दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

RFID is one technological breakthrough that can be of great help to every person if properly innovated and commercialized. One of the applications can be to help locating the goods stolen or lost and reducing the burglary or theft. Cars are the most sought after items by gangs near around Delhi. As the news goes, after killing Dr. Papiya Ghosh and her maid in her Patna house, the burglars have taken away the booty in her car and the police have not been able to find even the car till date. Perhaps with RFID incorporated in car design, the problem of locating the position of the car would have been easy.

Another fixtures that women like very much are the costly ornaments. However, they hardly use them because of the fear of snatching outside or of theft from house. Can’t RFID be integrated in costly ornament design to give its location on real time basis if so required? With abduction of children of rich and influential people becoming an industry in some part of the country, perhaps an intelligent RFID is to imbed in all the children to assist in case of emergency.

Gemma Simpson and Jo Best have compiled a list of 10 the best, worst… and craziest uses of RFID.

Children:
Japanese authorities decided to start chipping schoolchildren in one primary school in Osaka a couple of years ago. The kids’ clothes and bags were fitted with RFID tags with readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the minors’ movements. Legoland also introduced a similar scheme to stop children going astray by issuing RFID bracelets for the tots.

Pub tables:
Thirsty students can escape the busy bar and still get a pint thanks to RFID tables that deliver orders remotely. The high-tech bar is fitted with touch screens so students can get a round in, order a taxi or even chat-up someone at the next table.

Fulham Football Club:
Fulham FC has started issuing RFID-enabled smart cards to fans to cut queues at the turnstiles and increase safety around the stadium. Around 20,000 of the smart cards have been issued to mainly season ticket holders and club members and contain data on matches each cardholder has paid for.

Air passengers:
It was also suggested by boffins at University College London that air passengers should be RFID-tagged as they mingle in the departure lounge to improve airport security.

Tanks:
RFID has also made an appearance in the army to try and reduce casualties from ‘friendly fire’ incidents.

Hospital in-patients:
In an effort to trim clinical errors, hospitals in New York and Germany have been tagging their patients. Visitors to the hospitals are given RFID-chipped wristbands to wear, which are scanned by medical personnel to bring up their records and make sure the patients are given the correct dosages of drugs.

Blood:
The same clinic, which tags its patients, is also tagging blood. No vampire-pleasing effort this, rather the Klinikum Saarbruecken is using the tags to make sure the right blood reaches the right patient. Nurses will be able to scan the tags using reader-equipped PDAs or tablet PCs and check that the blood data matches the information held on an RFID-tagged bracelet worn by the patient. The National Patient Safety Agency in the UK is also considering a similar move.

Suits:
Marks and Spencer has long been associated with being at the forefront of flogging ladies’ undies. It’s also now at the forefront of item-level tagging, having chipped some of its men’s clothes. The retailer has avoided questions of privacy protection by attaching the tag to a label on the suit that can be cut off. M&S has now extended the trials nationwide.

Passports:
One of the more controversial applications is soon-to-be mandatory use of RFID in passports. The US is leading the way in deployments and the UK isn’t far behind. As well as the obvious privacy fears that surround such rollouts, experts have questioned how secure the passports are with some claiming to have cracked and cloned them already.

Books:
The first item-level rollout in Europe has already taken place in Dutch book store BGN. Each of the books in BGN’s Almere store is chipped and a second store, in Maastricht, will soon go the same way, allowing the retailer to track each book from its central warehouse to the shop floor.

Technology will be at the service of mankind, if we use it properly. RFID can be a revolutionary in this direction. Are Indian entrepreneurs listening?

Our PM Left for the official visit of Japan today. It is a great opportunity that our economist PM is visiting Japan and shall be interacting with the top leadership of the country that is more known for its cutting technologies rather for its political clout.. Each nation and ethnic group has “national traits” and “ethnicity”. Japanese are not so good at financial business, may be Indians are. Japan’s strong point is in “Manufacturing”. I have been a fan of Japanese manufacturing capability. Japanese have perfected manufacturing, and India must do everything to bring as many as possible Japanese manufacturing companies to India.

