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Apr 01, 2007

Tutors frown at PG course call

Ranchi, March 31: The cabinet decision to allow post-graduate courses in degree colleges came in for scathing criticism today, with university teachers voicing apprehension that it would open the floodgates and further dilute higher education.

Pointing out that post-graduate education in the state is already in a mess, they cited the state's own experience with the Jharkhand Eligibility Test (JET) last year. Very few candidates qualified in the test held to find eligible college teachers. In subjects like chemistry, nobody qualified while in physics, very few did.

It had sparked off a public debate on the state of higher education. And it was agreed that conditions in post-graduate departments were pathetic, with shortage of teachers, leave alone good teachers, paucity of funds and poor infrastructure.

Instead of strengthening the existing post-graduate departments and enforcing more stringent quality-control on teaching and research, the state government has decided to encourage students refused admission by PG departments to rush to degree colleges offering PG courses.

If existing PG departments continue to be ill-equipped, short-staffed and deficient in infrastructure, it would be foolish to expect colleges to be better, they felt.

The University Grants Commission, they point out, is a recommending body and in any case universities are authorised to grant affiliation to colleges with or without clearance from the AICTE.

The UGC grants more funds for colleges with postgraduate teaching, hence a group of teachers apprehend that after getting funds, many such colleges would discontinue post-graduate courses after a couple of years on some plea or the other, including the plea that students have disappeared after taking admission.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070401/asp/jamshedpur/story_7592065.asp

The Three Curses?

Education, healthcare, infrastructure...barring stray NGO efforts, the poor in India seem condemned to inhuman existence

Eerie Indicators

As per an NCERT survey, nearly a fifth of the 25 lakh- plus full-time primary school teachers are untrained.

A 2001 survey in Bengal's Purulia, Birbhum, West Midnapore districts showed only 7% of those who didn't take tuitions could write their names.

In Punjab, only 7% rural and 6% urban households use public health facilities for non-hospitalised illnesses.

A World Bank study reveals 39% doctors play truant in state-run institutions.

In East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, the standard of education is so poor that students of classes five and six cannot comprehend two-digit additions.

While the Uttar Pradesh health department claims 100 per cent immunisation, the Centre finds that the coverage is actually 30 per cent.

In Bangalore, India's technology hub, two girls drown in a drain because their state-run school doesn't have a toilet and the girls were forced to go out.

Extreme cases? No, this is the real state of the poor in India.

As the Indian economy booms, and experts confidently predict double-digit growth rates in the near future, there is a large segment of society that seems to be untouched by it. For poverty-stricken households, survival itself is a question mark, even as policymakers talk about the coming of age of an Asian century, led by India and China.
The Outlook-GFK-Mode poll, conducted in one of India's poorest districts—Bolangir in Orissa—reveals the way the other half lives.

"One-fifth of India's population suffers from chronic hunger. it should be a...matter of highest priority for India's society and the world."

Jeffrey D. Sachs Director, the Earth Institute, Columbia University

Ninety-six per cent of the respondents had no toilet, over 50 per cent said the nearest primary healthcare centre was over 10 km away, and two-thirds of children dropped out of school at age 14. "There is a consistent gap between what the government reports tell you, and what independent surveys reveal," a senior economist, who works with a multilateral agency in Delhi, puts it bluntly.

Probably, the most glaring gaps lie in the field of education. The two major issues confronting policymakers are to find ways to improve the quality of teaching in schools, and prevent children from dropping out. A recent survey by NCERT concluded that state-run schools impart a "questionable" quality of education. It found that nearly a fifth of the over 25 lakh full-time teachers in primary schools were untrained, and the figure was similar for the over 13 lakh teachers in upper primary schools.

For example, in West Bengal, education remains a neglected area. Explains Santosh Bhattacharyya, former vice-chancellor, Calcutta University, "Most school teachers belong to the CPI(M)-affiliated unions and don't feel the need to deliver. Teachers are highly paid and highly pampered. Thus, absenteeism is rife and when teachers take classes, they don't teach properly." A 2002 survey by the state government found that most of the primary and upper primary schools lacked infrastructure and they faced consistently low teacher attendance.

Children tend to drop out, either because parents find education useless, or expect them to augment household incomes. The Punjab's Economic Survey (2006) found that the dropout rate at the secondary level was over 48 per cent. In Bengal, the Pratichi Trust, founded by Amartya Sen, carried out a survey in Purulia, Birbhum and West Midnapore districts in 2001. "We realised that 30 per cent of the students didn't attend classes," says Kumar Rana, senior research associate at the trust. "Only 7 per cent of those who didn't take private tuitions (since they couldn't afford to) could write their names. So, the poor continued to be excluded from education."

