I wonder how many of us were struck by the irony of the great grandson of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, admitting before Parliament this week that there were still very many homes without a light bulb in this country 61 years after Independence.
The irony is that his father, his grandmother and his great grandfather ruled India for most of those 61 years. To me it was an admission of the failure of the dynasty and the party that has ruled India for six decades to deliver on its promises.
And this is a party whose Prime Minister told the Bucharest conference in 1976 that “development is the best contraceptive”. One of its family planning ministers told Parliament in the ’70s that “when a village is lit up, the birth rate falls.”
The National Electricity Policy (NEP), 2005 recognizes electricity as a “basic human need” and has set a goal of ‘electricity for all by 2012’, with a ‘minimum lifeline consumption of 1 kWh/household/day’. This would mean increasing per capita availability of electricity from 631 units to 1,000 units per annum.
But we are a long, long way from ensuring a light bulb in every home, nuclear energy or no nuclear energy, despite the goal of electricity for all by 2012.
Half the 220 million households in India do not have access to electricity. As of March 2007, the government has been able to provide power to less than a third of the 125,000 targeted villages under the Bharat Nirman – India Renewal – programme.
Electrification of villages does not mean that all rural households will get electricity – a village is declared electrified if 10% or more of households get electricity! Only eight of the 26 states – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Maharashtra and Goa, Punjab and Haryana, and Nagaland have achieved 100% electrification as per this definition.
That means 90% of the rural households in these states could still be without electricity. Is it a surprise then that 18% per cent of those in urban areas and 39% of those in rural areas are still illiterate?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, told the McKinsey Quarterly (Nov 2007) that India’s performance in power over the past several years is “the weakest”.
But he sought to lay the blame on the states as “most of the critical actions lie in the hands of state governments”. The Central government has now put in place the appropriate legal and regulatory framework to get the states to act But “performance, is lagging behind,” he admitted.
Today’s papers report that the situation is not just alarming, it’s scary even in the IT and financial capitals, Bangalore and Mumbai, respectively.
In Mumbai, unable to cope with outages, the MSEB has increased load shedding in certain industrial areas to a whopping 40 hours at a stretch. Electricity shortfall in Maharashtra has crossed 5,000 MW. Rural areas in Maharashtra have a nightmarish 13-hour power cut a day. Many towns will not have streetlights till 8 p.m. and possibly even beyond.
The political heart of India, Uttar Pradesh, fares no better with a shortage of 2,000MW per day against the demand of 8,500 MW per day. To bridge this gap, bigger towns and cities face up to eight hours of load shedding, district headquarters at least 10 hours and villages a staggering 16 hours.
The booming IT hub of Hyderabad has witnessed its first power cuts in more than 10 years. The government plans a two-day power holiday every week to tide over the crisis! And yet we claim to be a superpower and entertained the nation to two days of debate about whether India should sign the deal with the US on nuclear power or not.
Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai used to say, “What difference does it make if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice!” Perhaps Mr Prakash Karat and his new found friends in the BJP and the BSP (both are strong believers in caste, each at extreme ends of the caste spectrum!) should go back to reading the speeches of Chou and Mao. ###
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Christmas or Easter are not festivals of noise
I am glad that the Bombay High Court has sought a report from the Maharashtra Home Secretary about noise pollution in Mumbai and compliance with the noise control regulations in force.
It has given me a chance to take up with the Home Secretary my efforts for the last eight years – yes, eight years! – to get my parish church to stop firing crackers at night after the 10 p.m. curfew in “celebration” after the Christmas Eve and Easter vigil services.
Non-religious music has also been played on the loudspeaker system used for the church services held in the open air on both occasions. This is a clear abuse of the extension beyond 10 p.m. deadline given purely for purposes of the religious services being audible to the open-air congregation.
I have made every effort to get the priests in my parish – mostly rural boys from the south who do not understand the situation in Mumbai or their own parishioners and don’t want to learn either! – that this is not done if they are true followers of the man who said, “Do unto others as they do unto you!”