Japanese are today the leader in automotive industry with Toyota very soon coming to the number one in the world. Japanese are also superb in household appliance and electronics. By integrating Japanese manufacturing strength with India’s IT technology, both the countries can get into a win-win position. India with a vision to become global manufacturing must strengthen its electrical electronics sector. Japan can provide much of the technology needed for the manufacture of advanced high-end electronics components and products.

Japanese manufacturing was the first to pioneer the low volume high variety method of flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing system to satisfy customers’ various demands. With many management tools such as lean manufacturing, quality engineering, QFD and modular designing, Japanese have fine tuned product and process design and achieved ultimate in manufacturing. Speed, quality and the ability to provide the customer with the right price are some of the competitive advantages that Japanese have mastered.

Japanese got disenchanted in their first effort to come in manufacturing in India in 1980s in big way. Even today, except for Suzuki neither Toyota nor Honda have gone for significant investment in product design or even manufacturing in India, as Korean Hyundai in automobiles or Samsung and LG in household appliances have done. Japanese manufacturers have their own constraints, and perhaps apprehensions about the work culture in India. I don’t think either business or political leaders have made much effort to change the impressions of Japanese business leaders.

Japanese attention was substantially diverted to China, which over the past ten years has won investments of over $27 billion in a wide range of sectors when India got barely a tenth of that, and that too largely in two spheres, automobiles and electronics.

However, with changing global political equations and its historical problems with China, Japanese also may like to come nearer to India. It appears so from many of the recent statements of the Japanese bureaucrats. As reported, Ryoichi Horie, deputy chief of mission of Embassy of Japan in New Delhi, has said recently, “Many top Japanese companies have manufacturing hubs in Asean countries, but their products are sold in India. It’s more a multilateral business. But now, many Japanese companies are willing to set up their own manufacturing base in India.” And the Japanese Ambassador, Yasukuni Enoki, in an interview to ‘Hindustan Times’ made very encouraging promises for the Indian’s manufacturing sector on the eve of the PM’s visit. He said, ” Japan helped the Asean countries develop their manufacturing industries in the eighties, and did the same with China in the nineties. Now, in the new century, Japanese investment and technology will benefit India similarly. I believe this elephant is about to start galloping and we are there to give it a push.” Naoyoshi Noguchi, director general of Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) argues that Japanese companies have realised the missed opportunities in Indian market, and are now serious about long-term stay in the country. “The market dynamics in India are very different. It’s a highly price-sensitive market. That’s why many quality-conscious Japanese companies hesitated to explore the Indian market. Now, as many as 352 Japanese companies are operating in India and the number will only increase substantially,” unlike the Chinese and Indians, the Japanese don’t take hasty decisions. Their decision-making process is very slow. But once they decide, there’s no going back. I feel Japanese companies are convinced that the future lies in investment in India.” No sayonara any more.

The CII delegation of Indian CEOs accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Japan will be expected to assuage fears among Japanese companies about growing incidence of labour unrest in the country and slow pace of decision-making in the government.

India must do everything to convince Japan to bring its manufacturing sector to India as a reliable global base for domestic as well export market. Will Toyota and Honda make India its main base for R&D and manufacturing of its whole product range?

To the land of rising opportunities
SEZs, industry corridor: Delhi, Tokyo in new economic deal

Some news items from Bihar are causing worry for two reasons. Will Bihar remain behind forever? Can’t the government and the people there change when the whole world is changing? Here are three stories:

It is almost twelve days that noted professor of History, Dr Papia Ghosh and her maid were brutally murdered in her house in Patna. Police has not been able to get anywhere. Dr Ghosh’s IAS officer sister, Tuktuk Ghosh, has reportedly taken up the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The PM has spoken to Nitish Kumar. But Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is of opinion that the CBI does not have the expertise to solve murder cases. Why should Nitish Kumar so bluntly refuse the request about the CBI? What is he afraid of?

