thorium" (September 27, 2012). National imperative of protecting Rare earths including thorium.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-nuclear-fuel-and-iphone-are.html

Thorium -- a nuclear fuel and iPhone are born of Mother Earth. Govt. of India, conserve and protect rare earths including thorium.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/take-steps-to-protect-strategic.html

Take steps to protect strategic monazite reserves: Subramanian Swamy to PM

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-and-imperative-of-national.html

Thorium and imperative of national security - Dr. Swamy's letter to PM

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-as-strategic-mineral-greener.html

Thorium as strategic mineral: a greener alternative to uranium. India should protect her thorium reserves.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/dae-makes-strides-towards-thorium-fuel_1207.html

DAE makes strides towards thorium fuel supplies for AHWR

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-figures-unconfirmed-irel.html

‘Thorium figures unconfirmed’ - IREL

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/vver-voda-voda-energo-reactor-water.html

VVER: Voda Voda Energo Reactor, Water-cooled, water-moderated energy reactor

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/protect-india-thorium-to-transform.html

Protect India's thorium to transform the world of energy

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/a-future-energy-giant-indias-thorium.html

A future energy giant? India's thorium-based nuclear plans

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/india-should-enforce-nsg-guidelines-for.html

India should enforce NSG guidelines for protection of thorium

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/nuclear-energys-future-thorium.html

Nuclear Energy’s Future: Thorium

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/q-thorium-reactor-designer-ratan-kumar.html

Q&A: Thorium Reactor Designer Ratan Kumar Sinha

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-fuelled-dreams-for-indias_13.html

Thorium-fuelled dreams for India’s energy future. How India’s science is taking over the world.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-poster-source-thorium-australia.html

Thorium poster (Source: Thorium Australia campaign)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/briefings-on-nuclear-technology-in.html

Protect India's thorium. Briefings on nuclear technology in India -- PK Iyengar, Retd. Chairman, AEC, May 2009

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/new-all-party-uk-parliamentary-group-on.html

New All-Party UK Parliamentary Group on Thorium

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/china-takes-lead-in-race-for-clean.html

China Takes Lead in Race for Clean Nuclear Power -- using thorium.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/the-issue-is-india-as-nuke-power-anti.html

The issue is India as nuke power. Anti-Kudankulam leaders manipulate innocents - Pioneer Edit

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2012/09/india-ventures-into-rare-earths-to.html

India Ventures Into Rare Earths, To Launch Soon Monazite Processing Plant

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-is-nuclear-fuel-and-should.html

Thorium is nuclear fuel and should command immediate attention of GOI to conserve and protect the wealth of the nation.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-key-to-indias-energy-security.html

Thorium key to India’s energy security -- Sandhya Jain

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/india-plans-nuclear-plant-powered-by.html

Thorium advocates launch pressure group in UK. India plans nuclear plant powered bythorium - Guardian, UK

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/feature-article-thorium-reactor.html

Feature article: A Thorium Reactor (American Scientist, 2010)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-as-nuclear-fuel.html

Thorium As Nuclear Fuel

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thoriumgate-34-blogposts-seize-moment.html

Thoriumgate. 34 blogposts. Seize the moment to strengthen India's nuclear doctrine and energy future.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/is-thorium-biggest-energy-breakthrough.html

Is Thorium the Biggest Energy Breakthrough Since Fire? Possibly.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/are-beachfuls-of-thorium-sand-curse.html

Are beachfuls of thorium sand a curse? -- Rrishi Raote

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/why-should-foreign-companies-private.html

Why should foreign companies & private parties work in monazite placer deposits?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/krisastha-koil-kundal-uvari.html

Karisastha koil, Kundal, Uvari

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-reactors-dr-y-federation-of.html

Thorium for dummies. Thorium reactors - Dr. Y (Federation of American Scientists)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/upas-thoriumgate-toyota-tsusho-enters_6.html

UPA's Thoriumgate? Toyota Tsusho enters the scene.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/monazite-reserves-of-india-18-million.html

Monazite reserves of India 18 Million Tonnes (A review of seabed and placer mining deposits in India by Abhineet Kumar (May, 2011. Dept. of Mining Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-which-can-breed-uranium-233-is.html

Thorium which can breed uranium 233 is the future energy source for India. Rare earth elements; Indian rare earths -- Its genesis and growth (TK Mukherjee, IREL)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/proof-that-coir-was-used-to-export.html

Proof that coir was used to export thorium oxide in monazite. Now Toyota is inmonazite processing in India.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/wyoming-nuclear-task-force-hears.html

Wyoming nuclear task force hears thorium reactor plan

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/indian-rare-earths-genesis-and-growth.html

Indian rare earths: genesis and growth -- TK Mukherjee, IREL

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/who-looted-indias-missing-thorium.html

Who looted India’s missing thorium? -- Sandeep Balakrishna

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/after-coal-did-india-give-away-thorium.html

After coal, did India give away Thorium at pittance too?

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/great-thorium-robbery-impacting-india.html

Great thorium robbery impacting India's nuclear doctrine and energy security

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/67-years-nuclear-energy-nuclear.html

67 Years Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Destruction

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/15-billion-hole-in-ground-thorium-for.html

$15 billion hole in ground. Thorium for clean energy

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-reserve-in-country-narayanasamy.html

Thorium Reserve in the Country - Narayanasamy informs Lok Sabha

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/09/thorium-fuelled-dreams-for-indias.html

Thorium-fuelled dreams for India's energy future. How India's science is taking over the world.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/nuclear-materials-suppliers-group-nsg.html

Nuclear materials, suppliers group (NSG) and safeguards

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2012/08/depletion-of-thorium-reserves-from.html

Depletion of thorium reserves from South Indian beaches, impacting India's nucleardoctrine and energy security: 14 blogposts

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/black-monazite-sand-deposits-found-on.html

Black Monazite sand deposits found on beaches (India)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/thorium-fuel-cycle-potential-benefits.html

Thorium fuel cycle - potential benefits for India - IAEA publication (2005)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/thorium-alleged-export-of-sands-august.html

Thorium: alleged export of sands (August 2007 report)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/key-reserve-profiles-of-placer-deposits.html

Key reserve profiles of placer deposits: Chavara and Manavalakurichi (From Ph.D. thesis of Ajith G. Nair, 2001)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/valmikis-knowledge-of-oceanography-and.html

Valmiki's knowledge of oceanography and Mannar volcanic

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/mining-of-monazite-goi-response-in-lok.html

Mining of monazite (GOI response in Lok Sabha on 30 Nov. 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/indian-rare-earths-limited.html

Indian Rare Earths Limited

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2012/08/vv-mineral-achievements.html

VV Mineral: achievements

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/theres-nuclear-gold-in-this-sand-and.html

There’s nuclear gold in this sand. And it’s being sent out with impunity – Tehelka

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/manavalakurichi.html

Manavalakurichi

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/irregularities-in-bureaucratic.html

Scam of the century involving Rs. 1340 billion thorium reserves. Irregularities inbureaucratic processes which led to encouragement of illegal mining of thorium

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/10-point-plan-nationalise-thorium.html

10-point plan: Nationalise thorium resources of India and institute strategic command for protecting and conserving Nuclear Fuel complexes

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/illegal-thorium-mining-in-india-value.html

Illegal thorium mining in India. Value of India’s thorium reserves: Rs. 1340 billion est.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/monday-august-13-2012-must-look-into.html

‘PM must look into illegal thorium mining’

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3900879694651725760#editor/target=post;postID=876222689095259079

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke | Magazine

↧

Dharmapuri incident unravels: distorted reports, sermons of caste unity (Translation of a Tamil blogpost)

December 11, 2012, 3:45 pm

≫ Next: Book announcement: A theory for wealth of nations (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012)

≪ Previous: Norway begins four year test of thorium nuclear reactor

Dharmapuri Incident

English Translation of the Tamil blog post Nov. 21, 2012

Source: http://vanjikkapadupavaninkuralgal.blogspot.in/

All progressive people become happy about the dharmapuri incident. The newspapers who only publish lies, and the Televisions who never worry anything other than TRP ratings as usual has started manipulating things.

Because of these lies, even neutral people are confused a lot and started their sermon of caste unity.

Puthiya Thalaimurai is the first one to publish the lie that 300 houses were burnt . For those who think whether Puthiya Thalaimurai TV will tell lie, I will tell the reason why they have to, in the last.

Continuous Telecast was done by Puthiya Thalaimurai that 300 houses were burnt, and 50 vehicles burnt. Usually they send their reporters to the spot and telecaste live , but in this case, they did not send any reporters or any live visuals. Even after so many days, they did not send any reporters.

The next day, daily papers also published these lies adding or reducing the count as their whims and fancies. They did not care to hear both the sides. Rather they just manipulated bews from only one section.

