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| Hot issues of Today |
- Mar 26, 2007
- Mar 25, 2007
- Mar 24, 2007
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- Mar 22, 2007
- Mar 21, 2007
- Mar 20, 2007
- Mar 19, 2007
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- Mar 17, 2007
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| Mar 27, 2007 |
Jharkhand road mishap kills 16
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 (Garwah): At least 14 people, mostly poll personnel bound for Palamau where a Lok Sabha by-poll is due on March 29, were killed and 20 others injured when the bus they were travelling in fell into a gorge in Garwah district.
The mishap occurred when the bus' driver tried to avert a collision with a car coming from the opposite direction near a bridge at Tendi More in Ramna, about 25 km from Garwah town.
The bus hurtled into a 15-foot gorge, said Inspector General of Police A K Sinha.
Seven of the injured were in a serious condition. The poll personnel, mostly teachers, had left Ranka for Garwah.
At least 12 of the injured were brought to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences in Ranchi, sources said.
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070007012
Jharkhand tribals protest inclusion of converts
Ranchi, March 27 (IANS) The tribals in Jharkhand are concerned over the 'invasion' of the converted people who avail of government benefits even as the real community remains deprived of education and job opportunities.
In the 2001 census report, the original tribals have been clubbed with those who converted to religions like Christianity. Now the tribal community demands that there should be a religion column in the census form to separate the original tribals from the converts.
"The tribals should be put under different columns to maintain their separate identities," said Narayan Bhagat, a member of the Adi Dharma Parisad, a tribal body.
He said: "The tribals of the country should be brought under one religion - Adi Dharma - so that they can get the facilities provided by the state and central governments."
Tribal leaders in parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are unhappy that converted Christians also get tribal status in the census and can avail of the facilities given to tribals.
The issue was raised in the state assembly in the ongoing budget session by four Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators.
"There should be a separate column for tribals' religion in the census. Converted tribals avail of facilities in Christian missionary schools and benefit from jobs while the real tribals remain deprived," said BJP legislator Chandresh Oraon.
"In the present census, tribals are clubbed with those who converted to other religions. There should be a separate column to segregate the converted from the tribals," he added.
The tribal population has registered a sharp decline in the last five decades. In 1950 the tribal population was 40 percent of the total population of Jharkhand, only to go down to 27 percent in the last census. The Christian population, which was negligible in 1950, has gone up to four percent.
The literacy rate among the tribal population is less than 40 percent as against the state's 54 percent. In Jharkhand, 52 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and most of them are tribals .
http://www.indianmuslims.info/news/2007/march/27/india_news/jharkhand_tribals_
protest_inclusion_of_converts.html
SC raps Bihar for poor education facilities
NEW DELHI: A cash-crunched Bihar government has landed itself in a predicament after the Supreme Court directed it to fulfil its undertaking submitted before the apex court that it would revamp the entire education infrastructure to introduce "oriental" learning by well-trained teachers.
Currently, the number of trained teachers is far less than the vacancies in the state that was under Lalu Prasad's RJD for 15 years and is now governed by BJP's Nitish Kumar. The state is under judicial action to act now, or face contempt for not doing its duty for the welfare of children.
According to the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) report last year, at least 1732 schools in Bihar had only one room and 4398 upper primary schools had no rooms for their headmaster. Another 1275 schools did not have buildings to house them. Complete sets of books were never made available to any school thereby depriving the benefit of the Sravshikhsa Abhiyan Scheme to a large number of children in Bihar.
The CAG also revealed that model schools for girls were neither proposed nor opened in the test-checked districts. The government also failed to introduce retention drive in any of the districts. Instead, the government spent a whopping Rs 1.68 crore for purchasing 247 computers in four districts which are lying unutilised due to the non-existence of buildings and computer-trained teachers.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1087441
Lo, tigers also fled from Bihar
PATNA: So poor had been the law and order situation in Bihar during the last one decade or so that many traders, doctors and other professionals bid adieu to the state. Though not for the same reason, tigers too left the state as if for nowhere.
The CAG report for 2005-06 suggest a sharp fall in tiger population in the state during the past five years. The number of big cats in Valmiki Tiger Project has gone down mysteriously with as many as 23 of them missing during the last three years. There is no confirmation whether they died, were killed or just strayed away.
According to the report, there were 56 tigers in the project in 2002 35 male, 17 female and four cubs. But the number came down to 33 by 2005. Eighty per cent of these 33 pug marks sighted during 2005 were located in buffer zone and habitat areas outside the tiger reserve.
