life in general & financial markets: (part 1) the farce that is india's environment ministry

(click here for part 2 blogpost dated 2 Feb '11)

(pic shown below is courtesy http://article.wn.com/view/2010/07/16/Orissa_farmers_reject_new_Posco_package/#5)

The Congress Party-ruled government of India is notorious for cunning, but ugly and corrupt, use of the vast power it wields as the ruling government of the country.

In appointing a reasonably honest person, Jairam Ramesh, as the environment, the Congress government was being cunning as it tended to give an illusion of seriousness with regard to shoddy implementation of environment laws of India.

But even Jairam Ramesh has not been able to hold out against the extremely powerful, but dirty, forces within the Congress Party and its allies in the ruling government.  

Today, the environment ministry has given approval to a large steel project of Korean steel company, Posco, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. The conditions that have been applied to the project would have anyway applied to any major project. But the violations that Posco committed have attracted no hard action by the government. The only thing that Jairam Ramesh could do was put on hold the project for a few weeks. That is all.

I am confident that the Congress Party-ruled government, or any other future government of India, will pay heavily for their horrendous track record with regard to environmental and people's basic rights including that of livelihood and property.

Here is what a press release, issued today, from a Orissa-based group, comprising of people affected by the Posco steel project had to say on the matter:

POSCO PRATIRODH SANGRAM SAMITI

Dhinkia, Nuagaon, Gadkujang; Jagatsinghpur District, Orissa

PRESS RELEASE: 31 January 2011

Scandalous Decision of Jairam Ramesh to OK POSCO project

Environment Minister disregards findings of his own Review and Statutory Clearances Committees

The decision of Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to give a comprehensive OK to the POSCO India Steel-Power Production-Captive Port project, based on some additional conditions, is nothing short of a total sell out to the politics of power and international capital. In a climate where each and every Minister of the Union Government is tumbling over with scandals, Ramesh had stood tall taking one brave legally and ethically correct decision after another. An acid test for him to continue this streak of decision making in the wider public interest, keeping in view intergenerational interests as well, was about the POSCO project. By his decision today to clear the project Ramesh has failed not only his own legacy, but has attacked the very rule of law based decision making that he has so often been harping on to be the basis of his functioning.

It is well known that the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi, a peaceful movement of affected communities, has been systematically raising the deep, inter-generational and irreversible impacts of allowing this massive project to come up in the ecologically sensitive Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa. This struggle began with the inking of a most controversial MOU between Orissa State and Korea's Pohang Steel (POSCO) in 2005, proposing to establish the largest industrial project ever conceived in human history: a 12 MTPA steel plant backed by captive power plant; a captive port (described as “small” but designed to receive the largest commercial ships ever built - of CAPESIZE variety); a large township to accommodate over 100000 people; a large captive mine in Kandadhar (600 MT for local processing and 400 MT for export over 30 years); fresh water intake from over 100 kms. away (while denying many towns and cities drinking water) and extensive road and rail infrastructure to support the project.

The 4000 acres of land chosen for the plant site comprise of pristine coastal and deltaic ecosystems, with active nesting sites for the critically endangered Olive Ridley Turtles and the Horse Shoe Crabs. Over a third of this land comprises of coastal forests. Over 22000 people will be directly displaced by the steel plant alone, a number that has been repeatedly disputed by Orissa Government based on its spurious claims. Absolutely no impact assessment of any academic rigour worth its salt or regulatory review of value considering the mega scale of this project, has at all been conducted to support the project is environmentally and socially useful. In fact, the so-called Rapid Environment Impact Assessment reports prepared by M/s Dastur for POSCO India, was only for 4 MTPA steel production and not for the entire project as is required by law. Clearly against statutory standards and norms, the project was still accorded environmental, forest and coastal regulation zone clearances in 2007. In addition, the Orissa Government engaged the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to cook up data claiming the benefits from the project as phenomenal, which when verified even cursorily proved to be junk statistics supporting desperate political games promoting the project.

Following what is widely regarded as a politically brave but legally correct decision of Jairam Ramesh to reject on grounds of fraud the clearance accorded to the infamous Vedanta Bauxite project in Orissa during 2010, the much larger POSCO issue came into focus. After all communities affected by POSCO had been engaged for over 5 years in the most outstanding example of peaceful resistance against such unprecedented unjust development. Bending to reason, Mr. Ramesh agreed to constitute a sub-Committee under the N. C. Saxena Committee reviewing Forest Rights Act implementation, to also enquire if the POSCO project's forest clearances were compliant with the Forests Rights Act enacted only in 2006. Producing their report the Committee put beyond any reasonable doubt that the forest clearances accorded were in comprehensive violation of the Forest Rights Act. A right step taken soon after by the Minister was to stay the forest clearance accorded - a decision taken that was taken at a time when brutal dislocation of forest dwelling communities was underway by the Orissa Government.

Subsequently, Ramesh ordered an independent enquiry into all aspects of the project's clearance coordinated by Ms. Meena Gupta, former MoEF Environment Secretary, with Mr. Devendra Pandey (IFS, Retd.), former Director of Forest Survey of India, Mr. V. Suresh, Advocate and PUCL activist and Dr. Urmila Pingle, expert on tribal affairs, as members. Following three months of deliberate and extensive consultations, and also detailed investigation into all aspects of the clearances accorded, and on the basis of detailed verification of compliance review files the Committee by a majority decision (3:1) comprehensively rejected all the clearances granted to the project. Ms. Meena Gupta who stood up for the POSCO project, dubiously recommended additional conditions to adjust against serious statutory violations and fraud in the decision making process – a line of thinking that Jairam Ramesh now scandalously subscribes to.

