Dharmishta Mithran was set up to help with funerals. Today, it helps people with other day-to-day concerns too, writes VN Vasudevan.
It all began with a few like-minded people, seeped in Sanatana Dharma, coming together to assist families to conduct funerals and to perform the last rites of departed mortals. These spirited social workers, who look at death stoically, have created an organisation that is totally dedicated to this service.
In November 2001, the group set up Dharmishta Mithran as a not-for-profit company, under Section 25 of the Companies Act. The objective of the organisation was to deal with all matters related to the death of a person-from attending to calls in emergencies to conducting funerals anywhere in Greater Mumbai, and responding to other specific requests from members.
Jagmohan Vohra, a local businessman and a staunch devotee of Sai Baba, provided land to house the Aparakriya Centre (for last rites). From a modest beginning, the centre has grown into a 1,000 sq ft facility, thanks to the encouragement from late Pramod Shirwalkar, a former member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly. Mr Shirwalkar spurred them to reach out to salt pan workers in the Jai Ambe Nagar area. This community now has proper drinking water facilities, and they are provided toiletries (donated by Hindustan Unilever), books and uniforms for the kids and funds for their medical needs.
Dharmishta Mithran has conducted nearly 1,000 funerals in nine years. Desh Seva Samiti, which operates an ambulance service, has been a partner in the work. This has been possible because of the growing number of co-operators. Today, Dharmishta Mithran has 13 patrons, 551 life members and 219 ordinary members.
In March last year, the organisation acquired an apartment where it set up the Shraadha-cum-Community Development Centre that is patronised by people from Mumbai and from other cities. The Centre can conduct up to six kriyas a day.
The work of the organisation has been appreciated by none other than the pontiff of Kanchi Math, Jayendra Saraswati. On a visit to the Centre in December 2008, the religious leader compared conducting a funeral to holding an Ashwamedha Yagnam, saying: "No human being should run the risk of not being cremated for whatever reason."
The demand for the services has grown at a quick pace and the organisation has found it difficult to cope with the rush. Fortuitously, in August 2009 it managed to acquire more space and this enabled it to begin conducting shraadhs (memorial ceremonies). Now, it also conducts a variety of other rituals and ceremonies, such as upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony), annaprasanam (on the first birthday of a child), shastiabdapoorthi (on the 60th birthday), nischita thamboolam (engagement before marriage) and seemantham (during the first pregnancy).
The organisation has taken up new areas of activity like setting up a legal cell, to assist people to write and register a will and create awareness about issues related to transfer of property. It has published a compendium on transfer of property and monetary rights to appointed beneficiaries. It also provides transit accommodation for groups visiting Mumbai to attend marriages, for a low rent of Rs3,000 a day.
Dharmishta Mithran is also engaged in day-to-day issues, like working with the police department and partnering with citizens' groups to help senior citizens. It has an arrangement with a hospital in the area to treat its members at concessional rates. It is working with a sister NGO Bharatiya Adhyathmic Society to create infrastructure for the development of Vedic and other cultural/fine arts.
All donations to the organisation are exempt under Section 80G of the Income-Tax Act.
Source: In service of The Dear Departed - Moneylife: Personal Finance Magazine
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Happy Diwali 2010
Sun glows for a Day,
Candle for an Hour,
Matchstick for a Minute,
But a Wish can Glow for Days Forever.
So this Diwali , the festival of lights I Wish You and your Family Glowing Diwali.
Happy Diwali and Happy New Year to all my readers and followers.
Warm Regards,
Sailesh Mishra
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Old-age tension :Is Increasing the retirement age is inevitable and better than the alternatives ?
FRENCH workers have begun another round of strikes in protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposals to extend the minimum retirement age to 62. The protesters probably haven’t stopped to examine how demographic trends are set to devastate government finances in the developed world.
The bad news was spelt out in “Global Ageing 2010: An Irreversible Truth”, a report released by Standard & Poor’s, a ratings agency, on October 7th. As the baby-boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964) retire over the next two decades, the burden on the state will rise sharply.
This demographic problem has been coming for some time. But the boomers have not provided enough for their old age. And the credit crunch has made the sums look even worse.
It is not just pensions. Spending on health care and long-term care (ie, nursing homes) will have to rise too. If policies do not change, six European countries— Belgium, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Ukraine—will be devoting more than 30% of GDP to age-related spending by 2050. The median advanced country will be spending 27% of GDP on age-related items by then; state spending will absorb around 70% of some countries’ GDP.
