Jagjivan-heralded
Green Revolution need of the hour: PM
NEW DELHI, Feb 7: Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh today said the Green
Revolution heralded by late Babu Jagjivan
Ram as Agriculture Minister in the late
1960s was needed to be replicated now in
the wake of increasing threat to the
country’s food security due to
stagnating foodgrains production.
Showering
rich tributes on Babuji whose birth
centenary is being celebrated as
"Agriculture Revolutions, Inclusive
Growth and Synergy of Public Policies and
Scientific Research", Dr Singh said
during his tenure as Agriculture
Minister, the country achieved
self-sufficiency in foodgrains production
ending the ‘hand-to-mouth’
existence of the Indians.
Indian
agriculture is facing the same crisis
what it was confronting when Babuji took
over the reigns of the Agriculture
Ministry. "But Babuji provided a
visionary leadership in making a
difference to our agriculture sector...
We once agian need such vision and such
leadership if our agriculture is to meet
the requirements of the coming
decades," said the Prime Minister,
while inaugurating a seminar on ‘how
to rivatalise the agriculture’ at
Vigyan Bhawan.
"The
agriculture is highly indebted to Babuji
for his immense contribution which needs
renewed attention today," Dr Singh
said. " Babuji, who came from an
extrtmely deprived background and highly
caste conscious region, had rendered
service to those at the margins of the
society - small and marginal farmers and
landless labourer," he added.
Babuji
became Agriculture Minister twice in 1967
and 1974.
Remembering
his contributions, Dr M S Swaminathan,
who had worked in various capacities when
Babuji was the Agriculture Minister, said
the late leader had a great insight into
agriculture and irrigation-related
problems. He paid special attention to
thedevelopment of hybrid seeds of wheat
and rice and extension of irrigation
command areas by undertaking minor
irrigation projects as well as the
watershed programme at a bigger scale.
Dr
Swaminathan said now the country needed
to take up a holistic view of the farming
sector to make agriculture sustainable
through the adoption of organic
agriculture, and integrated farm
management techniques. In the process,
the small and marginal farmers should be
fully activised and involved to have an
inclusive development in the rural areas,
constituting around 70 per cent of the
country’s population. There should
be a synergy between scientific research,
extension serivces, now availed only by
8.4 per cent farmers, he added.
ICAR
Director General Mangla Rai and NDDB
chairperson Amita Patel also participated
in the seminar.
(UNI)
Alert
sounded
PANAJI, Feb 7: An alert has been
sounded in Goa and police have
intensified checking to track possible
terror plots in the tourist hot spot,
Chief Minister Digamber Kamat said today.
The move
follows the arrest of a suspected
militant in Karnataka who had allegedly
confessed about his plans to strike in
Karnataka and Goa. The militant had
reportedly said that he could not
translate his terror plans into action as
he failed to receive a consignment of 50
kgs of RDX explosive from Pakistan.
"We
have sounded an alert all over the state
and security has been strengthened,"
the Chief Minister said.
He said
that the police department is carrying
out checks to trace the possible terror
links.
Kamat said
that he has held a meeting with the top
police brass along with Home Minister
Ravi Naik and added that "at no cost
the security of the people would be
compromised".
"According
to our information, militants had visited
Goa thrice just to survey the coastal
areas and crowded places," Naik
said.
The State
Government has sought complete details of
the case and further comments could be
made only after obtaining them, Naik
said.
However,
highly placed police sources said that
the militants had the famous North
Goa’s Calangute-Baga beach belt in
their hit list. The sources also said
that a famous discotheque in the sea belt
was a target. (PTI)
For some
Sri Lankan women, military
is the saviour: Book
NEW DELHI, Feb 7: Wives and mothers
in militancy-infested Sri Lanka have come
to accept the military as the sole avenue
of employment for their husbands and
children, however anguished they are
about losing them in the war, a new book
says.
"Given
the absence of non-military public sector
expansion and lack of employment
opportunities even for the urban youth,
agrarian devastation, closure of garment
factories and breakdown of rural
economies, wives and mothers have come to
accept the military as the sole avenue of
employment for their husbands and
children," writes Neloufer de Mel in
"Militarizing Sri Lanka: Popular
Culture, Memory and Narrative in the
Armed Conflict".
