VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 196 Date: 10.04.2017
Contents:
1. Nitin Gadkari As A Peddler of Dreams
2. Rejecting EVM's Will Be A Retrograde Step & Bring Down India's Image In The World
3. India Continues To Look For Hand-Me-Downs In Nuclear Energy Which By Itself Is An Unnecessary Initiative
4. Handling The Aussies Better Steven Smith Et Al
Nitin Gadkari As A Peddler of Dreams
Nitin Gadkari should be re-designated as a peddler of dreams with his latest proposal of installing a ropeway from Mormugao to Mopa with the ostensible purpose of connecting Dabolim air passengers to Goa's latest international airport which still remains in the draft stage and one never know whether it will at all see the light of day. Gadkari by his very nature is adept at flying kites to audiences which readily buys into his logic. In the ropeway instance being up in the air, there is very much the possibility of flying kites from the ropeway! One thing that Gadkari does not realise is that Goa has recently seen the return of another 'peddler of dreams' in the form of Manohar Parrikar. Gadkari himself had no little hand in this event and was party in overturning the verdict of the people which had given the larger number of seats to the Congress. Thus we have one too many of the 'peddlers of dreams' for a small State like Goa whose people are content and happy with their simple lives and do not dream much but to have a life where their livelihood, ethos and culture is protected. Coming back to the ropeway proposed by Gadkari, one wishes that some kind of a technical feasibility was made before he went public with his idea. Simply put anything up in the air will be costly than anything created on the ground like an expressway and also by the forces of gravity there is every chance it coming to the ground to face its hard reality or destiny, one can say. We will all remember the celebrated Skybus project which Manohar Parrikar at that time widely touted and the State Govt. went and funded the project mooted by V Rajaram of the Konkan Railway Corporation. It did not take long for the Skybus to come crashing down and for its infrastructure built near Madgaon station to be ordered for demolition burning the Goa Govt. for its investment. The reason for the failure of the Skybus project was that no techno-economic feasibility by independent authorities was done. Similarly the ropeway project from Mormugao to Mopa would fail on economic considerations while another proposed ropeway project in Panjim to connect Campal to Reis Magos will fail on safety considerations since the high winds particularly during the monsoons will curtail its operations and it will become a fair weather project. Yet another harebrained idea was mooted by Parrikar before he was called up at the Centre was to make a tunnel to connect Verem to Candolim and the beach belt that would run through a hill in the area which also has not been tested for technical feasibility but clearly fails to put Goa on the tourist map since where we should have our tourists seeing from the open nature's bounty that has been bestowed on Goa, we burrow them underground maybe to be buried in soft laterite stone like the many accidents that the Konkan Railway Corporation has encountered in its many years of operation. Thus it is recommended that in this modern day and age peddlers of dreams should at least get past the first pass of technical and economic feasibility before they announce their dreams to remain credible.
Rejecting EVM's Will Be A Retrograde Step & Bring Down India's Image In The World
When Charan Singh became Prime Minister albeit for a short span of time, a Union Budget was presented which touted the essential nature of the bullock cart to the Indian economy and gave a benefit to those that fitted rubber surrounds to the wooden bullock cart wheels and/or used rubber tyres thus making the burden of the bullock lighter when it pulls the cart. This measure was seen with great amusement in both political and economic circles and it was widely commented that Charan Sigh was leading India backwards to the bullock cart age. The same thing is being done now by the 16 parties that met the Election Commission and demanded that EVM's should not be used in any further elections more so in the upcoming Delhi municipal elections and those in Gujarat shortly. As has been said this demand is being made by the losers in the elections while neglecting that some of their own candidates did win in the recent Assembly elections including those held in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and in fact technically the BJP lost in both Goa and Manipur. Thus there seems to be no basis for this short-sighted demand to withdraw the EVM's. The Election Commission has clarified that the EVM's are not tamperable and considering that they do not use any wireless technologies and are also not connected to the Internet there is no possibility of the EVM's being hacked. This advice seems to have fallen on deaf ears of those political parties who seem to mistakenly believe that using the good old ballot paper will improve their chances of winning the elections. These parties have also quoted that Western countries 6 out of 8 have gone back to ballot papers after having tried electronic voting. There is no merit in this claim since we have to assess what we use rather than look for references of what others use and/or discard. The truth of the matter is that electronic voting was tried out by several of the Western countries based on connected computer terminals which was susceptible to hacking and in some countries the law necessitated that you should use ballot paper which legal statute none of the political parties had deemed it necessary to be amended before electronic voting was used. Thus electronic voting resulted in an illegal election. The UN had recommended the use of EVM's in all elections including its own internal elections after evaluating it but the Western nations scuppered the chances of use of EVM's because it was not something designed by them but by a country like India. At this instance the UN took the path of least resistance and recommended its use for elections in the emerging new democracies in Africa. Some of these countries even witnessed demonstrations of the EVM's and tried them out. As late as end of March 2017 the Russian government had evinced interest in EVM's which news was reported in the Indian press. If EVM's are dispensed with in the upcoming elections then we will be showing the limited mindset of our political class. We will also succumb to goonda raj in our future elections and one will see widespread booth capturing. Is this what the Opposition parties want? Do they want to prove that their might is right which one predicts will end up as a bloody war and many loss of lives in these times of explosive sentiments. Discarding the EVM will be a retrograde step which is a proven technology and truly Indian. If accepted this measure will take India back to the Dark Ages a la Charan Singh who at least was not very wrong with bullock carts considering that 70% of India still lives in the rural areas and the bullock cart remains the vehicle of choice of transporting at least goods in our villages.