The marriage was said to be done on Oct-14^th, and the girl’s father committed suicide on Nov-7 (around 23 days). No one asked the question, why did girl’s father has to commit suicide after 23 days? Here is one has to doubt.

Few months back, there was a news item in Netrikkan magazine about Sexual tortures of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal . To condemn this, the cadres of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal went in 3 sumos, and ransacked the Netrikkan Office. This made me doubt that something is going to happen in Dharmapuri.

Visit to Dharmapuri by my friends:

In the road from dharmapuri to Thrupathur, the nayakkan kottai village is located in the main road at the 9^th KM. From there, entering the left side road, the natham colony is present. Due to 144, we faced severe restrictions from Police. As we entered, a van and 3 two wheeler vehicle was seen in burnt condition. Some cycles were also seen as burnt . The palm shed in front of the houses were seen burnt. One cow shed was also seen burnt and appeared bare. In the nearby school, a samiyana tent was there, under which some people cooked. Some party members was enquiring people there. When we spoke to some women, they said, since our jathi boy married the other jathi girl, they burnt our houses.

These messages are already found in newspapers and we felt nothing new would be got from here. So we started moving towards the “Sellan Kottai” village where the incident took place. After crossing Natham colony, within one km, we reached that village. First we saw a primary school. After that there are only 10 houses there. We found later that only the girl’s father Nagaraj (who committed suicide) , and his relatives were residing there.

Even school students are arrested.

Anna nagar which was also affected was near to sellan kottai.

As no details got from the incident area, we went to surrounding villages as strangers, and started having casual conversation with those people without revealing ourselves. From that, we came to know that a lot of incidents have taken place in the past and all those angers culminated when nagaraj died.

Many facts given by them are really shocking.

The Pillayar Suli for this riot was laid by Karunanidhi:

Karunanidhi appointed Sudhakar, a dalit as the District SP. He inturn appointed Only dalits as Inspector and Sub Inspector in all police stations under him. This has given a major boost to Viduthalai Chiruthaigal in that area. Since the inspectors and SI are from their jathi, the atrocities done by viduthalai Chiruthaigal has become unbearable..

Some incidents to quote:

Kambai Nallur Incident:

This area is 20 KM from Dharmapuri town. A 12^th std girl was returning from her school along with her teachers and panchayat president mariappan. A person came with some eggs, and broke that on the breast of that girl. And he ridiculed, he wanted to see whether the egg will break on Upper Caste women. Due to fear of PCR act, they did not take that to police station.

In another incident, a student name ranjitha was stopped by a person called subramani, and he bite in her cheek. The nearby people chased him away. When the father of that girl, Palani, complained to the police, a PCR case was filed on him by the SP Sudhakar.

When upper caste girls walk in the street, some goons will strip their pants and stand in front of them. Due to this, many girls stopped their schooling.

A person named mani from J.Palayam, stood on the foot of the girl Vijaya, in the bus. And he used some obscene words . Those who are in the bus, put down their heads. The girl complained to her house. The next day, her brothers accompanied her, and when the same person again abused this girl, they took him to the nearby police station.

On hearing this, the relatives of Mani (the person who abused her), started pelting stones on the bus, and abused her with obscene words. When the relatives of Vijaya opposed, there was a clash in that place. SP sudhakar unleashed the special force only on the relatives of Vijaya (the upper caste), and put 14 persons of them behind bar, with PCR case.

In this clash, a person named madhaiyan was missing. On the next day (21.10.2011) his dead body was floating in a well. The post mortem report confirmed he was beated to death. This news was published in Nakeeran Magazine.

The same kind of eve teasing happened to the daughter of a constable (shahul Sheriff) in the same kambai nallur police station. He vacated his house, and settled in a safe place nearby.

3 years before, some arms was missing in Athiyaman Kottai police station. 10 persons including PMK leader was arrested and tortured by the police. Later it was found that this crime was committed by a Dalit person.

Thus a specific jathi was targeted by the DSP sudhakar.

Savukku Thoappu Issue:

This place “Savukku Thoappu” is 2 Kms before the nayakkan kottai. 40 families are living there. Some families run maligai (kirana) shops. 65 year old govindan was running a petty (small) shop. Near to this gramam is Vellalapatti. There is a dada named Raju from this village, belonging to Viduthalai Chiruthaigal. He forcibly snatches materials from the shops, by threatening. This is a regular occurance. The viduthalai Chiruthai members are large in number in this area.

One day, being drunken, he tried to take some materials from this shop. The shop owner, Govindan tried to prevent this, but raju dragged him out, and broke all soda bottles in that shop. Getting angry, pushed raju away.. In this clash, raju’s fell down, and his head got smashed in a stone, and he died on the spot. Police arrested govindan, and to prevent any communal clash, put up police force of 10 in that village.

After 3 days, 20 members from viduthalai chiruthaigal party ransacked the shops there, and also attacked people there. In that, a student named suresh was severely injured (his backbone got broken), and got admitted in hospital for one month. For Another person, his ear drum was damaged.

Instead of taking action against them, the police formed a peace committee, and initiated dialogue. In that, a decision was taken to remove all party flag posts. They removed all, except viduthalai Chiruthaigal.

Sitting under this flag post, the viduthalai chiruthaigal gangs had teased young girls with obscene words and by throwing paper rocket..

As the situation became volatile, which might lead to another clash, people went to tahsildar demanding removal of that flagpost. The officials relented and removed it.

Like this the karunanidhi government has not taken any action on crimes against women, and instead formed only peace committee.. and this had made the viduthalai chiruthaigal, uncontrolled.

And the following news about viduthalai chiruthaigal is the highlight of all.

The youths from viduthalai chiruthaigal, lure school/college girl, by pretending to love them, and then deceitfully take them to some place and keep them there for 10 to 15 days and then demand money from their parent. The bargain would happen in the katta panchayat, and the girl would be released after receiving the money. This has been routine for long. The parents of the girl, to avoid spoiling the future of the girl, do not complain to the police.

Incident -1:

3 km from nallampalli village enroute to salem, lies the village konganapuram. The daughter of a person working in revenue department, (he belongs to chettiyar community), was lured by a dalit, and he lived with her for some days, and sent her back to her father with a demand of 3 lakh. The girl unable to face contempt from her father’s relatives , did not eat for days and committed suicide.

Incident – 2:

In the same nallaampalli village, a 17 year old girl was lured by this group, and they bargained with the parents. Her parent filed a habeous corpus in court, and recovered her daughter.

Incident – 3:

This incident happened 8 months after kambai nallur issue. A person from viduthalai chiruthaigal was disturbing a school girl (belongs to nayudu community) from puthureddyur (Near Kadathur) for months. The girl was consistently refusing his approach. One day evening, while she was returning from tuition, 3 persons from viduthalai chiruthaigal, attempts to rape her. On hearing the scream of this girl, nearby persons came and saved her. When they complained to the police station, the dalit police there threatened that the girl’s image would be spoiled and the complaint was not taken. The next day, around 200 persons, including the girl’s relatives, protested in the police station and demanded arrest of the kidnappers. Even after continuous complaint, the kidnappers were NOT arrested.

Incident-4:

A school girl named anupriya from nallampalli village, studying 10^th std, was continuously approached by the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal for over a year. She also consistently refused. One day while she was returning from a mill with her aunt, 3 persons from Viduthalai Chiruthaigal gang, stopper her, caught her hand, folded it on her back, and forcefully took photo with her. She slapped him out of anger. Enraged at this, they tore her chudithar and beat her. The girl’s father questioned them about this incident, but he was also beated up. The next day, when the girl complained to the police, the DSP sandanapandi and the inspector ashokkumar removes names of two important names from viduthalai Chiruthaigal, and arrests others.

Generally, in all katta panchayats, the police always acted in favor of viduthalai chiruthaigal. Because a part of the amount extracted goes to them.

In palakkodu, same kind of incident happened. The girl’s relatives told that they will get back the girl by paying amount, and it is said that they chased away all those who came for the katta panchayat, including the police officers and took their girl. The police officers who got the beatings were silent.

The Current Dharmapuri Clash and the real situation:

Nagaraj from sellankottai had a daughter (Dhivya) and a son (Mani). His wife is Thenmozhi. Divya was studying B.Sc Nursing in a college nearby. Ilavarasan who completed 12^th std, belongs to Natham Colony, which is on the way from her house. (He was selected for Constable post). He has successfully seduced divya in to his love trap. They both had gone together to many places.

Divya’s father Nagaraj was very affectionate towards her. When she asks 10rs, he will give 100 rs. Such was the affection shown by him.

When he came to know of Ilavarasan – Dhivya affair, he opposed it. Dhivya promised that she will not meet ilavarasan . Nagaraj believed her daughter’s words. In this situation, the day before the couple eloped (Oct-13^th), a relative girl had met her in her college. The next day, dhivya ran away with ilavarasan.

