Fire
from left over
By
Jyotsna Pandit
At
Pune’s Kimaya restaurant, leftovers
don’t join the municipal garbage
stream. Two buckets of the leftovers from
the plates of chowmein, dosas and pau
bhaji from the eatery go into an
obnoxiously smelly, underground biogas
plant where bacteria digest them to
produce methane gas. Restaurant-owner
Mahipal Patwardhan, who lives just
behind, uses the methane to reduce his
domestic cooking gas bills. "When
you eat at my restaurant, I make money.
When you leave something in your plate, I
get green energy and save money,"
says Patwardhan.
The
concept of using leftover food for
methane generation is part of a portfolio
of new technologies and technology
promotion practices developed by two
non-government organisations in India in
their attempts to make biogas and biomass
commercially attractive. Their efforts
have now received international acclaim
– and funding.
The US
Environment Protection Agency (EPA) last
week announced grants of $230,000 for the
two non-government organisations to
promote technologies that will reduce the
health risks of indoor air pollution from
traditional stoves. The Appropriate Rural
Technology Initiative (ARTI) in Pune will
use the grant to introduce its biogas
plants that use kitchen waste to make
methane in 2,000 households across
Maharashtra. And Development Alternatives
(DA) in New Delhi will scale up biomass
cooking to over 15,000 households in 13
districts in the Bundelkhand region of
Madhy Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
Non-conventional
energy experts caution that success will
depend on how efficiently people can be
convinced to shift from traditional
practices to the biogas or biomass
technologies. Lack of easy microfinance
may also pose a problem for growth. The
technologies may demand investments of
between Rs. 1,000 and 2,000.
Dr. Anand
Karve, a botanist who now heads ARTI,
says traditional attempts at harnessing
biogas failed because bacteria were given
the wrong food. India currently has less
that 2.5 million operating biogas plants
which, Karve says, is a
"ridiculously low figure for a
country of India’s size". There
are many reasons why the previous
attempts to promote biogas technology did
not work – the large size and high
cost of the plant, user-unfriendly
operations, and low efficiency of methane
production.
Dung has a
low calorie content available for
bacteria. "The key to improving
efficiency lay in finding the right
energy-rich food for bacteria," says
Karve.
The
compact biogas plant from ARTI is quite
different from the traditional
underground plants used for decades. A
conventional plant typically has a
capacity of four cubic metres and costs
Rs. 15,000 to build. The compact biogas
plant developed by ARTI has a capacity of
500 litres, costs Rs. 3,000 and occupies
the space of a household refrigerator. In
traditional plants, a user would handle
up to 40 kg of cattle dung each day. But
ARTI’s plant needs just two kg of
biomass and it can be kitchen waste
– rotten fruits, spoilt milk, potato
peels – or other starch-rich items
such as spoilt grain or the cake of
non-edible oil seeds. One thousand kg of
dung produces 10 kg of methane in 40
days, while 1,000 kg of starch-based
waste yields 250 kg of methane within 24
hours.
The ARTI
project is focused on the use of
starch-rich domestic and agricultural
wastes, but the DA programme is aimed at
improving biomass-based cooking. The
government-funded improved cooking stove
programme launched by the department of
non-conventional energy sources during
the 1980s had little impact on cooking
practices. Non-government organisations
estimate that 80 per cent of households
in India today cook in stoves that use
either low-grade coal or raw biomass that
emit harmful gases.
Research
at DA involved tailoring a combination of
stoves and fuels as well as finding ways
to transform low-performing biomass fuels
into higher-grade fuels. A wild grass
called ipomoea, for instance, is first
burnt under controlled conditions
(charred) and then converted into
briquettes – sausage-shaped chunks
of fuel that go into the cooking stoves.
In Bundelkhand, this grass is called
because no matter how much you cut, it
just grows again. "During controlled
burning, volatile gases and tar are
removed from the biomass and the
briquettes have far lower levels of
harmful emissions," says Sharshtant
Patara, manager, technology systems, DA.
