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Doctors are not criminals Violence in Valley |
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Eye of the century He framed the way we looked at the world HIS images shaped our way of looking at the world. Henri Cartier-Bresson, born French, was a photographer of and for the world. It was on Monday that the "eye of the century" closed for the last time at the age of 95.
Defence structure needs overhaul
The village pond
Punjab claims on SYL misleading Defence notes
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Doctors are not criminals THE relief granted by the Supreme Court to the doctors by ruling that they cannot be held criminally liable for negligence for the death of a patient during the treatment due to error of judgement or an accident actually helps the patients because with the sword of such a punishment hanging over their heads, they were not able to give off their best to their wards. The doctor-patient relationship is not like that of a buyer-seller. Here, much more trust is involved. After all, a patient entrusts his life to the doctor. In almost all cases, a doctor does his best to save him. But a medical man is not a miracle man. Sometimes, tragedies do occur. The trauma at times makes relatives of the deceased to imagine that these took place because of the negligence of the doctor. Ignorance adds to the disbelief. There are many instances where family members of the patient keep on arguing that he or she was "hale and hearty" when brought to the hospital. Without knowing what his actual medical condition was, they conclude that the doctor played the villain. That does not mean that negligence does not take place. Some doctors do tend to be sometimes callous. After all, the tales of some of them leaving scissors or bandages in the stomachs of the patients are not unheard of. The Supreme Court has clarified that for fixing criminal liability on a doctor or a surgeon, the standard of negligence required to be proved should be very high - described as "gross" or "reckless". It cannot be merely lack of necessary care, attention and skill. The medical fraternity which has the reason to feel relieved at the Supreme Court's judgement, however, needs to evolve a stringent system of peer review so that the black sheep can be eliminated and the confidence of the public in the medical profession restored. Every doctor - and there are quite a few of them - who steals a kidney or prescribes complicated and costly tests just to get his commission is discrediting the entire community. The apex court's decision should not be treated as a licence for the greedy for taking the patients for a ride. |
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Violence in Valley THE attack on the CRPF camp in Srinagar in which eight jawans and an assistant commandant were killed exposes the chinks in the security system. According to the official version, two militants on a suicide mission stormed the camp and opened fire indiscriminately. It took quite some time for the CRPF personnel to gun down the militant but not before his colleague could make good his escape. And to compound their lapse, the militant who killed so many happens to be a teenaged local boy. If this is not a failure of the security system, what else is it? It came less than a week after the militants struck at a CRPF installation along Srinagar's famed Dal lake killing five jawans. The same militant organisation has claimed credit for both the attacks. Obviously, the CRPF authorities did not take preventive steps after the first attack. The sudden spurt in violence is a grim reminder that the recent lull was misleading. There can be no disputing that the militants retain the capacity to strike at will. Unless this is broken, there can be no respite from such killings. Despite all the madness in the killings, there is a discerning method in it. The security agencies should have known that it has been the practice of the militants to step up their activities before Independence Day. The Amarnath Yatra and the Assembly session due to begin shortly motivate them to make their presence felt. The security agencies should have drawn up an appropriate strategy to deal with them, rather than give the impression that they are sitting ducks. The Centre's negotiations with the Kashmiri separatists have also run into rough weather with the hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani getting the upper hand. Efforts to unite the two factions of the Hurriyat have also come a cropper. It is not difficult to know why this has happened when there was some progress in the talks between the Centre's interlocutor and the Kashmiri leaders. Obviously, the forces in Pakistan would not have liked such a turnaround. Through their lackeys in the state, they have scuttled the unity efforts all the while propping up Geelani. However, let it be clear that even for the talks to succeed, there is an urgent need to break the backbone of militancy. |
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Eye of the century HIS images shaped our way of looking at the world. Henri Cartier-Bresson, born French, was a photographer of and for the world. It was on Monday that the "eye of the century" closed for the last time at the age of 95. He had travelled around the globe shooting black and white photographs in the US, China, Japan, the former USSR and India, both before and after Partition. His pictures were featured in Life, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines and he became an exemplar for every photo-journalist the world over. Cartier-Bresson became famous for capturing "the decisive moment", for which he waited with the patience of a hunter for his prey. In fact, he had hunted before the weapon of choice became a Leica-a simple, though mechanically excellent and practically noiseless, 35-mm rangefinder camera. One of the finest examples of interaction between man and machine, Cartier-Bresson would somehow manage to position himself at just the right place and take the picture at the very precise moment when human drama was at its climatic peak. He was an artist. He loved drawing and painting. In 1927, he learnt art from an early exponent of cubism, Andre Lhote. Cartier-Bresson often gave the credit of his photography to this artist. He took the greatest care in composing his pictures, which is why he did not like cropping photographs, since it altered his composition, and perspective. Cartier-Bresson always shot only in available light, without a flash, and he took an estimated seven lakh pictures. He was fascinated by India, a nation he visited six times, the first at the time of Independence, the last in 1987. He covered the refugees in Punjab, the beggars in Calcutta and the high and the mighty, Jawaharlal Nehru, the Mountbattens, and the famous picture taken minutes after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. His photographs of Gandhi are among the most remembered images of the master photographer of the 20th century. |
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Don’t attempt to run from the past, it is always behind you.