First Nagaraj thought Dhivya had married him and left the issue. Only when the kattapanchayat gang phoned him that his daughter was safe with them, he understood the plot. That gang had conveyed indirectly that when he paid a sum of Rs.2 lakh, they will release the girl. Realising the seriousness, he went to the nearby police station. The police station for that area lies in Krishnapuram, which is near to nayakkan kottai. The S.I of that police station is perumal. (he is a dalit, and it is said that he is called as informal taluk level leader of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal).

The katta panchayat was conducted by this S.I perumal along with 6 other VC (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal) members. It continued for 3 days. Due to this, the people around this area came to know of this kattapanchayat. Also the girl’s father had asked for money from many sources. His wife thenmozhi also got 50,000 from her parents.

The girl and the boy was secretly hidden in the foothills of malayappanur, which is 5 km from dharmapuri, on the way to salem. In between when dhivya came to know about these bargains, she accepted to go with her father. Only few ladies, including the aunt, and mother of the girl was called for this bargain. Strict condition was laid like NOT to carry cell phones etc.

This bargain happened in the road leading to Jarugu. There, S.I Perumal said, upon payment of 7 lakhs, the girl would be released. Dhivya was crying at that time. At the end, the kattapanchayat gang headed by S.I perumal, assured that the girl will be handed over on 7^th. With an intention to marry off his daughter after one month, Nagaraj spoke to his relative in Karnataka who son was fixed as the groom.

In such a situation, one of the girl’s relative called up dhivya that if she returned, her father will kill her. Due to this, dhivya was terrorized, and refused to go with Nagaraj and surrendered to the SP Asra Kark. Now Asra Kark came to know about the leelais of perumal.

Already angry that his katta panchayat was known to SP Asra kark, perumal abused Nagaraj when he asked for his daughter to be returned.

Having lost the money, and also his family name, nagaraj was depressed and committed suicide after returning home.

Since the people in that area was well aware of these katta panchayat, when the news about death of nagaraj spread, they all assembled together. Due to this, the dalits from Natham Colony vacated the village out of fear. S.I perumal was also escaped to secret place.

The relatives of Nagaraj, placed his dead body in front of Ilavarasan’s home and protested. There some enraged persons, ransacted houses there including ilavarasan’s. They burnt some of the vehicles there. When the police team arrived, they ran away.

Meanwhile, the nagaraj family and others, took the deadbody to the main road, and blocked the road. Nagaraj’s wife and all others, demanded that all those 7 members who conducted the katta panchayat should be arrested. In chengal medu along that road, 4 trees were felled down to block the traffic. Soon 2000 police were deployed by Krishnagiri S.P ashokkumar tried to pacify the protesters. He assured to arrest all those involved, and then sent Nagaraj’s body to post mortem.

In the same time, some of the dalit houses was damaged in kondampatty, 4 Km away from that place. The District Collector Lilly (she is also dalit), ordered to arrest all these people who protested. In the same night, the police went to each house and arrested all those found. The number of persons arrested in that day came around 90.

The next day, the newspapers published this incident. And the collected announced, 5000 rs to all those damaged houses. Due to this, the news about death of Nagaraj was suppressed, and the news about burning of vehicles was highlighted. Collector Lilly shown extraordinary interest in this issue, and was very rude to police. She pressured the police to arrest everyone. The previous night, the police tried to arrest even the son of the nagaraj, who was studying 12^th. The ladies there, pleaded with police that since he is the son of the affected family, atleast he be left there. The police relented.

That night, when the police produced all those arrested before magistrate, thenmozhi did not say anything about the kattapanchayat. This surprised S.P. Asra kark. Even the public was surprised at this. They did not understand, that when the fact about ransom amount asked by VC, and Nagaraj paying them, was a known secret, why did she hide this matter before the magistrate. Some expressed their doubt, that some one who is involved in this transaction, might have prevented her fearing exposure.

Meanwhile, Thenmozhi refused to receive Nagaraj’s body after post mortem. She strongly said that unless those 7 persons involved in this katta panchayat was arrested, she will not take the body. 3 days has been passed. Pressure was applied from top to some how handover the body and immediately conduct the funeral.

People there said that Asra Kark has handled this incident with honesty. The police circles say that at one stage, there was verbal feud b/w Collector and the SP. The SP said to collector that he cannot dance to the tunes of collector and that he can take action only as per the law.

Since SC/ST commission would visit, the government wanted to clear the body before that to avoid further problems. So they spread a news that when the body is received and funerals conducted, the police will stop arresting people and that If the body was not received, the police will themselves conduct the funeral. Some relatives fearing further arrests, pressured thenmozhi to receive the body. So thenmozhi yielded to the pressure and conducted the funeral.

Even during the funeral, SP asked thenmozhi about the reason for Nagaraj’s death. He was trying to get the detail about Perumal who conducted the katta panchayat.

Due to Collector’s pressure, the arrest was done on daily basis. The pressure was so intense, that the police themselves got angered. Dinamani News

The persons who so far accused that the houses were burnt, now started to throw allegations of theft, looting, missing jewels etc. Due to this, the original kattapanchayat issue was suppressed, by diverting the issue to caste clash, theft , loot etc. The media too for their part, published these false news on daily basis. No on cared to enquire the affected family of thenmozhi . Media, Fact Finding Committee, and all vested interests assembled only in Ponnambatti village, which is 4 Km away and in NO way related in any way to this clash. It is people from that area, who started the allegations of theft and loot.

Lies of Marx Antony:

In the name of supporting dalits, many non-dalits writers are deliberately spreading canards and lies. One such person is Anthony Samy Nadar, the popular member of Fact Finding Committee.

We can point atleast two big lies of that fact finding committee.

1. More than 50 vehicles has been burnt. But all of them could produce photos of ONLY two vehicles.

The below photo is the house which is said to be burnt by fact finding committee.

Another house said to be burnt.

The bureau said to be looted. Published by fact finding committee

The same bureau photographed from different angle. This clearly shows that the bureau is part of the scrap iron in the shed. More details given below.

scrap irons and used liquor bottles found near to the bureau.

2. The fact finding committee published a bureau said to be looted by the upper caste rioters. But this is the photo of bureau found in a place called Ponnampatti. It was present in Raju’s house, who used to buy and sell scrap irons. To prove it, we have taken a photograph of the same bureau from different angle as given above.

Naken Lies of Kavin Malar (dinamalar reporter):

Under the disguise of Dalit Identity, a lot of forces have been dividing our society. Among them, kavin Malar is the prominent. She went to the extent of comparing this dharmapuri incident with Mullivaaikal (srilanka) and Vachathi. The readers can understand how wrong it is to compare dharmapuri incident with mullivaikaal.

But I want to mention the biggest lie (himayalayan lie) by kavin malar.

She said that around 1000 members came to every village preplanned and that they looted all houses as 50 member team for each house, and that they took away all these looted materials in the lorry they came and that they threw petrol bombs on the houses.

But the truth is different. Nagaraj committed suicide only by 5 PM. Till then, no untoward incident happened in that area. No one was even near nagaraj’s house. Only after hearing his death, people from surrounding villages assembled in thousands. Most of them are just by-standers.

When deceased nagaraj’s relatives blocked the road, 4 trees were felled down. Due to this even police vehicles could not enter that area. Traffic was halted completely. This happened at 6 PM. The road was blocked till 9 PM. In such a situation, it is not possible for them to plan, hire the vehicle, and loot from ponnampatti village where even road facility is not proper. Even basic common sense is suspended while writing like this. Kavinmalar was writing this naked lies, in order to revive her Lost Dalit mask, which was exposed few months before.

Does all those who assembled know in advance that nagaraj is going to commit suicide?

Kavin Malar and Dinamalar:

Kavinmalar proved that she is equal to dinamalar (newspaper) in manipulating a lie. As per the SC/ST commission report, the total houses damaged was given as 40. But Dinamalar was reporting the lie that more than 300 houses were burnt.

And kavinmalar is deliberately lying that 42 trees were felled down, whereas in actual only 4 trees were felled. On the way from dharmapuri to nayakkan kottai, first tree was felled at S. Kottayur. The second tree was felled at Chengalmedu which is 1 km away, and the third and fourth tree was felled at 500 metre distance. We have taken photograph of those trees and produced in this article.

But as kavinmalar was a big liar, she reported as 42 trees. Assuming she is true, where are those 42 trees? Have they uprooted all those trees? Even if so, there would be big pit in that place. Where are those pits ?

The reason we are focusing on this count of trees, is to prove the malicious intent on the part of kavin malar. IF kavin malar wants to prove what she wrote is true, she should go to that place and show atleast 40 trees.

Another organization called Evidence has visited the place where clash occurred, and submitted a report. Even in their account only 60 huts were mentioned as burnt. But dinamalar has written it as 300 houses.