"For
a technology to be commercially viable,
all those in the technology chain should
either make money or save money,"
says Dr. Ashok Khosla, president, DA. In
the pilot phase of the programme,
supported by the Shell Foundation, DA got
local women’s communities to
participate in the collection of the wild
grass and charring. The briquettes are
made by TARA, the production and
marketing division of DA. About 1,500
house-holds in Bundelkhand today use this
technology. The goal is to get more
people to recognise the value of biomass
and set up local processing units and
earn money. INAV
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Hindu
Marxism
Dr
Bharat Jhunjhunwala
Truly,
Marxist-ruled states in India have had
dismal economic record; and the Marxist
revolution in Russia and China has
fizzled out. But then the record of the
Hindu-run princely states and countries
like Nepal is no better. In fact, Russia
and China may be one-up on the Hindus. At
least, they have successfully maintained
their independence. Their rulers did not
collaborate with the foreign invaders as
our ‘Hindu’ Kings like Jai
Singh of Jaipur did—he attacked
Shivaji at the behest of Aurangzeb.
Scindias of Gwalior preferred to save
their fortunes and did not rise to assist
Laxmi Bai of Jhansi.
The Hindu
tradition also failed to provide roti,
kapada aur makan to its masses—the
Sudras. Swami Vivekananda was appalled at
the all-pervasive poverty that was
sapping away the valour of the people of
India. Pray, why did the Hindu society
allow such poverty to arise in the first
place? It would be incorrect to lay the
blame wholly on the British economic
policies. The adivasis of Dungarpur in
Rajasthan, for example, told me that they
fled from the tyranny of the Indian kings
and sought protection from the British by
escaping to the areas directly controlled
by them. They narrate a story of a tribal
who plucked a leaf from the forest to
cover the pot of ghee he was taking as a
gift for his married daughter and save it
from rain. The king came to know of his
‘sin’ of plucking the leaves
and he was beheaded. The fact that large
scale conversions have taken place from
the poorer Hindus into Buddhism,
Christianity and Islam is an ample proof
that the Hindu society has failed to
provide nominal succor to its poor.
We speak
of Kautilya’s injunction to the king
not to impoverish his own people. But it
is easy to compare Hindu philosophy with
Marxist reality. We should compare Hindu
reality with Marxist reality and Hindu
philosophy with Marxist philosophy. Were
Kautilya’s teaching practiced? If
yes, what was the need for Lord
Parasurama to eliminate the
Kshatriya’s from the face of the
earth? We should not forget that Ravana,
Kamsa and Suyodhana (Duryodana’s
real name according to Mahabharata) were
all Hindus and oppressed the people. If
North Korean and other Marxist rulers
have had their failings, so have we.
Thus,
while rightly pointing out the flaws in
Marxist thinking we should also be
cognizant of the many flaws of the
glorious Hindu tradition. We need to
extract the best parts of both traditions
and create a new ‘Hindu
Marxism’. Indeed, at the first sight
there appears a fundamental difference
between the Hindu and Marxist approach to
common man’s welfare. But this
difference disappears on a close reading.
The Hindu approach to securing good
governance was through the Brahmin whose
character was defined by voluntary
poverty. The Manu Smriti says, "One
may have grain for three years or for one
year, or for three days, or not have
enough for the next day. Now of these
four householders Brahmin, the last in
order is to be known as the better, by
law he has most overcome the world
(4.7-8). This would be a good definition
of the Marxist revolutionary as well.
The Hindu
tradition has numerous examples of
tyrannous kings being opposed- and
forcibly replaced by the Brahmins. The
first such replacement perhaps was that
of King Vena. It was the responsibility
of the fakir-Brahmin to give the right
direction to the king. The Brahmin was
advised to guide the dharmic Kshatriya
and oppose the adharmic one. Thus
Chanakya cultivated Changradupta. The
difficulty in this tradition is that the
common man—the Sudras—have no
recourse if the Brahmin fails to
discharge his duty. They have to meekly
suffer. If the Brahmin tells them to
suffer in resignation then that is what
they must do.
The Indian
Kings purchased the Brahmins much like
the Government has purchased the
intellectuals of the country by paying
them fat salaries in tenured university
jobs. Marxism, in contrast, liberates the
common man from the bondage of the
Brahmin. The proletariat is told that it
can rise itself against a tyrannous king
and replace him with a ‘Dictatorship
of the Proletariat’. The economy of
West Bengal and Kerala may have suffered
due to rejection by the businessmen but
it is unquestionable that the living
conditions of the poor in these two
states are better than most other states.
