Jessica Alba From British GQ
via egotastic.com
A waterways authority official said a fresh detailed project report was important because the last techno-economic feasibility study was done about a decade back and much of the data might have changed. The hydrographic survey was done in 1991 and the Rail India Technical Economic Services (RITES) conducted a techno-economic feasibility study in 1998.
“The declaration of Barak river as a national waterway is already in process. However, this is expected to be declared only during 2010-11 or 2011-12,” the official said.
Of the total length of 900-km Barak river, 524km is in India and the rest in Bangladesh. A majority of Lakhipur stretch is in the hilly terrain and is not navigable. Only 121km of the river in India is navigable.
The new study will examine the cargo potential for inland water transport through the proposed waterway. The reports will be compared to the Techno-economic Feasibility Study Report 1991 of RITES, and accordingly traffic surveys will be conducted to update the study. The study will also provide traffic projections of five, 10 and 15 years.
“The study will provide the origin and destination of each identified cargo along with the source,” the official said.
The experts will analyse past 20 years’ data on water level, discharge, velocity, bed and bank material and also reports of Central Water Commission, Brahmaputra Board, state departments concerned, National Remote Sensing Agency and Survey of India on topography of the Barak.
The experts will recommend suitable freight structures for inland water transport after studying the existing freight and tariff structure for rail, road and inland water transport.
“The study should suggest charges for using the waterway, terminals and other facilities, which can be levied by the Inland Waterways Authority of India on the operators without adversely affecting the commercial viability of inland water transport operations,” the official said.
A division bench comprising justices I A Ansari and A C Upadhaya granted the conditional bail considering his health condition, said M S Chauhan, head of the Special Investigation Cell investigating the case.
Apang was directed not to leave the station without permission of the court and to cooperate with the SIC, he said.
Apang was arrested on August 24 by the SIC in the PDS scam case.
He was remanded in police custody for 14 days which ended on September 7. The court then extended his judicial remand till October 11 after rejecting his bail plea nine times.
The security safeguards for the J&K service area will be applicable to Assam and North East on an experimental basis for six months.
The biggest blow has come from the 15,000-odd multi-brand mobile stores who’ve refused to play ball with the telcos. Under the new regulations, all multi-brand mobile outlets in Assam and the northeastern states must give a legal undertaking to the telcos accepting full responsibility for acceptance and verification of all pre-activation documents/photo IDs. A majority have refused to comply, affecting new customer acquisitions in the region.
In a normal month, as many as 30,000 new activations a day happen in these states. That crashed to below 10,000 in the first week of October and is likely to get worse when verification intensifies and state-owned BSNL also implements the new rules.
Mobile phone companies have a clutch of dedicated customer outlets of their own, but the outlets remain largely confined to urban pockets. The suburban areas and the vast Assam and northeastern countryside do not have the distribution reach and rely largely on the legion of multi-brand mobile stores scattered across the region. Such stores are important for the telecom companies because real growth is happening beyond the urban zones. Since the telecom department has made it mandatory for mobile phone companies to sell new mobile connections in this region only through authorised franchisees, they have no choice but to ink legal business relationship agreements with all multi-brand retail stores.
“A majority of the multi-brand mobile retail points are unwilling to enter into legal business relationship agreements with the telcos as they are averse to taking responsibility for acceptance and verification of all pre-activation documents in the region,” said an RCOM official with direct knowledge of the matter.
“This has resulted in a massive decline in new activations in Assam and across the Northeast in the first week of October. The decline is nearly 60% to 70%. We’ve communicated this to the government and hope the DoT will come up with a solution,” the official, who did not want to be named, said.
Sources at Bharti Airtel and Aircel also said that many multi-brand telecom stores are yet to sign business relationship agreements.
“We are doing our best to convince them that this is a DoT direction in step with the new telecom security regulations. We fear it will take some time for these outlets to understand the gravity of the exercise,” an official said.
Under the new DoT rules, people in Assam and Northeast will not be able to buy new cellphone connections on the basis of electricity bills, caste/domicile certificates or even photo-IDs attested by MPs/MLAs and Group A officers. Instead, they will have to furnish a passport, an arms licence, a CGHS (central government health service) card, a driving licence, PAN card or a voter ID issued by the Election Commission.
The meeting that was earlier scheduled on October 30, was postponed because of the Ayodhya judgement that was delivered on the same day. The inter-ministerial meeting is likely to be attended by representatives of Ministries of Power, Water Resources, Environment and Forest among others, official sources confirmed.
The proposed meeting has evoked much interest because of a letter purportedly written by Union Minister of State for Environment and Forest, Jairam Ramesh to the Prime Minister, virtually endorsing the stand taken by those agitating against the ‘mega dam’ in Arunachal Pradesh.
A national newspaper on Friday reported the contents of the letter, which questions the manner in which some of the hydel projects in the neighbouring State were cleared, besides raising alarm over the hydropower projects in Bhutan. Jairam Ramesh has called for a “moratorium on any further clearances for hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh” since “these are bound to be the subject of agitation” in Assam, besides review of all sanctioned projects in Arunachal Pradesh.