In the subsequent review by Statutory Appraisal Committees of the MoEF, the Committees reviewing the Forest and Coastal Clearances recommended withdrawal of clearances granted. The only Committee that proposed a go-ahead was the one reviewing the environmental impacts under the EIA Notification. It was for Ramesh to now decide on the right steps to be taken to correct this gross injustice and irregularities in environmental decision making. In the face of extensive burden of proof of fraud involved in securing clearances for the POSCO project, the matter should legally have been to withdraw clearances accorded – as in the Vedanta case. This was the time to test the honesty of a man to stand up and uphold Constitutional and Ethical values, regardless of any and all forms of pressures. Jairam Ramesh has miserably failed this test.

The report presented today by Jairam Ramesh is nothing but a capitulation to corrupt forces both within India and abroad. ........... 

For the single largest project FDI investment in India at 2005 prices (Rs. 51,000 crores or USD 12 billion capital cost), analysis reveal that this investment can be recovered in less than a decade given the pittance of a royalty that POSCO will pay for iron ore extracted. (Rs. 30/tonne at the official ore valuation of Rs. 300/tonne, compared with the commercial value of Rs. 7,000/tonne). It is to make such unprecedented profits from the plunder of India's natural resources that POSCO demanded a coastal location for its super large CAPESIZE ships to be berthed to cart away our precious iron ore. What India would be left with is the toxic residue of its dirty ore processing, while the refined ore (perhaps not even the finished steel) would be exported to Korea and elsewhere to add more value to POSCO's profits. This is not merely a flight of the nation's natural wealth but also a massive planned political exercise for erosion of financial resources with questionable legal sanction.....................

Abhay Sahoo

President

09556666552

Prashant Paikray

Spokesperson

09437571547

prashantpaikray@gmail.com

POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samithi

life in general & financial markets: criminal collusion between politicians & real estate companies

The newsreport in a weekly newsmagazine that I share below is a recent India-based example of the criminal collusion between politicians & real estate companies.

Here goes:

www.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne050211Forest_too.asp

Forest too lands in DLF kitty

Degraded land in Gurgaon was nurtured back to health over a decade. But instead of serving as a green lung, it has been sold to a private developer, reports BRIJESH PANDEY

Green charade A forest nurtured by the state government in Gurgaon is now private property PHOTO: TARUN SEHRAWAT

BENDING RULES to allot or sell land, that scarce resource, to favoured parties is a fine art state governments have mastered across the country. It has been done through discretionary quotas, by changing land use patterns and subverting housing society norms. In Haryana, it has been done by pretending that land regenerated by afforestation is not really forest land in the traditional sense. Thus enabling a private developer already sitting on huge land banks to grab one more.

The deal in question is 350 acres of prime land in Wazirabad village near Gurgaon, given to DLF for development of a recreation and leisure park for Rs. 1,700 crore. Environmental experts and land developers are shocked that the prime land was sold in callous disregard to environmental laws laid down by the Supreme Court regarding the Aravalli Plantation Scheme, in an attempt to restore the forests of the fragile hill range.

The scheme, aided by the European Union, successfully rehabilitated degraded community lands of 294 villages in southern Haryana. Nearly 38,000 hectares was rehabilitated through planting and natural regeneration in the Aravalli region. Satellite imagery reveals that forest cover of this region, which was around 10,000 hectares in 1990, increased to 42,000 hectares in 1997. The duration of the project was from 1990 to 1999, sufficient time to grow a forest.

The attempt to change land use and encash this green gold began in 2002-03 when a delegation led by the then Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala made several visits to foreign lands. During those visits, several presentations were made before the delegation on developing business centres, leisure parks and related infrastructure.

A number of companies approached the state government for this and a core committee was set up by the government. Panchayat land in Wazirabad adjoining the DLF Golf and Country Club was identified as the spot for setting up the recreation and leisure project. About 350 acres was earmarked for this project and in 2008, the consultant to this project pegged its value at Rs. 1,683 crore.

In 2009, an international bidding process was conducted and only one bid was received — from DLF, with suggestions to make it more financially viable. The state government agreed to the developer’s suggestions and the project parameters were re-examined and modified. The most important change made by the government was that it would obtain statutory clearances for the project land. A fresh tender was floated and this time three companies bid for it. The project went to DLF with an important change in the tender: it was now incumbent upon the state to get statutory clearances for the land.

How important this change was can be gauged from the fact that out of the allocated 350 acres, approximately half (161 acres) came under the Aravalli Plantation Scheme and the other 92 acres was protected under Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1970.

To divert forest land for non-forestry purposes, the state needed approval from the Centre under the Forest Conservation Act. Therefore, the matter was put before the Cabinet Empowered Committee on Environment (CEC), which was appointed by the Supreme Court.

IN AN apparent bid to bypass the strictures of the Supreme Court in these matters, the Haryana government instead of approaching either the Central government or the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), filed an application in the apex court itself.