As a result, at least in part, of this age-related spending, the median advanced economy will be running a deficit of 24.5% of GDP by 2050; 12 countries, including both America and Britain, will have deficits of more than 30%. Debt-to-GDP ratios in the G7 will have ballooned to more than 400%.
Merely to state these numbers is to grasp why policies will have to change. Countries cannot deal with this problem by raising taxes, since any tax increase on that scale will crush economic growth. Nor is it likely that governments could slash other forms of spending by enough to counteract the effects of ageing.
It would seem that countries will have to choose between two forms of default. They can break their promises to their creditors or they can break their promises to future pensioners. Some countries will do the former, either by an outright failure to repay their debts or via the more subtle approach of inflation and currency depreciation. But most will attempt to do the latter, despite the protests and the electoral power of the elderly.
Raising the retirement age is the most obvious reform. It is a fair adjustment given the increased longevity of the population: European life expectancy has increased by almost ten years since 1950. A later retirement age also increases the size of the potential workforce, and thus the number of taxpayers. Some argue that it is unfair on manual labourers, whose life expectancy tends to be shorter, but this bias has always existed.
And manual workers would surely suffer more if governments went off in the other obvious direction—cutting benefits. Britain has quite a stingy basic state pension because of a Thatcher-era decision (reversed by the new coalition) to link payments to prices rather than earnings. Fiddling with inflation-linking is a stealthy way of cutting benefits but would hit the poorest hardest, since they have no alternative source of income.
Is there a deus ex machina, a device that will rescue the rich world from its plight? One option might be to generate a second “baby boom” so that by the time 2050 rolls around, there are more workers to support the pensioners. This is by no means impossible. In France the fertility rate is already around two children per female, not far short of the “replacement rate” which keeps population numbers steady. But it is unlikely. In Europe as a whole the birth rate fell from 2.65 in 1950-55 to 1.42 in 1995-2000. Although the birth rate has edged up since then to 1.5, it would take a huge social change to push it as high as is needed.
Another option is immigration. Opening the borders would increase the labour force, creating more taxpayers and more potential carers (in hospitals and nursing homes) to look after the elderly. Immigrants also tend to have more children, one reason why the British birth rate has rebounded over the past decade.
However, for this solution to work at the European level immigration would have to come from outside the continent, probably from Africa. European far-right parties have already surged in electoral popularity. Imagine what would happen to their support if countries tried to increase the flow of immigrant workers.
Raising the retirement age may not be popular, but it will be more popular than the alternatives. Get used to it: we are heading towards a pension age of 70.
Source: http://www.economist.com/node/17254452
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
NGOs and the legislative process
All stakeholders, including citizens, NGOs, etc. have an important role in the law making process. But for many stakeholders, the process is not obvious or easily explained.
In PRS, we often receive a number of requests from NGOs about how it is that they can get Parliament to make changes in legislation and what would be productive ways in which citizens can make a difference in the law making process. To address this, PRS has developed a short Primer on “Engaging with Policy Makers: Ideas on Contributing to the Law Making Process”, in which we have tried to explain the process of how a Bill becomes an Act and some of the opportunities for citizen groups to become part of the process.
Sometimes, large parts of a Bill that is introduced in Parliament may not be agreeable to some groups. In such cases there is a tendency among NGOs to sometimes decide to redraft the Bill.
To the extent that NGOs think of redrafting a Bill as a tactical negotiating position, they may have a point in trying to redraft legislation. To the extent that NGOs think of such redrafting as a way to keep the discourse alive on the most important issues in any legislation, such efforts are welcome and useful. But if there is a belief that the Bill introduced in Parliiament will be withdrawn to introduce another Bill on the same subject as drafted by NGOs, then history suggests that the probability of that happening is close to zero. This is not a comment on the quality of the Bill that may be drafted by the group of NGOs, but rather a result of a complex set of issues about lawmaking in India.
Despite the odds, there are some recent examples in which NGOs were able to bring about significant changes to Bills in Parliament. The Right to Information Act stands out as one of the best examples in recent times. On the recently passed Right to Education Bill, NGOs were able to exert sufficient pressure to bring about changes in the Bill, and also get the government to bring in an amendment Bill to make further changes. In the Seeds Bill which was introduced in 2004, the Government appears to have agreed to bring about important changes thanks to the efforts of a number of farmer groups approaching the government directly, and through their local MPs and political parties.