Exceptions exist. Like the World Bank-funded project in UP which has enrolled 50 lakh children in the past two years in the 30,000 new schools built in the state.

To ensure accountability, teachers were recruited locally and, already, 1.5 lakh teachers have been hired at a monthly remuneration of Rs 3,500 each. "Since we have local teachers, it has come as a boon for the educated unemployed in the villages," says Radhey Lal, the head of Pooranpur village, which is under the Mohanlalganj subdivision of Lucknow. However, such examples are few and far between.
When it comes to the public health sector, the picture is as dismal as in education. Despite increasing budgetary allocations to health, states are unable to utilise funds. In 2005-06, 18 states were able to use just 50 per cent of the funds meant for improving healthcare delivery systems.

The silver lining: people are turning more demanding, using RTI to seek efficient delivery of basic services.

Government studies themselves point out that the bulk of the money used is spent on infrastructure development, not on improving services. This perhaps accounts for the poor outcome of the countrywide immunisation programme.
"The faith in the healthcare infrastructure in rural areas isn't much," feels Deoki Nandan, director, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare. Adds R.N. Gupta, who was formerly with the Indian Council for Medical Research, "The political system is responsible for many things, including healthcare, going wrong." Low payscales, poor amenities, lack of connectivity and power shortages make doctors reluctant to take up jobs in rural areas. Even if they do, they mostly don't report for work. A World Bank study showed that 39 per cent of doctors and 44 per cent of other medical personnel are absent from their work in state-run health institutions.
In Punjab, says A.K.

Nanda, senior fellow, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, "the tertiary healthcare has collapsed as the Punjab Health Systems Corporation, which was set up to oversee it, has become virtually defunct". At the policy level, the focus seems to have shifted towards diseases that afflict the affluent, rather than killer ones like TB. Faced with rampant corruption and nepotism, only seven per cent of the rural households and six per cent of the urban ones use public health facilities for non-hospitalised illnesses in the state.
The urban poor fare no better. The government has estimated that 23 per cent of the urban population are slum-dwellers, and most of them below the poverty line. In most cities and towns, around 20-30 per cent of the population are slum-dwellers, while the number is 30 per cent in the case of Delhi. Recognising the need for a more planned approach to city development, the ministry of urban development and ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation are in the midst of finalising a new policy. One proposal is to adopt the model being planned to transform Mumbai's Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum.

The silver lining—and it shouldn't be taken lightly—is that people are becoming more demanding. "There are signs that the electorate is beginning to demand better service delivery," says Vikram K. Chand, who works for the World Bank. Agrees Rema Nanavaty of SEWA, "Awareness among rural people is definitely on the rise, but programme implementation is slow. If you see progress in some areas, it's because of the initiatives of local communities and civil societies." SEWA itself has built an association of 9,63,000 women, who are fast becoming the agents of change in rural areas, especially in Gujarat.

Veena Jha, India's programme coordinator at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, contends that NGOs "have had a big role to play in Bihar, especially north Bihar, where they are partnering with locals to open new schools. What is noticeable is that people are hungry for education." In Rajasthan, says social activist Aruna Roy, "the state government is lackadaisical, but people's pressure is forcing it to act".

Across the country, individuals have found voices, and are using the right to information to seek efficient delivery of basic amenities and services.

Even the Centre and state governments are waking up to the new realities. At the central level, the finance ministry is designing a computerised model that will make the system transparent and enable the public to access records. The ministry for health and family welfare has engaged the United Nations Population Fund to assess the quality of services and the performance of accredited social health activists in 18 states for mid-course corrections.

"The difference (in India and China's economies) has not so much to do with democracy, but (in India's) failure to invest in education and health."

Joseph E. Stiglitz Nobel-winning economist

In the first phase, the performance in three states—Rajasthan, MP and Orissa—is being evaluated.

The combined attempts are making a change in the rural hinterland—albeit very slowly. But still, let's conclude with the good news, hoping that such models will be replicated in lakhs of other villages. Here's a story about the transformation of Raj Samadhiyala, a village 20 km from Rajkot in the drought-prone Saurashtra region of Gujarat. From being a poverty-stricken hamlet, its 2,000-odd dwellers today harvest three crops, including 20 varieties of vegetables. The personal annual incomes range between Rs 50,000 and Rs 12 lakh. The primary healthcare centre works to full attendance, each house has a toilet, water connection and drainage system, there's full enrolment in the local primary school, and the village is safe and secure with no reported thefts.