The shocker was to come next. The CEC submitted its recommendations to the Supreme Court on 21 September 2010 saying, “An area of 161 acres of the project area is covered under the Aravalli Plantation Scheme. This area does not fall in the category of forest and therefore does not require approval under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. Since in this area plantation has have been undertaken at the cost of the state government and the state of Haryana will get a substantial amount of Rs. 1,700 crore from the project, it will be appropriate that in the lieu of use of this area, it is ensured that an area of 80.52 acres agreed to be acquired by the state of Haryana in Badkal village.”

This recommendation made by the CEC has not only put its impartiality under doubt but also revealed how environmental clearance or protection is treated with disdain in Haryana.

According to environmental lawyer Raj Panjwani, this kind of legal manipulation is not acceptable. “This is part of the Aravalli Plantation project and the Supreme Court in its 2004 judgment has declared this as forest area. We have spent substantial sums of money for the preservation and protection of Aravalli and any move to undo it is not wise. Ecology once lost can never be retrieved.”

It was the same CEC that had recommended in 2003-04 to the Supreme Court that areas where plantation had been undertaken with the assistance provided by international donor agencies should be protected, and had stressed that destruction of plantation will only result in wastage of funds, effort and cause embarrassment to the country.

It led the Supreme Court to declare in October 2004 that “in these matters, neither the state nor the lease holders can be permitted to turn around and take a stand that the area covered under the Aravalli Project are not forest”. Six years later, this is precisely what has been allowed.

And this is not the only volte face by the CEC. When the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had asked for the same 407 acres in the Badkal area for research purposes, the CEC had said, “The dense forest cover is of great ecological value and it should not be tampered with.” The same CEC has now recommended that the land in Badkal can be given to DLF for afforestation purposes.

A senior Haryana officer in the know of things said, “The whole deal runs into several thousand crores. The way clearances are being given, the fact that the company paid only Rs. 2 per square metre more than the reserve price and the Haryana government taking all the headache for clearance: can you get more lucky than this?”

Meanwhile, Opposition parties have become aware of the deal and are in no mood to let Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda off the hook. Kuldeep Singh Bishnoi, president of the Haryana Janhit Congress, has called it a major scam. “This is a Rs. 40,000 crore scam,” he says. “This is prime land and it is being sold for a song. The chief minister should be sacked.”

Despite several attempts, nobody from the Haryana government was ready to answer questions from TEHELKA. The DLF corporate communications department too did not want to offer comment or explanation on being contacted.

life in general: human rights: a facade of action

Human Rights Watch has just released a World Report (downloadable here) highlighting events in about 90 countries with every country covered in a separate chapter. Out of three thematic essays accompanying the report is one titled "A facade of action" that I found very insightful.

I want to connect what this essay says with what a three-judge bench of India's Supreme Court remarked earlier this month on 20 January. A newspaper reported, "The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday pulled up social activist Teesta Setelvad, who has been fighting for Gujarat riots victims, for approaching an international human rights body raising the issue of protection for witnesses. The court, which was seized of a law suit seeking transfer of cases from Gujarat to another state, expressed its displeasure on Setelvad’s move. “We do not appreciate that other organisations interfere in our functioning. We can take care of (them) ourselves and cannot get guided by others. It is a direct interference in our functioning. We do not appreciate it,” a bench of justices DK Jain, P Sathasivam and Aftab Alam said. Setelvad-run NGO, the Centre for Justice and Peace (CJP) had sent a letter to the Geneva-based office of the high commissioner for human rights, associated with United Nations, giving details of the proceedings in the Godhra riots cases. When Harish Salve, who is assisting the court in this case, drew the judge’s attention towards Teesta’s letter, an anguished bench told her counsel Kamini Jaiswal that CJP chief seems to have “more faith in foreign organisations than this court”. “It seems that witnesses would be protected by these organisations,” the bench remarked, adding if such letters are written then the court would pass the order without hearing the contentions of the CJP”. “If you send such letters then we would hear the amicus curie and pass the order (without hearing you),” the court warned. "All the cases are being monitored by us, we do not like any correspondence of her with foreign agencies’’, the court added. We do not appreciate letters sent to a foreign country. We do not approve of such a letter. Tomorrow, you will report these (SC) proceedings to them. This letter shows that you have more trust in them.”"

I think if Indian court judges are confident that they are doing their job properly then why have any apprehensions of any international human rights body being updated with any detail of any court case in India. This betrays arrogance on the part of Indian judiciary and is very unfortunate.

I connect with what the writer of the essay "A Facade of Action" in the Human Rights Watch's World Report, which I refer to above, says, "In last year's World Report, Human Rights Watch highlighted the intensifying attacks by abusive governments on human rights defenders, organizations, and institutions. This year we address the flip side of the problem-the failure of the expected champions of human rights to respond to the problem, defend those people and organizations struggling for human rights, and stand up firmly against abusive governments.
There is often a degree of rationality in a government's decision to violate human rights. The government might fear that permitting greater freedom would encourage people to join together in voicing discontent and thus jeopardize its grip on power. Or abusive leaders might worry that devoting resources to the impoverished would compromise their ability to enrich themselves and their cronies.
International pressure can change that calculus. Whether exposing or condemning abuses, conditioning access to military aid or budgetary support on ending them, imposing targeted sanctions on individual abusers, or even calling for prosecution and punishment of those responsible, public pressure raises the cost of violating human rights. It discourages further oppression, signaling that violations cannot continue cost-free.
All governments have a duty to exert such pressure. A commitment to human rights requires not only upholding them at home but also using available and appropriate tools to convince other governments to respect them as well.
No repressive government likes facing such pressure. Today many are fighting back, hoping to dissuade others from adopting or continuing such measures. That reaction is hardly surprising. What is disappointing is the number of governments that, in the face of that reaction, are abandoning public pressure. With disturbing frequency, governments that might have been counted on to generate such pressure for human rights are accepting the rationalizations and subterfuges of repressive governments and giving up. In place of a commitment to exerting public pressure for human rights, they profess a preference for softer approaches such as private "dialogue" and "cooperation.""