I wrote to the Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Ossie Gracias, who agreed with me that this should stop and asked his local bishop, Percival Fernandes to take up the matter. The only thing that has happened is that instead of the crackers being fired from the terrace of the church, they are now fired from the periphery to make it seem that the church has nothing to do with them.
But the timing of the firing of crackers, in synchronization with key prayers during the service or when the priests are leaving the altar, is a clear indication that this is being done with the connivance of the priests.
If the priests do not connive with the perpetrators of this unwarranted noise pollution, the Parish Priest, Claudy Vaz, should have been the first to complain to the local police about the violation of the law laid down by the Supreme Court of India. He hasn’t!
Worse, when I went to the parish office to persuade him to show consideration for the old and the young, for those who might be sleeping after ten, I was advised by the assistant parish priest, Anto Vijayan, a smart but immature young man too full of himself, to first stop people in wedding processions firing crackers on the road.
I thought Christians who consider themselves several levels superior to others – and especially Christian preachers like Anto who preach about environmental pollution – set their own benchmark.
I then went to the police who do not seem to be interested in enforcing the law either! As one of them told me, “these are sensitive matters because these are matters of dharma.” I would think this is a matter of adharma because the firing of crackers is not a part of Christian religious rituals either during the day or night!
I thought it was the job of the police to enforce the law regardless of dharma or adharma, and regardless of the dharma of the complainant or the violator. But that is not so. But that does not deter me. I have fought several battles over several decades in a 39-year-long journalistic career and this one is far from over!
I am now looking forward to the Bombay High Court taking up the matter and cracking the police as well as my parish priests on the knuckles for making a mockery of Silent Night, Holy Night, or the solemn Easter Vigil with their misconceived idea of “celebration”.
Watch this space!
It has given me a chance to take up with the Home Secretary my efforts for the last eight years – yes, eight years! – to get my parish church to stop firing crackers at night after the 10 p.m. curfew in “celebration” after the Christmas Eve and Easter vigil services.
Non-religious music has also been played on the loudspeaker system used for the church services held in the open air on both occasions. This is a clear abuse of the extension beyond 10 p.m. deadline given purely for purposes of the religious services being audible to the open-air congregation.
I have made every effort to get the priests in my parish – mostly rural boys from the south who do not understand the situation in Mumbai or their own parishioners and don’t want to learn either! – that this is not done if they are true followers of the man who said, “Do unto others as they do unto you!”
I wrote to the Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Ossie Gracias, who agreed with me that this should stop and asked his local bishop, Percival Fernandes to take up the matter. The only thing that has happened is that instead of the crackers being fired from the terrace of the church, they are now fired from the periphery to make it seem that the church has nothing to do with them.
But the timing of the firing of crackers, in synchronization with key prayers during the service or when the priests are leaving the altar, is a clear indication that this is being done with the connivance of the priests.
If the priests do not connive with the perpetrators of this unwarranted noise pollution, the Parish Priest, Claudy Vaz, should have been the first to complain to the local police about the violation of the law laid down by the Supreme Court of India. He hasn’t!
Worse, when I went to the parish office to persuade him to show consideration for the old and the young, for those who might be sleeping after ten, I was advised by the assistant parish priest, Anto Vijayan, a smart but immature young man too full of himself, to first stop people in wedding processions firing crackers on the road.
I thought Christians who consider themselves several levels superior to others – and especially Christian preachers like Anto who preach about environmental pollution – set their own benchmark.
I then went to the police who do not seem to be interested in enforcing the law either! As one of them told me, “these are sensitive matters because these are matters of dharma.” I would think this is a matter of adharma because the firing of crackers is not a part of Christian religious rituals either during the day or night!
I thought it was the job of the police to enforce the law regardless of dharma or adharma, and regardless of the dharma of the complainant or the violator. But that is not so. But that does not deter me. I have fought several battles over several decades in a 39-year-long journalistic career and this one is far from over!
I am now looking forward to the Bombay High Court taking up the matter and cracking the police as well as my parish priests on the knuckles for making a mockery of Silent Night, Holy Night, or the solemn Easter Vigil with their misconceived idea of “celebration”.
Watch this space!
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