The second story is about the showcase Golden Quadrilateral, the 30-km stretch from Sasaram to Dehri-on-Sone of the Delhi-Kolkata GQ. It is unfortunately my hometown too. As claimed, a “mentally deranged” (the police version) stoned Sunil Kumar Sharma 35, the supervisor in the project with Nagarjuna Construction, to death around midnight on Wednesday, Dec 7. The police maintain that it was a stray incident. “Everybody knows the killer was a mentally deranged man. We have arrested him and there was no need for the company officials to get terrorised”, said N H Khan, Rohtas SP. Sharma’s colleagues on the spot differ. “He (the alleged killer) owns three buses and manages them. How can he be mentally deranged?” On Wednesday night, Sharma was at the site under a bridge in Dehri when a worker came running and said that someone was throwing stones at him. His younger brother Anil said, “When he came out, the attacker struck him with a big stone and he fell on the ground. Then Tunna Singh struck his head again and ran away.” Sunil died on his way to hospital.

And the third one is the most damaging and really worrying one. If the parents of Bihar don’t mend their wards, Bihar can’t get its image improved.

Hyderabad, Dec. 11: Eight hundred youths from Bihar and Jharkhand took over the Howrah-bound Falaknuma Express for eight hours yesterday, grabbing seats, harassing women, beating up catering staff, robbing vendors and pulling the chain 22 times. The torment ended after a heavy police and Railway Protection Force contingent detained 500 of them at Tadepalligudem around midnight, while the other 300 escaped into the town. Only half of the group, returning home from a railway recruitment exam in Secunderabad, carried tickets. Some had the free coupon railway board examinees are entitled to, while the rest had neither. One Pushpa Kumari, who was in the women’s compartment, lodged a complaint at Guntur and said, “The boys forced their way into our compartment. They sang lewd songs and danced in the corridor in an obscene way.” An aged couple from Salt Lake got off the train at Guntur after being threatened by the youths. At Tadepalligudem, the police registered cases against only 15. As per a policeaman, “They were given tea and (apart from the 15 detainees) sent in another train to Howrah after a warning.”

How do you take these instances of going-on in Bihar? Bihari youth will have to behave properly, and give up it’s the ‘dadgiri’ behaviour, particularly in dealing with people of other part of the country or the world. If the people in Bihar don’t change themselves, there is hardly any hope for Bihar.

A report in ‘Times of India’ makes one think.

“China has trounced India 4-1 in trade in the first 10 months of this year with a trade surplus of $3 billion against India as compared to a trade deficit of $946 million in the same period in 2005. Chinese exports to India shot up 61% to reach $11.58 billion in that period. Indian exports notched a minor rise of 4.49% totaling $ 8.5 billion, according to the latest statistics released by the Chinese Customs for the January-October period.

Indian trade and industry has been far more receptive to Chinese goods rather than energetically taking up the task of selling Indian goods to China. Indian trade bodies visiting China, ostensibly to promote Indian goods are more interested in sourcing cheap Chinese products.

The $20 billion target of the bilateral trade set for 2008 was reached in October 2006 itself, because of a dramatic growth on the Chinese side and a slide by India, which lost the trade advantage it enjoyed in 2005. A Beijing-based businessman says, “Indian companies have been most aggressive in sourcing low-cost goods from China. Most of the businessmen visiting China are only looking for sourcing opportunities.’
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How do you feel after going through this report? Is it not disgusting?

And do you know what India exports to China?