life in general: say no to plastic

We are living a plastic life. From what we eat or drink to what we wear we stand engulfed in a vast ocean of plastic material. And, most of it, particularly that used in our eating and drinking habits, is use-once-and-throw. No decent bit of recycling ever happens of of the plastic and thermocol cups, glasses and plates or tin cans we use and throw as if it was our birthright to do so.

In countries such as ours quite a bit of these even get burned as trash to avoid having to transport it to a garbage dump. Anyone bothered that these release highly toxic chemicals in the air? "We are not doing the burning!" is what one might hear from offended people who clearly have lost sight of their mindless consumption habits that have caused it.

Un-burnt plastic items that do find their way to the dump are piling up and even as natural mountains are becoming small due to mining and quarrying activity we see mountains of plastic and other materials to do not decompose for hundreds years.

It is astonishing that so many well-educated consumers, having access to every kind of information on their finger tips (internet, mobile phones, books etc), fail miserably to take steps, at least a few if not all, to bring down the use of plastic in their daily lives.

To give just one example: how much really would it take for high-heeled corporate world officers and professionals to keep a non-plastic glass and a cup on their desks which they use to drink water and tea or coffee? Why do they think they do no wrong in using a new plastic glass or cup every time they want to drink water or tea?

How much difficult is it really for us to re-use plastic bags in the next round of shopping, atleast 3-4 out of every 10 times? Every effort is required today to reduce the pain we are causing our Mother Earth every day of our life.

life in financial markets: 3-year analysis of food prices in india

In order to interpret a relatively longer term trend in food prices that the Indian government uses in its Food Articles Index (a part of Wholesale Price Index) I did a story (in the newspaper I work) early this month.

Here is what I wrote:

Price volatility in some, consistent rise in others

Analysis of 55 food items reveal lesser-known ones registering the highest price increase

Onions have the potential to make government ministers cry in fear if its price keeps shooting up but it is not onion that has led the price rise in food articles over a longer time frame. The Food Articles Index (FAI), which weighs 14.34 per cent in Wholesale Price Index-All Commodities (WPI), rose by 17.39 per cent from its average of weekly prices in 2009 to that in 2010.

With respect to individual food items, out of 55 food items (cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs-meat-fish, spices and tea-coffe) that form a part of the FAI, 25 rose more than FAI and onion was not in this list, as per a FCRB analysis. Taking yearly averages, onion's price went up by only 5.25 per cent from 2009 to 2010. But from 2008 to 2009, it was the sixth highest riser at 36.36 per cent. Interestingly, in the year-on-year (YoY) period prior to that, from 2007 to 2008, onion price had fallen by 17.85 per cent.

Such volatility was the norm for many food items -- up in one year, down in next, again up in the following year, or vice versa. For instance, among the five highest gainers and decliners in the last three YoY periods, potato fell by the third-largest quantum of14.32 per cent from 2007 to 2008, shot up by the highest quantum of 70.57 per cent from 2008 to 2009, and fell by the highest quantum of 32.07 per cent from 2009 to 2010 (see table).

Who led food price flare-up?
Even as some food items fluctuate up and down from one year to next, some such as
turmeric rise sharply continuously
Risen the most	Wt. in FAI*	'09 to '10		Fallen the most	Wt. in FAI*	'09 to '10
Turmeric	0.56	125.88		Potato	1.39	-32.07
Garlic	0.42	97.86		Corriander	0.14	-29.80
Cardamom	0.14	88.32		Tea	0.77	-17.55
Guava	0.56	77.31		Masur	0.42	-6.23
Litchi	0.28	74.53		Gram	2.30	-3.01
		'08 to '09				'08 to '09
Potato	1.39	70.57		Guava	0.56	-28.73
Turmeric	0.56	66.06		Corriander	0.14	-22.84
Tapioca	0.49	42.00		Lemon	0.49	-14.59
Moong	0.56	39.26		Brinjal	2.09	-9.21
Arhar	0.98	39.21		Coconut (Fresh)	1.67	-7.10
		'07 to '08				'07 to '08
Corriander	0.14	68.69		Garlic	0.42	-22.73
Ginger (Fresh)	0.35	67.65		Onion	1.26	-17.85
Mango	4.53	37.34		Potato	1.39	-14.32
Tea	0.77	30.15		Urad	0.70	-10.53
Masur	0.42	25.01		Sweet Potato	0.14	-6.37
Figures in per cent
Year-on-year changes are calculated based on yearly averages of weekly prices
* Weight in Food Articles Index
Source: Capitaline Neo, FCRB

But there were a few consistent price gainers among the 55 food items in the three YoY periods. These included such as turmeric, cardamom, litchi, fish, arhar, tapioca, milk, orange, papaya, mutton and okra. The only consistent declining food item was gram that declined in the last two YoY periods and went up by a marginal 0.15 per cent from 2007 to 2008.

