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China flexes its muscles
Its claims beyond its borders violate a UN convention
G Parthasarathy

Chinese President Xi Jinping has got powers on national security issues akin to those exercised by Deng |
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symbolism of Emperor Akihito’s visit to Delhi and India's extraordinary gesture of the Monarch being personally received on arrival by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not have passed unnoticed in Beijing and other Asian capitals. The visit coincided with Beijing taking unprecedented steps to declare large areas beyond its land borders as an “Air Defence Identification Zone” (ADIZ), challenging the sovereign rights of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan over islands and reefs controlled by them. Under its new notification, China required all foreign powers to give prior notification of their aircraft — civilian and military — flying over the ADIZ, reinforced by the threat to scramble fighter aircraft to challenge any violations. These extraordinary measures by China, which are known to have followed years of internal discussions, were undertaken almost immediately after the Third Plenum of the Communist Party’s 18th Congress.The Communist Party Plenum put the seal of President Xi Jinping’s virtually unchallenged leadership. Apart from populist measures like doing away with the one-child policy, eliminating repressive labour camps and providing relief to migrant labour, strong anti-corruption measures were promised together with removing government control over the allocation of resources. But perhaps the most significant announcement was the establishment of an apex national security committee under President Xi, which gives him powers on national security issues akin to those exercised by Deng Xiao Ping. Deng wielded these powers when China was relatively weak economically and militarily and had to follow his wise advice: “Hide your strength and bide you time”. The Deng era has been followed by an economically vibrant and militarily robust China flexing its muscles across its entire neighbourhood. Having added an aircraft carrier to its fleet to project power, China clearly intends to expand its reach across the Pacific and Indian oceans, defining its maritime frontiers unilaterally in the South China Sea under its “Nine Dotted Line”. It has militarily seized the Paracel islands from Vietnam and asserted claims of sovereignty on the Spratly islands, overriding objections from the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. It has used force to seize the Mischief Reef, located barely 51 km from the Philippines and 590 km from its Hainan island. China’s extraordinary claims on its maritime borders do not conform to the provisions of the UN Convention of the Laws of the Seas. China’s assertion of its ADIZ has been challenged by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The US has challenged the legality of the ADIZ by sending unarmed B 52 bombers into the zone. But US commercial aircraft have been advised to observe China’s requirements. Japan and South Korea have, however, refused to comply with the Chinese demands. The Chinese threats of overflying the disputed Senkaku islands have been have been met by Japan scrambling F15 fighters. The South Koreans proclaimed: “We expressed deep regret and reaffirmed our jurisdictional rights to the waters surrounding the (submerged rock) Leodo, which would not be affected by the neighbouring State’s air defence zones”. The Chinese announcement of its ADIZ has exacerbated the existing dispute with South Korea over fishing rights in the Yellow Sea. Vice President Biden expressed his solidarity with allies Japan and South Korea over China’s border claims during his visits to Tokyo and Seoul. The US has also sent P 8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol aircraft to Japan. China’s aim is clearly to get Japan to accept that the Senkaku islands are disputed territories. According to the well-informed Hong Kong-based Asia Weekly, China sees its maritime boundary in the East China Sea as stretching from the southernmost Japanese island towards the East Coast of Taiwan and joining the South China Sea. China is now clearly seeking unchallenged access to the Pacific Ocean. In 2009 the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Timothy Keating, told Indian interlocutors that one of his Chinese counterparts had suggested to him that when China acquired aircraft carriers, the US should leave maritime security responsibilities in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans to be handled by the Chinese navy, with the US confining itself to security of the Eastern Pacific. Even as Japan and others facing security challenges from China are upgrading their defence, India’s defence spending this year has reached an estimated all-time low of 1.79 per cent of the GDP. Even as the Chinese build their communication networks across their borders with India and across Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan, our armed forces take days to reach the outer periphery of our borders. Our Army is woefully short of mountain artillery, the