The credit goes to Hardevsinh, a post-graduate who chose to stay back to change the village. "I bridged the gap between the panchayat and the people by setting up village community leaders. These leaders were accountable for results from their respective communities," says Jadeja. Thus, the village was able to introduce water harvesting, build 45 checkdams, create a network of farm ponds and percolation tanks that raised the water table over the years.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070409&fname=OBasic+Nayar&sid=1&pn
=3

Naxal annual report reveals terror plans

NEW DELHI: The Naxal onslaught at Riga in Sitamarhi district of Bihar may be the first of a series of such attacks planned by the militants in areas where large mining, irrigation or industrial projects are to be set up.

This is suggested by the fact that an annual report of the Maoists, seized by security forces recently, had listed several upcoming projects in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh for attacks.

The Riga attack may just be a symbolic call for battle to create Red terror in the nearby region, where the proposed Kosi irrigation project is to come up, security experts believe.

Incidentally, the Kosi project is on top on the Maoists' hitlist, with the annual report saying the region needed attention for not only repulsing the government machinery but also for mobilising mass support.

The Maoists had made their intentions clear nearly six months ago when they met to observe the sixth anniversary of their armed wing People's Liberation Guerilla Army on October 8 last year. The Red ultras, in their annual report (October 2005-September 2006), a copy of which is with the TOI, specifically listed sites for attacks.

Among these were areas having proposed bauxite mines of Jindals near Visakhapatnam and Polvaram irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh, projects of Tatas, Essar and Jindals in Chhattisgarh, Rajghara-Raoghat-Jagdalpur rail line, steel plants of Posco and Tatas in Orissa, power plants of Reliance and ongoing Narmada projects in Madhya Pradesh.

The ultras, in their eight-page report, asked their cadre to put up a brave front against these projects and initiate a Kalinga Nagar-type of agitation.

The Kalinga Nagar incident had witnessed killing of 12 tribals during a protest against Tata Steel's proposed project in Jajpur district in Orissa in January last year. Thousands of tribals, backed by Maoists, had opposed the plant fearing displacement.

Besides touching upon their future plan, Maoists also listed their successful operations, which included the Jehanabad jailbreak in Bihar, killing of 11 Naga jawans and attack on Salva Judum camps in Chhattisgarh, killing of 14 cops in West Singbhum in Jharkhand and attack on Malkangiri-Udaigiri jail in Orissa.

It is clear from the report's contents that they had been successful in such operations despite the government putting up a larger contingent of security personnel in place. It also reflects the naxals' intention to encourage their cadre by highlighting such incidents.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Naxal_annual_report_reveals_terror_plans
/articleshow/1842133.cms

Hindu trust offers job to Bahadur Shah's kin

A Hindu temple trust in Bihar has offered a job and free education to the impoverished family members of India's last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar's great granddaughter-in-law Sultana Begum.

This humane gesture of communal harmony comes in a year that India celebrates the 150th year of the first war of independence in 1857 - a war fought under the leadership of Zafar.

The Patna-based Mahavir Mandir Trust has offered a job to a member of Kolkata-based Sultana Begum's family and free education to her grandson to mark their respect for Zafar, whose contribution to sectarian harmony and national integration is legendary.

'The temple trust has offered a job to any member of her family in any secular institution and free education to her grandson to pay our respects to Bahadur Shah Zafar ' said trust secretary Kishore Kunal here.

Sultana Begum, who is in her early 50s, is in Bihar along with a minor grandson on a mission to spread the message of peace and create awareness about Zafar's contributions to society.

'I was honoured when the trust offered a job for a family member and free education to my grandson. It is a great thing to happen, I will not forget this in my lifetime,' said an emotionally charged Sultana Begum, who is the wife of the late Mirza Mohammad Bedar Bakht, the great grandson of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Bakht was born in Rangoon where the British government had imprisoned his great grandfather. After India's independence, Bakht return to India and married Sultana Begum in 1965.

Sultana Begum, who lives off a small scrap shop in a Kolkata slum along with half a dozen family members, also visited a Sikh shrine - the Patna Saheb Gurdwara - and a tomb of a Muslim saint at Phulwarisharif near here.

