India to expand polar research to Arctic as well

Three decades after its first mission to Antarctica, the government is refocusing priorities to the other pole — the Arctic — because of opportunities and challenges posed by climate change.

This month, it has renamed the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) — since 1998, charged with conducting expeditions to India’s base stations to the continent — as the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research. It’s also in talks with Canada and Russia, key countries with presence in the Arctic circle, to establish new observation systems, according to a source. Now, India only has one Arctic observation station near Norway.

Along with the Arctic, India’s earth sciences community also views the Himalayas as a “third pole” because of the large quantities of snow and ice it holds, and proposes to increase research spends towards understanding the impact of climate change in the Himalayas. It has already established a high-altitude research station in the Himalayas, called HIMANSH, at Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.

“…The Hon’ble Minister for S&T and Earth Sciences has approved the renaming of National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR), Goa to National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Goa,” says a July 5 notification by the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

While annual missions to maintain India’s three bases in Antarctica will continue, the new priorities mean that there will be more expeditions and research focus on the other poles, the source. M. Rajeevan, Secretary, earth science ministry, wasn't available for comment.

Climate change, said the source, was a decisive factor in India re-thinking priorities. Sea ice at the Arctic has been melting rapidly — the fastest in this century. That means several spots, rich in hydrocarbon reserves, will be more accessible through the year via alternative shipping routes.

India is already an observer at the Arctic Council — a forum of countries that decides on managing the region’s resources and popular livelihood and, in 2015, set up an underground observatory, called IndARC, at the Kongsfjorden fjord, half way between Norway and the North Pole.

A big worry for India is the impact of melting sea ice on the monsoon. Over the years scientists across the world are reporting that the rapid ice-melt in the Arctic is leading to large quantities of fresh water into the seas around the poles. This impedes the release of heat from the water and directs warm water into the seas around India, the theory goes, and eventually weakens the movement of the monsoon breeze into India. “Therefore we need more observations and stations in the Arctic countries to improve understanding of these processes,” the source added.

House panel concerned over Assam kidnappings

Chidambaram-led committee suspects trafficking link, recommends inter-State probe

A parliamentary standing committee has expressed deep concern over a large number of kidnappings in Assam, mostly of women, and surge in insurgency in Arunachal Pradesh, which it termed as “alarming”.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, headed by Congress leader P. Chidambaram, in its report said that it was deeply worried that a large number of victims who were kidnapped or abducted in Assam before and during 2016 were yet to be recovered.

“Even more worrisome is the fact that a large majority, at more than 81%, of victims are women. The committee is of the view that this may also point towards a connection between such abductions and human trafficking,” the panel said in its report submitted to the Rajya Sabha.

Inter-State probe

The committee recommended that an inter-State investigation may be carried out to find out the reasons for this extremely high rate of kidnappings of women.

Status note

“The committee also recommends that sustained operations must be launched to trace and recover the victims of kidnappings and abductions. The committee desires that the Ministry submit a detailed status note about the action taken to recover such victims,” it said.

Referring to Arunachal Pradesh, the panel said unlike the overall Northeast region, which shows a declining trend of insurgency-related incidents and casualties suffered by the civilians, the State has seen a rise in the number of such incidents.

“The committee is alarmed to observe that in 2012, Arunachal Pradesh accounted for just 5 % of the incidents in the entire region, however, in 2017, it accounted for almost 20 per cent of the incidents in the region,” the report said.

This is an indication of the fact that the security situation has deteriorated in Arunachal Pradesh vis-à-vis in the entire Northeast region, it said.

Agitation over milk prices called off in Maharashtra

State asks cooperative, private milk societies to pay ₹25 per litre from July 21

The Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) led by Lok Sabha MP Raju Shetti announced the withdrawal of agitation by dairy farmers late on Thursday night. This followed the State government’s directive to cooperative and private milk societies to pay ₹25 per litre milk to producers from July 21.

“Since the government has accepted our demand to give ₹25 per litre rate to dairy farmer, we have decided to withdraw the agitation,” Mr Shetti told The Hindu after a meeting with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Earlier in the evening Dairy Development Minister Mahadev Jankar said in the Assembly, “The government has decided to not give any subsidy on packaged milk. For the rest of milk production, the government will give ₹5 per litre subsidy which will be given either to milk collection societies or to the ones which will process the milk.”