under-strength Air Force desperately needs Multi Role Combat Aircraft and the Navy is equipped with an aging and obsolescent submarine fleet. Essential reforms to our archaic defence structures recommended by the Naresh Chandra Task Force around 18 months ago remain unimplemented. Sadly, South Block has no dearth of apologists for China's policies who have even sought to downplay Chinese transgressions in Chumar in the Ladakh sector. These continuing intrusions have crossed the Karakoram Range, the great watershed that separates China from the subcontinent. They have been accompanied by Chinese claims to the whole of Arunachal Pradesh, reiterated recently to protest the visit of President Pranab Mukherjee to the state. P Stopdan, who hails from Ladakh, recently voiced serious concerns about the Chinese ingress into the region. After explaining how the Ladakh-Tibetan border was defined in the Ladakh-Tibet Treaty of Tingmosgang in 1684, Stopdan has dwelt on how Chinese territorial claims have grown in Ladakh ever since 1956. He has drawn attention to how China dealt with its borders with its Central Asian neighbours. He notes that China purports to give “concessions” without actually giving an inch of territory. He adds: “The Chinese will have a maximum claim and then they will settle for (what purports to be) the minimum territory. They will present it as a win-win situation to all parties, but in essence usurp what is far more than their legitimate claim”. Referring to negotiations with Kazakhstan Stopden notes: “After the Soviet Union collapsed, China settled for a third of the territories it claimed, the claim itself being maximalist with little basis”. Overawed by the Chinese, the Kazakhs were forced to give assurances of non-interference from their soil and part with 60 per cent of their vast oil resources to the Chinese. China follows the advice of its Chanakya, Sun Tzu, who proclaimed: “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence”. Our brilliant negotiators, forever apologetic about Chinese intrusions and claims, would be well advised to study Chanakya’s Arthashastra on statecraft.
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Everything is in a name
Harish Dhillon
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cannot call myself a Shakespeare devotee, but in the course of my academic career, I have studied and taught a sufficient number of his plays to be an admirer. Like many others, I always believed that everything in Shakespeare was the gospel truth. So when Romeo says: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”I couldn’t agree more. But recently I have had to revise my opinion. Stray memories of experiences over the years came together and I realised that Shakespeare was not always infallible. Many years ago, I was on a visit to my friend Khurshid in Calcutta and he took me out to dinner to a lovely restaurant, which I believe has since closed down, The Sky Room, on Park Street. He persuaded me to try a cocktail called Field Marshal.
“Why is it called Field Marshal?” I asked. He smiled a non-committal smile and made no answer. But a few hours later when we came out onto the now deserted road, he said: “Just stand there and watch me walking down”. He walked with purposeful and authoritative steps.. Then he turned around and asked, “What did I look like?” The answer came immediately and clearly: “A senior army officer.” The cocktail could not have come under any other name. In the 80s I was spending a few days in Raksham and was invited by a retired forest officer, Sunil Negi, to dinner. He served me a lovely local brew. As I took the first sip I asked him what it was. He said it was called ‘ghainti’. “Why ‘ghainti’?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and said it was just a local name. But later when he walked me to the rest house, he asked me how I felt. I told him I could hear bells ringing in my ears — ‘tan, tan’. No name other than ‘ghainti’ could have described this amber-coloured liquid so aptly. On similar lines I believe there is a local brew in Rajasthan called ‘Pari’. I have never sampled it but I am told that two pegs of this, make you feel so light headed that you are convinced you have grown wings and can fly through the air. On the flip side, there is the experience with a scotch called ‘Kuch Nahin’. Punjabi NRIs have a funky sense of humour. Most visitors, when asked what they would like to drink, say “Kuch Nahin”. The NRIs have had a scotch specially created with that name. So now when you say “Kuch Nahin”, you are served this scotch and you cannot refuse to drink it because it is what you asked for! This is a hilarious situation and has proved to be a source of great delight for NRIs. Unfortunately, like the other liquors that I have talked about, this too lives up to its name. Even after four large pegs that is exactly what you feel: “Kuch
Nahin”!
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Generating power from paddy straw
Biomass power plants are the best solution to deal with the problem of paddy-straw burning. With multiple objectives of power generation, added income for farmers and employment generation in rural areas, the plants can stop the practice.