The two of its most important export items are – ores, including slag and ash, and iron and steel. Ores, mostly iron ore accounted for 57% of India’s export basket last year. With the humongous Olympics facilities in Beijing nearing completion, their demand has tapered off. Unfortunately, in the last 60 years Indian steel sectors could not expand sufficiently. Till late nineties, none of the Indian steel producers could produce the extra deep drawn steels, leave aside the more sophisticated ones, for the outer skin panels of passenger car industry Iron ore export is a real lucrative business for small players to make huge money with no value additions and exhausting the natural national wealth. Cotton is another major export item to China. India is the second largest producers of raw cotton, but Indian textile and apparel manufacturing capacity is just miniscule in comparison with the Chinese.

China exports all value-added finished products- electrical machinery, iron and steel products and paper and paper boards besides all the junk households things that are flooding the markets all over India courtesy our unscrupulous traders who visit China and buy all the rejected third class flashy stuffs that are rejected by other countries and sell to Indian consumers at huge margin.

Unfortunately, China’s quality control system is very flexible. Its manufacturers leave it to the buyers to evaluate. Wal-Mart and other buyers of US and the Western countries have their own quality control checks. Indian traders buying consumer supplies in bulk hardly bother about the quality. They are hardly accountable for the quality off the Chinese goods. It is for the consumers to buy the cheaper Chinese goods or go for the goods from other sources. And in process, the majority of them get cheated but they come to realize that late when they can’t do anything. Will the traders associations taking all the advantages from the government stop this practice of importing all the sundry items from China and cheating the domestic consumers?

If India wishes to win the race with Chinese, it will have to be smarter in deciding the strategies to save its different manufacturing and service sectors where it has some inherent superiority. Chinese are moving so fast that it will be difficult to survive. The latest news from pharma sector is the warning.

Ind-Swift Laboratories, a pharmaceutical major based in Chandigarh, halted the production of roxycomycin and arithromycin last month. “While our manufacturing cost comes to $115 per tonne, the Chinese supply the same drug at $105 a tonne. Since we could not match their rates, we discontinued the production, which stood at 1.5-2 tonnes a month,” said V K Mehta, joint managing director, Ind-Swift. It is not Ind-Swift alone. Companies like Alembic, Kopran and Torrent are all bearing the brunt of Chinese imports.

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The news of suicides of framers in rural India pains one and all. But many good things are happening all over India that brings hope of a better tomorrow even in rural India.

1.In Bilashpur, Himachal Pradesh, Jagdish Thakur has sold 2.5 lakh carnation stalks, grown on a part of his 13-acre plot, in the last seven months at the whole mart in New Delhi. His earnings have been Rs 10 lakh. It didn’t happen the first time. In 1997, when Jagdish experimented with gladioli flowers, it turned out to be a dismal failure and he lost Rs 20,000. But with time changing, Jagdish tried again. And by this time he knew about the greenhouse technology that helped increase yields. Further, he could ship his products directly to Delhi-based commission agents, without depending on local middlemen. The demand of flowers has boomed. A Dutch company wishes to import his products.

2.Jaswinder Singh Bhondli village in Ludhiana Punjab is making hay by selling vegetables, instead of traditional crops like wheat and rice. From the 22 acres (of the 35 he owns) devoted to vegetables, he gets an annual income of Rs 14-15 lakh. And he’s building a Rs 35-lakh mansion, and waiting to ink a contract farming deal with either Reliance Industries or ITC.

3.As reported, another Bilaspur farmer is making a killing by growing red and yellow capsicums, which sell at Rs 100-140 per kg in Delhi, and each plant yields nearly 10 kg. His income from just one crop sowed on a small portion of his 20-25 acres (most of which is devoted to traditional crops like maize) this April: a whopping Rs 9 lakh.

4.An employee of Spencers, a retail chain spotted Yellapa, a poor farmer from Mallu village near Bangalore who used to travel to the city to sell coriander, spinach, and other vegetables on the roadside. With help of Spencers, Yellapa increased his yield of spinach from 50 bunches a day to over 800. Yellapa has taken the land of his neighbour too on lease.