'We have been struggling for survival. There was virtually no help from the West Bengal government or the central government,' she added.

With a meagre pension of Rs.400 since 1980, she has seen near penury after her husband died. 'There was no change in my pension but prices of rice and wheat increased manifold. The pension provided by the government hardly allows us to get foods for four days. But who cares for us despite our historical background?' she lamented.

Sultana Begum has set up the Bahadur Shah Zafar Memorial Trust in West Bengal, with the aim of making people aware of the contributions made by the last Mughal emperor. 'I want to spread the message of communal harmony of the last Mughal emperor among the youth,' she said.

The trust will hold a poetry meet in Kolkata on April 22. She also plans to revive Zafar's famous 'Phul Walon ki Sair' (floral tour).

Earlier here, Kunal presented her with a shawl, a memento and some traditional sweets prepared by the temple trust.

'We honoured her when she visited a Mahavir Jain temple and offered prayers for communal harmony,' said Kunal, a former IPS officer who was appointed administrator of the Bihar Religious Trusts Board by the Nitish Kumar government.

Kunal is credited with single-handedly turning around the Mahavir Mandir Trust into a profit making body. The trust runs three hospitals, including the state's first private cancer hospital here, from the monetary offering of devotees and profits from the sale of special sweets prepared by it.

The trust, which has also appointed a Dalit priest at the temple, is associated with the Ramanand sect.

http://www.indiaenews.com/art-culture/20070330/45326.htm

West Bengal shows red flag to Wal-Mart

KOLKATA: Sunil Mittal's plan to open a Bharti-Wal-Mart cash-and-carry store in Bengal has come under a cloud. On Friday, state finance minister Asim Dasgupta reiterated that Bengal would not allow Wal-Mart to establish a presence here.

Replying to a debate on the West Bengal Finance Bill, 2007, in the state Assembly, Dasgupta said chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has categorically told US envoy David Mulford that Wal-Mart is not welcome here.

"We said no to him and the government doesn't want to allow FDI in retail business," the minister said in reply to a question on the state's foreign direct investment (FDI) policy on retail by Congress MLA Sudip Bandyopadhyay.

The Congress leader is also the chairman of state Assembly's standing committee on commerce, industry and industrial reconstruction.

Bandyopadhyay said the state was "not being transparent" in its policy for retail sector. While Reliance chief Mukesh Ambani was being encouraged to start a retail business in Bengal, the state was not allowing Wal-Mart to do so.

"The state should form a committee to decide how it should approach the subject of FDI in retail," he added. "After what the minister has said, the question of Bharti-Wal-Mart starting operations in Bengal just does not arise," Bandyopadhyay told TOI.

Dasgupta made no comments on whether the government would prevent the Bharti-Wal-Mart joint venture from undertaking cash-and-carry operations here in the light of Friday's announcement.

Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal had said that Bharti-Wal-Mart is keen to include Bengal in its nation-wide roll-out plan. The state has already allowed Germany's Metro Cash & Carry to set up shops since it would engage in wholesale trade and target institutions as customers.

Although the Left has claimed that Wal-Mart is making a backdoor entry into India through the alliance with Bharti, the argument has not found favour with the UPA government at the Centre. The Bharti-Wal-Mart joint venture is expected to start operations later this year.

Dasgupta said the state would frame a policy for small and medium enterprises having turnovers less than Rs 50 lakh. The state would form a panel headed by economist PN Roy to examine the country spirits business.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India_Business/West_Bengal_shows_red_flag_to
_Wal-Mart/articleshow/1835662.cms

Party games

Nandigram did not surprise me. I was anguished and angry but not surprised. I had heard the story of Alipurduar from Jugal Kishore Raybir.

This dalit activist, a believer in Gandhian non-violence, was the founder of UTJAS, (Uttar Bango Tapsili Jati O Adibasi Sangathan) an organisation of dalits and adivasis of north Bengal. Through the 1980s it demanded greater regional autonomy and justice for sons of the soil. Not only did the government turn a deaf ear, the ruling party launched an offensive against them, branding them 'separatist' or 'bichhinatabadi'.

The story of Alipurduar goes back to January 10 1987, twenty years before Nandigram. On that day, UTJAS had organised a rally of what they estimated to be about 50,000 people in Alipurduar, the headquarters of Cooch Behar district. As the rally started, they noticed something unusual: The police was nowhere in sight. Soon the rallyists found themselves surrounded by and under attack from the armed cadre of the CPM. The rally was dispersed as unarmed protesters were beaten and chased. The police surfaced, only to arrest the victims, once the party cadre had finished their job.