But the food items that impacted the FAI the most adversely were the ones that weighed the most in the index and which were shooting up consistently. For instance, the five food items that weigh the most in FAI -- milk (22.59 per cent weightage in FAI), rice (12.48 per cent), wheat (7.81 per cent), fish-marine (5.02 per cent) and mango (4.53 per cent) have all gone up in all the last three YoY periods, barring one instance of mango falling by a small quantum from 2008 to 2009. Milk, for instance, has gone by 6.01 per cent (2007 to 2008), 14.32 per cent (2008 to 2009) and 24.49 per cent (2009 to 2010). In the same three periods, fish-marine has shot up by 9.08 per cent, 8.77 per cent and 40.81 per cent and rice by 12.81 per cent, 13.68 per cent and 7.03 per cent.

life in general: gujarat bjp govt. continues to cover up 2002 genocide-like killings of muslims

The newsreport I share below brings out yet another ugly attempt by the BJP-ruled, Narendra Modi-controlled, state government of Gujarat state to use dirty and illegal means to cover up any expose of the genocide-like killings of Muslims in February and March 2002.

Here is the newsreport:

http://twocircles.net/2010dec31/tv_journalist_rahul_singh_booked_covering_gujarats_mass_grave_digging.htm

TV journalist Rahul Singh booked for covering Gujarat's mass grave digging

31 December 2010

By TCN Special Correspondent,

Ahmedabad: In a sinister move to gag the press in Gujarat of Narendra Modi, the Panchmahals (Godhra) district police have booked TV journalist Rahul Singh as co-accused in a case pertaining to digging of the mass graves at Panderwada, near Godhra, in 2005. The police have got a court summon issued to question Rahul who was working with Sahara TV channel here then.

The police have booked five persons including Rais Khan, a former aide of noted civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad. Setalvad’s Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) have been fighting cases of Muslim victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.

A team of Gujarat police on Wednesday descended at the Bhopal residence of Rahul. A convoy of four police vehicles from Godhra surrounded Rahul's house from all sides, creating panic and terror in the locality.

Police told his family members that they wanted to take Rahul to Gujarat for questioning in the mass grave digging case which he had reported for Sahara Samay. As Rahul was not present at his house, his family members were told to accept the summons and produce Rahul to the police but his father N K Singh, resident editor of the Bhopal edition of The Hindustan Times, declined to receive the summons.

The police left Rahul's house when local and national TV journalists reached the spot and questioned them as to why they had come to Rahul's house.

Rahul had joined Times Now in Bhopal and is currently working with Headlines Today in Delhi.

Though it is not known as to what exactly the police want to extract from Rahul, but police sources say that they want to know from Rahul who had informed him about the digging of the mass grave. So, the police want him to reveal his source, which journalists all over the world hold as the most sacred and never divulge even if they have to go to prison.

As the relatives of 27 Muslims killed during riots in Panderwada were locating their bodies, they came to know that they were buried in a mass grave in the bed of Panam river, near Lunavada, in Panchmahals (Godhra) district.

On December 27, 2005, the victims began digging the river bed and found the skeletons. Some of them informed mediapersons as well as CJP as it was extending legal assistance to riot victims.

While media reported the news of Muslim riot victims buried in a mass grave and discovery of their skeletons, police lodged an FIR against CJP coordinator Rais Khan and those involved in the digging on charges of destroying evidence. Rais Khan was in 2008 expelled by Setalvad as the latter suspected him to be working in collusion with the state government.

But police could not arrest Rais Khan and others as CJP got a bail for them from the Gujarat high court. The high court also stayed further proceedings in the case.

Later on, the Supreme Court issued orders for DNA testing of the skeletons and eight of them were identified.

But after Rais Khan quit company with Setalvad, one of the accused in the case withdrew his petition from the high court. The high court on November 24, 2010, vacated the stay in the case. After this Rais Khan and three others surrendered to the Panchmahals police. During interrogation, Rais Khan is reported to have told that he had helped the riot victims at the instance of Setalvad.

Human rights activists believe that the whole exercise to know who ordered digging of the grave and who informed the media is aimed at implicating Setalvad, who has become a headache for the Modi government by extending full support to the riot victims.

Gujarat-based human rights activists have strongly condemned the police bid to question Rahul, saying it amounted to an attack on freedom of expression.

Noted human rights activist J S Bandukwala said that Rahul and other mediapersons, who reported the mass grave digging, deserved to be felicitated as they had exposed how the police buried those killed in the riots without informing their relatives and kept it a secret. He urged media not to buckle to the Gujarat police and give tough fight to uphold freedom of the press.

life in financial markets & journalism: ratan tata needs to improve himself first

Rata Tata lives in an illusionary world of his own making where twisting and distorting the truth is a daily necessity. Its been many years since I could not but help to realise that this man, like many of his peers in Indian and world industry, does not merit the flattering write-ups by senior editors and journalists in Indian and world media (which, by the way, still continues shamelessly by some newspapers, magazines and television channels despite all the recent exposes as per the conscious decisions of their editor-in-chiefs).