However, we need not worry about dinamalar lies. It is their habit. But, the puthiya thalaimurai TV and its magazine, which claims itself as Hero of truth, also reported the same lies. They reported as 300 houses and 50 vehicles were burnt. They did not send a single reporter to the spot. Just through information obtained from phone they managed to write those lies. Instead of Sellangottai, they wrote it as Sennankottai. This itself is a proof. If their reporter had directly visited the spot, this mistake would not have occurred.

What did Puthiya Thalaimurai Magazine wrote?

Lets see how puthiya thalaimurai wrote in its magazine.

Most Men from Dalit villages like Natham Colony went to Bangalore for work and earned well. From their savings, they bought jewels, two wheelers and autos, built houses in their village. The goal of the dominant caste is to weaken the dalits economically.

If the above report of puthiya thalaimurai is true, then how many two wheelers should have been burnt? How many autos? How many houses should have been burnt?

However, only one tata magic and one auto was actually burnt. All medias showed only these two burnt vehicles and nothing else. Apart from this, 3 motor cycles were burnt Near Ilavarasan’s house.

As per Puthiya Thalaimurai’s reporting, the number of burnt houses was 268.

Will a responsible media, write like this irresponsibly? There is a reason for that.

The owner of Puthiya Thalaimurai TV is paari vendhar. He started a political party called “India Democratic Party” for his own caste. But another unknown fact is that the same person is running a magazine for his own caste. It is called “paarkavan kural”. One day, an advertisement was released in that magazine. Ie, paarivendar announced one lakh rupees for those dalit couples, who conducts marriage under his guidance. This is a proof, that paarivendhar was using dalits as votebank to develp his own party. And for that, he is luring dalits with such helps. And this also proves, he is instigating caste clashes in north tamilnadu where dalits are majority.

In order to find what happened actually in the caste clash, we met those who are arrested under PCR act in the salem jail. Their version of the story is different.

“because of the prevailing anger in that area, they attacked only ilavarasan’s house. Other than that, they only blocked the road demanding arrest of those who are involved in this kattapanchayat. Our anger was towards police and NOT on anyone else. We burnt only the police vehicles and we don’t know what happened else where. “

Also they said, that police has arrested many people who are NOT connected to these incidents, and even the relatives who came for the mourning, and school friends of nagaraj’s son Mani (all aged b/w 17-20), were also arrested.

The list of school, college and ITI students who was arrested by police.

1. Jaisathish

2. Santhosh

3. Aasaithambi

4. Karthick

5. Dinesh

6. Senthil

7. Manimaran

8. Dilli raj

9. Chandrasekhar

10. Arul

11. Sabhari

12. Murugan

13. Deiveegam

14. Thulasirajan

15. Sriram Arulselvan

16. Murali

17. Kabilan

18. Shanmugam

Further, 70 year old periyasamy, a diabetic patient annadurai, all were arrested under PCR Act.

Also a particular jathi was accused of orchestrating this riots. However, the list of arrested persons include people from all jathis.

No. of persons from other jathi who were arrested.

Nayudu – 12

Kurumbar – 4

Chettiyar – 4

Kongu Vellalar – 2

Vannar – 2

Everyone resented that the purpose for which they all protested was still now not fulfilled. All those 7 people who are involved in katta panchayat was not arrested so far. Instead the SI perumal who headed the kattapanchayat was just transferred. “We are not worried about being in jail. We want that atrocities of this gang should not happen in future”, they said.

Some people, after our request, shared their anguish.

“ It is we who lost our daughter, lost our honour, lost our husband. But no one cares about our suffering. Till date, No one came to see us or to enquire what happened. The real criminals has tactfully diverted the issue, and escaped by throwing allegations on us. “

Tirumavazhavan’s worry:

After the dharmapuri incident, thirumavazhavan conducted a private meeting among his party members. He said “If you all create enmity with all jathis, then it will be a good opportunity for karunanidhi who is looking to kick out our party from his alliance. And we have to disband the party and go.”

Attacks in Aroor:

Aroor is located at 20 KM from dharmapuri. A person named Sakthivel was returning from Tiruvannamalai to salem. On the way, at a place called S. Patti, the viduthalai Chiruthai party was protesting against dharmapuri incident, and in that, they threw stones at the bus in which sakthivel travelled. Sakthivel (who belongs to the so called upper caste vanniyar community) was injured in this stone pelting and eventually died in hospital. All media systematically suppressed this news. Police also did not arrest the criminals.

Another romeo was caught redhanded

After this dharmapuri incident, many girls got awareness about the large scale conspiracy by viduthalai chiruthaigal gang. One girl was disturbed in the same way by a person from ambedkar colony, and she took this matter to her father. His father then caught that boy red-handed in nallaanpatti, and chased him away. Some youths called him to file a complaint. But this father, refused, saying he wants his girl to live in peace.

From our field visit, we came to know the following news.

1. More than 26 girls has been lured like this, and were recovered after paying ransom amount. Considering the future of that girl, none of their parents complained about this.

2. At one point of time, this nayakkan kottai village was the fort of Naxals. Activists from the so called Upper caste vanniyars, ate in the dalit’s houses. A village which should have been an example to whole tamilnadu, has become a bad example, because of the former SP Sudhakar, who gave unlimited freedom to viduthalai chiruthaigal.

3. As per the report of SC/ST commission, the number of houses burnt was 40, and damaged was 175. But the government gave compensation to 268 houses. How is it possible?

4. When the Revenue Inspector, took the census, the people asked for compensation even for small breakage of window. When he refused, he was threatened and forced to include those houses.

The Role of PMK:

Many people accuse PMK as the force behind this incident. But in reality, they have no connection to this incident. People all parties and all jathis joined the protest in the first day.

The next day, the panchayat president Raja (belongs to PMK) was called for dialogue by the collector. In front of the collector itself, viduthalai chiruthaigal gang attacked him and broke his head. This incident itself is an example, on whose side, the collector and police were acting.

Even after all these happened, no one met the affected family on behalf of PMK. They were busy issuing press statements.

When some persons pasted posters condemning PMK for instigating the riots, the PMK party people were happy, because they got the name for an act they did not do.

Advantages to Viduthalai Chiruthaigal

By diverting the focus of this kattapanchayat, the viduthalai chiruthaigal is the most benefitted.

1. The Victim was made as accused.

2. They successfully projected themselves as Innocent.

3. No one can dare to question them in future, on this kidnap game.

4. To get compensation even for houses not affected

Future of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal

The PCR act which was enacted to protect the dalits, was now used as a shield for atrocities of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal. Due to this, these people are going to be isolated from mainstream, and it will take time for them to realize this.

The progress of the dalits lies in their education and NOT in the bedrooms of the so called upper castes. If this is NOT understood, then today’s victory would be tomorrow’s defeat for them. It is the ordinary dalits who are going to affected out of this.

All those leaders who visit the riot spot, was demanding 2 lakhs, 5 lakhs so on for the affected houses. Let the government give even 10 lakhs to the affected houses. We don’t have any issues.

But our main question remains unanswered.

The people who attacked the houses has been arrested under PCR act. But who is going to punish those culprits, who is responsible for the death of Nagaraj and Sakthivel (who died in stone pelting incident).

http://vanjikkapadupavaninkuralgal.blogspot.in/

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 Tamil report at.http://vanjikkapadupavaninkuralgal.blogspot.in/

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Book announcement: A theory for wealth of nations (S. Kalyanaraman, 2012)

December 11, 2012, 4:09 pm

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Book announcement: A theory for wealth of nations

A theory for wealth of nations: Market economics overturns Adam Smith and Karl Marx [Paperback] http://tinyurl.com/akmtwko
S. Kalyanaraman

Book Description Publication Date: December 11, 2012

A theory for wealth of nations -- Market economics overturns Adam Smith and Karl Marx In the context of economic theories of political economy, market capitalism dominated by a network of corporations defines global capitalism which makes society subservient. Economic history of two millennia provide a framework for delineating a relativist theory for wealth of nations governed by Sreni dharma to cope with greed and corruption. The metaphor of varaha, upholding the earth provides an outline for sustaining wealth of nations. Reviewing holistic-ethical development models and role of social capital, the dominant role has to be assigned to household economics which provides for rebuilding economic theory founded on a global ethic to correct market fundamentalism and to create and strengthen European Community and Indian Ocean Community as Rastram, grouping of nations. Such a theory will promote and sustain wealth of the grouped nations.

