PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

New Delhi, 19 November, 2005

India’s Export Potential

BAMBOO TO BOOST DEVELOPMENT

By Radhakrishna Rao

Described as the "green gold of the forest" and a "noble grass of multiple uses", the lean, tall and fast growing bamboo has become a major foreign exchange earner for China which has not only more than  one million hectares under bamboo cultivation but also has an active programme to manufacture high quality, innovative bamboo based products.  No wonder then that last year China earned US$130-million through the export of bamboo products in the ecologically conscious global market.

In contrast, India's track record in producing and exporting bamboo products is far from edifying. Of course, India has  now  recognised the potential of the international  market for bamboo products and has  launched many initiatives aimed at  producing and marketing bamboo products, both in the domestic and global market.

Taking a cue from China, Thailand has taken to growing edible variety of bamboo in a big way. Indeed bamboo cultivation has become a catalyst of growth in many villages of Thailand. Many other countries of S.E Asia have found in bamboo a versatile natural raw material to manufacture a mindboggling range of products-from the toothpick to basket,  from mats and musical instruments to furniture and toys.

Bamboo is also the most sought after raw material used in the paper and rayon industry. It is also used for producing activated carbon, joss sticks, match sticks, charcoal and panelling boards. Bamboo beer, wine and vinegar are quite popular in many parts of S.E. Asia.

In recent years, bamboo has been adopted for fabricating a gorgeous range of flooring tiles, high strength composites and as a reinforcement in the concrete. Bamboo shoot is the widely favoured delicacy not only in many parts of western and southern India but also in South East Asia and China.

The Bangalore-based Indian plywood Industries Research and Training Institute (IPIRTI) has perfected the technology of building houses made of bamboo products. Efforts  are now to popularise such inexpensive, eco-riendly bamboo dwellings in the rural areas of India in a big way. In Thailand, the Bangkok based Thailand Institute of Scientific and  Technological Research has developed technology for building bamboo- based houses.

In India, the National Mission on Bamboo unveiled by the Department of Science and Technology seeks to popularise  the technologies and processes  to fabricate  value added products out  of bamboo. The hilly State of Uttaranchal, two-third  of which is under the forest cover a set up a Bamboo and Fibre Development Board with a view to popularise  the cultivation  of bamboo and boost rural employment.

Similarly, the state of Orissa too is looking at bamboo as a means to mitigate rural poverty. Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are the major bamboo growing states in India. However, the mountainous north east India account for 65% of the total bamboo harvested in India. "The bamboo resources of north east India are immense" says Kamesh Salam, Director of the Cane and Bamboo Technology Centre (CBTC) at Guwhati.

Many industrial units in South India are forced to get their bamboo requirements from the North-East. For the once abundant bamboo resources of the biologically rich Western Ghats which covers a large part of S. India have all but disappeared due to overexploitation and ecological disturbances. The scarcity of bamboo has hurt many rural artisan communities in the State of Karnataka. Ecologists also point out that bamboo could be an ideal substitute to wood. For instance bamboo is now used to make plyboards and match sticks, both of which once depended on wood. 

However, the Indian paper mills which originally started its operations with bamboo as  raw material as now shifted to wood on account of the scarcity and high price of bamboo. For instance, JK Paper Mills located one of its units at Koraput in Orissa on account of the liberal availability of bamboo. But with the supply of bamboo becoming scarce and erratic, the paper mill has been forced to modify its production technology with wood as the raw material. For many years now, the Indian paper industry has been urging the Government to lease out the revenue wasteland for raising bamboo plantations.

Bamboo is also considered an eco friendly species that can be used to restore the health of the degraded land stretches. However, there is a huge demand and supply gap in India; while the demand for bamboo is pegged at 26.69-million tonnes the supply is just around 13.47-million tonnes. Paper and rayon industry, cottage industries and building sector are the major consumer of bamboo in the country.

From the traditional weapons of the aboriginals to the scaffoldings of the modern high rise buildings, bamboo continues to play a vital role in human civilisation. The uses to which bamboo can be put is determined only by the imagination. As the Chinese philosopher  Pou  Son Tong said, ""A meal should have meat but a house must have a bamboo. Without bamboo, we lose serenity and culture itself".