— Anonymous
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Defence structure needs overhaul DEFENCE sources reveal that the formulation of a war doctrine was discussed at the Army Commanders’ Conference in April. Though the whole information has been kept classified, yet in the briefing it has come to light that the concept of “battle groups” is likely to take the place of existing strike formations. This concept has been taken from World War-II where the Germans innovated this concept. However, it needs a lot of deliberations at the higher levels. There has been a dire need of formulating an Indian doctrine on defence and national security since the day it became independent. A brief but perilous 1999 battle with Pakistan in the Kargil sector set the stage for a comprehensive overhaul of India’s defence structure. Since that conflict, India has created an Integrated Defence Staff (IDS), given high priority to joint doctrine, adopted new military-planning and arms-buying strategies, and attempted to separate command and staff responsibilities. However, with all military bureaucracies, change has brought a number of challenges. “Often it is elected officials who force changes on militaries,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Vijay Oberoi, Director of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, an Army-supported think tank recently constituted at Delhi to align with the Centre for Air Warfare under the aegis of the Air Force. The genesis of the Defence Ministry’s IDS was a November, 2000, report by the Group of Ministers - just as in the US, the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act made the Joint Chiefs of Staff the President’s principal military advisers. Established in 2001, India’s IDS is intended to fashion a joint approach to warfare and allow the nation’s most senior military officers to advise the Prime Minister directly without passing through layers of bureaucracy. In the past two years, IDS members have: 1 Written a draft joint doctrine and joint perspective plan through 2017. 2 Established a unified command in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, a Strategic Force Command to oversee India’s nuclear arsenal. 3 Set up a national command post, using the Defence Communication Network and dedicated satellites. The IDS already has played a key role in shaping the five-year defence plan for 2002-2007, though the plan still must be approved by the Defence Ministry, said an official at the Indian Planning Commission, which builds long-term plans for the entire federal government. Under IDS’ direction, India’s vast inventory of Soviet- and Russian-made weapons is likely to be upgraded to Western systems, Defence Ministry sources say. IDS intends to reshape military planning and modernisation efforts from a budget-driven exercise to a need-driven one, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Brij Mohan Kapur, who until recently served on the IDS as Deputy Chief for policy planning and force developing. Eventually, IDS would like to create an effects-based military planning system that judges new weapons on their relative combat effectiveness, Kapur said. For example, if a missile-armed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can destroy a target better than a tank, the tank may have to go. Most importantly, IDS has promoted joint thinking about warfare, Kapur said. The unified command set up at Andaman and Nicobar will serve as the experimental lab for joint warfare training. “Future wars are not going to be Air Force dominated or Army-dominated,” he said. “It is going to be country-dominated,” with a national objective rather than service objectives driving combat strategy, he said. But inter-service rivalry and bureaucratic delays are slowing reform. “Like most militaries, the Indian military has the usual inter-service rivalries, including turf wars,” said Oberoi. But without integration “you cannot win wars, including low-intensity conflict.” As the largest of the three services, the Army is a prime mover toward integration and joint warfare concepts, but the Air Force and Navy fear integration could mean being overshadowed by the Army, Oberoi said. Service Chiefs in India perform both command and staff function, unlike the US service Chiefs, who are solely responsible for recruitment, training and weapons, while combat commanders perform operational command functions. The formation of IDS and creation of a joint warfare structure is intended to break up Indian service chiefs’ dual function, adding another layer of resistance to change, Oberoi said. “Service chiefs do not like to give up their command function to theatre commanders,” he said. The bureaucracy in the Ministry of Defence, which serves as the conduit for communication between the military officers and the government’s political leadership, is reluctant to allow the IDS to take on that role. As a result, though IDS has been created, the IDS chief has yet to take on the role of a joint staff chief with powers over service chiefs. The current IDS chief is Vice-Admiral Raman Puri, a Navy Officer, who replaced Army Lt. Gen. Pankaj Joshi. Despite the delays and setbacks, India’s armed forces “are heading toward a high degree of joint planning. Indian defence planners are proposing to