According
to de Mel, women also have to constantly
negotiate with paramilitary and
para-legal entities in going about their
daily business and are vulnerable to
gendered abuse as these groups stand
accountable neither to the Government nor
the law.
"Militarizing
Sri Lanka" is about the work of
militarism and militarisation in relation
to the Sri Lankan armed conflict, and
covers a period spanning the late 1980s
to 2005.
The writer
says women have also taken advantage of
the military economy in various ways.
"During
the war, a thriving sex industry operated
in the north-central city of
Anuradhapura, the site of a major transit
camp for Sri Lankan Army soldiers either
going to or returning from the
battlefields of the north," de Mel,
an English professor at University of
Colombo, says.
From about
10 sex workers in the city in 1986, the
figure shot up to 1,000 by 1996, she
claims.
However,
the increase in such work opportunities
for women was accompanied by high levels
of sexual and gender-based violence
against them trafficking of women and an
estimated 800 reported teen pregnancies
annually, which was attributed to the
proliferation of military camps and
increasingly visible militarisation in
the area.
De Mel
says that the militaries, whether
belonging to the Sri Lankan state or the
LTTE, play a key role in the system of
patronage that distributes welfare and
privileges, making women in subordinate
positions keen not to alienate them.
"Their
powerful local presence as a source of
employment, security and administrative
responsibility on the one hand, and the
source of insecurity, extortion and
gendered violence on the other, mark them
as having an ambiguous but forceful
impact on Sri Lankan women’s
lives," she writes.
While the
ethnographic, feminist and figurative
work on the armed conflict have paid heed
to militarism and militarisation because
of their cognizance of the work of
ideology and culture, this book seeks to
contribute to an impressive corpus of
scholarship on the war and its context by
offering a full-length study of the
pivotal role and processuality of
militarisation in the conflict, its
structures and widespread presence in
institutional apparatuses that shape
factors both on and off the battlefield.
"The
female suicide bomber is not an
autonomous subject before power, but one
constituted by and through it. In the
complexity she inhabits, the female
suicide bomber points to paradoxes
inherent in censorship itself," the
book, brought out by Sage Publications
says.
"Her
subjectivity unavailable to the public
before her death, she becomes the object
of literary and visual portrayal, public
speculation and fascination."
Creative
writers and filmmakers have not only
attempted to "give" the figure
of the female suicide bombers a
"prior" voice, but also contour
the war itself in alternative ways that
go against the grain of official
narratives.
The
authors says the martial model has become
central to both individual and collective
survival and development, while the
violence it legitimises becomes part of
routine social relations.
"It
has been noted that in LTTE-controlled
areas, everyone from about 14 years above
in age is compelled to undergo training
in military drill, use of arms and mock
battles, and undertake military tasks
such as digging bunkers and manning
sentry posts.
Sri Lanka
Government rations, welfare benefits and
travel are permitted only to those who
have undergone this training."
De Mel
says that whether seen as victims,
survivors or aggressors in war, the lives
of Sri Lankan women have in one way or
the other been integrated into the
structures of militarisation that support
war. (PTI)
People in
North India take pride in violating law:
Lt Governor
NEW DELHI, Feb 7: As Raj
Thackeray’s anti-North Indian
statements have snowballed into a major
controversy, Delhi Lt Governor Tejendra
Khanna today raised eyebrows when he said
the people of north and west India take
pride in violating law.
"In
this region, the situation is such that
commonly it is a matter of pride to
violate the law. The behaviour pattern in
South India is such that the people
naturally stay within the limits of the
law," he said addressing a function
to launch Delhi Police’s Traffic
Patrol Scheme.
He
remarked that there is much better
compliance of law in South India and that
too without any external pressure.
"It
is a speciality of North and West India
that the people feel a sense of honour
and pride in violating law and boasting
that no action has been taken against
them," Khanna said.
He added
that as Lt Governor of the capital, he
has decided that efforts will be made to
ensure that the citizens of Delhi treat
law with respect and have a sense of fear
towards overstepping the limits of law.
"Fear
does not mean that there will be any
high-handedness. But if the people
overstep the limits, then the law
enforcement agencies should not remain
mute spectators and will have to take
effective action," Khanna said.
"In
taking such action, as Lt Governor, I
will be completely with you," he
said. (PTI)
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