Bamboo's most fascinating and mysterious aspect is its interesting flowering cycle. Depending on the species, flowering takes place anywhere between 60 and 120 years. Flowering is spread over a year or two.  It is gregarious in nature. The bamboo dies after  flowering because the old leaves fall and instead of being followed by  regeneration are generally replaced by flowers. And when bamboo flowers bloom and die, the bamboo plantations are clear felled. Ecologists on their part point out that the destruction of bamboo forests means a sever disturbance in the finely tuned and closed forest eco system.---INFA

 (Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)

PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBLEMS

NEW DELHI, 26 August 2005

No Image Building

GOVT. ADS, NEED NEW APPROACH

By T.D. Jagadesan

Of late there has been a spurt in paid advertisements in newspapers by various Central Ministries and State Governments with photographs of Ministers and Chief Ministers and also of party Presidents and the Prime Ministers, extolling the progress they claim to have achieved. Advertisements are often issued even on certain routine activities or on programmes of conferences to be held. They too carry the photographs of the Ministers and sometimes even of the bureaucrats heading the Departments.

Advertisements in the past used to be made by political parties and certain specified ministries at the time of elections, but issuing paid advertisements these days seems to have become a regular practice of some ministries and State Governments. An important lesson thrown up by the India Shining blitz a few months preceding the last general election was that such advertisements have little positive impact on the electorate.

With the level of illiteracy in some of the large States (Bihar 53 per cent, UP 44 per cent, Rajasthan 40 per cent, AP 40 per cent), the number of people in the country who read newspapers is naturally very low. The number of readers of English newspapers is much lower. Even among those who are regular readers of newspapers, the natural tendency is to doubt the veracity of what governments advertise as their great achievements.

Newspaper readers may attach importance to what journalists write about because they believe that journalists are generally not influenced by political considerations when they report events. However, the new trend of issuing frequent Government advertisements with photographs of the Prime Minister, presidents of both national and State level political parties, Chief Ministers and ministers make the readers cynical about such advertisements.

It is not surprising that the discerning readers view them as exercises in image projection and misuse of public funds. Government advertisements have been a mixed lot. Some are subtle in presenting a good image of the minister concerned. Some others are unabashed projections of the minister’s leadership and contribution.

Some ministers use the opportunity for advertisements to display loyalty to their party president and for lauding the “guidance and inspiration” provided by their party leaders in their work. Such advertisements become shameless indulgence in sycophancy and people naturally resent the practice of spending Government money for such publicity.

Let us examine a few recent advertisements issued at heavy cost to public exchequer and see to what extent public interests, if any, have been served by them. Most of the daily newspapers of August 13 carried half-page advertisements by the Indian Railways with the photograph of a smiling Lalu Prasad Yadav, Minister of Railways, comparing the state of the Railways in 2005 with that in 2001.

The key words in the advertisement below the photograph of Lau Prasad Yadav describe him as “a visionary who scripted the financial turn around of Indian Railways.” Unlike most other Ministers, Lalu Prasad did not share his advertised glory with anyone else, including the Prime Minister or even his own Minister of State. The advertisement gives full credit for the claimed “financial turn around of Indian Railways” to Lalu Prasad Yadav.

It is relevant to note that advertisements of this type at public cost are appearing when the elections to the Bihar Assembly, in which the Railway Minister has a heavy stake, are expected to be held in two months time.

A few days ago there was an advertisement by the Government of Gujarat with the photograph of the Chief Minister and of Mahatma Gandhi listing out various achievements of the Government in the development of infrastructure, industries and services in the State and in attracting foreign investments. Here the not-too-subtle attempt was made to project the Gujarat Government as a successful example of fulfilling the Mahatma’s dreams of making India an ideal State of peace and progress.

Mahatma Gandhi’s photograph would have been more relevant in an advertisement for popularizing programmes close to his heart such as khadi and village industries or improving the lot of the under-privileged sections of society like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes.

But it was morally not quite justified to use the photograph of the Mahatma, the greatest human who ever walked on this earth in the 20^th Century, to promote the image of the Gujarat administration in the manner it was done in the advertisement.

Take another half-page advertisement which was issued by a State Corporation of Punjab in the first week of August when Punjab was awarded the first place among the 20 large Indian States in a survey conducted by India Today magazine. As this survey is conducted in an impartial manner by professionals, it has become a very prestigious one and Punjab has every reason to be happy at this recognition.

However, what has surprised many readers is the fact that the advertisement was to extend congratulations to Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, for “making Punjab the State of excellence.

If Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh are to be given congratulations for the achievements of the people of Punjab, then blaming them should also be in order for the poor ranking of some of the States ruled by their party, like Assam and Andhra Pradesh which ranked only 16 and 11 respectively in a list of 20 large States covered by the survey.