This is happening across the country. Retail chains, food processing companies, and even restaurants like Mc-Donald’s with huge requirement of farm produce are increasingly avoiding the city wholesale dealer and instead, are talking directly to farmers, eliminating middlemen, deciding on mutually beneficial prices and collecting the produce in their own trucks directly from the farmers in villages. Farmers are not spending on transport or sharing revenues with middlemen anymore. And that is resulting in better earnings for the farmers.

A farmer such as one 40-year-old Shiwarkar has become the direct supplier to the retail chain Spinach that has 17 stores in Mumbai. He does not deal with the transport agent anymore, nor the market agent. Instead, it’s the executives from the retail companies he’s in touch with the most. The men from the Spinach retail store monitor the packing of tomatoes. The intermediaries are going out from the value chain, and for the farmers, hopes, opportunities and wealth are all finding their way into their homes. Some advantages are incredibly basic. Once farmers take their goods to the market they are at the mercy of the market forces. They cannot take their vegetables back to the village if the prices are too low. Now, everything is neatly settled by the corporates.

Further, the traders in mandi used to be unscrupulous. As narrated by one farmer, on an average, the net weight loss used to be 10 kg for every 100 kg of produce due to faulty measures. So the weights are right, payments are instant and damage to the crop is less. And the farmers can have an assured demand all year round.

As the organized retail sector moves further in, the biggest gainers will be the farmers, especially those who are small and illiterate and completely dependent on the village agent.

I only wish these retailers or its employees didn’t get too greedy. It all means the farmers need to change from the traditional system to make their earnings better. The success stories above can only provide the inspirations to go for more perspiration and, in turn, prosperity.

Please Read Farmers take a `Fresh’ look at retailing

Nitish Kumar, the engineer chief minister of the bottom position holder state, Bihar completed one year in office. In last week, I came across two of his interviews that appeared in ‘The Indian Express’ and ‘The Hindu Businessline’.

Except for some claims on investment proposals for sugar factories, there is nothing exhilarating but for a very genuine hope about the state’s future. ‘Bihar has to become a developed state by 2015 to be in tune with the President’s Vision 2020.’ However, Nitish though engineer by qualification never came out, what he and his government will do in less than four years to make the people of the state feel confident to look for better Bihar by 2020.

I shall like to only remind engineer in Nitish Kumar that today with technologies available there are hardly any projects that can’t be completed in 3-4 years. You require only a steely will power. Chief Minister’s putting10-12 hours at work can only set example, but for the implementation of the projects taken in hand, he will have to select his executing team, delegate, and monitor the completion within the timeframe.
Nitish Kumar will have to prioritize, decide on some10 major projects, and see that they get completed. As otherwise, the remarks ‘There are so many things to do; we are fighting on many fronts’ and then ‘After all, the mineral-rich districts of the erstwhile Bihar State have gone to Jharkhand,’ reflect indecisiveness and perhaps frustration. Again, Nitish Kumar must be innovative on his offerings to the investors to attract them towards Bihar, as all the states of India are competing in providing more and more allurements to industrialists.

As it appears, Engineer Nitish Kumar has given up easily on the state owned and private industrial complexes including one at Dalmianagar. He could have appointed at least some reputed consultants such as Mc Kinsey or Booz, Allen, Hamilton, or Boston Consulting for helping Bihar in preparing a roadmap for prospective industrial revival of Bihar. It would have been an expenditure made with a purpose. The chief minister must aggressively attempt for fast-track development instead of just giving up apparent when he says, ‘I don’t think we can do anything about its revival right now.’

His idea of a land bank with a corpus of Rs 200 crore is an excellent approach direction of land acquisition for industrial units of interest. And I wish Nitish Kumar could get the 61 proposals (for setting up various industrial units totaling an investment of Rs 26,000 crore that his government has cleared) get completed in 3-4 years as promised.