About the Author

Dr. S. Kalyanaraman is Director, Sarasvati Research Center, President, Ramasetu Protection Movement in India and BoD member of World Association for Vedic Studies. His research interests relate to rediscovery of Vedic Sarasvati River, roots of Hindu civilization, decoding of Indus Script, National Water Grid and creation of Indian Ocean Community. He has a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of the Philippines. He is a multi-lingual scholar versed in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Sanskrit, Hindi. He was a senior financial and IT executive in Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines and on Indian Railways. His 18 publications include: Indian Lexicon - a multilingual dictionary for over 25 Indian languages, Sarasvati in 15 volumes, Indian Alchemy - Soma in the Veda, Indus Script Cipher, Rastram, Indian Hieroglyphs, Indian Ocean Community. He is a recipient of many awards including Vakankar Award (2000), Shivananda Eminent Citizens’ Award (2008) and Dr. Hedgewar Prajna Samman (2008). Website: http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97

Product Details
• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Sarasvati Research Center, Herndon, VA (December 11, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982897162 ISBN-13: 978-0982897164

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The Gadkari issue: The facts without comments

December 11, 2012, 8:23 pm

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The Gadkari issue: The facts without comments

November 27, 2012 17:45 IST

We must understand that we live in extremely cynical times. If it is a politician he must be corrupt. If he is a businessman, he must be equally corrupt. Poor Nitin Gadkari, he is a politician and a businessman. That compounded matters for him, says M R Venkatesh.

"Money Laundering." That was the charge a senior journalist levelled at the outset while we discussed the Nitin Gadkari issue. "But have you read the Prevention of Money Laundering Act," I probed him. "No" was his cryptic reply. Surely he did not realise that a charge of laundering is sustainable, if and only if, it is associated with a crime. Crucially, the proceeds of a crime must be passed of as untainted property.

Being technical, this was greeted with silence. Seizing this opportunity I elaborated "to launder money, one must have committed a crime. What is the crime he committed in the first place -- kidnapping, drug peddling or corruption?"

"Corruption" he mumbled and added meekly "that is what Khejriwal says." "Do you realise that Gadkari has not been in power for over 12 years that the charge of corruption, at this distance of time and that too without any evidence, is ludicrous?" I queried. Once again silence.

"As regards land allotted by Maharashtra government for irrigation, it has, in effect been used (through a trust) for the purpose for which it was allotted. Nothing wrong." I elucidated.

"But what if he has worked his way through the state government for the allocation of this land?"

Obviously, in the absence of cogent arguments, my friend was getting vague. "Well in that case, the state government stands condemned first up where even persons of Gadkari's stature had to bribe their way through," I elaborated. "Will the state government inquire this matter?" I queried. More silence followed. Remember, Gadkari is ready for an probe by the Centre or state governments.

"But the maze of transactions, the shell companies, his domestic help being appointed as directors all point to something fishy." From a pointed and serious charge of Money Laundering it had now become "fishy." After tackling the money laundering charge, I began explaining the transactions.

Purti, the company in question and linked to Gadkari, had a paid up capital of Rs 55 crore by 2009, of which, Rs 47.34 crore (say 85% and the bone of contention) was invested by one Mehta group through 12 shell companies. Let us call these companies Block A.

That is not all. Mehta who had originally given his guarantee to financial institutions, substituted his guarantee (on account of some technicality) with that of another 14 shell companies (let us call these companies Block B), which were distinct from the original 12 viz Block A. In short, he is, repeat he is, the owner of Block A as he is of Block B. In short, Mehta used Block A shell companies for structuring their investments into Purti and Block B for structuring their guarantees to financial institutions (FI) for loans taken by Purti.

"Did you get the crux?" I enquired. In response, my friend conceded "Nothing illegal or immoral I guess but I am not comfortable either."

"Remember that the Supreme Court has allowed a person to arrange his affairs as long as they are not illegal" I said and added "Your comfort is irrelevant."

"Is this arrangement an afterthought?" my journalist friend enquired mischievously. "Remember that this issue was settled, not now in 2012, but almost a decade back," I retorted. All these were fully known since then to FI, Registrar of Companies and IT authorities. This is called contemporaneous evidence and obviously has very high evidentiary value.

Further, in a search conducted by the IT authorities on parties concerned, the ownership was conclusively demonstrated to them dramatis personae parties concerned, the ownership of Purti issue was decisively settled in favour of Mehta. This is a crucial issue that media and Gadkari's detractors missed out. Forget technicalities, Mehta invested into Purti over a period of time a decade back, all of which were disclosed to the IT authorities and accepted. This is the crux of the issue that the media and Gadkari's detractors missed out.

Bad luck or bad planning?

While substantial portion of Purti's capital was from Mehta, Gadkari with a mere capital of Rs 100,000 became the face of Purti. Possibly, Purti was his political instrument to nurture his constituency in Vidharbha. Unlike other Maharashtrian politicians who used the co-operative model, Gadkari used a corporate model (Purti).

It is now well known that Purti has in excess of 10,000 farmer-shareholders, a good number of whom were beneficiaries of Purti's intervention in drought stricken, farmer suicide prone backward regions of Vidharbha. One need not be Einstein to figure that if farmers had to benefit (paid more than the minimum support price), someone had to lose equally.

And it was Purti -- the very vehicle that was designed to help farmers by Gadkari had become sick! By 2009, Purti had an accumulated loss of Rs 64 crore. The loans had not been serviced and became bad in the books of the FI. In the process the assiduously built idea constituency of Gadkari ran the risk of imploding.

Purti had to be restructured. For this reason fresh capital was required. Global Safety Vision Limited, another player in this drama, agreed to put Rs 164 crore into Purti in 2009-10. But there was a pre-condition. Mehta had to exit Purti as Global would not fund till he was around. So Mehta effectuated a "theatrical transfer" (a phrase used by S Gurumurthy) of his holdings from Block A shell companies to Block B, which he controlled (through domestic help) if not owned.

Once the money flowed from Global, dues to the FI were settled. "But, did this not prejudice FI? If they had known that probably Mehta was the owner of Block B companies, probably they would not have taken decisions to favour a settlement with Purti?" My friend was trying to play devil's advocate.

"But sir, did I not tell you that the ownership of loan to Purti was guaranteed by Block B shell companies vested with Mehta and was known to concerned all authorities?" Since 2003-04?" "Oh yes" my friend conceded sheepishly. "Is that why you argue that there is no prejudice to FI?" he enquired. "Yes" I replied.

"But was not Global prejudiced, especially more so assuming if Mehta was in effect the owners of Block B shell companies? Importantly, why did Mehta introduce domestic help as directors?" My friend was at his pursuasive best. "To some extent I concede he, Mehta, was probably wrong. But even in your question you have not implicated Gadkari. If that were so why hold Gadkari guilty?" I questioned.

My friend was stumped. He realised his game well and truly over. After all Gadkari was linked to Purti not to the shortcomings in shell companies of Block A or B shell companies! Similarly, all his domestic helps were linked to these shell companies, not to Purti. Either way, the domestic help did not bring any substantial capital that could remotely implicate Gadkari.

Simply put Global gave loans because of Gadkari, not Mehta. In turn Purti remortgaged its assets to Global. This was possible as the market value of Purti's assets skyrocketed. Importantly, it was possible as once their loans were repaid, the FI released lien on assets mortaged with them.

Once these transactions were completed, Mehta once again proclaimed ownership of Purti. "Whatever be it, Mehta short-charged Global" my friend remonstrated angrily. "Probably," I retorted agreed and added "See Gadkari is not involved in all this. If at all it is an issue Mehta and Global without involving Gadkari. Then why hold him responsible? If Gadkari is responsible for the action of his business partner, should not the PM be responsible for the conduct of his colleagues?"

Perturbed at this question my friend interjected "But how genuine is the Global loan?" "You tell me, after all you made the charge of money Laundering," I retorted. "I don't know." He confessed. "Not to worry, Global is part of IRB group -- a separate group," I concluded.

Moral of the story

One thing is certain; it was a war against Gadkari orchestrated from within -- an insider job. That created the "perceptions" in the first place. Sections of the media inextricably became part of this internal squabble within the BJP. That converted perceptions into "charges."

Maze of shell companies, liberal usage of exotic terminologies without understanding it and anchors who held Gadkari guilty first and then began their investigation added to all these. Competitive media converted "charges" into "sensational findings." And now Gadkari's colleagues point to the mess which they created in the first place as a reason for Gadkari to go.

We must also understand that we live in extremely cynical times. If it is a politician he must be corrupt. If he is a businessman, he must be equally corrupt. Poor Gadkari, he is a politician and a businessman. That compounded matters for him.

Press report suggests that the government has initiated some probe through ministry of company law affairs and IT. All these do not suggest the grave charge of money laundering as my friend initially made it out to be. There could be some technical violations by Purti, no doubt, but nothing that criminally implicates Gadkari of money laundering at this point in time.

The lessons of all this is compelling. Some media anchors acted as mercenaries. They carried out a hit and run operation without evidence. When evidence was forthcoming they lacked the basic courtesy to carry out the other side of the story and provide an opportunity to the accused to defend himself.

"Finally do you mean that Gadkari did no wrong?" my beleaguered friend enquired. "I am no one to pass verdict. Consequently, I have laid out facts for you to decide. This is what even the Lord did while delivering ultimate knowledge through Gita (Chapter XVIII) to Arjuna. After all clarifications, he allowed Arjuna to decide his course of action." I rest my case.