The letter was part of the follow-up action taken by Jairam Ramesh after his much-publicised tour of the State of September 16, when he had met members of the NGOs, civil society, experts and representatives of the public sector undertakings.
The “feeling in vocal sections of Assam’s society particularly appears to be that ‘mainland India’ is exploiting the North-east hydel resources for its benefits”, he reported to the Prime Minister.
He further linked up the issue with the ensuing Assembly election in Assam. “Even leaving aside elections, these issues are important in themselves and merit our serious consideration. Personally, I believe that some of the concerns that were expressed cannot be dismissed lightly,” he wrote.
“What I could assure the audience, of course, is that for projects not yet started, we will carry out cumulative environmental impact assessment studies as well as comprehensive biodiversity studies,” the letter reportedly said.
There should be a “moratorium on any further clearances for hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh” until downstream impact assessment studies, cumulative environment impact assessment studies and biodiversity impact studies are completed, he suggested.
The 135 dams of different capacities being planned in Arunachal Pradesh “are being given green signal” without carrying out these studies, he apprised the Prime Minister.
These MoUs signed with the knowledge of the Central Government have not taken on board the concerns of the people of Assam. “The Government of Assam should be a party to these MoUs, especially where downstream impacts are significant”.
Award of projects in Arunachal Pradesh to different companies in the same river basin is making the “task of environment impact assessment very difficult”, the Minister claimed.
The 1750 MW Lower Demwe hydel project on the Lohit river “should not be given forest clearance, although environmental clearance has already been given for the project” because of the downstream impact of this project on Assam, Ramesh said.
The entire approach to dams in the North-east “needs to be looked afresh” and factors such as “high seismicity and rich biodiversity have not been adequately considered by Government of India” before granting clearances, he opined.
The Environment and Forest Minister expressed concern over mega projects in Bhutan like the Kurichhu dam and Mangdechhu hydel project. Environmental impact of hydel projects in Bhutan need to be “studied better”.
Ramesh’s letter is similar to the assurance he had given in the Parliament on August 9, when he said his Ministry would not allow any project, which would have an adverse ecological impact.
“Under no circumstances, we will allow any project which will have an adverse ecological impact. That much I want to assure,” he had stated.
Ramesh had though indicated that all projects may not be scrapped, though efforts will be made to minimise the downstream impact citing the case of Subansiri downstream hydroelectric project.
By Aveek Sen
Athletes at the Commonwealth Games Village.
New Delhi, Oct 9 : The air is changing in Delhi. I got off the gleaming new HOHO (Hop On, Hop Off) bus, ushered out by a liveried Commonwealth Games volunteer from the Northeast (perhaps ‘hoho’ meant something else to him).
I found myself in front of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in the middle of Lutyens’s Delhi. It was lovely to linger on the pavement with its pruned hedges and feel that nip in the air. This must be how Lady Mountbatten felt on a fine morning in Delhi with nothing particular to do.
Suddenly, I sensed a collective, uniformed gaze fixed on me. There were as many policemen at the NGMA’s Gate No. 3 as there were at the main entrance to the Jama Masjid on the day of the verdict.
One policeman walked up to me and asked if I was waiting for somebody. No, I said, quickly switching from lingering to purposive, I want to go into the museum.
As I walked across the garden towards the New Wing, there were tribal dancers leaping into the air while playing their drums to sarkari malis crouching on the grass with their backs to them, a gaggle of volunteers in their Reebok gear, and a couple of press photographers. In their regulation tribal wear (satin dhoti, sequined jacket, headgear and makeup), they looked like shreds of the laser-and-helium opening ceremony, ballooned out of a fantastical India and dropped into the light of common day.
After another round of security checks, I got to the first of the many exhibitions inside. It was of Company paintings from the museum’s collection and, in a few minutes, I found exact counterparts among the paintings of the policemen, malis and dancers who were outside, down to the last detail of expression and attire.
Looking at the faces and persons of these colonial subalterns hanging in the museum, with their docile eyes and bowed heads, the vague discomfort I’d been feeling over the last few days became clearer to me.
In a city made and remade for wealth, spectacle, protocol and power, a certain, seemingly timeless, form of servility comes naturally to the ordinary (and less than ordinary) hordes who serve Delhi’s unending flow of important people with capitally insecure egos.
The staff in my guesthouse, the drivers who take me round the city, the security men who guard all day and night the many gates of this neurotically gated city, the odd-jobs men who shuffle about in vast numbers in libraries, museums, embassies, secretariats and ministries —all seem to use, especially when spoken to in English, that little word, “sir”, in tones and gestures I have seldom encountered in any other Indian city.
Standing amid the art and architecture, with the drumming and dancing going on outside, the grandest of vistas and avenues opening up all around, and the roofs of the state-of-the-art Games venues showing above the treetops like distant peaks, I realised how much of Delhi was built and rebuilt to make people feel physically small in relation to heights and distances that create their own structures of dream-like inaccessibility.