Bihar has many strengths of its own. Its huge tourism potentials for Hindus (Gaya), Buddhists (Buddha Gaya), Jains (Vaisali), Sikhs (Patna Sahib), and Muslims (Phulwarisarif) itself can boost the state’s economy tremendously, if it is exploited with a businesslike approach. Nalanda International University can bring in $1 billion or more if one works seriously and a permanent prestige for the state. Unique traditional textile related products from Madhubani and Bhagalpur are other prospective employment providing strengths of Bihar. In food processing industry based on cereals, vegetables, and fruits, Bihar can always compete with any other state. Bihar has manufacturing potentials in leather goods and pharmaceuticals with plenty of raw materials available in the state.

It is unfortunate that neither the journalists raised question nor the CM mentioned anything about the potential of knowledge sector, BPO when a huge lot of technocrats from Bihar are serving the sector. The sector is not very capital intensive also. Bihar produces students in abundance with excellent academic records. Bihar can have BPO in legal, medical, and education areas. The CM is to get his engineering colleges in top gear and encourage bringing in some finishing institutes for fluency in English.

I shall agree to Nitish Kumar’s remark, ‘Others, preferably independent people should rate me.’ I wish the journalists such as Shekhar Gupta, who are familiar with Bihar, would have made some independent research on the progress made in Bihar in last one year and published their findings instead of these interviews.

Finally, I found the fire missing in the CM in these interviews that is a must for the development of the state that was made to sleep for three decades.

Unfortunately, over the years India and its government have not done anything that makes the country a nation and does not divide the people. British handed over the power to Congress and left. But this Congress was not the same one that had been fighting for the independence of India and its people. India had already disintegrated in two nations based on religion. Over the years, the number of power hungry opportunists in the Congress went on increasing. The party leaders went on putting all the energy in finding ways to win elections and to be in power to get the maximum benefits for themselves and their clans. The party learnt the trick-‘divide and rule’ from British who ruled the country for almost two centuries or more by following the policy in India. The constitutional guarantee through reservations for 10 or 15 years for SC/ST got perpetuated with maximum benefits going to some top affluent families and the political leaders of the castes.

VP Singh did further damage to the nation with the Mandal, as he had learnt the trick when in the Congress party. After returning in power again in 2004, every sane Indian thought the new Congress will go whole hog for development. But the Congress has worked on a single point agenda to do everything to remain in power. Arjun Singh, Man Mohan Singh, and naturally Sonia Gandhi directly or indirectly have been trying to keep the society divided and its peace disturbed in name of equity through reservations. Reservations for OBC in state-run higher educational institutions, in private sector, and now for the minority community- are all attempts in the same direction.

Muslims are really in miserable conditions. With a dropout rate of 25% and only 17% as matriculates, is there a surprise that only 6% Muslims are graduates? What is so strange if only one in 25 undergraduate students in a premier college is a Muslim and mere 63 Muslims are in 4,743 IIM students?

But why has it happened? Some blame it to the community attachment to Madarassa education system. But the Sachhar committee says, “Muslim parents are not averse to mainstream education or to send their children to affordable government schools.” I can’t but agree with Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former member of knowledge Commission and president of Centre for Policy Research. ” A cocktail of political forces has kept the Muslims backward. It suited the Congress to have them as supplicants, the moderate and progressive Muslims has been too meek,..”. None of the political leaders, be it Lalu Yadav, Ram Vilash Paswan, Shabuddin, or Sonia Gandhi appeal to the community and the parents to send their children to the schools, once the nation has taken up Sarv Shikhsha Aviyan as mission.

Instead of talking about the reservation, why can’t the government and its machinery work for improving the implementation of the unique programmes – Sarv Sikhsa Aviyan, Bharat Nirman, and NREG of the government has devised? If that is done efficiently and effectively and expanded to the whole of the country, automatically the destiny of the people of all the underprivileged will change for better even without any reservation. If Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan can cover all the people, if the quality of education to the children is improved to make their employability better, if every one is made to learn a skill that can sustain him, will there be any thing such as reservation needed? Why can’t it encourage the private sector to participate in the task of the affirmative actions to educate the people and for providing basic healthcare for all 100% needy without any consideration for caste and community?