ministry officials a new deterrence-oriented doctrine that restructures the Army, takes into account Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and attempts to avoid eye-to-eye confrontations with its troops. “The new doctrine, in short, says that we do not hit our adversary so hard as to invite a nuclear response,” said a senior Indian Defence Ministry planning official. He said the new doctrine would also shrink the Army, but declined to give details, citing its sensitivity. Ministry officials will decide within three months whether to approve the new doctrine, which was developed under the direction of Gen. Joginder Jaswant Singh, former Army Training Command Chief, who now heads the Army’s Western Command. Other ministry sources said the restructuring would: 1 Prompt a rethinking of acquisition priorities. 2 Integrate elements from the Navy, Air Force and the Army. 3 Aim to create Special Forces that could strike behind enemy lines. 4 Require better satellite communications and imagery, aerial and ground sensors, and night-vision devices. The restructuring also would reduce the fighting role of the three Strike Corps stationed in northern India, and turn them largely into training units, said a senior Army planning official. The doctrine calls for developing a deterrent ability to inflict greater punitive retaliation with nuclear and conventional arms. “Wars would be short, swift and limited against a nuclear background,” the ministry-planning official said. Military strategists must concede that a full-scale military conflict between India and Pakistan or China is no longer a viable option, because even a short conflict will attract quick international military intervention, said retired Indian Navy Vice Adm. Premveer Das. The doctrine aims to spend money more wisely. Funds would shift to precision-guided missiles, nuclear arsenals and delivery systems, smart weapons and digitisation, with Western help. “We will need to spend billions of dollars to change the Russian hardware into Western digital machines,” the Indian ministry official said. With a new government in saddle, it is hoped that the appointment of Chief of Defence Staff which is pending for the last three years in the files of Ministry of Defence will be a reality so that the Defence services become cohesive and the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) gets an Advisor for all Defence and national security matters rather than dealing with all the three service
chiefs. |
The village pond WE can never forgive ourselves for the apostasy we committed in the name of rural development. Taking the cue from the so-called progressive villages in the area the villages panchayat decided in all its wisdom to fill up the village pond which for centuries together had been a quintessential feature of the village culture and ecology. Like the sacred rivers it had its moods, its ups and downs, its beauty and ugliness, its stench and odour and yet it significantly represented the ethos which constituted the rural life for us. It was something as permanent as the Yamuna in Delhi and the Ganges in Benares and Patna. In summer it was known as the community swimming pool in which the villagers dived to get away from the scorching heat of the sun. It was something they enjoyed in fraternity with the village livestock which also took refuge in its cooling ambience. Nobody cared for the contagion that it could cause. It appeared to contain the sacred elixir with its purifying properties — something like the holy tanks associated with our places of worship. It put them through a sacramental ablution which was supposed to cure them of all ills or at least such was the invincible faith in its purity. The monsoons presented it in a less benign mood. Having swollen up to its brim it entered the streets and homes inhabiting its vicinity blocking the passages to the village. The chorus of frogs singing away to glory in full-throated voice enlivened the nights while the rains that inundated the pond also irrigated the parched fields. Those were the days when the ever-thirsty paddy was not in vogue in Punjab. The rains that used to come spelt prosperity for the farmer and he was all too willing to forget the diluvian discomforts caused by the pond. One cannot forget the Venetian experience of going through the watery streets in small “gondolas” that were set afloat to navigate through the ubiquitous waters. And now having filled up the pond we found that a quintessential feature of the village life with which our ancestors grew and lived had been destroyed. Along with it went away the beautiful swans and ducks which swam around its placid surface. The romance of the pond gave way to the prosaic sandy layer of the earth making everything drab and monotonous. The new generation was happy that with its disappearance there were fewer
mosquitoes and flies in the village but the older generation saw in it yet another onslaught on their pastoral habitat with a typical Hardyesque feeling of alienation growing out of
it. |
Punjab claims on SYL misleading