The success of the Marxist-ruled states
in elections repeatedly should encourage
the ruled states to introspect as to why
they have not been able to gain a similar
acceptability among the masses and why
they have rarely won a reelection.
The
difficulty with Marxism arises at an was
right in condemning the tyrannous
capitalist system that prevailed in
Dickensian England where welfare of the
people was sacrificed at the high altar
of profits. He was right in exhorting the
working class to revolt against such a
system. That would be dharma yuddha like
Rama’s exhorting the people of
Kishkindha
to revolt against Rama. But Marx failed
to understand that a person’s
character is fundamentally determined by
his inner psychology. His material
conditions contribute to the invigoration
of one or other tendencies of his inner
personality. The material conditions do
not determine the consciousness of men as
Marx had thought; but they do determine
which part of his inner tendencies or
samskaras are invigorated and brought out
in manifestation. Marx erred in assuming
that the change in material conditions
will transform the psyche of the people.
The result was that once the Dictatorship
of the Proletariat was established, the
tyrannical inner tendencies of the
leaders took hold of their personalities
and they became cruel. The error lay, not
in the call to the proletariat to revolt
against tyrannous capitalism; but in not
being able to establish an alternative
system of governance that will continue
to be pro-people in its character. The
character of the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat continued to be pro-people as
long as the progenitors of the revolution
who had been seeped in the ideology of
proletarian revolution—Lenin, Mao
and Castro—were in power; but
degenerated as soon as second generation
leaders with elite-oriented samskaras
rose to power.
The
tragedy of the Indian tradition has been
that we have failed to launch this dharma
yuddha as frequently as was required.
Thus the
BJP implemented the most callous
anti-people policies under the shroud of
Hindutva.
We need to
take the concept of the fakir-Brahmin
from the Hindu tradition and the concept
of a proletarian revolution for the
Marxist tradition. There is no
contradiction between the two. The
combination of the two concepts in new
form of Hindu Marxism will provide both
good governance and succor to our people.
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Musharraf's
machiavellian plan impact on Northeast India
By Vinod Vedi
A child of
partition, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, appears
unable or unwilling to shed the Freudian
fallopian of his birth. Division, decimation and
slippery manoeuvre remain his forte and his
fixation to complete an "unfinished
business" in Kashmir lies at the root of his
suggestion to splinter the "paradise on
earth" into little bits in the hope that he
would, eventually, be able to undermine the
foundations of the nation-state in which he could
find no place.
His proposal to
divide the whole of Jammu and Kashmir into seven
zones and then seek the will of the people
appears to have been inspired by what the US and
its allies did in the former Yugoslavia. Of
course, there too nobody bothered to ask the
different ethnic and religious groups their
opinion before deciding to divide them up. The
result is there for all to see.
Musharraf's
proposal is a convolution of the already
discredited "two-nation" theory and the
intent and purpose is similar to the
Balkanisation that took place, ironically, in the
Balkans. By trying to appear democratic and
supposedly "moving away from stated
positions" (particularly on the issue of
plebiscite under UN aegis) he wants to avoid the
first requirement of a unilateral withdrawal of
Pakistani troops from the former princely State
of Jammu and Kashmir as dictated by the very UN
resolution that Pakistan has sworn by since 1948.
Pakistanis, and
more particularly the military establishment, are
aware that any withdrawal of troops as prescribed
by the UN resolution could undermine their claims
to the former princely State. So what has been
done over the years has been to create a local
standing army in the form of the Northern Light
Infantry, which owes allegiance to the Pakistan
Army and bolstered it with the induction of
jehadis to lend credence to an essentially
externally inspired "struggle for
self-determination".
This was done with
the Machiavellian intent of changing the
demographic configuration of the areas under
Pakistan army control. Most specific to this plan
was to obliterate the name and stature of the
Gilgit Scouts which, under the command of the
British officer Major Brown planted the Pakistani
flag in Gilgit and then watched helplessly as
tribals from other parts of Pakistan,
particularly the North West Frontier Province set
off orgies of rape and destruction as they set
off towards Srinagar.
But that is
history.
