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SPECIAL REPORT From B L Kak
CPI-M session THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 20: The special conference of the CPI-M to update the party programme ....more
Surjeet flays EC decision THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 20: CPI-M general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet today came down ....more |
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Tell our
countrymen: NEW DELHI, Oct 20: Fortyone years ago on October 21, 1959, ten valiant jawans of the Centre Reserve Police Force laid down their lives in an unprecedented ambush by Chinese troops in the inhospitable wilderness of Aksai area of Ladakh in the Himalayas......more 2 dissident BJP BANGALORE, Oct 20: Two dissident BJP legislators in Karnataka were today suspended by party state president Basavaraj Patil Sedam for protesting against the expulsion of senior leader B B Shivappa....more UKD demands Gairsen DEHRA DUN, Oct 20: The Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) has demanded that Gairsen in Garhwal be declared as the hill state’s permanent capital in place of Dehra Dun.....more Sonia applies Gandhian Talisman to IT economy NEW DELHI, Oct 20: Congress president Sonia Gandhi today expressed confidence that India will become an economic super power on the strength of its IT prowess but cautioned that the prosperity will be meaningless if the tear is not wiped from the face of the poorest Indian.....more Severe water JAIPUR, Oct 20: An estimated 2.7 billion people, forming a third of the world’s population, will face severe scarcity of water in the first quarter of this century...more |
SPECIAL
REPORT From B L Kak NEW DELHI, Oct 20: Even as Ms Sonia Gandhi continues to wield her authority as the supremo of the Congress, she is not without an element of fear, an element of perturbation and an element of anger. Fear, because a new crop of dissidents is gradually emerging. Perturbation, because she has not yet learnt all the tricks. Anger, because some of her own loyalists, too, have sent out wrong signals in recent days. All her loyalists are not for the continuance of the coterie surrounding her, particularly at the time of the organisational polls. It will be incorrect to say that Ms Sonia Gandhi has shed a tear or two over the conviction of the seniormost Congress leader and former Prime Minister, Mr PV Narasimha Rao, in the Jharkhand Mukthi Morcha (JMM) bribery case. Before Mr Narasimha Rao's conviction, Ms Sonia Gandhi had received reports from her sleuths alleging that while the former Prime Minister had planned certain moves against her and her associates, he was re-emerging as a rallying point for dissidents within the party. There is no doubt that Mr Rao has, in political manoeuvring, greater skills than Ms Sonia or any of her other opponents, including CWC member, Mr Jitendra Prasada. The scenario changed with the conviction of Mr Rao. This particular development seems to have shaken the confidence of the Congress dissidents. In fact, prior to this development, it was hoped and felt too that the growing dissidence in the Congress party would develop into organised opposition to the coterie surrounding Ms Sonia Gandhi. However, the Congress party's surprisingly good performance in the local bodies elections in Gujarat and Kerala gave the lady of 10 Janpath and her associates a shot in the arm in their fight within and outside the party. The poll victories helped Ms Sonia counter her detractors. And Mr Narasimha Rao's conviction virtually pre-empted the emergence of a rallying point for those opposed to the style of functioning of Ms Sonia and her associates such as Mr Arjun Singh and Mr Vincent George. Both these persons have already become highly controversial. Ms Sonia Gandhi cannot claim to have learnt all the required lessons in India's geography, history, politics and politicking. But she has fully understood the fact that her party staged a comeback in rural Gujarat in the recent civic polls. The party won 22 out of 23 district panchayats. Of the 3,848 taluk panchayats, the Congress won 2,450. Happily for the Congress high command, the BJP, which rules Gujarat, had to be content with 1,200. And if according to Ms Sonia Gandhi the Gujarat results indicated that the people still perceived the Congress as the only alternative to the BJP, the local bodies elections in Kerala also produced a result that was beyond the expectations of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). This phenomenon was followed by victories in the byelections to the Dausa Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan and the Assembly seats of Shaherkotda in Gujarat, Lakhnadon in Madhya Pradesh and Shahuwadi in Maharashtra. True, the threat from Mr PV Narasimha Rao and company is over. But a new threat has emerged for Ms Sonia Gandhi and her company. A group of dissidents has planned to field a candidate against her in the elections for the post of Congress president. The election is slated for next month. And October 28 is the last date for filing the nominations. Mr Jitendra Prasada continues to maintain studied silence. Significantly, however, he has not refuted media reports about attempts being made to field him as a candidate for the post of party president. Perhaps, he has learnt that loyalists of Ms Sonia Gandhi have launched a drive to avoid a contest in the coming elections. This notwithstanding, the loyalist camp is a bit restive. Not because their rivals will put up a tough fight in the election but because the contest, if it finally takes place, will show that Ms Sonia does not enjoy the full backing of the organisation across the country. The coming election will have tremendous political significance, considering the fact that a member of the Gandhi-Nehru family is going to be challenged. The challenge is unlikely to be serious, considering the fact that all the dissidents are not loyal to Mr Jitendra Prasada. This may eventually lead Mr Prasad to stay away from the contest. |
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CPI-M session begins, Basu for alternative at Centre THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 20: The special conference of the CPI-M to update the party programme began here today with West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu calling for efforts to shape up a third alternative to the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre. Mounting a scathing attack on policies and programmes of the Centre, Basu in his Presidential address said "what is immediately necessary is a third Left Democratic Alternative to the NDA Government at the Centre". The West Bengal leader called for concerted efforts to mobilise all sections of masses to give shape to such an alternative and hoped that the updating of the party programme would accentuate that process. Referring to demand by his political adversaries for dismissal of his Government invoking Article 356, Basu said he was certain that the "people of West Bengal will give a fitting rebuff to forces of instigation". Around 400 delegates from across the country, including politburo and central committee members, are attending the four-day session convened to incorporate necessary changes in the 1964 party programme including the question of CPI-M’s possible participation at the Centre in a like-minded set-up. Inaugurating the meet, CPI-M general secretary H K Surjeet