It would be useful if we can get more examples/ comments/ suggestions about how some NGOs were able to bring about these changes in Bills. This will help more people understand how their voices can be heard in the corridors of power.
Source: http://prsindia.org/theprsblog/2010/09/23/ngos-and-the-legislative-process/
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
In PRS, we often receive a number of requests from NGOs about how it is that they can get Parliament to make changes in legislation and what would be productive ways in which citizens can make a difference in the law making process. To address this, PRS has developed a short Primer on “Engaging with Policy Makers: Ideas on Contributing to the Law Making Process”, in which we have tried to explain the process of how a Bill becomes an Act and some of the opportunities for citizen groups to become part of the process.
Sometimes, large parts of a Bill that is introduced in Parliament may not be agreeable to some groups. In such cases there is a tendency among NGOs to sometimes decide to redraft the Bill.
To the extent that NGOs think of redrafting a Bill as a tactical negotiating position, they may have a point in trying to redraft legislation. To the extent that NGOs think of such redrafting as a way to keep the discourse alive on the most important issues in any legislation, such efforts are welcome and useful. But if there is a belief that the Bill introduced in Parliiament will be withdrawn to introduce another Bill on the same subject as drafted by NGOs, then history suggests that the probability of that happening is close to zero. This is not a comment on the quality of the Bill that may be drafted by the group of NGOs, but rather a result of a complex set of issues about lawmaking in India.
Despite the odds, there are some recent examples in which NGOs were able to bring about significant changes to Bills in Parliament. The Right to Information Act stands out as one of the best examples in recent times. On the recently passed Right to Education Bill, NGOs were able to exert sufficient pressure to bring about changes in the Bill, and also get the government to bring in an amendment Bill to make further changes. In the Seeds Bill which was introduced in 2004, the Government appears to have agreed to bring about important changes thanks to the efforts of a number of farmer groups approaching the government directly, and through their local MPs and political parties.
It would be useful if we can get more examples/ comments/ suggestions about how some NGOs were able to bring about these changes in Bills. This will help more people understand how their voices can be heard in the corridors of power.
Source: http://prsindia.org/theprsblog/2010/09/23/ngos-and-the-legislative-process/
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
"A Petition to the President of India to SAVE Prehistoric Monolith Gilbert hill in Mumbai ,India"
I am a creative director and documentary maker, wildlife photographer and by nature a social activist. I am currently working on a documentary and Article with trustee(s) of Gilbert Hill to save this prehistoric Monolith. I started an online campaign to save our geological wonder. I thank you all for their incredible support. I shall not remind Government and bureaucrats. It is their sweet will. I only know that I am also a part of greedy system. I see the beauty and also the problem, over population, man's need for dwelling, poverty and greed for money. The one thing of many that is wrong in India is that very few people hold a lot of power. Gilbert Hill is certainly the best place in suburban Mumbai. It is the only hill of its kind in India and had been reportedly declared a National Park by the Central Government in 1952. The 200-foot-high vertical columns of the Gilbert hill are similar to the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, USA. It was notified as a heritage Grade II structure in September 2007. Mumbai’s 65-million-year-old Gilbert Hill is threatened by a rash of urban constructions around the pre-historical monolith.
Gilbert hill should be preserved for future generation to enjoy and to appreciate. "Gilbert Hill is an eye sore. Let it be removed and replaced with a man made cesspool or a parking lot” .How do you like this approach? Common men think, there is nothing more, we can do. I am an ordinary Indian citizen. The change required is at smallest of effort done by ''me''.............it will change: every system does and we all have a power to do so; starting with me'. However there are more pressing problems that concern the health of the masses. But it is my Nobel Responsibility to save our natural heritage site. Some western people would shell out millions to visit such monument, but when it’s free for locals & matter of spending some Thousands for Rest of India.......no One's bothered. SHAME!!! I am awfully sorry if I seemed harsh it was in reaction to what I felt that we did ruin to our heritage. It will be great to have your support for campaign to save Gilbert Hill. I would also like to ask you a favour to ask people to sign a petition .Attached herewith are a copy of the article on Gilbert Hill along with picture. Kindly acknowledge.