The report, however, does not mention the reason behind the fall in tiger population at the Valmiki tiger reserve which came into existence in 1990. It does say that regular tiger sighting was not done and monthly reports on tiger mortality were not submitted by range officers. In fact, no mortality survey was conducted between 2000 and 2006, the report says.
Another reason, as indicated in the CAG report, could be the illegal activities in the project area. About 150 villages are situated within one km of the periphery of the protected area and these villagers have to pass through the protected area for communication as there are no alternative routes. Also, these villagers have been grazing their cattle in the forests.
Besides, the villagers are engaged in felling of trees and other illegal forest activities like poaching, the report says, adding forest guards do not have arms and ammunitions.
No less stunning is the fact that 2150 hectares of forest land was encroached by the Nepalese about two decades back. But no action was ever taken to get it vacated. However, in case of encroachment of another 186 hectares of land, 67 hectares were restored while court cases for the remaining encroached land are pending.
The CAG report says due to the poor management of the tiger project, promotion of wildlife tourism, as envisaged in the 1998 guidelines of the government of India, could not be planned.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Patna/Lo_tigers_also_fled_from_Bihar/
articleshow/1807305.cms
State Pulse: West Bengal: Cars, not land
What the debate on Singur hasn't touched - Abhijit Banerjee, (Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
A remarkable fact about the recent debate about Singur is that it is so much about land, and so little about cars. Yet a thousand acres of land is really not very much, given that the state has over 1.3 crore acres of cultivated land, and even Mamata Banerjee cannot be entirely serious when she talks about the absolute sanctity of agricultural land. After all, if someone really believed that, then why stop at Singur?
The New Town at Rajarhat, I am sure, could be double-cropped (and so, for that matter, could Chowringhee). Would she support a policy of no further urbanisation: Why not agitate to put policemen at Howrah station to turn back aspiring migrants, who are, after all, probably the most important reason why cities grow and agricultural land turns into housing estates.
A hundred thousand cars additionally a year, on the other hand, is serious business. After all, in 2005, the total number of cars sold was just over a million. And cars are what economists call a 'public bad'. When I buy a car, it makes me happy (or at least that is the presumption) but it makes everyone else worse off. The suspended particles that get released into the air when I drive my car, will eventually contribute to killing someone and the carbon dioxide that results from burning hydrocarbons, even George Bush seems to have realised, might end up killing us all. My new car also contributes to worsening the traffic, lengthening the working day, and encouraging the murderous manoeuvres of drivers late for work...
Less obviously, it alters the political economy of transportation. Before I bought my car, I was a devotee of public transportation. Even if I had owned a two-wheeler, when it was raining or when the sun was blazing, or when I wanted to travel with friends or family, I was happy to take a bus or a train. When a new metro was built, I cheered. When the government turned the state transport corporation into a sinecure for drivers who no longer felt like driving and conductors who refused to conduct, I agitated.
Now that I own my small car, I am largely indifferent to the fate of public transportation. Indeed if all the buses stayed off the streets one day, my driving would actually be less stressful.
Every time someone buys a car, the pressure on politicians to deliver better public transportation goes down. The people who get hurt by this realignment of political priorities are the poor, those who cannot imagine buying a scooter, let alone a car.
They need public transportation the most, and yet in terms of the ability to influence politicians, they tend to lag behind the lower middle classes. Therefore, when the lower middle class exit the public system, the poor lose their most effective champions. This is why a one lakh rupee car, targeted exactly towards the lower end of the middle classes, is likely to be particularly perverse in its effects.
The mystery, for me, is why a leftist government decided to make a showpiece out of a project for building small cars, when it would have much more sense for it to agitate for higher taxes on all cars. Since cars make everyone else pay for the driver's pleasure, the driver needs to pay society back, and a special tax on every new car purchase is the best way to get there. Figuring out what that tax ought to be would take some work, but I would not surprised if it turned out to be in the lakhs.
This is not to say that the West Bengal government should not try to attract the Tatas, nor that they should, as Medha Patkar has been telling us, stick only to agro-industries. Indeed, why not a different vehicle project? Given the state of roads in rural India, suvs are actually often the only available form of transportation-the one way, other than walking or cycling, of getting out of a village, especially during the monsoon. In medical emergencies-when pregnancies suddenly start going horribly wrong or a child's fever refuses to subside-having access to one of these can make the difference between life and death. Why not invest in developing a newer, cheaper, very much more energy efficient version of the Tata Sumo, still the archetype of an suv in rural India?
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20070328/2803304.htm
Rising crimes
HUBLI: The spate of dacoities, robberies and other crimes in the twin-cities and elsewhere in the district have left the citizens a worried lot.