During an event like the Commonwealth Games, therefore, a strange contradiction, at once architectural and political, begins to dog the city. Delhi is left with the unenviable task of having to create a festive, welcoming, fairground spirit within a physical and cultural infrastructure that is founded on inequality and exclusion — on keeping people out rather than letting them in.
As you speed down a wonderful new road or flyover, you are invited to look endlessly ahead. But if you look left or right, colourful screens of plex might prevent you from seeing what you are not meant to see.
At its most spruced up and modernised, and with something like the Metro providing high-calibre (though not low-cost) mobility, today’s Delhi cannot quite decide what to do with its feudal and imperial past when trying to project itself to the world as a 21st-century democracy. And trying to do this in the name of an archaic and politically dodgy piece of fiction like the Commonwealth doesn’t help.
Watching the Prince and the President sitting together, like Prospero and Miranda, above the stream of nations and territories processing merrily below them, some with names that are more flavours than names (Antigua & Barbuda, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Tristan da Cunha, Turks & Caicos Islands), I found myself slipping into a sort of pre-political-correctness, a New World stupor: even the parading of the Hottentot Venus wouldn’t have surprised me then.
Yet, this merriment was also, and as delightfully, about cheering India’s emergence into the post-everything world, watched over by the global balloon that was at once Tree of Knowledge and Mushroom Cloud.
Inside the NGMA, as I explored the labyrinth of art —good, bad and indifferent —hung pell-mell to tell the story of Indian modernism, I slowly began to feel strange presences around me.
Flocks of dressed-up “tribals” had entered the gallery, looking unreal, exhausted and lost. Bored with the lack of audiences and sweating in their costumes, they wandered listlessly among the Benode Beharis, Sher-Gils and Ravi Vermas. I asked one group where they were from, as we stood surrounded by immense painted posters of Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Nutan and Vyjayanthimala.
“Konkani, Konkani!” they giggled at me, before a guard came and whisked them away in a trice.
But I met them again at the entrance to Charles Correa’s Crafts Museum in Pragati Maidan. This time, they were standing so still in the twilight among the terracotta statues and Bishnupuri horses that I wondered for a moment if they were a diorama. They had been brought in to decorate the reception being hosted by the Australians around an exhibition of clothes and textiles, called Power Clothes of the Commonwealth, put together during the Melbourne Games.
It showed Queen Victoria’s diamond-jubilee gloves and the khadi blanket gifted to Reginald Reynolds by Gandhi. Draped around tailor’s dummies were a shawl worn by Gandhi, a jacket worn by Nehru, and Nelson Mandela’s Madiba shirt next to a Zulu king’s headdress.
The way out was through a courtyard with a fake, unmanned paan-bidi shop in one corner and craftsmen selling their stuff in sheds that were part of an abandoned model village.
I wondered what to do if I met the living diorama again. I had avoided meeting their eyes while coming in, feeling embarrassed for myself and for them. Should I smile at them this time — or keep pretending they did not exist?
The event, Implementation of suspension of operation agreement and way ahead for lasting peace, was organised by 27 sector Assam Rifles, which operates under the command of the 57 Mountain Division, at its headquarters here.
This is the first time that the security forces have brought together leaders of suspension of operation agreement signatories, community leaders and commanders of security units, after the tripartite agreement was signed on August 22, 2008, to discuss the implementation of the agreement ground rules.
Though all the three groups had different perspectives, everyone agreed on the need to work towards achieving the goal of peace and development, and a lasting solution to the Kuki issue.
“It was a good and fruitful beginning. We expect more of such interactions in the near future so that all misunderstandings can be cleared and a solution can be worked out through political talks,” Maman Cicilia, a member of Churachandpur district council, told this correspondent after the programme was over.
Bishop Mung agreed that such interactions would bring security forces, civilians and signatories closer, and ensure better understanding among the parties involved.
“As far as the signatories are concerned, the peace process has been proceeding smoothly. As the time has come for political leaders to step into the political process, we are organising the programme to take views of the people,” general officer commanding, 57 Mountain Division, major general D.S. Hooda said.
While the security forces want the involvement of the public to usher in lasting peace and the public leaders want extortion and intimidation to stop, the leaders of the militant groups want the Centre to solve the Kuki issue within the framework of the Constitution.
“We seek political settlement of the Kuki issue within the framework of the Constitution. We are looking forward to such a settlement,” T.S. Haokip, the convenor of the Joint Monitoring Group of the Kuki National Organisation said while addressing the programme. United Peoples Front spokesperson Sanga Hmar also spoke on the occasion.
The signatories belonging to the Kuki community are grouped under two umbrella bodies — KNO and UPF.
The participants also expressed concerned about safety of villagers residing near the designated camps.
Government officials, citizen leaders, academics and church leaders were happy that the residents of sthe district were finally getting a taste of peace, after nearly two decades of militancy.