They say Jugal Raybir's commitment to non-violence prevented a blood bath that day. But that day also marked the end of the rise of UTJAS as a political challenge to the Party. For the next few months, the UTJAS cadre was hounded by the police, attacked by the CPM and not allowed to hold even indoor meetings. This dalit movement wilted under the onslaught of the state, police and Party. That prepared the ground for the rise of militant outfits like the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation. But that is a different story.

Note the parallels between Nandigram and Alipurduar: The Party faces a political challenge, decides to nip it in the bud and executes an onslaught in sync with the police and administration. The only difference this time was that there was unexpected resistance. And that an anti-SEZ movement makes more news today than a dalit movement did twenty years ago. There were no Gopal Gandhi or Tanika and Sumit Sarkar then to point out that the emperor had no clothes.

Nandigram may not have been the worst case of police firing. We have seen similar incidents in Orissa, Rajasthan and UP in recent times. West Bengal is certainly not the only state where the ruling party uses the state machinery to crush its political rivals. Om Prakash Chautala could still teach the CPM a lesson or two in this game. But there is one thing Chautala never did. He never talked of human rights and lofty democratic ideals. A Chautala could not have issued the injured yet clinical statement that the CPM's Politburo did after the Nandigram killings. The cold-bloodedness of the statement reminds you of the BJP top brass's reaction after Gujarat.

This gap between the CPM's preaching and practice did not surprise me. I have been looking at Christophe Jaffrelot's research on the social profile of MLAs in India. His analysis shows that the proportion of upper caste MLAs is on the decline all over the country since the 1960s. There is only one exception: In West Bengal the proportion of upper castes has increased in the state assembly after 1977, after the Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About two thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman, Boddis, Kayasthas). Perhaps you did not notice that West Bengal was the last major state to come out with an OBC list to implement Mandal. You might say, the CPM believes in class, not caste. Fair enough, but then why is the CPM in Delhi so aggressive about championing Mandal? Why does it present itself as more Mandalite than thou?

Or read the data supplied by the West Bengal government to the Sachar Committee. With 25.2 per cent of Muslim population, the state government has provided just 2.1 per cent of the government jobs to Muslims. West Bengal has the worst record of all Indian states in this respect. Gujarat has just 9.1 per cent Muslims and has 5.4 per cent Muslims among government employees. The irony, of course, is that the CPM was the first party to come out with a statement demanding implementation of the Sachar Report!

Will the CPM stop playing games? A few months ago the Party held an unprecedented State Secretariat meeting to discuss the Cricket Association of Bengal elections. The CM was openly backing Kolkata's police chief only to be opposed by his own sports minister and Jyoti Basu. The Party finally declared that the CPM will not play politics with games, at least not with cricket. But what about playing games with politics? Will the CPM stop that as well?

Perhaps we should ask: Can the CPM stop playing games? Or are these games essential for survival for a party that has lost touch with the times, has lost faith in its own ideology and has come to fear its own cadre and election machine. Satyajit Ray's Shatranj ke Khiladi was a brilliant depiction of the games nobility played at the time of its historic decline. Alimuddin Street may not have time for such bourgeois indulgence, but the point of this film would not be lost on an avid cinema buff like Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Sometimes it is not the player who plays the game; it is the game that consumes the player.

The writer is a political scientist at the CSDS, New Delhi

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/26169.html

CAG report debunks Orissa claims on PSE reform

BHUBANESWAR: Notwithstanding tall claims made by the Orissa government on sweeping reforms in public sector enterprises (PSEs), the functioning of government companies and statutory corporations has shown no sign of improvement. In fact, due to faulty and delayed decisions, PSEs have suffered financial losses of over Rs 200 crore.

"There were 13 cases of loss amounting to Rs 73.47 crore on account of faulty planning; inadequate provisions in the contract for safeguarding financial interest; undue benefit to buyers, sellers and contractors; failure to discharge contractual obligations; non-collection of entry tax and poor recovery action", according to the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) laid in the Orissa Assembly last week.

There were instances of avoidable and wasteful expenditure amounting to Rs 5.41 crore in three cases dues to injudicious procurement of iron ore, conductors and vacuum interrupters and avoidable payment of interest", it added.