The author is a Chennai-based chartered accountant. He can be contacted at mrv@mrv.net.in

M R Venkatesh

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-gadkari-issue-the-facts-without-comments/20121127.htm

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Ramachandra Guha's aggressive secularism : His problem with the cow -- Dr. Vijaya Rajiva

December 12, 2012, 4:44 am

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December 12, 2012

Ramachandra Guha's aggressive secularism : His problem with the cow

Dr. Vijaya Rajiva

Javed Anand of Communalism Combat came up with a happy phrase : Ramachandra Guha's aggressive secularism. He said this approvingly in contrast to what he saw as the Congress's lukewarm secularism during the current run up to the Gujarat elections. He made this observation during a program on NDTV. However, it provided a solution to the riddle of Guha's liberalism/secularism, which surfaced in his work India After Gandhi (2008). In that work which is largely an historical chronicle Mr. Guha has a loosely structured narrative of events and personalities after the Gandhian period (as the title indicates). In chapter 24, perhaps the weakest part of the work, he attempts an overview of the Sangh Parivar and its activities within the context both of the Ramajanmabhoomi movement (ending with the demolition of the Babri Masjid) and the Sangh's devotion to the cow.

The historian is unsympathetic to this devotion to the cow. The present writer finds this puzzling. Mr. Guha is disapproving of M.S.Golwalkar's insistence on the care and respect for the cow. In today's world the trend in health circles is vegetarianism. Not a day passes by without the medical establishment warning about the dangers of red meat in one's diet. Simultaneously there is an excessive consumption of beef which requires large inputs in the shape of land and feed for cows. Brazil, one of the largest meat exporters to the western world has encroached considerably on its forestes land in order to raise cattle for beef consumption. India is the third largest exporter of beef and here it is the Middle East that is the client. From Bangladesh cattle thieves take cattle from India and export the meat. The cattle population in India is steadily decreasing.

Most importantly, the suffering of the hapless animals has been well documented in the video 'Their Last Journey: Cattle Trafficking to Kerala' (this video may be viewed at Haindava Keralam).

In such a context one would expect a thoughtful historian (and one interested in environmental issues as Mr. Guha is or used to be)writing in 2008 to be cognisant of the importance of the cow in Indian culture. Neverthless, Ramachandra Guha is carried away by his prejudice against the Sangh. What motivates this talented author and historian ?

Part of the answer is in his own autobiographical reference in the book Patriots and Partisans where he refers to his family having discarded the sacred thread and whole heartedly embracing secularism. Why casting off the caste symbol of the sacred thread should lead one to the neglect of the cow and the problems associated with the suffering of the dumb animals (the horrors of halal killing of cows is well known) is not the type of question that a secularist, especially an aggressive secularist is likely to ask. This indifference brings 'secularism' a bad name and indeed Indian liberalism/secularism is a mish mash of undigested ideas.

The mystery clears up somewhat when one reads Guha's book Makers of Modern India. The reader should be informed that this is not a theoretical examination of these historical figures. It is a collection of excerpts from 19 politician- thinkers ( as Guha describes them)and provides a service to the general reader who may not get to read their entire writings. There is once again a loose theoretical scaffolding of sorts which is thematically the secular narrative. Prior to each excerpt the author has a brief set of observations.

The familiar names are there : Ram Mohun Roy, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar, Gokhale, Syed Ahmed Khan, Jotirao Phule, Verrier Elwin et al.

It is in the last chapter one understands Mr. Guha's predilections. It is devoted to excerpts from the works of a relatively unknown figure, a Hamid Dalwai (1932-1973) whom Guha describes as the last 'modernist' of India. Dalwai, unlike Syed Ahmed Khan, did not secretly favour the Muslim community. His goal was the complete secularisation of both Muslims (his own community) and the Hindus. He advocated women's rights and the education of Muslims in general in a modern rationalist tradition. As for the Hindus he called upon them to become dynamic and in doing so they would also carry the Muslim population along with them, rather than cater to their obscurantist ideas. Hence, a united front of liberals.

However, for the Hindus to become dynamic they have to shed their own obscurantist views, namely the caste system and the CULT OF THE COW. This is not the place to go into an extended discussion of the caste system erroneously so called. The proper word would be 'jati' and this system arose from the exigencies of economic life in ancient India. The jati system was a guild type of system and was the basis of India's famed economic prosperity. It is not clear whether it is still the basis of India's entrepreneurial activity. The economic writings of S.Gurumurthy and Professor Vaidyananthan of the Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore) would indicate that the jati system is still the basis of much of it. Throwing that out might end up as throwing the baby out with the bath water. It would,ofcourse, fit neatly into the liberal economic plans of opening the door to FDI (Foreign Direct Investment).

The iniquities of the caste system such as the treatment of the lowest castes, the former Untouchables (now Dalits), are certainly to be condemned and no organisations have been as active in eradicating this social evil as the very Sangh Parivar organisations that the Indian liberals fulminate against. The affirmative programs by the GOI are also to be considered and the recent book by Dr. Rakesh Bahadur Equality and Inclusion : Progress and Development of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes In Independent India (2010) can be usefully referred to.

So, while Hamid Dalwai can be taken seriously on some aspects of the caste system his views on the cult of the cow have to be firmly rejected in their entirety. Ramachandra Guha does not do that and to that extent his secularism morphs into an 'aggressive secularism' which all Hindus must reject without hesitation. This is neither modernism nor dynamism but a retreat into atavism.

(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university).

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The evolution of writing - Michael Gross

December 12, 2012, 4:52 am

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Current Biology, Volume 22, Issue 23, R981-R984, 4 December 2012

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.11.032

The evolution of writing

Michael Gross

Michael Gross is a science writer based at Oxford. He can be contacted via his web page at www.michaelgross.co.uk

Summary
Decoding the world’s oldest as yet undeciphered writing system could help to improve our understanding of the origins of writing and of how this crucial cultural progress spread, branched out, and in some cultures died out.Michael Gross reports.

MAIN TEXT

Just over 5,000 years ago, the earliest cities flourished in Mesopotamia and western Iran. One explanation that has been considered is that making these areas with their seasonal alternations of flooding and drought amenable to agriculture required a complex infrastructure for water retention and irrigation. Thus, only a critical mass of workforce and a certain level of organisation could make these lands habitable, leading to urban settlements like Uruk in Mesopotamia and, a few hundred kilometres to the east, Susa in Iran. On the other hand, humans adapt well to diverse climatic conditions, and southern Mesopotamia may have lent itself to the growth of incipient complex societies without the need for large-scale hydraulic management as more current archaeological theories suggest.

Whatever their origin, the complex societies that built these early cities soon found they needed to keep records of their stocks, property, and commerce. The people of Uruk came up with proto-cuneiform, which evolved into cuneiform. This script encoding words and syllables was eventually supplanted in the Middle East by alphabetic writing systems that spread across the Mediterranean.

A few centuries later, the people of Susa picked up the idea of keeping written records and apparently borrowed a few signs from proto-cuneiform, but mostly they invented their own system of record-keeping, which is now known as proto-Elamite. The writing quickly spread across Iran, even though other archaeological evidence doesn’t suggest that the country had a unified culture at that time. Early excavations in Susa found more than 1,500 clay tablets with proto-Elamite script, and hundreds more have been found since.

As the name indicates, researchers were initially hoping to find a more advanced ‘Elamite’ script that might have followed up on this early version, like cuneiform evolved out of proto-cuneiform. However, systematic archaeological investigation has shown that this next step never happened. After a few centuries of using proto-Elamite, the people of Susa and other towns in Iran stopped writing altogether. For a period of 500 years, there is no trace of writing in Iran, until the introduction of cuneiform from Mesopotamia around 2300–2200 BC and, concurrently, the development as the Susan royal court of a second indigenous script known as Linear Elamite, which is unrelated to proto-Elamite.

In anthropological terms, the proto-Elamite script is the Neanderthal of writing systems. It branched off from our line of descent early on, spread for a while, then became extinct for mysterious reasons. Understanding it better might help us to understand our own cultural evolution. It would help, obviously, if we could decipher it.

Deciphering challenge

Jacob L. Dahl, of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford, started out studying cuneiform and then became more interested in the path less travelled, the branch that became extinct. Dahl, the world’s leading expert in this writing system heads a research team dedicated to understanding it.

Many have considered the script undecipherable, and linguists are frustrated by the lack of any parallel documents like the Rosetta Stone, which could help, and by the lack of proper prose, as the tablets seem to be listing quantities of commodities owned by specific households. The writing uses 17 numerical and around 1,400 non-numerical signs. Of the latter, Dahl believes, around 100 may have been used as syllables to code for names. These occur where names of owners are listed, are poorly standardised, and have no obvious pictorial meaning.