One may even say that since the Congress is sharing power with the RJD in Bihar, the party’s national leadership, on the same logic, should get a share of the blame for Bihar’s 20^th rank in the list of States. It should also be noted that Punjab itself has ranked only at 12 in a list of 20 States on the important criterion of law and order, obviously the blame for this or the relatively poor showing of Andhra Pradesh or Assam cannot be placed on the party president or the Prime Minister.

There are certain special occasions like Independence Day, State foundation day, etc, where advertisements giving information on the progress made by the Central Ministries or State Governments would be considered justified. In any case, there should be strict instructions to the ministries and to the State Governments to ensure that advertisements paid for from public funds are not used by the ministers for their own image building. – INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Sunday Special

New Delhi, 23 June 2008

Hassan’s Dasaavatram

UNIQUE EXPERIMENT, BUT SEASONAL

By Dr. Syed Ali Mujtaba

Lord Vishnu has been incarnated in various life forms through different ages in situations where Hindu religion was in danger. In Hindu mythology, there are ten incarnation of Lord Vishnu; Tortoise, Fish, Boar, Narasimha, Parasurama,Vamana, Krishna, Rama, Buddha and Kalki.

The Tamil movie Dasaavtaram staring Kamala Hassan has supposedly taken a cue from the 10 avtars of Lord Vishnu and its named as such. However, its storyline does not seem to have any linkage with the avatars of Vishnu and the movie is all about a deadly virus that find its way out of a well-guarded lab in the US, set to destroy the world. But its impact gets mitigated eventually by the killer Tsunami waves that had hit the Coromandel coast in 2004.

Dasaavtaram could really have been a great mythological film, if the 10 avatars could have been fitted into this story of good versus evil. Many movie goers who had gone to the theater with high expectations were disappointed saying it was a “mish mash” of a mega film having nothing to do with their religion.

The film had a perfect opening with much hype built around well ahead of its release. The Vaishnavites sect of Hindus filed a court case praying the movie hurt their religious sentiments. The Madras High Court rejected their plea on the ground that they were complaining without seeing the film. They moved the Supreme Court, which too rejected the plea saying the contention lacks circumstantial evidences.

This happened because the story line of the film was kept a well-guarded secret. Its promos tend to suggest that the movie had strong religious aroma but when it was released finally in theaters on June 13, the moviegoers came out saying Dasaavatram had nothing to do with the Hindu religion.

The movie opens with settings in the 12th century Tamil Nadu, which was a hot bed of intrigue between the Shaivite and Vaishnavite followers of the Hindu religion. The Shaivite King orders a Vishnu devotee Rangarajan Nambi (Kamala Hassan-1) to utter “Om Namah Shiva” (I bow before Shiva), who refuses and instead says “Om Namoh Nariyana” (I bow before Vishnu). Nambi is punished, tied with the idol of Lord Ranganatha, taken in a boat and thrown into the ocean. In the movie, this character of Nambiis over, only the idol of Lord Ranganatha resurfaces in the end, when Tsunami struck the Coromandel Coast three years ago.

Moviebuffs are left wondering about the connection of Nambi’s character with the rest of the movie. ‘Why was this there at all? It looked the last shot where the idol reappearing was meant to justify the opening,’ said Vijay who had seen the movie first day first show. He did not seem to be happy with the sudden end of Nambi’s character and called it a “patch work”, not meant for this movie.  “Perhaps Kamala Hassan was planning a period film and so shot this character with a different story line altogether. But that project could not materialise and thus this character was patched up in Dasaavatram. Such things are common these days among the musicians and this has happened in this case as well,” felt Vijay adding that the common people have been conned.

Another moviegoer, Raghav tries explaining this puzzle in a different way: “Kamala Hassan’s movies are like abstract paintings. One has to see this film from that point of view. Maybe the linkages of Nambi’s character could be traced at the abstract levels to seek justification.’

Dasaavatram’s release was hyped with the audio release of the film. Hollywood actor, Jackie Chang flew into Chennai with his bodyguards to attend the star- studded opening. So did super star Amitabh Bachchan. Controversy dogged the event, when Bollywood’s sex bomb, Malika Sharawat who has starred in the film, sat on stage in a micro-mini skirt.