said hat the alternative to imperialism was only socialism, there was need to have self-critical analysis of what went wrong and how to rectify erroneous practices in the light of the setback to socialism after the fall of the Soviet Union. Charging that BJP was still governed by the RSS ideology of "Hindutva", Basu said the constitutional reforms embarked on by the Government was part of the efforts to fulfil the goal of the RSS. "Today we have at the Centre a party committed to the ideology of Hindutva. But Hindu Gurus have never argued that you have to attack others to safeguard Hinduism," he said. He said though there were parties in the NDA which did not embrace the ideology of Hindutva, they were bound by the opportunistic alliance for the sake of power. Criticising the path of development pursued by the Congress and BJP Governments, Basu said though much progress had been made in industrialisation and development of science and technology in the last 50 years, vast majority of people were still kept out of the sphere of progress. "Successive Governments have failed to make a dent in the situation by following the bourgeoise, landlord policies", he said. He claimed that his party had correctly analysed when it adopted its programme 36 years ago that without agrarian revolution there could not be a democratic transition. (PTI) |
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Surjeet flays EC decision to de-recognise CPI-M THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 20: CPI-M general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet today came down heavily on the Election Commission (EC) for derecognising CPI-M as a national party and wanted it to change its rule taking into account present political realities in the country. "The recent decision of EC to derecognise the CPI-M as a national party is totally unjustified and unreasonable", Surjeet said in his inaugural address to the special party conference called to update the party programme which got underway here. "A party which has received nearly two crore votes in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections and which always got 5 to 6 per cent of the total votes polled in the country and which is the third largest party in the Lok Sabha is deemed unfit to be a national party according to the present rules of the Election Commission. "The national role of the CPI-M can not in any way be curtailed by such lopsided and deficient rules. Democratic opinion in the country has already decried the present criteria being applied by the EC," Surjeet said. (PTI) |
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Tell our countrymen: for
your tomorrow, we NEW DELHI, Oct 20: Fortyone years ago on October 21, 1959, ten valiant jawans of the Centre Reserve Police Force laid down their lives in an unprecedented ambush by Chinese troops in the inhospitable wilderness of Aksai area of Ladakh in the Himalayas. In keeping with their annual ritual, 23 jawans and officers representing various state and paramilitary forces will visit the specially built historic monument at hot springs at an altitude of over 15,000 feet tomorrow to pay floral tributes to those soldiers. Before going to this region by passing through inhospitable terrain which is up to 18,000 feet high and is devoid of any habitation or vegetation and the mercury touches minus 47 degrees celsius, the police party has to acclimatise at Leh for at least five days. The Indian police in 1959 had the duty of administering and policing the 2500 miles of normally peaceful frontier of India with Tibet. But this front became active in mid-1059 due to transgressions by Chinese troops. The group of twentyone CRPF constables on deputation to the Indo-Tibetan border police and armed with only rifles valianty resisted the ambush by an overwhelming number of Chinese troops equipped with automatic weapons and mortars till they were overpowered. Eleven men were taken prisoner by the Chinese. The bodies of the dead were handed back by the Chinese on November 13 that year. Since then, policemen at every district headquarters in the country hold commemoration parades in their memory. The memorial was built by the Government out of voluntary contributions by policemen from all over the country and completed in 1962. The words inscribed on the monument constantly haunt minds of people all over the country: ‘When you go home, tell them of us. For your tomorrow, we gave our today’. (UNI) |
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Severe water scarcity awaits third of world’s population JAIPUR, Oct 20: An estimated 2.7 billion people, forming a third of the world’s population, will face severe scarcity of water in the first quarter of this century, the Third Asian Conference of Agricultural Economists here has warned. The growing scarcity and competition for water - for agriculture, industry, domestic and other uses - will dramatically change the value and utility of this natural resource the way water resources are mobilised and managed, the three-day conference, which concluded today, felt. The Conference called for faster development of an Integrated Water Resource Management approach to meet the challenge and protect both the environment and human health. Less water will be available for agriculture and growing more food with less water is now the challenge that the world faces, said agricultural economist and senior advisor to the International Water Management Institute, Sri Lanka, Randolph Barker told PTI. In many parts of Asia like Punjab in India and the plains of North China, Barker said, overexploitation of ground water is leading to severe degradation of land and water resources. Contamination of water with nitrates due to indiscriminate utilisation of fertilizer and arsenic threatened human health too, he said. New policies and instructions will be required to allocate water among competing uses to control over-exploitation of ground water, to manage ground and surface water for conjunctive use, and to minimize impact of irrigation development on environment and human health, Barker said. However, the move to Integrated Water Resource Management and development of required new institutions may take years or even decades because there are major research issues to be tackled, he said. Barker said water scarcity problem was rapidly becoming a major constraint to food production in Asia. Participants in a plenary session on technical change and sustainable agriculture expressed concern over the painfully slow pace of land reforms in many parts of Asia including India. An advisor on rural development to the World Bank, Dr Jock R Anderson said since agriculture alone cannot serve all those involved in escaping poverty, there was an increasing need for improving and enabling environment for rural non-farm enterprises. Therefore, he said, implementation of land reforms was vital in improving income distribution and poverty alleviation. Dr.V.L.Chopra of the National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology in the Indian Agricultural Research Institute stressed the need for developing a regulatory framework for thorough testing of genetically-engineered producers. President of the Korean Rural Economic Institute Dr.Jung Ill Kang discussed technological change and policy implications for reducing farmers’ dependence on agro-chemicals for raising yields. (PTI) |
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