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Difficult read: A proto-Elamite clay tablet from the collection at the Louvre. Scribes used a stylus typically made of reed to press these shapes into the soft clay. (Photo: University of Oxford.)

“An additional challenge,” says Dahl, “is the fact that they use no signs depicting body parts. They must have had a taboo forbidding that. The only exceptions are two pictographically constructed signs for female and male workers, which they took over from proto-cuneiform, obviously without regard to their pictorial associations.”

Early excavations produced large numbers of texts and other artefacts but failed to contextualise these, and, whereas the early publishers worked fervently to quickly publish the results, the published copies cannot necessarily be trusted.

In the late 1970s, the Swedish mathematician Jöran Friberg managed to work out the numerical system used in archaic Iran, based on the observation that the tablets usually contain sums of the quantities listed in each line. Later, Peter Damerow at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science and Robert K. Englund at the Free University, both at Berlin, proposed identifications for some of the signs and deciphered the content of some tablets. Thus, signs for containers for weakly fermented beer, dairy products, and grains are understood. Dahl, who worked with Englund at UCLA and with Damerow at Berlin, deciphered a number of signs relating to sheep and goat herding, but still scratches his head over how the proto-Elamite scribes may have referred to cattle, for example.

Dahl has started producing high-quality images of the tablets using a novel device, the Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) system (building on technology developed originally by Tom Malzbender and others at the HP labs in Palo Alto). This uses a black plastic dome lined with 76 separate LED lights and fitted with a 25 megapixel camera. Each artefact is photographed 76 times, each time illuminated from a different angle by one of these LEDs. A dedicated software package combines the 76 shots into a single image file, with which the users can then create different viewing experiences, as if they were looking at the original tablet and shining a torch at it from different sides and angles to get a feeling for the shapes, the textures, and the depths of the grooves.

With these complex images, Dahl now hopes to launch an internet-based crowdsourcing project to help complete the decipherment, following the example of success stories such as Folding@Home (see Curr. Biol. (2012) 22, R35–R38). Combining the ideas and skills of many different people, and including perspectives from mathematics, linguistics, art, and so on, may be the clue to cracking the remainder of the code. Some images have already been made available online, with more and in increasingly higher quality over the coming six months (seehttp://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/proto-elamite for an introduction to proto-Elamite with links to images of the tablets andhttp://cdli.ucla.edu for more on online cuneiform).

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Detective work: Jacob Dahl and Laura Hawkins working on cuneiform tablets at Oxford University. (Photo: University of Oxford.)

Rise and fall

Taken together with the available evidence from the Middle East, a better understanding of proto-Elamite would be a big step towards a complete overview of the evolution of writing, including its birth, branching out, diffusion, and dying out.

Contrary to what one might expect based on today’s notions of literacy, writing did very clearly not arise from a move to record spoken language. Instead, it evolved out of primitive accounting methods, more closely related to abacuses than to storytelling.

“At first, there were tokens used to represent quantities of commodities such as grain,” explains Dahl. “Most tokens were made of clay, a few examples exist of stone tokens. We recently made some clay tokens for our class and were able to replicate the calculations — additions only — in rather complex texts without any use of abstract numbers, or even number words.”

In a second stage, people turned the very same tokens into a permanent recording of the relevant quantities by keeping them in clay envelopes. “These consisted of a hollow clay ball, also called a bulla,” Dahl explains. “It is very likely that tokens continued to be used for centuries.”

Finally, clay tablets bearing the impressions of tokens, and then, similar shapes produced with a stylus became the record keeping, making the tokens redundant. The stylus was usually made of reed, but perhaps also of hard wood or metal: in fact one metal tool that may have been used as a stylus was found at Tepe Yahya close to some proto-Elamite tablets.

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Ghost town: The remains of the ancient city of Susa may increasingly look like natural hills, but excavations have yielded more than 1,500 clay tablets with inscriptions that are around 5,000 years old. (Photo: Jan Walstra.)

The third stage can be pinned down exactly. “Writing is a technology. Regardless of whatever mnemonic devices may have been used in different parts of the ancient Near East, the earliest crystallisation of that technology occurred at the great southern Mesopotamian metropolis of Uruk in the specific context of a large institution dedicated to the city goddess Inanna,” explains Dan Potts from the University of Sydney, Australia. “The earliest texts served to document the incomings and outgoings of those commodities (naturalia, realia) that served to sustain the institution, which some would call a temple complex, and its personnel (not just priests and scribes but agricultural and craft labourers as well). Lexical texts, lists of words classified by domain (names of different categories of animals, trees, plants, professions), represent concrete expressions of early scribal training. It took many more centuries before writing was used to record royal inscriptions, literature, letters and other types of texts.”

Initial proto-writing systems could represent only a certain repertoire of relevant objects — their users could not write down current events or stories they may have told each other. Gradually, the proto-writing systems evolved into complete writing systems, allowing people to write down whatever they could express in words of their language.

The invention of writing happened at least twice and no more than four times in the history of mankind. The two clear cases are cuneiform and the Mayan scripts, both clearly independent inventions that went on to become complete writing systems. Deciphering of Mayan writing has made rapid progress since the 1970s, following the realisation that it is a phonetic representation of a language related to the one still spoken in the area today. It might have been easier if 16^th century colonialism had not actively sought to eradicate knowledge of the script that still existed at the time.

Cuneiform was decoded in the second half of the 19th century using trilingual inscriptions written in Old Persian cuneiform, Akkadian cuneiform and Elamite cuneiform. Since the content of some of these texts was known (ruler names and titles of the kings of Persia) this was in fact a very complex linguistic puzzle of replacing signs with sounds and speculate language affiliation.

Some people still question whether the Egyptian hieroglyphs are an equally pristine invention. While there is no similarity in the signs used, Egyptians and, as some have speculated, even ancient Chinese may or may not have gleaned the idea of writing things down for accountancy from Mesopotamia.

Proto-Elamite by contrast, clearly got the idea and a small number of signs from Mesopotamia, and then went on to add a whole range of new signs to the repertoire. It is the earliest writing system that we know to be a derived one. This early branching point is thus the equivalent of speciation in biological evolution. The separate writing systems of these neighbouring regions must have been mutually incomprehensible.

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Ancient lands: The area of western Iran, where a writing system inspired by Mesopotamia’s cuneiform flourished around 5,000 years ago. (Photo: University of Oxford.)

Over a short time span — three centuries at most, but probably much less — the proto-Elamite script spread across Iran, offering a prime example of cultural diffusion. There is no archaeological evidence suggesting a mechanism for this spreading, such as central government or long-distance trading, so the rapid expansion remains one of the mysteries of proto-Elamite.

As the proto-Elamite script spread and developed further, it became richer in its sign repertoire, but Dahl notes that it also ran into problems. “There was an inflation of signs in proto-Elamite,” says Dahl, “and even in high-level accounts, such as those for the household of the ruler of Susa, you see systematic errors and bad practice.” For instance, scribes would cram in information at the end of a line, rather than planning for the space available, like their colleagues in Mesopotamia would have done. And they made elementary mistakes in the bundling of numbers, as it would be a mistake in Roman numerals to write IIIII instead of V.

The key cultural difference is that cuneiform was backed up by a lexical tradition from early on, says Dahl. In Uruk, lists of standardised signs were used for reference. No such lists have ever been found for proto-Elamite. Dahl can’t resist the temptation to speculate that it may have been the failure to invest in the quality of proto-Elamite writing culture that led to its deterioration and ultimately to its downfall.

The ensuing period of five centuries without writing makes Europe’s descent into the Dark Ages pale in comparison. Prophets of linguistic doom who worry about youth slang and text speak will delight in this example of cultural downfall that was possibly triggered or accelerated by bad writing practice. Seeing writing as a trait that has evolved in human populations, it is only natural that it can not only arise, diversify and spread, but also die out. That’s just life.

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01376-0?large_figure=true

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Drab textbooks kill urge to learn - Kumar Chellappan

December 12, 2012, 5:56 am

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Dec. 12, 2012

Drab textbooks kill urge to learn

Author: Kumar Chellappan

The authors of books prescribed for schools and colleges are established academicians with impeccable credentials. But most of these writers have poor communication skills

Textbooks prescribed for schools and colleges in India are dull, drab and disheartening. The only time they get national attention is when the contents generate controversy like the NCERT social studies textbook recommended for ninth standard students in the CBSE stream. A chapter on culture and clothing authored by a Leftist historian from Jawaharlal Nehru University contained derogatory and flippant observations about the politically and economically influential Nadar community in Tamil Nadu. The chapter got publicity not for the wisdom of the author but for comments reportedly picked up from a book authored by a US journalist. Our eminent historians blindly follow anything anti-Indian, especially when that is authored by Western writers.