What Pervez
Musharraf has proposed is the very obliteration
of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, as it existed
in 1947. Based on the discredited "two
nation" theory - just as was Pakistan's
support and instigation of the Sikh
"struggle for self-determination" for
Khalistan in the 80s which fell flat on its face
because of its very obvious internal
contradictions - Musharraf's "food for
thought" to deconstruct Jammu and Kashmir
into Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sunni and Shia
entities is nothing but a poison chalice.
An Indian analyst
has described it in the following words: "It
is a chapter from a game plan for the
Balkanisation of India that was prepared by the
US Central Intelligence Agency when Jeanne
Kirkpatrick was Secretary of State under
President Ronald Reagan. If Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has, indeed, made it clear to
President Musharraf during their meeting in New
York that there is now no question of redrawing
the map in this part of the world then that
should suffice to torpedo that gambit".
It is not
surprising therefore, that US under-secretary of
State Richard Armitage should find great merit in
Musharraf's suggestion (a non-proposal, according
to Indian sources) because it fits in perfectly
with the Republican Party's policy of
interventionism around the globe. The sole aim of
this policy is to create small entities that will
forever be dependent in their foreign policy
posture on US.
It is a good
recipe for global dominance as the aftermath of
the Balkanisation of Yugoslavia shows where the
Dayton Peace Accord fashioned by Bill Clinton in
that US city ensures a continuing supervision by
the US and NATO in the internal affairs of a
fragmented polity.
The very fact that
the plan has been enunciated in relation to a
multi-ethnic and multi-religious portion of
territory in Indian control indicates that the
policy of Balkanisation is intended to be applied
to other parts of India as well and the next
target could well be the north-east of India
where foreign-inspired insurgencies are endemic
with considerable help from the Pakistan Army's
Inter-Services Intelligence which has now added a
new fundamentalist Islamic flavour through
madrassas in Bangladesh.
Portions of the
jehadi terrorist network are being shifted out of
their strongholds inside Pakistan to give
credence to the fiction that Pakistan is a
frontline State in the War on Terror. As part of
this dispersal is the shift to Bangladesh of many
of those who have secured training in Afghanistan
under the Taliban and who are currently preparing
to launch the same kind of cross border terrorism
in north-eastern India as is supposed to have
been stopped in Pakistan.
It raises the
question in Indian minds as to what the former
NDA government was trying to negotiate with
Musharraf and whether the new Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance can keep moving in the same
direction or put a brake on proceedings. During
talks with the NDA both through official channels
and the secret Track-2 diplomacy Pakistan had put
forward the contention that the Muslim majority
Kashmir Valley should be amalgamated with
Pakistan. It was quite blatantly a continuation
of the "two-nation" theory and was an
attempt to undermine the package by which
princely States would accede to either India or
Pakistan.
Described as the
"Chenab Plan" it fitted in neatly with
what a US think tank suggested could result in a
major "shifting of the Line of Control
eastwards". An excision clearly dictated by
America. It appears that as quid pro quo for
Musharraf's cooperation with the US in its War
Against Terror, India must pander to the demands
by a barely-camouflaged military dictatorship the
core competence of which is the export of
terrorism and using terror as a means of
expansion of its sphere of influence.
President
Musharraf has on several occasions hinted that if
he does not get what he wants in Jammu and
Kashmir there is unlikely to be any progress in
the "composite dialogue" encompassing
such issues as the Siachen Glacier, the Wullar
Barrage, and Sir Creek (Gujarat). At one point of
time he also belligerently and bluntly stated
that he would also unleash the jehadis whom he
has reined in by a ceasefire along the Line of
Control if his demands are not met.
Even within
Pakistan, while there is a fear in sections of
the media that Musharraf would ditch the Kashmir
cause (just as he did to the Taliban in
Afghanistan), there are others that see the
larger game plan quite clearly.
For instance The
News International, a Karachi English daily, had
this to say of what Musharraf is trying to
achieve: "By identifying the regions he has
produced a geographic reading of J&K that
shuns secular objections without ignoring any
Muslim majority part. In fact it is closer to the
Chenab formula and goes beyond the Valley. Much
negative reaction from J&K is due to
overwhelming view against any division as opposed
to New Delhi which is unlikely to accept
redrawing of borders or another partition rooted
in the un-acceptance of the Partition of the
subcontinent by most Indians, both secular and
Hindu communal.