Before partition, the waters of the Ravi, the Beas and the Satluj were supposed to irrigate large tracts of present Pakistan also as the three rivers passed through Pakistan. After partition, India signed the Indus Water Treaty in 1960 with Pakistan to secure rights for unrestricted use of waters of the three rivers. In exchange, India had to abandon the right to use the waters of the Chenab and Jehlum rivers, besides paying 62.00 million pounds (a huge sum) to Pakistan for building alternative irrigation works. At that time, it was estimated that both the Ravi and Beas rivers had an annual flow of 19.3 maf. After cutting off Pakistan territory, this water was more than enough to irrigate the small area lying between the Ravi and Beas rivers. Hence it was calculated that 15.85 maf was surplus water from these two rivers which could be optimally used for irrigating the scarcity area of Rajasthan and Punjab. Hence an agreement was reached between the Govts. of Punjab, Rajasthan, PEPSU & J&K in 1955 which provided a flow of 0.65 maf to J&K, 5.9 maf to Punjab, 1.3 maf to PEPSU and 8.0 maf to Rajasthan after excluding the pre-partition use of 3.13 maf (19.3 - 15.85 - 0.32 as losses in transfer) water amongst these states. After the merger of PEPSU, the share of Punjab became 7.2 maf. At that time the surplus waters of the Ravi and the Beas flowed to the sea during the rainy season. Therefore, the Govt. Of India funded the Pong Dam, the Ranjit Sagar Dam, the Rajasthan Canal and the Beas-Satluj Link projects. This link provided for a transfer of 4.0 maf of the Beas water to the Satluj to run the right power plant of the Bhakra Dam. The share of Punjab (7.2 maf) had to be divided between Punjab & Haryana after the re-organisations of the states. The Govt. of India settled the dispute in 1976 by a notification u/s 78 of the Punjab Re-organisation Act 1966, allocating 3.5 maf to each state and 0.2 maf going to Delhi. Then came the Indira Gandhi Award 1981. This award simply recalculated the surplus water to 17.17 maf instead of 15.85 maf as calculated earlier and marginally increased the share of Punjab to 4.22 maf and Rajasthan’s to 8.6 maf. This award was followed by the Rajiv Gandhi - Sant Longowal Accord of 1985. The Eradi Tribunal was set up to further adjudicate the share of each state. The Tribunal gave its award in1987 to allocate 5.0 maf to Punjab and 3.83 maf to Haryana after discovering some additional flow of water downstream of storage dams. The rest is history. Given this background, the facts advanced by the Punjab Govt. in a recent advertisement in newspapers are misleading on the following grounds. 1. The three rivers i.e. Satluj, Ravi and Beas release an annual flow of 34.05 maf of water (Read Dr. K.L. Rao’s famous book India’s Water Wealth, pp 66) in a normal monsoon year. Even after allowing 10.3 (1.7 +8.6) maf to Rajasthan, 7.8 (4.3 + 3.5) maf to Haryana, 0.65 to J&K, Punjab is still left with 15.30 maf (20,000 cusecs for 365 days) which is more than sufficient for this state. 2. The main stance of the Punjab Chief Minister is that the amount of excess water available from these two rivers is 14.37 maf and not 17.17 maf. This difference of 15% is not an issue. If the flow is less or more than 17.17 maf in a particular year, then the share of each state can be reduced or increased proportionately. 3. The area of Punjab falling between the Ravi and Beas rivers covers only the four districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, and Hoshiarpur. Hence a flow of 4.22 maf over and above the pre-partition use of 3.72 maf is more than sufficient. Hence to say that the diversion of 1.92 maf (3.5 - 1.62) to Haryana will render 9 lakh acres barren is highly misleading. This is besides the fact that the yield from tubewells in these districts is very high and canal irrigation requirement is minimum. Also over-irrigation in Punjab with canal water has caused severe water-logging conditions in Bathinda, Ferozepur and Faridkot districts. These districts are virtually floating on water because of the close proximity of the watertable to the ground. 4. The contention of the Punjab Govt that Haryana and Rajasthan are not riparian states and so do not deserve any share in the Ravi-Beas waters is equally preposterous. Punjab is a riparian state only for using that amount of flow which is contributed by its land as run-off into these rivers. This is hardly 10 per cent of the total flow carried by the these rivers. The catchment area, which contributes 90 per cent of the flow, lies in Himachal Pradesh and is the property of Himachal Pradesh and the Govt. of India. This is also because of the facts that the three dams (Bhakra, Pong and Ranjit Sagar) along with vast storage reservoirs are also located in the territory of Himachal Pradesh and the cost of these mega projects was born by the Govt. of India. It is an irony that Himachal Pradesh is not getting royalty from the supply of irrigation water and power generation at the Bhakra, Pong and Ranjit Sagar