Interestingly, the Orissa Hydro Power Corporation (OHPC), a product of power sector reforms in the state, continued supply to its employees and local residents, blissfully forgetting that it required a distribution license for such activities. The failure to take timely remedial measures led to revenue loss of Rs 22.12 crore.

Gridco, the state's lone power transmission company, coughed up a penalty of Rs 5.69 crore as it failed to fulfill the supply commitment made to a trading company.

The poor follow-up for recovery of dues coupled with inadequate punitive measures for seizure of financed assets by the Orissa State Finance Corporation (OSFC) led to doubtful recovery of Rs 28.71 crore.

Idcol and its subsidiaries, like the Idcol Kalinga Iron Ore Works and Idcol Ferro Chrome and Alloys Ltd, have suffered financial losses of Rs 15.10 crore due to procurement of iron ore at a higher rate, failure in effecting sales of chrome ore in time and failure in increasing the crushing capacity of lump ore.

However, the most shocking revelation made by CAG is that the Orissa State Cashew Development Corporation has suffered massive revenue losses of Rs 65 crore.

The loss is because the Corporation failed to replant trees fully in vacant patches and in the damaged area after the supercyclone and also failed to replace old and senile trees.

Similarly, the Orissa Construction Corporation Ltd suffered revenue losses of Rs 49 crore, due to its heavy dependence on government works, delayed execution of works due to inappropriate fixation of target, coupled with improper and delayed engagement of job workers.

The CAG report has virtually debunked the Orissa government's assertion that it was restructuring and revamping public sector undertakings by inculcating professionalism in management under the Orissa Public Sector Enterprise Reforms Programme.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=159766

Stir for separate 'Kosala' state intensifies in Orissa

Bhubaneswar, April 1 (IANS) Demand for a separate Kosala state in Orissa has intensified further with hundreds of agitators holding mass demonstration in the capital city even as the state celebrated its 72nd formation day Sunday.

About 1,000 activists of the Koshali Ekata Manch (KEM), an organisation that wants a separate state comprising 11 of Orissa's 30 districts, demonstrated in front of the residence of Governor Rameshwar Thakur Sunday shouting slogans.

The team led by KEM chief Pramod Mishra submitted a memorandum to the governor demanding statehood and inclusion of Koshali language in the 8th schedule of the Indian constitution. He threatened to intensify the agitation if the government did not meet their demands.

For the past 15 years, several other organisations too have been seeking a separate state comprising the backward districts of Bargarh, Bolangir, Boudh, Deogarh, Jharsuguda, Kalahandi, Koraput, Nuapada, Sambalpur, Subarnapur and Sundergarh in western Orissa.

Known as the Kosala region, these districts have often been in the news for sale of children, death due to malnutrition and high infant mortality rate.

Though the backwardness of the region has aroused national and international concern over the years, the situation has mainly remained unchanged.

Although leaders of various political parties are opposed to the idea of a separate Kosala state, the demand has found sympathy among the people of the region.

KEM activists across western Orissa observed April 1 as a protest day, Mishra said. Similarly, people from the region who are living in New Delhi also observed the day as a black day, he added.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/india/news/article_1285554.php/Stir_for_separate_
Kosala_state_intensifies_in_Orissa

Vedanta puts money before the gods of India's Dongria Kondh

Their thick, ancient forests shelter leopards, elephants and even the odd tiger, and their slopes are home to an isolated people, but the "curse" of eastern India's Niyamgiri hills lies beneath the soil.

Massive deposits of bauxite have brought Britain's Vedanta Resources to this corner of the state of Orissa, where it has built a $900 million (R6.5 billion) alumina refinery.

Just a stone's throw from its gleaming new facility, a few hundred people gather in the shade of mango trees in Lanjigarh in mid-March for the latest protest against the company.

Among them is Dickcha Majhi, who walked for five hours from her village to the small town. She is a member of the 8 000-strong Dongria Kondh people, who worship an earth goddess and revere the hills as their protector, Niyam Raja.

"She is our mother and he is our beloved lord," she says, with rows of colourful beads around her neck, golden rings through her nose and through her ears, her frizzy hair held down with a dozen metal hair clips. "If you hand the hill over, the hill god will eat us."

As eastern India engages in an increasingly controversial rush to industrialise and exploit its vast mineral resources, Vedanta's plans to turn the top of the Niyamgiri range into open-cast mines has emerged as a key battleground. It is a battle not about whether to industrialise, but how to do it, and how to compensate the losers.