A petition is hosted on the web ("Kindly ask the Indian president to save Mumbai’s 65 million year old Gilbert Hill”) at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/savehill
Kindly find Links of the media articles attached with this note. The article was published in The Times of India on Gilbert Hill on 13 September, 2010.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDEwLzA5LzEzI0FyMDA2MDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDEwLzA5LzEzI0FyMDA2MDI=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom
We need to get more voices to impress upon her the urgency of this issue. We will run the petition till Oct 10, 2010 and thereafter will submit the hard copy to the President.
Best Regards,
Shail Rane (Creative Director and Activist)
shailr78@yahoo.com
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
In Kenya, Farmers Grow Their Own Way
Thousands of grassroots, African-led efforts are building locally rooted alternatives to the chemical agriculture promoted by the Gates Foundation and Monsanto.
We had just been visiting farmers cultivating land in the lush, steep hills north of the town of Thika in central Kenya. Samuel Nderitu, our guide and host, had one more project he wanted us to see: the Tumaini Women’s Group. They were meeting to found their community's first seed bank.
We were now in an area that has suffered from six years of drought and has a high concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS, both compounding the area’s struggles with hunger.
Samuel left the highway and drove down a flat, dusty road. In the distance we could see a cluster of trees. As we got closer we could hear music, and then more than twenty elderly, colorfully dressed women emerged from the shade, singing and dancing to a song they had composed just for our visit. They led us to a tree where they asked us to sit while they told us their story.
Like most of the farmers in this area, the Tumaini women explained, they had followed the advice of outsiders (mostly large-scale foreign NGOs) who told them that yields would increase if they purchased special seeds rather than saving their own and applied chemicals to their crops. But the women soon learned the long-term consequences of these methods. When the rains stopped, crops didn't produce well and debts mounted. Stripped from years of chemical use, the soil couldn’t retain what little moisture was left, nor was there enough water to dissolve the chemicals. Yields declined and farmers could no longer afford the inputs—chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds, pesticides—that they believed were necessary to cultivate their land. Farmers became poorer and hungrier.
Now, with the help of Samuel and his wife, Peris, the women of the Tumaini group are rejecting the methods they had been taught and learning both new and traditional ways of farming—replacing methods that depend on chemicals or expensive seeds with practices rooted in ecological management and local knowledge. In doing so, they are also rejecting the latest scheme by the Global North to cure Africa of hunger and poverty, the so-called “New Green Revolution in Africa."
Read more: In Kenya, Farmers Grow Their Own Way
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
We had just been visiting farmers cultivating land in the lush, steep hills north of the town of Thika in central Kenya. Samuel Nderitu, our guide and host, had one more project he wanted us to see: the Tumaini Women’s Group. They were meeting to found their community's first seed bank.
We were now in an area that has suffered from six years of drought and has a high concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS, both compounding the area’s struggles with hunger.
Samuel left the highway and drove down a flat, dusty road. In the distance we could see a cluster of trees. As we got closer we could hear music, and then more than twenty elderly, colorfully dressed women emerged from the shade, singing and dancing to a song they had composed just for our visit. They led us to a tree where they asked us to sit while they told us their story.
Like most of the farmers in this area, the Tumaini women explained, they had followed the advice of outsiders (mostly large-scale foreign NGOs) who told them that yields would increase if they purchased special seeds rather than saving their own and applied chemicals to their crops. But the women soon learned the long-term consequences of these methods. When the rains stopped, crops didn't produce well and debts mounted. Stripped from years of chemical use, the soil couldn’t retain what little moisture was left, nor was there enough water to dissolve the chemicals. Yields declined and farmers could no longer afford the inputs—chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds, pesticides—that they believed were necessary to cultivate their land. Farmers became poorer and hungrier.
Now, with the help of Samuel and his wife, Peris, the women of the Tumaini group are rejecting the methods they had been taught and learning both new and traditional ways of farming—replacing methods that depend on chemicals or expensive seeds with practices rooted in ecological management and local knowledge. In doing so, they are also rejecting the latest scheme by the Global North to cure Africa of hunger and poverty, the so-called “New Green Revolution in Africa."
Read more: In Kenya, Farmers Grow Their Own Way
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Derek Sivers: How to start a movement | Video on TED.com
Derek Sivers: How to start a movement | Video on TED.com
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Experts differ on Torture Bill
A bill belatedly brought in Parliament to root out torture of persons in police custody has drawn stern opposition from law and human rights experts for the serious lapses in its draft, including lack of proper definition of torture and firm provisions to fix accountability on officers ''in command.''