dams. What will happen if the Himachal Assembly passes an Act to get absolute right over the water and power generated at these dams? So on what grounds does Punjab lay its absolute claim to the ownership of the Ravi, Beas and Satluj waters? Haryana has a special claim on these waters because it was part of the erstwhile Punjab and so Haryana has been a riparian state up to 1966. Had Punjab not been divided in 1966, nobody would have objected to the construction of the SYL canal to irrigate the areas of present Haryana. Rajasthan has a right in the share because the command area in Pakistan has been cut off and the Govt. of India had paid 62 million pounds to Pakistan for this purpose. Punjab has not spent a penny in the development of these water resources. Therefore, Punjab is only a downstream beneficiary state like Haryana and Rajasthan and not a riparian one. According to Dr. K.L. Rao, an authority on water resources development, riparian cannot be the sole criteria for water allocation amongst the states. There are also Helsinki Rules which consider a number of factors in the allocation of water to different states. The real basis is the equidistribution of water considering the scarcity conditions of adjoining regions and extendability of irrigation facilities. There are many states without perennial rivers passing through them. Will these states remain without water for ever? The dictionary meaning of word riparian describes the rights of people inhabiting along the banks of a stream over the use of its water e.g. fishing in the stream. Therefore, the state boundary cannot become the riparian boundary. By abrogating the agreements, the Punjab Govt. has also forfeited its share of 4.22 maf. Now the distribution of this water should be conducted by the Govt. of India through the BBMB and there was no need to go to the Supreme Court. ————— The writer is a retired Engineer-in-Chief, Public Health, Haryana |
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Defence notes DESPITE India and Pakistan being firmly on course to hold peace talks to solve all contentious issues, the disturbing news is that the terrorist training camps are still operational in occupied Kashmir (PoK) from where regular attempts are made to push terrorists into India. The government recently said that despite India consistently asking Pakistan to put an end to cross-border infiltration and to dismantle the infrastructure of support to terrorism, Pakistan has been lending all help to terrorists. As a result, the government strategy for tackling cross-border infiltration consists of a multi-tiered arrangement which includes a forward tier of troop deployment assisted by surveillance devices and fencing along the Line of Control. MiG-21s to be phased out Although the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, recently defended the air safety record and the capabilities of the country’s frontline fighter aircraft MiG-21 by pointing to its accomplishments against the fighter aircraft from the US Air Force, a blueprint has already been made to phase out these aircraft in the coming few years. According to information furnished by the government recently in the Lok Sabha, the Indian Air Force is in the process of phasing out the MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-25 fighter aircraft depending upon the calendar/technical life of the aircraft. These aircraft will be phased out from the service between 2006 and 2017. But this would depend on the airworthiness of the aircraft. The upgraded MiG-21s, which form the frontline of the country’s air defence, could be the last to go. Not only has their life span been improved by regular upgrade but, the IAF has given special attention to them keeping in mind their safety record. Besides, by then the country would also have in its kitty not only the new SU-30 MKIs but also new Jaguars and Mirages. But the MiGs would be remembered for long in the IAF. Rajouri kids’ salaam For the 30 boys and girls of Rajouri district it was nothing less than a dream when they met President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam last week. The children, aged 13 to 17 years, were part of a 10-day Army-sponsored educational tour under ‘Operation Sadbhavna’ to Amritsar, Delhi, Chandigarh and Shimla. The children also visited the Air Force museum, India Gate and the Red Fort, besides having a joy ride on the metro rail. Test flights for ‘Nag’ The much delayed anti-tank missile “Nag” from the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s stable finally underwent two flight tests on June 10 and July 3 last. According to reports, the two test flights met all the mission objectives. During the first flight, the missile was guided to the target in a top attack mode using an Imaging Infra Red seeker and a direct hit to the target was achieved and during the second flight the warhead detonation sequence was successfully evaluated. According to the MoD, the ‘user trials’ for the anti-tank missile, which has been in the pipeline for years now, are planned by the end of this year and after that the missile system will enter the production phase. |
That man rightly deserves the appellation of the tranquil one, who has safely crossed the terrible forest of youth so full of curious incidents. — Sri Rama The immortal can be reached only by continuous acts of kindness; and perfection is accomplished by
compassion and charity. — The Buddha |
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THE SYL canal issue is very easy to solve but has been complicated by politics. The issue can be entrusted to a body of renowned engineers for a solution. Since the issue involves engineering details, most people do not understand the game played by politicians. The following facts should help put this issue in a right perspective.