Conservationists say the mining firms could and should have chosen other hills, instead of risking the rich biodiversity of Niyamgiri, and have taken the issue to the supreme court. On the ground, farmers worry their traditional lands and livelihoods will disappear once mining begins. They are being corralled by local Congress Party politician Bhakta Charan Das, who promises to stage a mass march on the site in mid-April.

"By the time they reach here, the site will be gheraoed [encircled] by 50 000 people and the administration will be paralysed," he says.

An elephant corridor, and the only known home of the rare golden gecko in Orissa, the hills were proposed as a wildlife sanctuary in the 1990s. The Wildlife Society of Orissa dismisses Vedanta's pledge to spend millions of dollars protecting wildlife.

"How will they manage the wildlife?" asks Biswajit Mohanty. "Seventy-three million tons of bauxite will be taken out. You can't mitigate the effects of that."

The Vamsadhara river rises from the range and more than 30 streams flow from the mining site, providing water that sustains hundreds of thousands of people, conservationists say. Mining will destroy those sources, they argue.

In September 2005, a supreme court committee recommended that "the use of forest land in an ecologically sensitive area should not be permitted".

It condemns the ministry of environment and forests for a "blatant violation" of its own guidelines for the refinery to be built without getting clearance to mine in the hills, much of which is protected forest under Indian law.

But Vedanta, along with the state and central governments, have fought back hard. The company says the bauxite lies in the top 25m to 30m of the 1 000m high hills, and promises to protect water sources from contamination.

It will fill up pits with residues as it goes along, and plant new trees, says the refinery head, Sanjeev Zutshi. The supreme court will refer the case to the forest advisory committee, an expert panel. But that will only happen when the court and the government resolve a separate row about who should sit on that committee.

Meanwhile, Vedanta is forging ahead. Some of the pillars to carry a conveyor belt from the mine to the plant have already been built.

Zutshi says 17 locals are working in the refinery and 50 more are being trained. Hundreds might get jobs from local contractors as shovel men to sweep out spillage and drain slurry. But employment for all is simply not possible.

"One big issue which is difficult to address is the issue of employment," he says. "These people unfortunately are not educated at all, most of them are illiterate."

Instead Vedanta says it has sponsored health and education in local villages as well as alternative income-generating projects. But the firm's claim to popular support was belied by February's local elections, where Congress-backed candidates running on anti-Vedanta tickets dominated, says Das.

Two hours' drive away on a rocky, dirt road, a few Dongria Kondh men and women sit outside their thatched roof huts, their malnourished children beside them, berries fermenting in the sun to make home-made liquor.

Vedanta says the mines will not affect the slopes on which these people live, only the summits and ridges, which they worship. But already people here fear the worst.

"The earth is our mother," says Verang Majhi, rejecting any talk of compensation to leave ancestral lands. "Would you leave your mother for money?"

As dusk draws in and the lights of the refinery dominate the night sky, Reuters visits the village of Bandhaguda, right up against the wall of the plant. Daka Majhi says all 32 men of his village were jailed for seven days last year for staging a peaceful protest outside the refinery. Women were threatened by police while Vedanta completed the wall around the plant, cutting the people off from their pond, cremation grounds and much of their fields.

Zutshi contests that version of events, and says repeated efforts have been made to reach out to the villagers, even offering them resettlement at one point, only to be obstructed by a handful of people who want "heaps of money".

Vedanta, he insists, is not the bully that politician Das made it out to be. Nor can it afford to be.

"The days are gone when you can impose yourself, surround yourself with goons and policemen, and browbeat every Tom, Dick and Harry," he says. "It's not going to work, it's not a long-term solution at all."

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=3758331

Farmers killed in Chhattisgarh for giving land to industry

RAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Maoist rebels killed two farmers in Chhattisgarh for allowing their land to be acquired for a planned steel plant, police said on Sunday, as the country debates industrial projects being set up on farmland.

The killings took place in a village in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh, which is the worst hit of at least 13 out of 29 states affected by Maoist violence.

"Over 40 armed Maoists raided Bhansi village and killed two tribal villagers by slitting their throats for agreeing to surrender their land for Essar Steel's planned plant," senior police officer O.P. Pal told Reuters by telephone.

Bhansi village is about 400 km south of Raipur.

Police said Maoists had warned residents in the area not to hand over their land in return for financial compensation for the steel plant of Essar Steel Ltd., which had signed a deal with mineral-rich Chhattisgarh in 2005 for investing 70 billion rupees in the project in Dantewada.