The Prevention of Torture Bill, now with a select committee of Parliament for whetting, zipped past the Lok Sabha with hardly any discussion on it but hit a roadblock in the Rajya Sabha after the BJP and Left parties took stands against it. The BJP maintains the Bill will “handcuff” police officers against criminals and terrorists.
Most of the opposition from experts against the Bill hovered around the definition of torture in it. “The bill describes torture only as suffering grievous injuries,” said senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhusan. Electric shocks and water drowning might not inflict “grievous injuries” but they were still acts of torture, Bhusan pointed out.
The bill merely follows the definition of “torture” in Indian law where the act is described as “grievous injury.” This despite Indian police stations recording roughly over 1,000 custodial deaths annually.
To ratify the UN Convention against Torture of 1975, of which India was a signatory, the bill would have to do a serious relook into its definition of torture, Maja Daruwala, director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said. According to her, the definition of torture in the bill does not conform to international standards.
“It makes it difficult to bring people who use torture to book. The purpose of the bill must not be just to show on paper that India has made a law against torture, but actually to have an effective deterrent against what is a common practice,” she said.
Another loophole is the lack of provision for compensation in the bill for torture victims. The maximum punishment for the police officials responsible for torture was only 10 years. “Breaking of law by a man in uniform should invite more punishment,” Daruwala said.
She also questioned “the time-limit” of six months for filing a complaint against torture. The “bill thus protects the police, as permission of the Central and state governments is needed to punish the police officer who may have a prima facie case of torture against him,” Bhushan said.
Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/96042/experts-differ-torture-bill.html
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
The Prevention of Torture Bill, now with a select committee of Parliament for whetting, zipped past the Lok Sabha with hardly any discussion on it but hit a roadblock in the Rajya Sabha after the BJP and Left parties took stands against it. The BJP maintains the Bill will “handcuff” police officers against criminals and terrorists.
Most of the opposition from experts against the Bill hovered around the definition of torture in it. “The bill describes torture only as suffering grievous injuries,” said senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhusan. Electric shocks and water drowning might not inflict “grievous injuries” but they were still acts of torture, Bhusan pointed out.
The bill merely follows the definition of “torture” in Indian law where the act is described as “grievous injury.” This despite Indian police stations recording roughly over 1,000 custodial deaths annually.
To ratify the UN Convention against Torture of 1975, of which India was a signatory, the bill would have to do a serious relook into its definition of torture, Maja Daruwala, director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said. According to her, the definition of torture in the bill does not conform to international standards.
“It makes it difficult to bring people who use torture to book. The purpose of the bill must not be just to show on paper that India has made a law against torture, but actually to have an effective deterrent against what is a common practice,” she said.
Another loophole is the lack of provision for compensation in the bill for torture victims. The maximum punishment for the police officials responsible for torture was only 10 years. “Breaking of law by a man in uniform should invite more punishment,” Daruwala said.
She also questioned “the time-limit” of six months for filing a complaint against torture. The “bill thus protects the police, as permission of the Central and state governments is needed to punish the police officer who may have a prima facie case of torture against him,” Bhushan said.
Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/96042/experts-differ-torture-bill.html
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Govt gives free phones to poor instead of grain
People in Phagi village in Rajasthan haven’t been lucky to get free foodgrain from the government. But these below the poverty line (BPL) card holders have been magnanimously issued BSNL mobile connections with a free connection as part of a corporate social responsibility initiative.
One among the 1,000-odd beneficiaries is Gyarasi Devi who has no idea what to do with the gift. “We could have done with some grain, or a job. What will we do with these mobiles,” she asked. Other recipients say it is more of a headache than a gift. “Mobiles will actually add to our expenses. The foodgrain in the godowns is rotting. Why can’t the government distribute foodgrain,” Govind said.
Although Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Sachin Pilot skipped the function, he defended the decision to supply mobile phones instead of foodgrain. “It is a good start made by the BSNL to make people below the poverty line feel like they too can be part of the telecom revolution. My best wishes are with them,” the minister said.
Also conspicuous by his absence was Rajasthan Civil Supplies Minister Babulal Nagar. Babulal was recently embroiled in a controversy after television news showed how Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns were being used to stack liquor while foodgrain rotted outside.
The FCI has played a catalytic role in the distribution of grain at subsidised rates to India’s poor, partly ensuring smooth supply of grain in the open market by drawing on its stocks during high inflation, shortages and price volatility. It has also played a role in preventing grain prices from falling below the government-set minimum support price by buying grain from farmers, subject to quality specifications.