As a journalist, I am amused when I see many media editors harp about integrity in journalism and then go on to practise insidious journalism, executed very cunningly. I have written about this a couple of times in my blog but it needs to be stated again: editor-in-chiefs in a majority of media organisations in India hold large amounts of power without any accountability to any one. Unfortunately, majority of the readers and viewers of Indian media choose not to notice this.

Anwyay, there is a good write-up by a columnist at Outlook magazine's website putting Rata Tata's recent statements to media in an insightful perspective. I share it below.

The Banana Sheiks

The Niira Radia tapes have firmly put the spotlight of adverse attention on politics and the media. But surprisingly, the loudest voice of protest—which is also a claim of innocence and a warning that the focus on the mud-smeared keeps attention off the real beasts in the 2G story—has come from India Inc. Ratan Tata, head of the Tata group and Radia’s foremost client, calls the leaked tapes “unauthorised” and their publication and the subsequent buzz “a smokescreen” for the real scam. He has asked the government to book those guilty in the 2G scam “but stop this banana republic kind of attack”.

For this paragon of propriety, rightly affronted by the breach of privacy, the whistle-blowing that brought the tapes into the open is symptomatic of a “banana republic”—never mind that it exposes the nexus between business, bureaucracy and the media. He has even enlightened us, in the course of a television interview, on what happens in banana republics: “Banana republics are run on cronyism. People of great power wield great power. People with less power, or those who are not in power, go to jail without adequate evidence or their bodies are found in the trunks of cars.” Sounds like one of the many cautionary notes wise men pronounce regarding the conditions the country could slide into if the rule of law is not upheld. But listen to those words, coming from a powerful industrialist, from the perspective of a whistle-blower, presumably someone with “less power”, and you would be forgiven for reading a threat between those lines.

Something good may come of it, after all, for the great man has helped us with the diagnosis by telling us how banana republics work—through cronyism, which has been on ample display in those very tapes he despises, though the more precise term for what the tapes reveal would be crony capitalism. What the cag report on 2G and the tapes reveal is the sale of spectrum at throwaway prices, changes in eligibility and procedural criteria to favour a few chosen ones, windfall gains through sale of equity and resale of spectrum, cartelisation through cross-holdings in supposedly rival companies, and lobbying for the appointment of a minister whose decisions made all that possible. They also hint at money-laundering, bribery and manipulation of policy, administration, the media and even the judiciary in matters like aviation and the quarrel over natural gas between the Ambani brothers. The primary driver in all this is capital: it is corporate houses that employ lobbyists to cozy up to politicians, bureaucrats and the media; it is corporate houses that cultivate and invest in these groups in order to corner windfalls. Corporate houses, therefore, cannot claim victimhood in a kleptocracy of their creation.

The diagnosis is for the UPA-2 government, professed champion of inclusive growth and the aam aadmi, to understand and act upon. For it’s crony capitalism that has driven the miracle growth rate of close to nine per cent. Rajeev Chandrashekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP and former FICCI president, has pointed out that agriculture has grown at a dismal one per cent and manufacturing at no more than three per cent. The so-called miracle has been achieved through phenomenal growth in mining, real estate, construction. Recent scams—Adarsh, CWG, the Bellary brothers’ many depredations, Yediyurappa’s land largesses to relatives, and not the least, the 2G scam itself—are strong enough indications of the profitable webs big business casts.

The public revulsion these scams have evoked should be a wake-up call. Pointing to bigger stains on the clothes of the opposition will not be enough to save this dispensation. Governments that were complacent about corruption were overthrown despite a decimated and vanquished opposition in the wake of the Jayaprakash Narayan movement in the 1970s and the Bofors disclosures in the late 1980s. The scale of robbery this time has been revealed to be so high, its execution so systematic, that it will take much more than window-dressing to save the government—and much more important—the poor who live in hope.

When the licence-permit raj was disbanded, ushering in liberalisation and globalisation and the promise of plenty, it was said cronyism would come to an end: anyone with initiative could compete on a level playing field. How mythical this is the robber barons of big capital have just driven home to us. The real smokescreen—one Ratan Tata is unlikely to warn against—is the neo-liberal rhetoric that shields crony capitalism and allows it to stealthily profit by influencing policy and leave India’s poor with empty bowls.

life in general: (part 1) 'unheard voices..' book written by harsh mander

There is one book that is very dear to me. It is Harsh Mander's 'Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives' written by him some years back.

I share below excerpts from the book. It is one of the 20-odd stories of common Indian people that Mander has written about in the book.

Excerpts from the book:

Two decades after he was uprooted from the land of his ancestors, Nanhe Ram, still speaks little. Looking much older than his sixty years, he sits for long hours outside his dilapidated hut in the resettlement village of Aitma. He has no land, no cattle, no sons; his ageing wife labours all day in the forests or in the fields of the big farmers of the village, to keep the fires burning.

There is anguish but little recrimination, as he talks haltingly of the past. The first time they heard about the large dam that would submerge their village, he recalls, was when daily wages were twelve annas (which would probably be in the mid-1950s). Their village, as, indeed, the entire region, was hardly connected to the outside world, and until then they had encountered very few government officials. When men on bicycles, wearing trousers and shirts, rode into their villages to inform them about the dam, the tribal people living there had got scared and run away into the forests.