The author of the article described Nadars as descendants of Shanars, a group of people in Kerala, who migrated to southern Tamil Nadu to work as farm labourers in the agricultural lands of Nair landlords. The word ‘Shanar’ itself is inappropriate. They are Channars and the community was known for their wealth and social advancement. This is just to drive home the point about how insipid and tasteless our school and college books are. How many of us have gone through them? I am sure even grown-up people find it painful to read those books.

It is not because our students are lazy that they detest such textbooks. The authors of those books may be good academicians but they are poor communicators. One scientist who could simplify complex subjects for ordinary people was CV Raman, who is credited with the Raman Effect, and who walked away with the Nobel Prize for the same. While even modern day teachers struggle to explain what Raman Effect is, to their wards, there is a real life story about the great scientist. His illiterate aunt asked Raman what is this commotion about the Raman Effect and the Nobel Prize. When the great scientist explained to her the significance of his invention, the aunt reportedly asked him, “Are these Westerners mad to honour you with Nobel Prize for such a simple invention”, the aunt is reported to have asked him. It took Raman Effect to new heights.

I remember late M Sundareshan of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, telling me how science is taught in US schools. “There were two students staying in the same neighbourhood: A boy and a girl. The boy was black, the girl was white. Whenever they came face to face, they used to fight. The girl always taunted the boy calling him ‘Blackie’; the boy shouted back at the girl calling her ‘Whitie’. This went on for weeks and months. Once the boy got so irritated that he caught hold of her hand and pulled her towards him. There was a ‘blast’ and lots of ‘fire’. Onlookers watched it with shock. When the fire subsided and the smoke blew away, people had a hearty laugh. They had learnt yet another lesson. When potassium permanganate, which is black in colour, comes into contact with glyceriene, which is white, there would be fire— and one has to be cautious. This is how they teach chemistry in USA”, he told me.

Our schools and colleges may not have state-of-the-art laboratories or teaching instruments. But good teachers could make the learning process interesting by taking the students close to nature and teaching them about environment and ecology. Most of the students, in schools as well as in colleges, fear mathematics. The teachers never tell them why one should learn the complex equations in algebra, calculus and trigonometry. On their party, the students learn mathematics out of fear; fear of their teachers and fear of the examinations.

P Iyemperumal, executive director of the MP Birla Planetarium in Chennai, who moves around in all of Tamil Nadu schools like an evangelist preaching the significance of learning science and mathematics, says that the quality of teaching in schools as well as colleges has come down over the years. He feels a teacher should be trained for a minimum period of three years by a senior teacher before the trainee teacher is entrusted with a classroom.

P Shankar, a distinguished nuclear scientist-turned professor, says that the destruction of thinking power of our students begin in schools where they are asked to learn everything without understanding one bit of anything. If they do not reproduce what they read in the text books ad-verbatim, they stand to lose marks.

With its rich history and cultural traditions, India does not need billions of dollars of investment for making this possible. Tell the newly recruited teachers that theirs is not just yet another job, but that it is also a mission.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52993-drab-textbooks-kill-urge-to-learn.html

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The good CAG and the bad CAG - J. Gopikrishnan

December 12, 2012, 5:58 am

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Dec. 12, 2012

The good CAG and the bad CAG
Author: J Gopikrishnan Dec. 12, 2012

The Congress does not tire of ridiculing the Comptroller and Auditor-General on its estimate of the loss to the exchequer in the wake of the 2G Spectrum scam. But the party merrily uses an old CAG report to allege that Narendra Modi’s regime is involved in hera-pheri of Central funds

On December 3, Comptroller and Auditor-General Vinod Rai and his colleagues must have had a hearty laugh watching television channels flashing news of Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari’s live Press conference at the All India Congress Committee’s office. Mr Tewari, a frequent CAG baiter, was ‘revealing’ to the media a ‘scam’ related to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The Minister was talking at length and posing serious questions to Mr Modi on the benefits allegedly given to certain companies, and the role of a foreigner in the gas exploration contract of a State public sector undertaking. He was citing a magazine report which in turn was based on the CAG’s findings.

Several illegalities in the gas exploration contract had been then found by the CAG, and these were tabled in its report in the Gujarat Assembly on April 2012. Though the magazine gave credit to the CAG in its recent report, Mr Tewari refrained from doing so. He instead praised the magazine for the exposé on Mr Modi’s “corruption”. In fact, even the questions that Mr Tewari asked the Gujarat Chief Minister in the Press conference were a direct lift from the CAG report.

Ironically, Mr Tewari banked on the CAG’s findings against the Modi Government’s gas exploration contract. Till this Press conference, the Congress and its Ministers since the past two years had been mercilessly attacking CAG and its chief, Mr Rai, for the findings in the 2G Spectrum scam report.

For these politicians, the CAG report is gospel truth when it suits their politics and when it does not, they violate all norms of decorum to attack the CAG in general and its head in particular.

This ‘my CAG versus your CAG’ syndrome is the bane of Indian politics. When the CAG report is against them, politicians immediately start raising questions: Can the CAG question policy? Next will be the turn of the spin doctors of the party. The so-called brigade will initiate Goebbelsian methods by questioning the auditing style and ‘unilateral’ move of the CAG, and its method of calculation of presumptive loss. The last, of course, is the contribution of the dirty tricks department.

We recently witnessed the dirty trick played by the UPA regime when it dug up a retired auditor to trash the very report which he had prepared. Given the downgrading of Indian politics and the magnitude of slush money involved in the scams unearthed by the CAG, we may see more retired Government personnel coming out in the future. The theatrics of retired auditor RP Singh are hidden from no one. He was present at the Press conference when the CAG report on 2G Spectrum scam was unveiled two years ago, proudly explaining the nitty-gritty of the report on the massive scam. He is the same person who presented the report before the parliamentarians of the Public Accounts Committee, after taking oath. His numerous U-turns now have thoroughly undermined his credibility.

The CAG’s critics ignore the powers, the duties and the responsibilities of this premier constitutional body of the country. CAG auditors do not arrive at their conclusions unilaterally. There are several pre-audit and post-audit conferences and interactions between Ministries and Government Departments concerned and the CAG team. Several questions need to be addressed and answered satisfactorily before preparing the draft report itself. The CAG’s office scrupulously seeks explanations more than once from the persons concerned, before indicting them. This prestigious body needs nobody’s consent in deciding on what should be audited. It is simply its prerogative to decide on what to audit, when to audit and how to audit. Those powers are derived from the Constitution. It is, therefore, highly amusing to read newspaper headlines of this kind: “Reliance agrees for auditing”.

The 2G scam report is unique. It is the very first report where the CAG found the role of corporates or bribe-givers in influencing policy-makers while dealing with the Government and in the allotment of natural resources. The CAG’s subsequent reports on Coalgate, Delhi Airport and mega power projects indicted and exposed the ‘who’s who’ of India’s corporate sector.

Apart from the politicians and the Government, the CAG has thus added corporates to its list of opponents. With the involvement of the corporate sector in many shady deals, CAG-bashing has gained added impetus of late.

In normal practice, a CAG report broadly has three parts. First, the report will speak about the policy and norms in practice and the history of that policy. Second, the report will expose the violations and the illegalities and, if needed, indict the persons concerned. Finally, in its suggestions/observations, the CAG may highlight the possible loss or presumptive loss to the public exchequer due to the illegalities. The presumptive loss is derived through certain statistical measures and it is the CAG’s prerogative to do so.

For more than five years, Parliament has not debated any CAG report. Normally, the CAG report tabled in Parliament goes to the Public Accounts Committee for a review. Some non-important CAG reports may not go to the PAC and it is the PAC’s prerogative to take a decision on this. The CAG report then returns to Parliament with the PAC’s recommendations for a debate. But the Congress has used its majority to scuttle the PAC report on the 2G Spectrum scam with the help of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. This is because the PAC has questioned the role of Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself in the scam, while the CAG had limited its indictment to only former Union Minister for Telecommunications A Raja. Using political leverage to influence probes and swing deals portents ill for democracy and this country.

The CAG is considered a friend, philosopher and guide of the PAC. The CAG and its officials concerned with the report are part and parcel of PAC meetings. Despite knowledge of these conventions and practices, a brouhaha on the relations between the two bodies is created frequently.

It is the Government’s moral duty to hold an immediate debate on the important CAG reports, as soon as these reports are tabled. It is also the Opposition’s moral obligation to demand a debate. But today, because of the involvement of influential people in and outside the Government, none of the people’s representatives in Parliament wants debates. Instead of a structured debate on the CAG report in Parliament and the State Assemblies, political parties prefer mudslinging. Structured debates will force the Government at the Centre to respond and be accountable. Also, the bribe-givers from the corporate sector will be exposed.

Incidentally, what were the Congress MLAs in Gujarat doing when the CAG placed the report in April 2012, on the irregularities in gas exploration project? What was the PAC in Gujarat headed by a Congress MLA doing on this CAG report all these months?

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/52995-the-good-cag-and-the-bad-cag.html

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