The acquisition of land by companies and state governments for industrial units and special economic zones (SEZs) has become a hot issue in India.

Fourteen villagers protesting a planned chemical hub were killed in a clash with police last month in West Bengal. The local communist government later backtracked over placing it on farmland after the violence.

The Maoists, who say they fight for India's poor peasants and landless labourers, organised a 24-hour strike across eastern India and Chhattisgarh to protest the killings, and a government policy that allows the setting up of SEZs on fertile agricultural land.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Maoist violence in the past three decades.

In response to farmer protests earlier this year, the Union government put all proposed SEZs on hold.

An Essar Steel official said the land acquisition process for the plant in Dantewada was in the final stage, and that the state government had assured the company about 600 hectares (1,480 acres) of government and private land by June this year.

Farmers have had their land taken to make way for factories for decades in India, but in recent months isolated protests have joined into a national movement against the accelerating industrialisation of the economy.

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2007-
04-01T195517Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-292887-2.xml&archived=False

IFDA farm projects likely to be rolled out

NEW DELHI, APR 1 : Three projects of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) may be implemented in the country, this year, if the government sets up necessary infrastructure for its implementation.

Tejaswini rural women's empowerment project for select districts in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, approved by IFAD in December 2005, is in pipeline for implementation. IFAD has assured to extend a loan of $ 39.5 million for implementation of this project which involves a total investment of $ 208.7 million. This 8-year project intends to strengthen women's self-help groups (SHGs) by fostering links with banks and micro-finance institutions, improving livelihood opportunities by developing skills and fostering market linkages.

IFAD has also approved a similar project in December 2006 for empowering women in the mid-Gangetic plains (4 districts in UP and 2 districts in Bihar). This 8-year project entails an investment of $ 52.5 million against which IFAD has agreed to extend a loan of $ 30.2 million.

Another project for developing post-Tsunami sustainable livelihood opportunities in coastal Tamil Nadu was approved by IFAD in April 2005. This project entails an investment of $ 68.8 million and IFAD has agreed to extend a loan of $ 30 million. "We have been assisting projects in India since 1979 and have so far approved loans amounting to $ 564.4 million for 21 projects. Every year we approve to support one new project in India by extending loan within the range of $ 35 million. Our loan component may be small compared to the total investment but we arrange co-financing from different global agencies for the project," IFAD president, Lennart Bage told FE. IFAD also provides a small amount of grant for projects. Last year it gave a grant of $ one million to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and this year it has supported Uttaranchal Grameen Vikas Samiti with a grant of $ one million for innovation for reducing drudgery in women.

Bage further said that agreements for the projects are signed with the Union government which decides whether it should be implemented as a central government project or as a state government project by creating necessary infrastructure. Grants are mainly for research and innovations.

Thirteen IFAD-assisted projects have been completed so far which includes livelihood security project for earthquake-affected rural households in Gujarat, Mewat area development project, two Andhra Pradesh participatory tribal development projects, rural women's empowerment in select districts in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Maharahstra rural credit project, Orissa tribal development project, Uttar Pradesh public tubewell project, Madhya Pradesh medium irrigation project, Sunderban development project, Rajasthan command area development project and Bhima command area development project.

"Our evaluations show that these completed projects benefited thousands of rural households. Basing on our past experiences we are eager to assist more projects in India," said Bage. There still 5 on-going projects in different parts of the country like livelihood improvement projects in the Himalayas and in the Orissa tribal belt, national micro-finance support programme being implemented by SIDBI,

Jharkhand-Chhattisgarh tribal development programme and northeastern region community resource management project for upland areas.

Bage outlined IFAD's India strategy for 2005-09 which includes providing access to micro-finance which he says has been very effective in women's self-help groups. Other aspects of IFAD's policy are to improve livelihood opportunities for communities in semi-arid tropicial regions with better water management and new farm technologies, introducing development activities in the densely populated and impoverished mid-gangetic plains, improving productivity for coastal fishing communities through sustainable means, developing partnerships with NGOs and corporate sector to re-inforce community-based approach and promoting policy change through project activities.

Bage said with Indian economy growing at a fast rate, the farmers need to link up with the markets for ensuring better living conditions. He also suggested that farmers should come together a set up processing units so that they can directly stand to benefit from the sales of their value-added products. Micro-finance institutions should attract deposits from the local people to encourage savings and their own viability.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=159772

news@jharkhand.org.uk Jharkhand News Network www.jharkhand.org.uk

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