As I heard the Hyderabad MP claiming that there are no government schools in many Muslim majority localities. The government must provide that and even private initiatives for setting up modern schools there must come. We all understand that the nation can’t live and prosper with Muslims living lives of destitute. I do believe that community has many skills. The boys and girls must get full opportunities to fine tune the skills and become entrepreneurs. Why do we keep on pointing out to them that they are backward or minority as they belong to a caste or community? Instead why can’t we educate and empower?

And why should our learned PM bring confusion with his statement, “We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources.”?

For a Prime Minister all the needy citizens of the country must be same. Let the people stop using the divisive statements to make the nation one and integrated.

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How should we assess our PM, when he has completed half of his tenure? As per one report based on the data available on March 31, 2006, out of the 742 ongoing projects of the government of India, only 91 were actually completed, though 273 projects were due for completion. The total anticipated cost of the 742 projects is slated to rise steeply by Rs 48,483 crore from Rs 2,79,081 crore to Rs 3,27,564 crore, reflecting a jump of 17.37 per cent in the overall. Surprisingly, the time overrun ranged from three to 252 months. With all the projects completed as per schedule, the exchequer would have got nearly Rs 50,000 crore, and it would have added to the GDP tidy two or three percentiles in the form of the multiplier effect of goods and services flowing from the projects.

India expects its efficient economist prime minister and his team to improve on the implementation of the dream projects rather than bombarding the people and mesmerizing them with the announcements of mind-boggling values. Let him see that all the dream projects such as Bharat Nirman, Sarv Shiksha Aviyan get implemented in the time frame planned.

As reported, after an almost one-year lull, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has awarded three contracts for national highway sections. Ministry officials, on their part, have been blaming the public-private partnership appraisal committee (PPPAC) for the delays in awarding the contracts. The Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) is still not complete. NHAI has already extended it twice from December 2004 to December 2005. Perhaps, it may finish only by mid-2007. With so much of criticism from every quarter, particularly the prospective investors, the Prime minister would have taken some personal interest and pushed the ministry and NHAI to perform instead of discovering the excuses. If transportation minister is inefficient, why can’t he be changed? And if necessary, why can’t the prime minister talk about it confidentially to DMK chief? I am sure DMK must have some better substitute.

Let us look at the situation of power. Every one knows that no progress can even be dreamt without electricity. Now the minister discovers that BHEL is not having sufficient capacity to supply the equipment in time. BHEL currently has an order book of about Rs 45,000 crore. And this becomes the excuse for achieving only 75 per cent of the targeted capacity addition of 41,000 mw during Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07). And after so many years, the power minister of the country says, “the power capacity addition in China stands at 3 lakh mega watts and there were at least five to six manufacturing companies meeting the annual capacity addition of nearly 60,000 mw. We need to learn from the China experience and have more manufacturers to support our power programme.” How long will our ministers keep on learning today from China, earlier from Japan, Korea, or US?

People expect the prime minister to get over the situation where the minister keeps on making such excuses instead of finding the solutions. I still expect that the prime minister must bring younger and efficient ministers where the executions are critical for the development of the country.

And there is one another area where I feel our PM would have made his personal contribution that could have facilitated investment in manufacturing sector. He would have concentrated on the actions for starting and doing business in India that is all on measurable, easy and without a hassle. His experience would have helped him. His honesty of purpose would have made bureaucrats respond positively to attain it. And would have been a big achievement of his government. Perhaps, even now the PM can do something in the remaining two years of his tenure as PM.