India Continues To Look For Hand-Me-Downs In Nuclear Energy Which By Itself Is An Unnecessary Initiative
News coming out of the US is that the nuclear energy industry giant, Westinghouse is the latest to file for bankruptcy proceedings considering that this sector has been seeing massive setbacks with major projects mostly in the American South going into huge overruns running into billions of dollars and negative public sentiment about nuclear projects in the US with the background of accidents at Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl. India's nuclear energy plans are linked with all the countries in which the above named places are located. The first being the US with whom the Indo-US Nuclear treaty is in limbo in which uncertain scenario the US government has been trying to push the Westinghouse reactors into India for its nuclear energy program possibly to save the Co. from shutting down completely. Westinghouse being a Toshiba Co., Japan is involved in the deal and their Prime Minister during his last visit to India was making the right noises to push the business through. Even in Japan as a consequence of the Fukushima disaster where leaks have been reported as late as last month and with concerns of resettlement of people in the vicinity still dominating the public dialogue there is widespread public resentment towards the deploying of any more nuclear reactors. In summary what the US and Japan are doing is just as in the colonial days and thereafter also in the name of free trade, they are trying to dump the risky and unsafe reactors in India by Cos. which will be going out of business. India would then be saddled holding the sack of outdated and faulty equipment. As for Russia, we all know that equipment coming from that country which India has used in the steel industry and also nuclear energy are not technologically of the same class as the West but are sturdy and functional to perform to desired levels of operational efficiency. Even in terms of economic assessment of performance, the Russians are proven at the 800MW capacity reactors while the other vendors have moved up in excess of 1000MW and some to 1600/1700MW. This has a direct relationship to the unit rate for the power tariff, the larger reactors being able to give a lower rate. Thus the Russians are delivering a category of reactor which is somewhat behind that of the West in technology terms but gives no improved guarantee of safe operation. We also need to remember that Chernobyl remains the most grievous nuclear accident in the history of nuclear energy and what is more important is that Russia is not deploying any more new reactors in their own country but is concentrating on export to countries like India. Thus the Russian approach is no different of sending out their reactors for trial to India and others and then maybe consider using them in their own country. Looking at these scenarios of nuclear energy worldwide where there is a definite aversion in terms of use of this form of energy why India should go in for it is something that needs to be explained clearly by our government. We have the third largest reserves of coal in the world which may be having a large ash content but we can still burn this to generate electricity in the modern plants available today which have the ability to use it and also limit environmental pollution. Then we are a sunshine rich country and with the prices of solar power should we not consider using that for our power needs. Again wind power is fast becoming popular with unit costs of generation dropping and with our vast coastline and hilly terrain we have the potential to generate huge amounts of wind power, another safe and clean option for generating electricity. When all this is available our government continues to hanker for nuclear energy where again we have to import a large part of the fuel since domestic production is minimal and we have the added policy constraint of signing up for the NPT (Nuclear Proliferation Treaty) without which the fuel will not be supplied to Indi and neither would India be accepted as a member of the NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group). The moral of the story is simple. Use your own and become independent in terms of energy security with a similar or lower carbon footprint rather than beg others for things that you do not possess making your own energy security uncertain and fragile.
Handling The Aussies Better Steven Smith Et Al
The war of words between Virat Kohli and the Australian cricket establishment including the sports scribes from there seems just after the India – Australia series seemed to show no signs of ending. We had the Aussie ex-cricketers and coaches joining in with Mark Taylor, Dean Jones and David Lloyd pitching in with their two bits of advice to Kohli which was quite unnecessary. The problem with all 'ex's' is the need to remain in the news and that is possibly why this trio had weighed in on the issue. We in India never learn how to tackle the Western community in terms of a public relations exercise. We should have handled the Steven Smith incident of looking at the pavilion for advice prior to a DRS referral purely on factual evidence and not fallen for the 'brain fade' claim by Smith. Further BCCI after having filed a complaint with the ICC, there was no need to withdraw the same after a meeting with the CA CEO Sutherland and that too without the presence of both the captains involved in the incident. We need to understand that the West in the first instance tries to defuse a situation more so when they are in the wrong and makes sure that there no legal loose ends remaining. That is why the charm offensive against the BCCI to withdraw the complaint which trap our one-legged BCCI, these days, fell for. Hardly had this meeting got over and on the very next day Sutherland started picking on Kohli once again. Additionally we again fell for Smith's ploy in apologising for his conduct in the series at the last press conference and an unconditional pardon was given to him by all including by even the redoubtable and plain-speaking Sunil Gavaskar who is no great fan of the Aussies having once threatened to walk out of a Test match Down Under. It must have been the euphoria of winning the Test series and India having regained the No. 1 spot in Test cricket. And what do the Aussies do, instead of being gracious have their ex-cricketers and their press call our captain Kohli names! It is time we understood how to handle these countries like Australia and England on any matter and also on the playing field is that to stick to the letter and spirit of the law and the rules of the game and ask for a fair judgment. Otherwise they will continue to slander and make our players like Kohli the 'bad guy' while actually the offender was Steven Smith who has got off on the 'brain fade' ploy and a faceless apology which conduct is a shame for a 26-27 year old adult.
*********************************
No comments:
Post a Comment