He did not know then that a gigantic thermal power complex was being planned in the neighbourhood of his village, at Korba, for which the two rivers that flowed there, the Hasdeo and Bango, were to be dammed. Fifty-nine tribal villages like his were to be submerged, twenty completely and the rest partially, along with 102 square kilometres of dense sal forest, to create a vast new reservoir of 213 square kilometres. No one consulted with the 2,721 families of these villages, condemned to become internal refugees in the cause of ‘national development’, profoundly and irrevocably. Some 2,318 of these families, who like Nanhe Ram were the least equipped because of their temperament, culture and lack of experience, to negotiate their new lives.

The survey work continued for six or seven years, and it was in 1961 that the first phase of the project, for the construction of the barrage and major canal was sanctioned. Nanhe recalls their fear and excitement when a small plane flew in as part of the on-going survey work. However, it was only a decade and a half later, in 1977, that the first settlement, Nanhe’s village, was actually submerged. In the intervening years, construction continued apace, but no one from the government planned any steps for their rehabilitation or even as much as spoke with them about how they might rebuild their lives in the future. They were completely ignored.

In 1977, a few months before their homes were actually submerged, the farmers were packed into a truck and driven to the divisional headquarters of Bilaspur, located in the heart of the Chhatisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh. Nanhe recalls that they arrived at the imposing building housing the district office in the late afternoon, and were bundled into a courtyard. There they were addressed by an official, who informed them that their village would be lost to the dam reservoir in just a few months, during the net monsoon, and that the government was therefore paying them the first installment of their compensation. For Nanhe, this was a niggardly Rs 540.

When their truck returned to their village, it was morning. The inhabitants found that the local revenue officer, the tehsildar, was waiting for them. The tehsildar wanted to recover the land revenue due from Nanhe out of this compensation amount. Nanhe lost Rs 300 to him, and the remaining Rs 240 also disappeared before long merely in day-to-day survival.

During the meeting at the district office, someone had timidly asked, But where are we to go when our village goes under in the next monsoon? The official had replied tersely, How do I know? Why don’t you go to your relatives’ homes? But, some weeks later, a bank of activists held a series of meetings in their village. How can they ask you to go to the homes of your relatives, they thundered. Did your relatives build this dam? They organized demonstrations and rallies, in which many young tribals of the village also participated. Nanhe was confused and frightened, and he held himself aloof. Eventually, the government conceded that the tribal families that were being submerged would be given house-sites in a resettlement colony located in the forest uplands.

In the few months that remained, Nanhe made plans in his own way for the future. Where and how they would live, he did not know. He was worried first about his cow, whom they all loved. He knew that he would not be able to take care of her in the resettlement village, at a time when even keeping his wife and two daughters alive would be very hard. He also could not think of selling her, because she was like a member of the family. So he gave her to an Ahir cowherd, and promised to pay him Rs 150 each year for looking after her. Nanhe continued, despite all his subsequent tribulations, to save and send money for the upkeep of the cow for ten years, until the cow died.

Just a day before the monsoon broke, the trucks arrived. The people were given only a few hours to bundle their belongings into the trucks. They were then driven to the resettlement village, in which house plots of .05 acres each had been hurriedly cleared for them in the forest. The rains broke early, and Nanhe and his family spent the entire monsoon huddled with their few belongings under a mahua tree. In the dry spells, Nanhe struggled, trying to build a small hut, while his wife scoured the forests for food.

The remaining instalments of compensation were paid only fifteen years later, in 1992. Nanhe received a cheque of Rs 2,000, which he used to repay loans to the moneylender. Nanhe survived on occasional wage labour, but only barely. It was around then that for the first time, under pressure from activists, the government initiated a few livelihood programmes. Although the government has since spent some two crore rupeeds in the resettlement region in recent years to belatedly provide livelihoods to the displaced families, there has been little success. Fishing in the new reservoir is dominated by outside contractors. Forty lakh rupees were spent on a poultry farm, which ran for a few months, with twelve beneficiaries who were given 100 birds each. The birds suddenly died of some illness, and the farm closed down. The manager of the poultry farm departed after making a young tribal girl pregnant. Ambar charkhas or spinning looms were installed, but raw material supply and marketing were erratic. The looms provided wages in fits and starts, and that too only one rupee a day.

The resettlement villages are at the periphery of the large artificial reservoir, connected by earth roads that get submerged after the rains each year. In these inaccessible, remote, artificial settlements, not only are jobs hard to come by but life is very hard in other ways as well. Schools, health centres, credit cooperatives and ration shops rarely function. If someone is seriously ill during the rainy months, the only way to reach a hospital is by undertaking a perilous journey of three hours on a small leaking dinghy.

Not surprisingly, of the 208 families that had been resettled in Aitma, only sixty remain. The rest have migrated, either to the forests as encroachers, or to the city slums, in desperate search of means for bare survival.

Nanhe is among the few who remain, because he had neither the strength, nor the will to struggle and to start life anew one more time. He sits quietly outside his hut for most of the day. But sometimes when he speaks, he says softly to anyone who is willing to hear. When I am on a boat, in the middle of the reservoir, and I know that hundreds of feet beneath me, at that very point, lie my village and my home and my fields, all of which are lost forever, it is then that my chest rips apart, and I cannot bear the pain…

life in journalism: a welcome torchlight on unhealthy aspects of Indian journalism

Every once in a while the ugly facets of Indian media editors come out in the open. Last week, Outlook magazine published the tapes between Nira Radia and a few media editors and journalists. Everything about the issue and the tapes can be on Outlook's website here, here, here, here, here and here.