I only expect our PM to do what he can do the best.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist, is known for exposing abuses of China’s one-child policy. His case has worked its way through the courts in Shandong’s Yinan County. Potential witnesses have been beaten and evidence suppressed in Chen’s August trial and his retrial by the county court on charges of inciting the public. The charges stemmed from a public protest by his supporters. However, human rights groups have said authorities trumped up those charges to silence Chen after he accused Linyi officials of forcing women to be sterilised and have abortions as late as eight months into their pregnancies. Chen, who has been held for over a year, was sentenced to more than four years in jail recently following the retrial.

Yuan Weijing, the wife of the jailed Chinese activist is in hospital with bruises and “extreme mental distress” after being assaulted by police in Linyi city. Police had dumped Yuan on a street outside the city later that day where she was found crying and dazed. She has bruises to her chest and has not spoken for days. As reported, Yuan was picked up by police seeking “revenge” for her attempts to introduce evidence in the retrial that purportedly exonerates Chen of the charges.

And on Thursday, one Bharati Das, wife of a poor farmer with barely one and a half acre land in Singur, by now famous as the site of Tata Motor’s prestigious Rs one-lakh car project narrated her owes, tears welling up as she spoke about police brutality. She displayed her bandaged hand and narrated how drunken policemen barged into her house, nearly molested her and beat up her young son. And all that was for one-and-a-half acre which has kept her family going for years that now the Buddha Babu’s government wishes to hand over to Tata Motors.

Everyone acquainted with working of West Bengal knows the atrocities of the Marxists against the opposition parties. This time it is happening to acquire the land for Tata Motors in Singur. And the police are with them in name of law and order.

I feel morose to find Medha and Arundhati Roy on my side of the fence in Singur case. To be more blunt, I just hate them. I call them celebrity protesters, who carry on that as profession. I wrote my viewpoints on their protest against raising the height of the dam in Sardar Sarovar project. Their protest delayed the project completion and caused huge loss to the nation. Moreover, they could have helped the people by facilitating the compensation. But they would have appreciated that the dam can’t be shifted and would have also believed the technical capability of our civil engineers. I oppose Tata Motors locating its project at Singur totally on technical ground. It can very easily be located on land that could have not affected so many farmers.

I don’t blame west Bengal government and Buddha Babu, as in pursuit to bring in industrialist back to West Bengal again and create an investor- friendly image; they are ready to yield to any extent. But why should Tata Motors be so shellfish to stick to Singur? Why can’t the company and its executive voluntarily agree for a change in location to a place that can be strategically equally good or better?
Why should Tata Motors build car factory on a land that can yield three crops around the year, and upto Rs 1 lakh per bigha from potato cultivation, that are scarce in our country?

Why should Tata Motors require 1,000 acres if technically it does not require more than 200 acres? Why can’t Tata Motors build multistoried plant as done in Japan and even Germany? After all Tata Motors are not going to produce heavy-duty commercial vehicles. It is meant for the lightest vehicle in the sector to attain fuel efficiency norm.

Why can’t Tata Motors build the plant in places such as Kharagpur or Durgapur that are well on the GQ or for that matter in other industrial complexes in West Bengal that are lying vacant?

I still think Tata Motors could have bought the unutilised land of Hindustan Motors at Hind Motor that is very near to Singur. With Hindustan Motors closing down its activities, it has publicly gone to ask the permission of the same government to develop the extra land into realty business. Why can’t the government think on that line? The land is not suitable for farming as it is low lying.

The whole story is fishy. But the silence and lack of a farsightedness from the executives of Tata motors are more surprising.

I am not a supporter of Mamata, Medha or Arundhanti. But I oppose the move of Tata Motors to locate its plant on this fertile piece of land, and I am ready to go for a debate with any executive of Tata Motors on the issue. Will they agree? Unfortunately, why are the stalwarts of the industry such as RC Bhargava, Subodh Bhrgava, Tarun Das, and many others so silent? I strongly feel that the regional allurements should not be the criteria for selecting a location. It is going to be harmful and create imbalance in different regions.

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