The last three months have witnessed an alarming increase in the crime rate here. And the disturbing fact is the failure of the police to effectively check the growing trend, despite their tall claims. Incidents of dacoity and robbery in the twin cities and the district during the last few days are mind-numbing. This year, there has been 35 pc increase in burglaries till date. Residents feel unsafe even during daytime, for many incidents of daylight robberies have been reported in the recent past, the latest being a burglary reported close to the police commissioner's office.
To add fuel to fire, communal clashes were also reported at Toravi Akkal of Hubli and Navalur of Dharwad on Sunday night giving the police some more sleepless nights.
Why is the crime rate increasing? "I feel the entire north Karnataka region is going the Bihar way where such dacoities and robberies are an every-day affair. Like Bihar, the rising crime here also reflects socio-economic imbalance. Moreover, the nature of population has changed. The divide between the rich and poor has also increased. Unemployment has also turned people into thieves. Illiteracy and the vicious environment of corruption and nepotism have also led to increase in crime here", explained Kiran Mahendrakar, a businessman.
Are the police doing enough to bring a sense of security in the minds of people? Basavaraj Hulimani and Akkamma, an aged couple from Vidyanagar, said: "In our times, we never even locked our doors. Now the night turns into a nightmare, as we are terribly apprehensive of robbers or dacoits attacking our house. We do not think the police are doing anything for public safety. Daylight robberies have really shaken our faith in law and administration. There is no police patrolling at all during night and that's what is required."
What is the solution for curtailing the rising crime graph? "I strongly feel that there is laxity on the part of the police department. There is no determined investigation even after the FIR is registered. The police must increase patrolling and follow-ups.
"The regular trained police personnel, who can handle crime, are not much in number, so crime investigation is delayed. So many police personnel are merely providing security to VIPs. This should change" said Satish Chandra, a bank officer.
"The police should initiate community policing seriously. It can involve senior residents and other volunteers to cooperate with them in forming mohalla committees, which will take action to ensure the safety of their mohalla. The police should come out from their stations and interact with people. Vulnerable areas should be identified and patrolling system should be reviewed accordingly," asserted Vishwanath Hiremath, a teacher
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Bangalore/Rising_crimes/articleshow/1812623.cms
Orissa village turns tide against drought
Sambalpur -, March 27 - By the early 1980s, Padiabadmal, a remote tribal village in Orissa's Sambalpur district had lost its forests. Lost with it were the village's age-old mechanisms to cope with drought till a farmer pioneered a movement to bring back its lost glory.
'Since 1982, our village has become testimony to a new phenomenon - large scale migration in search of jobs outside,' says Mahadev Bhoi, a 65-year-old farmer who has seen his village through both phases - prosperity and penury. 'Before the '80s, although we had years of drought and migration, we were not too distressed,' he says.
The village had a good forest cover and traditional water harvesting structures, which helped in coping through drought years.
But, Mahadev, an ordinary farmer with four acres of land, is also witness to another phase of development, which he has led in his village.
He has successfully experimented with traditional knowledge and wisdom of harvesting rainwater and conserving ecology. The youngsters have followed his example and the village has turned its grey topography to green once again. Migration has stopped since 2004, reports Grassroots Features.
'We have four acres of land, and paddy was the principal crop even when I was a child. However, we had indigenous seeds at home and had other crops to sustain the farming. We had paddy at crop fields and millet at the uplands and field bonds,' says Mahadev.
As a young farmer, he convinced his father to start vegetable farming and they succeeded to some extent. 'We had a particular type of water harvesting structure near our crop fields and that sustained our vegetable farming besides helping the paddy fields,' says Mahadev. 'As time passed, however, for some reasons I can't recall, the villagers started facing difficulties.'
Things changed so drastically that the villagers migrated en masse in search of jobs and the village wore a deserted look each drought year.
'It continued almost for two decades when Manav Adhikar Seva Samiti -, a voluntary organisation, came to us and discussed our plight in 2001,' says Nrushingha Charan Naik, president of Brajeswari Krushak Club, which was formed after MASS motivated and organised the villagers.
The village plan that we made with help of MASS helped us revisit all those areas and indigenous technology, informs Puspashree Nayak, a senior programme officer with the organisation. But, when it came to reviving some of the structures, the difficult task was to decide who would start first? No farmer wanted to take a risk because MASS didn't offer an easy grant. 'People had to contribute a major portion of the work through labour and we only offered meagre grants,' says Nayak.
Mahadev decided to experiment yet again. He constructed a huge 200 sq ft 'paenghara' -, which cost Rs.7,000. MASS provided him with 80 percent of the cost and he had to contribute the rest in the form of labour.
The first revival by Mahadev brought him instant benefits. Besides saving his crops, he could also start growing multiple crops. In a year's time, about 11 farmers constructed such paengharas.