Earlier in the week, the food ministry told the Supreme Court that its suggestion on limiting food procurement to available storage facilities, if put into action, would hit the poor farmer and “drastically impact the food security of the nation”.
In a 19-page affidavit, C Vishwanath, joint secretary in the ministry, said: “If the Food Corporation of India and state government agencies that do the work of procurement were to limit procurement only to the extent of their storage capacities, it would mean that in years of peak procurement, when markets are not very favourable, many farmers may not be able to sell their produce… and… would be left… at the mercy of traders who may not pay adequate prices.”
The government said this would force it to go back on its assurance to farmers that “whatever quantity of foodgrain they wished to sell to the government at minimum support prices would be purchased by the FCI and state agencies,” provided quality specifications were met.
“Absence of adequate returns or an assured guarantee from the government procurement agencies for purchase of foodgrain would dis-incentivise farmers from sowing these crops in future.” The affidavit went on to explain how the court’s suggestion would cause a “substantial shift to other non-food crops” in agriculture. “This would then drastically impact the food security of the nation,” the government said.
It would be best to augment “production and procurement” rather than limit food purchase to storage space, the government added.
Procurement went up from 36.2 million tonnes in 2006-07 to 53.77 million tonnes as on September 4, 2010, the affidavit stated.
Meanwhile, the government is thinking about splitting the 46-year-old FCI into three entities to divide the responsibilities of procurement, storage and distribution, said a senior government official.
The Union government invited wide criticism when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the Supreme Court’s suggestion to distribute rotting foodgrain to the poor.
The apex court had observed: “It is time we develop a culture of zero-tolerance towards corruption to ensure two square meals for the hungry and the poor. What will be the choice of the government -- allow foodgrain to rot, or give it free to the poor and hungry. The choice is obvious.”
Source:
InfoChange India News & Features development news India - Govt gives free phones to poor instead of grain
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
One among the 1,000-odd beneficiaries is Gyarasi Devi who has no idea what to do with the gift. “We could have done with some grain, or a job. What will we do with these mobiles,” she asked. Other recipients say it is more of a headache than a gift. “Mobiles will actually add to our expenses. The foodgrain in the godowns is rotting. Why can’t the government distribute foodgrain,” Govind said.
Although Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology Sachin Pilot skipped the function, he defended the decision to supply mobile phones instead of foodgrain. “It is a good start made by the BSNL to make people below the poverty line feel like they too can be part of the telecom revolution. My best wishes are with them,” the minister said.
Also conspicuous by his absence was Rajasthan Civil Supplies Minister Babulal Nagar. Babulal was recently embroiled in a controversy after television news showed how Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns were being used to stack liquor while foodgrain rotted outside.
The FCI has played a catalytic role in the distribution of grain at subsidised rates to India’s poor, partly ensuring smooth supply of grain in the open market by drawing on its stocks during high inflation, shortages and price volatility. It has also played a role in preventing grain prices from falling below the government-set minimum support price by buying grain from farmers, subject to quality specifications.
Earlier in the week, the food ministry told the Supreme Court that its suggestion on limiting food procurement to available storage facilities, if put into action, would hit the poor farmer and “drastically impact the food security of the nation”.
In a 19-page affidavit, C Vishwanath, joint secretary in the ministry, said: “If the Food Corporation of India and state government agencies that do the work of procurement were to limit procurement only to the extent of their storage capacities, it would mean that in years of peak procurement, when markets are not very favourable, many farmers may not be able to sell their produce… and… would be left… at the mercy of traders who may not pay adequate prices.”
The government said this would force it to go back on its assurance to farmers that “whatever quantity of foodgrain they wished to sell to the government at minimum support prices would be purchased by the FCI and state agencies,” provided quality specifications were met.
“Absence of adequate returns or an assured guarantee from the government procurement agencies for purchase of foodgrain would dis-incentivise farmers from sowing these crops in future.” The affidavit went on to explain how the court’s suggestion would cause a “substantial shift to other non-food crops” in agriculture. “This would then drastically impact the food security of the nation,” the government said.
It would be best to augment “production and procurement” rather than limit food purchase to storage space, the government added.
Procurement went up from 36.2 million tonnes in 2006-07 to 53.77 million tonnes as on September 4, 2010, the affidavit stated.
