The Vedanta Affair

Dotted with dense but gaunt sal trees, mango trees, numerous medicinal plants and colourful orchids, atrek up the verdant Niyamgiri hills is like being in virtual communion with Gods. The narrow dirt trackthat leads up the mountain covered by a green canopy is as much littered with mangoes, jackfruits, dates and several forest fruits as cool springs that crisscross their way through the rocky pathway. As you walk through, don't be surprised if you occasionally hear the roar of tigers and leopards and see a few sambars sprinting around. Home to a numberof vulnerable wildlife species including sloth bear, pangolin, palm civet, giant squirrel, golden gecko, the last population of Travancore wolf snake, bamboo pit viper and langur it is also on the path of migration corridor of elephants.

But the communion with Gods run the risk of being short-lived if the Supreme Court allows Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta Alumina to continue with its 1 million tonne greenfield alumina refinery in the adjacent Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district being built at a cost of about (Rs 3,657 crore. The refinery’s construction has already begun, but the scrapdealer-turned-metal billionaire confronts the prospect of Supreme Court nixing the project. Read my take on the Vedanta project in Telegraph's Insight page...

Lure of UN funds drives NGO to 'rescue' kids

How NGOs serve up plain lie and a weave a web of deceit to further their own cause. None too different from thousand of those paper-tiger NGOs in Orissa and elsewhere who don't mind doing that photo-ops with the helpless victims so that some fatcat international funding agency would loosen their purse strings. The media should also be put in the dock for cosying up to these charltan bodies, who are out and out unscruplous and cheats.

Lure of UN funds drives NGO to 'rescue' kids

Sidharth Mishra / Rajesh Kumar / New Delhi

PIONEER INVESTIGATION------- This could well be described as the fate of children rescued from a cage and incarcerated in a pigeonhole.

The 477 children who were rescued during raids conducted on Monday last amid much publicity by foreign-funded NGO Pratham are now faced with an even more uncertain future. No one knows what to do with them. As a matter of fact, investigations by The Pioneer revealed that rather than concern for the rehabilitation of the children, utilisation of funds under a UN-funded scheme prompted the raids.

Since their rescue, the children have been parked at a Raen Basera, a night shelter for beggars at August Kranti Bhawan at Bhikaji Cama Place. From the close confines of the zari-embroidery factories of Shahadra and Ghonda in trans-Yamuna, the 477 children have been packed into three rooms, each measuring not more than 30'x 20'.

Neither the Government, nor the NGO, which carried-out the operation has an answer about their future. Joint Labour Commissioner Piyush Sharma, when confronted, said, "They would be rehabilitated under education for all programme of the Central Government and the district magistrates of their home districts would be made responsible." This would mean sending the children back to the same homes they had fled to escape hunger and disease.

When asked about the next step on the children's future, an NGO functionary said, "We are in contact with the Child Welfare Committee of Bihar Government for their rehabilitation."

When he was told that most government committees in Bihar were in a dilapidated state, Junaid Khan, a coordinator with the NGO, said they have a report of their (Bihar Government's) good governance. Asked for a copy of the report, he evaded an answer, saying they had left it behind at their head office in Mumbai. However, he did not forget to add that a probing media unnecessarily created doubts about their 'noble efforts'.

Investigations by The Pioneer revealed that the raids were carried out to facilitate utilisation of funds received by the Labour Department from the International Labour Organisation, a UN body, for carrying out programmes to eradicate child labour. Sources in the Delhi Government said that such raids are planned with a lot of media hype and positive media reports are submitted to ILO to embellish the application for the release of more funds. In the case of the Shahadra raids too, a pre-event briefing was organised where mediapersons were invited to join the operations. Extensive Press notes followed the raids.

The NGO by its own admission has so far already raised a bill of over Rs two lakh for getting the children released and providing them two meals for two days. It is another matter that the children are being served watery-daal, and leathery chapattis. The kids have also been denied all access to the public, including media persons.

'Incidentally, there is no provision for rehabilitation of children rescued under the Child Labour Act. The NGO's and the Delhi Government's claim that they would help rehabilitate children is hogwash,' said a Delhi Government official stating that the Labour Department has coordinated (a politically correct usage for contract) with the NGO only to the extent of rescuing and deporting these children from Delhi.

Interestingly, the Labour Department has not registered a case against any factory owner till date. The raids were conducted on Monday. Joint Labour Commissioner Piyush Sharma, however, denied that the entire exercise was done to show the expenditure of fund received by the government. On the role of NGO, he said, "They were involved because they had provided information on the child labour."

Mobile phones making a monkey out of Japanese

Going bananas over mobile phones for so many years is turning Japanese into monkeys, according to Sapio magazine. Nobuo Masataka, a professor at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute and author of the monster bestseller "Keitai wo Motta Saru (Monkeys With Mobile Phones)," argues that the proliferation of mobile phones has got young Japanese making monkeys of themselves, aping the behavior patterns of chimpanzees. He says that young Japanese have lost the ability to discern between public and private space. He adds that they have formed what he calls the dearuki-zoku (out and about tribe).

The world of bloggers

Ashok Malik, a senior editor and chief of the Express News Service of The Indian Express pays a
handsome compliment to bloggers in his speech at Asian College of Journalism. Read the full text.

Congress and its oily link

The United Nations' $64 billion oil-for-food scandal seems to be snowballing into another Bofors. While the report has cooked the goose of External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh despite his high-decibel claims of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh backing him, it is Sonia who could be in serious trouble for her dubious role in the whole episode. If the assertions of an Iraq-based Indian businessman Haridarshan Singh Majie is found true then Sonia's letter of solidarity for Saddam could just open a whole can of worms. This is the first time that Sonia's name has figured in the scam after the Volcker report that listed Singh and the Congress Party as "non-contractual beneficiaries" of the food-for-oil programme. So what we have in our hand is a deadly cocktail of greed, money and sheer opportunism.