"Those who
have made it do not understand the criticism in
Pakistan on this count. His purpose seems to be,
in case the regions at stake are to be identified
and division becomes an option, that he can lay
claim on almost 80 per cent of J&K that India
is not likely to cede as a status quo power and
Pakistan is not in a position to snatch by
force."
The UPA government
has been cautious in its reaction to Musharraf's
kite flying and prefers to deal with it within
the ambiance of the composite dialogue. However,
Musharraf continues to deal with diplomacy in the
same churlish manner as in Lahore during
Vajpayee's bus diplomacy and later in Agra where
too he used the media in a manner that tended to
scuttle whatever intrinsic potential there is in
an Indo-Pak rapprochement.
(Syndicate
Features)
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Developing
India's marine output
By N C Joshi
India's marine
sector products have assumed a place of pride in
the national economy. The country has now become
the world's second largest fish producer with a
production of 70 lakh tonnes during 2003-2004.
The total marine products export value has also
increased rapidly and reached the Rs 6,000 crore
mark last year, up from Rs 2,376 crore in the
1999-2000.
However, the
growth rate of fish production, especially in the
marine sector, has been declining. Of late, even
convention fish resources in coastal waters have
started showing signs of decline. Offshore shrimp
resources, a valuable foreign exchange earner,
are no longer in a position to yield any
substantial increase.
It is surprising
that while the technology has advanced and is now
more efficient, the catch per unit of effort, in
marine fishing is going down. Perhaps, this is
indicative of the emerging constraints on marine
resources. As such, the situation calls for a
substantial increase in fish production from the
hitherto under-exploited deep sea fishery
resources and through development of coastal and
inland fish farming products i.e. through culture
operations.
About 2.02 million
sq kms of watespread area in the Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ) of India along the 7,517 kms
of coastline presents sizeable fishery resources
potential which has not been effectively tapped
so far. Resources of tuna and allied fish around
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands alone are about
1,000 tonnes. Another 50,000 tonnes of potential
resources are available around the Lakshadweep
Island. About 9.18 million tonnes of squid and
cuttlefish are estimated to be available within
the EEZ.
The annual
harvestable marine fishery potential within
India's EEZ is estimated at 4.5 million tonnes,
while the present production is only around 2.5
million tonnes. Deep sea pelagic tuna and
skipjack can be mentioned as example of under
exploited sea fish species. More than 27,000 km
length of major rivers and about 2.7 million ha
of inland water area, in the form of reservoirs,
tanks and ponds, provide scope for inland capture
as well as inland culture fisheries. In addition,
about one million ha of coastal land along the
estuaries is available for brackish water
fish/prawn farming.
Surely, there is
tremendous scope for increasing fish production
in India in the coming years. The time is ripe
for the Government at the Centre to lay down a
new marine products policy so that all hurdles
constraints for developing India's marine
products industry are removed. The Central
Government, the State Governments, agencies line
the Marine Products Exports Development Authority
(MPEDA) and other fisheries research
organisations, entrepreneurs and commercial banks
and other financing agencies have an important
role to play in converting the potential
available in India into a commercial reality.
Some ten years ago
the Government stopped granting licences for deep
fishing as there was staunch opposition from
traditional fishermen who went on a countrywide
strike in November 1994. The deep sea fishing
industry says the real threat to traditional
fishermen comes from motorised boats. The
mechanised trawler operators, who have been
behind the agitation in the name of small
fisherman, are allowed to fish in territorial
waters extending upto 12 nautical miles from the
coast, while deep-sea fishing vessels cannot
operate upto 15 nautical miles. There is,
therefore, a need for creating a corridor between
the traditional and mechanised sectors as well so
that small fishermen are not threatened. While
there is no bar on the motorised as well as
traditional fishermen to venture far into the EEZ
extending to 20 nautical miles into the sea, they
are not equipped to handle and process the catch
found in the deep sea.
Though Indian
marine products are exported to over 70
countries, the major importers ar the traditional
buyers-Japan, UK, France, Italy, Spain and
Germany. These countries together account for 62
per cent of the trade volume wise and 85 per cent
by value. However, there has been a shift in the
market in recent years. While Japan's share has
dipped over the years, Western Europe has come to
stay as the major market for Indian exports.