Meanwhile, the government is thinking about splitting the 46-year-old FCI into three entities to divide the responsibilities of procurement, storage and distribution, said a senior government official.
The Union government invited wide criticism when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the Supreme Court’s suggestion to distribute rotting foodgrain to the poor.
The apex court had observed: “It is time we develop a culture of zero-tolerance towards corruption to ensure two square meals for the hungry and the poor. What will be the choice of the government -- allow foodgrain to rot, or give it free to the poor and hungry. The choice is obvious.”
Source:
InfoChange India News & Features development news India - Govt gives free phones to poor instead of grain
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Niyamgiri To Bellary, Polavaram To Konkan: Stop All Destructive Projects Now
The cancellation of the Vedanta group’s ‘mining rights’ in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha’s Kalahandi district surely marks a huge victory for the growing people’s movement against corporate invasion and plunder. The brave resistance of the local people, belonging predominantly to the Dongria Kondh and Kutia Kondh tribes, had begun to find wide-ranging support beyond the borders of Odisha and India. In July, the Annual General Meeting of the UK-based Vedanta group in London attracted angry protests by a broad spectrum of activists, and on August 16, the NC Saxena committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests submitted a hard-hitting report documenting the numerous illegal activities of the Vedanta group in collusion with high-level Odisha officials.
The opposition to the Vedanta group’s mining offensive in Odisha has been growing for several years now. And till recently, the central government too had been siding with the state government to rubbish and crush the popular protests and defend and promote the project in every possible way. The UPA-I had granted environmental clearance for the project rejecting the opposition of the tribal people of Niyamgiri and flouting every tenet of the PESA Act. And when the tribal people went to the Supreme Court to challenge the environmental clearance, the apex court went out of its way to ask the government to grant forest clearance as well! And the UPA government followed suit. So what the UPA-2 is doing is nothing but selectively retracing a step or two taken by the UPA-1 without admitting its past mistakes!
The Vedanta mining saga clearly raises some fundamental questions. The group’s claim of ‘mining happiness’ for the people of Odisha has been squarely exposed – but the ministers and officials working hand in gloves with this mining giant are yet to be adequately exposed and punished. We all know that P Chidambaram was on the board of directors of Vedanta Resources till the day before he became the Finance Minister in UPA-1 and we are also aware of the group’s bonhomie with the state government of Odisha led formerly by the BJP-BJD combine and now by the BJD on its own. A similar story is going on in Karnataka with the BJP pulling out all stops to defend the mining loot of the infamous Reddy brothers. Clearly, the people’s movement will have to confront and defeat this nexus between corporate robbers and bourgeois rulers.
This nexus is armed with a policy regime that promotes corporate loot at the cost of every legitimate concern and right of the people – be it over land or livelihood,
environment or culture. Even as one Niyamgiri has seemingly been saved, there are hundreds of Niyamgiris all over the country where state-sponsored destruction campaign is going on in full swing. The ongoing Polavaram dam project in Andhra Pradesh and the proposed nuclear power plant in the environmentally delicate Konkan region of Maharashtra are just two glaring examples from two Congress-ruled states. The same Ministry of Environment and Forests which is now being described as a ‘Green Crusader’ has actually been functioning as nothing but a ‘Green Destroyer’. The time has come to press for a complete halt to this indiscriminate state-sponsored destruction.
The people’s movement will also have to challenge the doublespeak of the Congress. On August 26, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri and projected himself as a soldier of the tribal people in the corridors of power! He was garlanded by Lado Sikaka, a tribal activist of Niyamgiri who had only the other day been badly harassed and tortured by the state as a ‘Maoist’. One hand of the Congress is busy coercing and displacing the adivasis while the other hand garners the sympathy of the people and pretends to be their soldier and saviour. The politics of the Congress revolves around this calculated combination of ‘Operation Green Hunt’ and ‘Operation Greenspeak’ and we must unmask this hypocrisy of Rahul Gandhi’s professed concern for the deprived tribal people.
Veteran journalist and Congress-watcher MJ Akbar sees Rahul Gandhi’s pro-farmer pro-tribal discourse as a sign of a clever Congress attempt to appropriate the left-of-centre agenda. “It is axiomatic that a largely impoverished nation needs a political party that the poor can identify with. The Congress has set out to be the party of the poor in daytime, and of the rich at night. ... This is an extremely clever act whose opening scenes are being played out for a new generation that is vague about Indira Gandhi and amnesiac about Nehru”, writes MJ Akbar in his recent Sunday column in the Times of India (29 August 2010). Well, when the rhetoric of Nehru and Indira could not stop the radical Left even during the heydays of ‘non-alignment’ and ‘mixed economy’, can the ‘clever lines’ of Rahul Gandhi befool a people who are bearing the brunt of the pro-corporate pro-imperialist policies of the Congress?