With the water scarcity situation easing, migration also stemmed to a large extent. The challenge then was to look beyond paddy and practice sustainable farming, which required crop diversification. But breaking the shackles of current agriculture practices in their village was not easy for the villagers and Mahadev.
During his younger days, deviations in rainfall patterns were not too extreme. The villagers, therefore, were happy with their paddy production and never thought of supplementary cultivation or diversification of their cropping patterns. However, repeated failures of the kharif crop have forced the villagers to think beyond paddy.
Here too Mahadev took the lead. He began diversification of crops with kulthi and berseem crops. The villagers succeeded in their initiatives as those crops require little rainfall. Mahadev then thought of vegetables and other crops.
The villagers now have two types of collectives - a farmer's club and all-women self-help groups - - and have taken several initiatives to drought-proof their village. The villagers have studied traditional drought resistant seeds of paddy that had earlier helped them to cope with drought years. 'We have also started collecting other types traditional seeds,' informs Nayak.
Currently, there are as many as five women SHGs in the village. It is a matter of pride for the SHG members that all the public representatives to the local grassroots-level body are members of their federation. 'With these kinds of initiatives, we feel empowered as our vulnerability has decreased considerably,' says Premshila Bhoi, president of one of the SHGs.
Not only has availability of water increased but food production is also on the rise. The village institutions are taking up social issues too. Most importantly, the village has decided to take up forest protection to sustain all these efforts.
'Unless the forests are conserved, no water conservation efforts will succeed,' says Mahadev, a hero at 65.
Will other villages get champions like him?
http://www.rxpgnews.com/india/Orissa-village-turns-tide-against-drought_21173.shtml
I LEFT THE NAXALS, JOINED SALVA JUDUM
Only 19, former Naxalite Badri Nath Atami now teaches fellow adivasis how to fight the Naxals.
I ran away from home in 2002, when I was 16. I walked to the Dantewada railway station and took a train to Hyderabad where I got a job with a company called Krypton Novelties. I supplied gift items to shops and was happy with my job. My parents would call my employer to check on me, but they had stopped speaking to me.
One day some people came up to me and asked me to get Rs 50,000 per month from my employer. If I didn't, they said, they would blow up his factory and kill me in the bargain. They called themselves Naxalites.
'I killed 12 people as a Naxal, including village sarpanches, panchayat officials and an ASI'
My employer refused and I feared for my life. I had no idea what Naxalism was, but I thought, that a life extorting huge sums from businessmen would be much better. I left my job and joined the Naxalites in January 2003. Their camp was in Khammam district, bordering Chattisgarh. Spread across a huge area in the jungle surrounded by hills, it must have covered at least five square kilometres.
Nine months of intensive training followed. They taught me how to make bombs, how to operate weapons, how to protect myself in the face of an attack. The arms training began with a .303 rifle. Then they gave me a 12-bore rifle, and soon I was operating automatic weapons: SLRs (self-loading rifles), AK-47s and finally, Light Machine Guns. My family presumed I had died. Training over, I was inducted into the Central Military Dalam, cpi (Maoist)'s highest military body.
We would go from village to village in Dantewada, organising night meetings to attract support and tell the villagers not to side with the police. I graduated to taking part in operations, many of which I led. I killed 12 people as a Naxal, some of them village sarpanches and panchayat officials. I even killed an Additional Sub-Inspector. Often we would go to a village and barge into the house of the wealthiest family. We would distribute their wealth among the villagers. If the family resisted, we would murder them.
We used to place pressure bombs — ordinary things with explosives inside them — strategically in places where policemen used to rest during their patrols. The moment a policemen would sit on a pressure bomb, he would explode into pieces. Landmines were effective in blowing up police and government vehicles.
By the end of 2003, I began introspecting: Why was I doing this? For whose benefit? So one day I got up and went back to the factory in Hyderabad. They kept me again. But they got suspicious and two months later sacked me.
So I returned to Gumalnar to an emotional homecoming. My parents forgave me and I went to Raipur. In January 2006, Chaitram Atami asked me to join the Salva Judum. They made me a trainer in the Salva Judum camp in Gidam block. It felt strange that I was doing this all over again, but this time I felt proud of what I was doing. I was serving my village and my country.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main28.asp?filename=Ne310307_I_left_CS.asp
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| Hot issues of Today |
- Mar 26, 2007
- Mar 25, 2007
- Mar 24, 2007
- Mar 23, 2007
- Mar 22, 2007
- Mar 21, 2007
- Mar 20, 2007
- Mar 19, 2007
- Mar 18, 2007
- Mar 17, 2007
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