Natwar would have to go despite all his hamming and hawing about the Volcker report. Because the longer he stays as external affairs minister of India, he would be damaging India's cause at the international areana. Natwar Singh erred on many counts. He suggests that the annexures have been made by the present government. The records are all from the nationalised oil company under Saddam rule. The Volcker committee cross-checked it with the bank records. Beyond all this what is really disturbing is the conduct of the oldest political party of the country. Instead of rebutting the charges in the Volcker report, all that the lawyer-politcians and senior leaders in the Grand old party have done is brazen denial. The tactics seem to be deny, deny till the stormclouds blow over and a new issue takes centrestage.

The sheer extent of the scam is indicates of how a humanitarian programme was subverted by unscruplous individuals ranging from anti-imperialist sloganeering politicians like Natwar who lobbied for a pro-Saddam Hussein policy at home to Marc Rich, America’s biggest white collar criminal. They set aside all sense of ethics and scruples to mint billions of dollars by paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein while the masses for whose benefit the programme was intended continued to live wretched lives.

What is really interesting and gailing is that how a section of the mainstream media have taken cudgels on behalf of Congress and Natwar Singh. While NDTV 24X7 on Saturday ran "exclusive" interview with Natwar who kept on rubbishing the Volcker report in capital letters(quite churlish I must say) to a intent Barkha Dutt, the venerable Hindu kept on poking holes in the report. Even N Ram of Hindu allowed did not seem convinced by the indictment handed out to Natwar in the the Volcker report,

The Big Fight show in NDTV 24x7 being compered by Vikram Chandra was simply claptrap and looked like Prannoy Roy's subtle way to bury the issue. The way Vikram compered it looked like it was NDTV bosses who suffered from Big Fright. Throughout the show, Vikram just refused to allow economist Surajit Bhalla when the latter started reading from a sheaf of paper detailing the flow of funds to Congress. The fright of finding Congress and Natwar in trouble. I am just guessing what the bosses at NDTV ordered to their editors after the scandal broke out. The Hindu of course, having decided to save "anti-imperialist" Natwar, today made some amends and published the whole list of Indian companies mentioned in the Volcker report. In its eagerness to toe the Commie line of saving Natwar and Congress, Hindu seems to have eroded its credibility while covering the scandal.

To quote Swapan Dasgupta in the Big Fight, it's not imperialism that is all about profits. Even anti-imperialism also equals profits.

When Naveen doesn't empower, he just watches

What does Naveen mean to imply when he wrote that column for Indian Express? For once, he doesn't quite seem to agree with the backward tag given to Orissa. Rather, he babbles about how girls from this backward state represent the country at a kids' meet in Beijing or women taking over pani panchyats.

Sadly, these are isolated cases. And how can the State government claim credit for the two girls visit to Beijing. The two went on a trip sponsored by UNICEF. A look at Naveen' s Orissa tells a different tale. Crimes against women are rising. Minors are being employed as domestic helps and continue to be tortured, physically, mentally, sexually. No index, including the infant mortality rate or malaria prevalence rate seems to have wiped out the `backward' sticker from his state.

Sadly, women command a murmur when it comes to having a say in how panchayatiraj institutions(PRIs) are governed. Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyer who recently toured the state found out that `PRIs exist but dont function'. So much were the complains by the villagers that State PRI minister Damodar Rout had to act as translator often skipping the acrid parts....

And speaking of corruption shadowing development, what has Naveen done to cleanse the system? Raids on few Govt officials by the Vigilance isn't the only way out . The man who is going to head the information commission in his State is yet to shake off the tainted image. Would Naveen care to explain how does he plan to eliminate corruption which according to him is "a stumbling block for all those rural women"....

Natwar's foot-on-oil?

Whoa! The Congress has now sent a legal notice to the United Nations and its investigator Paul Volcker seeking to know why they were named in the report. As if on a cue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is now concerned about the unverified references in Volcker’s report. Congress apparently has now decided that it's not a good idea to ask Natwar Singh Singh to resign. Even Prakash Karat, the moral guardian of the UPA coalition, has now decided that the Nehruvian Natwar should stay. So if we expected that Congress would ask Natwar to resign, we did not estimate that morality is a bad word in politics. So what we would see in the next few weeks would be really interesting and downright stupid. The main ruling party of the country would sent legal notices to the body where India is an important member and now seeking a permanent position in its Security Council. We would have a foreign minister whose actions run contrary to India's interests. Interestingly, Hindu, the last refuge of the Commies, has trashed the report like the Congress and Natwar.

The venerable Hindu writes:

But the cases of Mr. Singh and the Congress Party are quite different. The Volcker Committee showed gross irresponsibility, if not political bias, in listing them as beneficiaries without any explanation and without being transparent about the source of the allegations.

Barbaric practice

Being a barika(barber) in Orissa means getting trapped in a time warp of traditions. And if the barber happens to be living in Puri district's Brahmagiri block, his status requires him, among other indignities, to wash the feet of the upper-caste groom and guests at weddings and to do the dishes after marriage and religious feasts. Those who fought against this humiliating practice have been thrashed and ostracised. The barbers cannot even take their cattle to the fields for grazing. Worse, they can neither walk down the main road nor bathe in the village pond. Though few would believe, the crappy practice still continues to take their toll on lives of poor in Orissa's interiors.

Read an interesting essay by Prafulla Das in Frontline about the heinous practice.