Nira Radia and her firms including Vaishanvi handle the public relations of all the companies of the Tata Group (whose chairman is Rata Tata) and the Reliance Industries Group (whose chairman is Mukesh Ambani).

Its good that the Radia tapes have been published by Outlook magazine. Such a torchlight was necessary, and I am sure other dirty aspects of Indian journalism would also not remain un-hidden forever.

The editors who feature in these tapes are not the only ones who subtly plugged Radia's clients in their publications and television channels or to political parties using their influence. There are a few other media editors too who do the plugging in their publications/channels but do so in a very cunning manner. I have no doubt that over time these editors would receive payback for their un-ethical and dangerous liaisons with large companies and their PR representatives.

I have written about the unhealthy practises in journalism in my blog a few times. In one of my blog post (29 September 2008 one) I even mentioned Vaishnavi company (owned and run by Radia) by name. I share below the contents of that blog post:

http://natant.blogspot.com/2008/09/life-in-journalism-public-relations.html

There is a slyness with which India Inc and their pubic relations (PR) companies treat the media. Partly, of course, it is the media's self-imposed cowardliness but it also due to the sophistication that the public relations companies (or in some cased the companies do it directly without hiring a public relations firm) deploy to discourage/intimidate/fool the editors and journalists that dare to ask even basic tough questions about their client-companies.
As a journalist, I have seen how some PR companies directly deal with the Editor-in-chief (or other senior editors) of a publication or a news channel and try to manipulate them if they perceive a junior-level editor/reporter probing the affairs of their clients a little deeper (such a journalist, in my view, would only be carrying out his/her journalistic duties more diligently).
The PR companies that try to aggressively wield a lot of influence on the top media editors include Genesis Burson-Marsteller, Vaishnavi PR, Perfect Relations and 2-3 more.
The media dare not even write about their PR companies as a part of the regular coverage of the role of all kinds of business entities in the economy and industry. But in June this year Tehelka magazine dared and wrote a story on them (you can read it here). It was a welcome torchlight on an evasive bunch of people although I still felt the story was soft.
There is a lot more to say about the techniques used by the PR companies that would do a Goebbels proud. The readers/viewers of Indian media do not adequately know the kind of insights/news/analysis they are missing out on due to such Goebbels'.

life in financial markets: fuels on fire

Recently, I wrote an editorial for the publication I work for on the issue of diesel-run SUVs and cars. 

Here is what I wrote:

Fuels on fire

The car market in our country has been on a roll in recent years notwithstanding the intervening global depression period of 2008 and early 2009. While car manufacturers--Indian or foreign--selling cars, including SUVs (sports utility vehicles) to Indians have all the reason to be mightily pleased with such a trend there is an underlying unpleasant side-effect that India as an ecological landscape is experiencing. 

In the last few years, almost all the high-end cars sold in India have been diesel. These cars, that includes sedans and SUVs, have costed upwards of Rs 7-8 lakh. Advocates for a less-polluted environment have always opposed the dieselisation of the car fleet. They have associated the deteroriating air quality in the cities to the sharply rising levels of tiny particulates of size less than 2.5 microns and nitrogen oxides, both of which arise more out of diesel exhaust emissions than from petrol vehicles. 

So nothing new was being said by union environment minister, Jairam Ramesh when he told the delegates of a UN conference on environment last week that in view of the growing carbon emission levels of India's transportation sector it was criminal for diesel subsidies to be used up in increasing part by large-sized cars and SUVs. It is estimated that these passenger vehicles gobble up 20 to 25 per cent of all diesel sold in the country. 

As a concept, discouraging the use of diesel passenger cars is ideal for climate change mitigation purpose but there are practical difficulties. Particularly if the solution being touted is differential pricing of diesel -- higher for cars and normal rates for trucks, tractors, power generators, agricultural pumps, railway trains and industrial use. Enforcing differential diesel prices at the retail outlet would be extremely difficult. 

One viable alternative was spelled out by a section of a February 2010 report of a government-nominated expert group on a viable and sustainable system of pricing of petroleum products headed by Kirit Parikh. After commenting that there was no economic reason to subsidise diesel car and SUV owners it laid out a formula to collect the same level of tax that petrol car users pay from those who use a diesel vehicle for passenger transport. 

Illustrating through an example and use of discounted rate over a 10-year life of a vehicle, the group stated that a petrol car owner who drove 8000 km a year and got an average mileage of 13.5 km per litre was paying Rs 10,000 more excise duty per year than what he would if he drove a diesel car. The calculation culminated in a figure of Rs 80,000 additional excise duty diesel cars should be required to pay. While this figure may seem low to some, the assumptions of car usage, mileage and discount rate can always be updated and fine tuned to levels that truly reflect the average of the use of passenger cars in the country. 

Whatever be the challenges in finding a solution to the dieselisation of the car industry in India, one has to be found and soon. Even in the US, where governments and consumers are wary of paying more for fuel-efficient vehicles there is heightened awareness of harmful effects of fuel-guzzling SUVs. India is racing ahead on the way to become a consumerist society but it does not have the knowledge and the maturity to deal with the negative environmental side effects. 

Whether unwitting or not, the subsidy being enjoyed by rich diesel car and SUV owners is neither wise nor sustainable.