Bikram Singh Virk

Despite a ban, the burning of paddy straw continues in Punjab. An acre of paddy yields around 2.5 tonnes of straw, which could translate into an income of around Rs 3,000 an acre to a farmer. |
Burning
wheat and paddy straw in fields after harvest is a perennial phenomenon in Punjab, leading to large-scale pollution. Despite prohibitory law and appeals from environmentalists, the practice continues unabated. In a hurry to prepare fields for the next crop, farmers see it as the easiest and cost-effective solution. However, paddy stubble, unlike that of wheat, is neither good fodder nor fuel. It is thick, has heavy moisture content and does not burn easily. The smoke covers the sky for weeks.Biomass power plants in Punjab, which have started using paddy straw to generate power, are an effective solution to this problem. Though paddy straw is not a perfect fuel as biomass to be used singularly, it is mixed up to 30 per cent with other dry stuff and burnt in boilers. It has good burning properties, with a calorific value ranging between 2,700 and 2,800 against 3,500-3,700 found in cotton sticks, ‘arhar’ and ‘sarson’ residue, which are considered best for the purpose. With this amount of energy, 1.75 kg paddy straw is capable of producing one unit of electricity, which sells for Rs 6-7. Biomass energy The Malwa Power Plant at Gulabewala village in Muktsar district started this practice about four years ago. This year, it has purchased around 55,000 tonnes of paddy straw — covering nearly 20,000 acres — from nearby villages at a price of Rs 1,200 per tonne. As a result, no farmer in the area has burned paddy straw. An acre of paddy yields around 2.5 tonnes of straw, which translates into additional income of around Rs 3,000 an acre to a farmer. The gathering of paddy straw from the field is a mechanical process, requiring three tractor-driven machines for cutting, lining, gathering and making bales. Farmers generally use reaper to further cut down standing stubble to make it combustible after it has been dried in the sun. A tractor owner with a raking machine and baler gathers 25 to 30 tonnes of paddy straw worth Rs 25,000 to 30,000 from 10 to 12 acres of fields in a day and earns a net profit of Rs 3 to 4 lakh during the paddy season, which lasts for six weeks. To promote the use of paddy straw, the government is offering 50 per cent subsidy on baler and reaper. The venture is fairly profitable with a payback period of three to four years for farmers and even others who can invest and earn extra income from collecting and selling paddy straw. Profitable venture Punjab has six biomass power plants with an installed capacity of 52 MW. Another 11 with a combined capacity of 145 MW are under construction. With an area of nearly 28 lakh hectares under paddy, the state produces and burns nearly 175 lakh tonnes of paddy straw worth Rs 2,100 crore every year. If biomass plants are set up, the straw can generate 10 billion units of electricity worth Rs 6,000 crore every year and add 1,500 MW to the existing capacity in the state. Thus, a gain of nearly Rs 8,100 crore can accrue if straw is not burned. Transporting and using paddy straw is possible in the radius of 20 to 25 km around power plants. Beyond that it becomes economically unviable due to higher transportation costs. The state needs to set up biomass power plants in clusters of 50 to 60 villages. The investment in the sector can be encouraged by offering lucrative power purchase agreements. Already the players in the biomass sector are from the private sector and they can be further encouraged to bring in investment in other parts of the state. The other side The biomass sector has its own woes. Post-clean development mechanism (CDM) regime, where carbon credits were given to non-polluting power producers and fetched extra income, the only source of revenue for this sector was proceeds from power sale. The state’s power purchase agreement (PPA) with the biomass sector at Rs 3.49 per unit made them economically unprofitable and some of them were on the verge of closure. After the introduction of a new policy in December 2012, the PPA rates were raised to Rs 5.31 per unit, making them viable, but a lot needs to be done to promote investment in the sector. This rate is far lower than Rs 8.5 per unit that is given to solar power producers. Another factor in favour of such plants is the generation of large-scale indirect self-employment in rural areas. Apart from 100 direct employees, a 6 MW power plant ‘indirectly’ employs nearly 8,000 to 10,000 people who are engaged in collecting and transporting biomass from various sources to the plants. There is hardly any economic model of such a small size that is capable of generating large-scale employment for unskilled rural masses. —
The writer is Associate Professor, PG Department of
Commerce, NJSA Government College, Kapurthala.
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