By Dipankar Bhattacharya
(The author is General Secretary, CPI(ML) Liberation, and the write up appeared as editorial in ML Update, Vol. 13, # 36, 31 August – 6 September)
Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/dipankar310810.htm
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
The opposition to the Vedanta group’s mining offensive in Odisha has been growing for several years now. And till recently, the central government too had been siding with the state government to rubbish and crush the popular protests and defend and promote the project in every possible way. The UPA-I had granted environmental clearance for the project rejecting the opposition of the tribal people of Niyamgiri and flouting every tenet of the PESA Act. And when the tribal people went to the Supreme Court to challenge the environmental clearance, the apex court went out of its way to ask the government to grant forest clearance as well! And the UPA government followed suit. So what the UPA-2 is doing is nothing but selectively retracing a step or two taken by the UPA-1 without admitting its past mistakes!
The Vedanta mining saga clearly raises some fundamental questions. The group’s claim of ‘mining happiness’ for the people of Odisha has been squarely exposed – but the ministers and officials working hand in gloves with this mining giant are yet to be adequately exposed and punished. We all know that P Chidambaram was on the board of directors of Vedanta Resources till the day before he became the Finance Minister in UPA-1 and we are also aware of the group’s bonhomie with the state government of Odisha led formerly by the BJP-BJD combine and now by the BJD on its own. A similar story is going on in Karnataka with the BJP pulling out all stops to defend the mining loot of the infamous Reddy brothers. Clearly, the people’s movement will have to confront and defeat this nexus between corporate robbers and bourgeois rulers.
This nexus is armed with a policy regime that promotes corporate loot at the cost of every legitimate concern and right of the people – be it over land or livelihood,
environment or culture. Even as one Niyamgiri has seemingly been saved, there are hundreds of Niyamgiris all over the country where state-sponsored destruction campaign is going on in full swing. The ongoing Polavaram dam project in Andhra Pradesh and the proposed nuclear power plant in the environmentally delicate Konkan region of Maharashtra are just two glaring examples from two Congress-ruled states. The same Ministry of Environment and Forests which is now being described as a ‘Green Crusader’ has actually been functioning as nothing but a ‘Green Destroyer’. The time has come to press for a complete halt to this indiscriminate state-sponsored destruction.
The people’s movement will also have to challenge the doublespeak of the Congress. On August 26, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri and projected himself as a soldier of the tribal people in the corridors of power! He was garlanded by Lado Sikaka, a tribal activist of Niyamgiri who had only the other day been badly harassed and tortured by the state as a ‘Maoist’. One hand of the Congress is busy coercing and displacing the adivasis while the other hand garners the sympathy of the people and pretends to be their soldier and saviour. The politics of the Congress revolves around this calculated combination of ‘Operation Green Hunt’ and ‘Operation Greenspeak’ and we must unmask this hypocrisy of Rahul Gandhi’s professed concern for the deprived tribal people.
Veteran journalist and Congress-watcher MJ Akbar sees Rahul Gandhi’s pro-farmer pro-tribal discourse as a sign of a clever Congress attempt to appropriate the left-of-centre agenda. “It is axiomatic that a largely impoverished nation needs a political party that the poor can identify with. The Congress has set out to be the party of the poor in daytime, and of the rich at night. ... This is an extremely clever act whose opening scenes are being played out for a new generation that is vague about Indira Gandhi and amnesiac about Nehru”, writes MJ Akbar in his recent Sunday column in the Times of India (29 August 2010). Well, when the rhetoric of Nehru and Indira could not stop the radical Left even during the heydays of ‘non-alignment’ and ‘mixed economy’, can the ‘clever lines’ of Rahul Gandhi befool a people who are bearing the brunt of the pro-corporate pro-imperialist policies of the Congress?
By Dipankar Bhattacharya
(The author is General Secretary, CPI(ML) Liberation, and the write up appeared as editorial in ML Update, Vol. 13, # 36, 31 August – 6 September)
Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/dipankar310810.htm
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
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