The mega film supposedly made at a whopping cost of Rs 60 crore created enough excitement before its release. The movie is learnt to have sold its audio rights to Sony BMG for close to Rs two crore. Theatres across Chennai were ‘house full’ for the next 10 days with almost all the multiplexes having six shows a day. Regrettably, in the end, the promise of a cinematic extravaganza turned out just a flavor in the season of entertainment.

The film actually begins in the US where an Indian scientist Govind Ramasamy (Kamala Hassan-2) discovers that a deadly virus that could be used as a biological weapon goes missing from his lab. He launches a man hunt for it and the plot takes the line of the infamous campaign “War on terror.”

American President George W Bush (Hassan-3) makes appearances on the screen several times, urging the rest of the world to combat this evil design. The American president is shown as a buffoon contemplating a nuke war.

The most interesting part of the plot here is that the terrorists are not the Al Qaeda or the Afghan variety, as Hollywood movies tend to suggest, but are reputedly referred as American terrorists! The film tries to convey that the destruction of the world does not necessarily have to be in the hands of turban-headed Islamic jihadi, but that Americans wearing western clothes too could trigger catastrophe.

Hassan plays one character after another very well. The story, however, itself is not only weak but quite complex. Scientist Govind has an Indian friend, who has a Japanese wife. Terrorists come looking for the nuclear weapon to his house and in the process kill both Govind and his wife. The wife’s brother Narashashi (Hassan-4) is a marital arts expert in Japan and he plans to take revenge. Govind travels to India for the weapon, and is chased by a CIA agent, Christian Fletcher (Kamala Hassan-5). The bio weapon is parceled to India to an old woman, Krishnaveni (Hassan-6), who yearns for her son’s return. When Govind reaches India, he is hauled up by a RAW officer, Balram Naidu (Hassan-7), who is meant to provide comical relief to the audience with his light character.

The plot gets disjointed and the characters get connected through some unconnected events and others quite predictably in an accidental way. Out of the blues a Sikh pop singer, Avatar Singh (Hassan-8) comes up, the story then wavers to a social activist, Annachi (Hassan-9), fighting the sand mafia in Tamil Nadu. Whew! Attention then shifts to an eight-foot Tamil speaking Pathan, Kalifullah Khan (Hassan-10) a buffoon of a character.

The movie ends up in a high voltage drama centered on the Tsunami of 2004, when Fletcher tries using the bio weapon to destroy the world, but is sucked in by the Tsunami with its salt water neutralizes the bio weapon.

The fast pace of the movie, however, sustains the tempo of the film that does not allow much of thinking. Music is mediocre. The jumble-mumble, however, stands out for its excellent technical work and Hassan’s extraordinary performance in several characters. His make-up and voice modulation is superb that it is a difficult task picking any one character as outstanding. The Tsunami shots are perhaps an outstanding presentation in the movie. 

In the end: Dasaavatram may well go down in the history of Indian cinema as a unique experiment in the commercial circuit, but its span is unlikely to last beyond a season of entertainment.---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Political Diary

New Delhi, 20 June 2008

Incredible India

A  CUE FROM BRITS WOULD HELP

By Poonam I Kaushish

India, is Incredible! A trip to London tells you just how much and showcases the warts and all. Let’s start with the new spanking Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and one hits the first road block. People have their driving lanes all mixed up. Toll payers invariably queue up in the ‘smart tag’ lane. Not that it really matters because the tag system ---to help one automatically cross the toll barrier--- doesn’t work anymore! The toll collector has to now feed in the smart tag code before letting your car proceed.  Might have been better if all the lanes were priced, at least cars would move faster and the queues shorter.

True, Planning Commission Chairman Montek Ahluwalia’s trip to the airport recently had a salutary affect. Traffic moves faster and the queues at the departure gates are way less. But two things Ahuluwalia could not or has not been able to do: remove the people sleeping on the pavements of the departure area. It continues to resemble the railway station. 

Next, the lines at the immigration counters get longer and longer with various airline personnel running through people-lanes screaming flight departures, yanking passengers and breaking immigration queues. Why do the authorities take forever to clear our departure? They definitely need a rapid fire course in people management and politeness. Resourceful Ahluwalia should have given a piece of his mind to the Immigration Authorities, instead of picking a bone with the Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel, who is the only one delivering on giving a face-over to our airports.