Composition wise break-up shows that shrimps
continue to be the major item exported. Of the 30
odd items of marine products exported from the
country, lobster, cuttle fish, squid, frozen fish
and dried items like dried fish, shark fins and
fishmaws, form the other major items.
The fishery
resources of India are indeed a high bonaza to
set up a giant aquaculture industry in the
country. By virtue of strategic location in the
Indian Ocean, India is under the influence of two
monsoons which bring rain and replenish fresh
water and brackish water bodies of several
million hectares for aquaculture. A few million
hectares of coastal marshy lands, coastal lagoons
and shallow inshore waters are our unique
national assets for aqua farming. Temperate to
tropical climate available in the country allows
the culture of diversified species. As such, if
the country takes up appropriate steps to augment
aquaculture production of exports, it should be
able to ear more than a billion dollars in
foreign exchange by the end of 2005 AD.
The P Murari
Committee reviewed deep-sea fishing policy and
submitted its report to the Government on
February 8, 1996 recommending setting up of a
Fishery Authority of India to handle issues
relating to marine fishery development. It may be
pointed out that under Article 62 of the UN law
of the Sea to which India is a signatory, if any
country is unable to utilise the resources in an
optimum manner, other countries have the right to
stake a claim and utilise these resources and
with the limits put on deep-sea fishing, other
countries would naturally be encouraged to
harness. India's poor production of fish to the
tune of Rs 1,800 crore in value is much less as
compared to the global turnover of over 45,000
million dollars.
Low production in
India is attributed to complexities of political
and administrative system, lack of people's
awareness, low investment, delay in
implementation of policies and projects and lack
of coordination of various agencies concerned.
India has around 14 lakh hectares which can be
used for inland farming in brackish water areas,
and only 65,000 hectares i.e just 5 per cent, has
been brought under shrimp farming, mostly under
traditional methods. The new policy should
increase production through an integrated
approach to marine and inland fisheries along
with aquaculture, both fresh water and brackish
water.
No doubt, several
schemes to promote shrimp farming in the private
sector have been going on with the cooperation of
MPEDA which guides the entrepreneurs in selection
of farming spots, feasibility studies, pond
preparation, management and harvesting. The MPEDA
has been organising regular training programmes
for entrepreneurs who are also given subsidy for
new farms.
With all the
drawbacks and limitations prevailing, it is also
true that Indian fishing industry is on the
threshold of a revolution with the introduction
of modern electronic gadgets such as electronic
fish finders, global positioning system and
wireless communication equipment to help the
traditional fishermen in improving the catch.
Somehow, today
very few traditional fishermen venture into the
deep sea and are unable to reap the benefit of
tuna, sharks and bell fish which are very popular
abroad. Traditional crafts, numbering around
20,000 do not fish beyond 50 fathoms deep
although with India's exclusive economic zone of
20 nautical miles, there is enough fish for
everyone.
This situation
leaves over 50 per cent of the marine resources
intact. At present, therefore, only 1.9 per cent
of the total catch of fish in the country is
accounted for by deep sea fishing vessels
operating under foreign collaboration and joint
venture agreements. Only Indian companies with
foreign equity participation have been allowed to
operate such vehicles in Inda's EEZ but the
number of these vessels has also gone down
sharply.
With a capacity of
providing employment to 15 million persons and
earning about Rs 8,000 crore worth of foreign
exchange a year through export, it is imperative
that we must aim at heralding a blue Revolution
in the near future. The deep sea potential within
India's EEZ is estimated to be around 1.7 metric
tonnes a year.
Since neither
traditional fishermen nor even the mechanised
trawlers operate in the deep sea, normally it
should not have hurt them if someone else taps
the unused potential. The country's inability to
properly exploit its deep-sea resources has,
therefore, contributed to an increase in the
incidence of poaching in India's territorial
waters. The fact that trawlers from other
countries find it commercially viable and come
long distances to poach in Indian waters, should
be an eye-opener for the Government to do some
serious thinking in the interest of optimising
the marine output. Let the country's marine
industry become a significant sector for
acclerating the pace of our economic growth and
development in the country. PTI Featurer
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