Feeling patriotic, one decided to fly Air India to see if our industrialist-turned Minister has really made a difference to the way Indians fly. Definitely yes. The new Boeings, the in-flight service and the food could give any other airline a run for its money. That he intends leaving his imprint was also evident. Crew and passengers described Patel as a “hands on” Minister. Said a crew member, “Beneath the velvet glove is an iron hand. He is very particular about punctuality. Once on a trip back from London he found the AI flight was delayed because of the crew. He simply boarded another flight. But there was hell to pay later. Besides, he is not only accessible but receptive to our problems, solves them, is pragmatic and yet a hard taskmaster and expects results.”    

However, the arrival in London was a let-down. Air India, it seems is being given the step-motherly treatment at Heathrow airport. We appeared to have made a ‘backdoor’ entry as the disembarking area was littered with garbage and the staff rude. Though the immigration line was longer, the authorities were way smarter and the clearance was faster. One had a choice of the mode of transport to the city: taxi, bus or the underground. The Asian mini cabs, driven by Indians, Bangladeshis, Afghans and Pakistanis’ seemed to have elbowed out London’s famous black cabs. They are half the price of what the normal ride costs.  

That apart, London continues to throb, brimming with joy de vivre. Beautiful sunny weather, loads of tourists all over Oxford Street busy shopping as if there was no tomorrow. The summer sales are on too. There are many Asians among them, not a few from Delhi. Many choose this time to travel in the hope of striking a good bargain. Asians today are the revered ‘rich’ customers. There is awe mingled with jealousy and a bit of animosity displayed by shop staff to serve them, who till the other day were disparagingly dismissed as poor immigrants.

Does that mean that the US sub-prime crisis and the ever-rising international crude prices are not hurting the people in London? A simple no. The difference is that people are taking it stoically. From 70 pence per litre (Rs 60) the price is up to 1.20 Pounds (approx Rs 100) and may go up to two Pounds. Sure, people feel the pinch but don’t crib. They realise their Government is doing its best to lessen the hurt.  

Like my Bangladeshi taxi driver said. “The cost of living hasn’t really changed. There is no marked increase in prices of groceries and food stuff and public transport remains the same. In all a tax of 10 pounds per day on vehicles plying in central London is imposed and the only sign of rising inflation is a downward trend in property prices.”

Yet the Gordon Brown Government is worried. Daily news brings reports of economic slowdown, worsening Government finances and rising prices. The House of Commons grapples with how the economy got into this mess and how to get out of it. There is no finger pointing, no acrimony and importantly the aam aadmi is not dragged into the nitty-gritty of prudent government money management.

The Bank of England is hanging tough, the private sector needs to keep wages down and some sense needs to return to the oil markets. Significantly, the Government realises its responsibilities and the need to be fiscally cautious. Towards that end it is making the right noises on the public sector pay rise, which would fuel inflation. Brown’s reply to all: This is no time to abandon Prudence.

What about our erudite Finance Minister Chidambaram? First, like a school teacher he reprimanded the aam aadmi for jumping the gun and promised to bring down prices within two months. Then he blamed the previous NDA Government for the financial mess. Now he has simply washed his hands off by confessing helplessness. Questionably, is that enough? Can we allow our Finance Chief to get away? He owes the country some hard and honest explanation for inflation hitting 11.05 per cent, the highest since 1995.

Scandalously, amidst all this the Government has decided to give itself a pay rise. Explained as ‘babus are poorly paid’. Never mind that the Sixth Pay Commission has added an additional load of Rs 12,000 crores to the fiscal burden. There is no talk of downsizing of staff even as the private sector has gone in for massive pruning and is streamlining its operations to ‘paperless’ offices.

Worse, even as the aam aadmi stoops under the burden of petrol price rise and its cascading affect on daily commodities and expensive travel, neither our netagan nor babudom has cutback on its cavalcade of cars. At times just to ferry them, their wives and kids home. What to speak of the increasing ‘diversions’ the aam aadmi has to take due to VIP movement, sic. So unlike the UK.

Significantly, Britons have regaled 7/7 as a bad dream. The rigid checking at Heathrow airport is still there but with a smile. Back home to the dismally long immigration lines one gets a taste of asli Bharat. Of petty clerks who painfully take forever to process your data. While the NRI and PIOs are allowed to sail through. It makes ones blood boil. Are we unwanted? 

The intermittent long queues in the baggage area and the taxi bay says it all. A multitude of humanity seems to have descended from nowhere. The aam aadmi sleeping on the pavement. Indeed, India is Incredible. Even as the 21 Century of Super India beacons we still have a long way to bring asli Bharat and Brand India together. ----- INFA

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)