This announcement followed a meeting attended by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Mr. Fadnavis, Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, NCP leader Ajit Pawar, and leaders and representatives of milk suppliers federation.

Following the decision, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis called Mr. Shetti for a meeting to Nagpur.

The farmers had been holding protests across the state since Monday, seeking a hike of ₹5 per litre in the procurement prices.

The impact of the protest was felt in some cities, including Pune, where the supply of milk was partially affected.

At a previous meeting on July 10, the government had announced ₹50 per kilogram subsidy on milk powder produced for export. To avail this benefit the societies will now have to pay ₹25 per litre to dairy farmers.

No effective measures taken to clean Ganga: NGT

https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/no-effective-measures-taken-to-clean-ganga-ngt/article24466806.ece/amp/

Details of 2015 Naga agreement emerge

Framework agreement’ recognises uniqueness of Naga history.

The government has informed a Parliamentary panel that it signed a framework agreement with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) after it agreed on a settlement within the Indian federation with a “special status.”

R. N. Ravi, interlocutor for the Naga talks, told the committee that it was a departure from their earlier position of “with India, not within India,” and that the government called it a framework agreement and signed it. This is the first time that details of the agreement signed at the residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 3, 2015, have emerged.

The details are part of the 213th report on the security situation in the Northeastern states tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The committee was also informed that the “contours” had not been spelt out in the framework agreement that was “just about the recognition of the uniqueness of the Naga history by the Government of India”, and some special arrangements will have to be made for the Nagas.

“On being asked what the special arrangement will be, the Committee was told that with respect to Nagaland...Article 371A of the Constitution makes it clear that they are special and a special status has been accorded to them. A similar kind of status, with some local variation, and some change to the Nagas in the neighbouring States can be explored,” the report said. According to the report, Mr. Ravi also informed the committee that the Nagas had now reached a common understanding with the government that “boundaries of the States will not be touched” and “some special arrangements would be made for the Nagas, wherever they are.”

“The Interlocutor apprised the committee about the broad status of the negotiations that boundaries of any State will neither be changed nor altered. Initially, the Nagas had stuck to the idea of unification of Naga inhabited areas, resolutely maintaining their stand of ‘no integration, no solution.’ However, they have now reached a common understanding with the Government that boundaries of States will not be touched,” the report said. The NSCN-IM has been fighting for ‘Greater Nagaland’ or Nagalim — it wants to extend Nagaland's borders by including Naga-dominated areas in neighbouring Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, to unite 1.2 million Nagas. The Chief Ministers of the three States have warned against any tinkering with its boundaries.

“While briefing the committee, R. N. Ravi, interlocutor for Nagas, stated that the Government has been talking with the NSCN-IM for the last 20 years and their position from the very beginning has been that Nagas were exceptional, Nagas were not Indians, Nagas were sovereign and any settlement could be reached only on the basis of the fact that this is a settlement between two sovereigns“During the course of the last several years, the Government started opening out and reaching out to civil society organisations, Naga tribal bodies and other stakeholders other than the NSCN-IM,” the report said.

Getting the language count right

Getting the language count right

G.N. Devy

JULY 19, 2018 00:02 IST

UPDATED: JULY 18, 2018 23:11 IST

Recent Census data appear to inadequately reflect India’s linguistic composition, and are inconsistent with global ideas

The story, “Death of Jagmohan, the Elephant”, by Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi, is about the death of an elephant. For a reader, the story may appear to be about a rather “big death”, but what the writer wanted to say was that there are also many “small deaths”. They include the deaths of Dalits and tribals who are trapped by hunger and humiliation. Anonymity surrounds them and our lack of compassion gives them finality.

The death of a tree or a forest sacrificed at the altar of development is mourned but not spoken about. Similarly, the death of a language is literally shrouded in silence. Because of its nature, a language is not visible and fails to move anyone except its very last speaker who nurtures an unrequited hope of a response. When a language disappears it goes forever, taking with it knowledge gathered over centuries. With it goes a unique world view. This too is a form of violence. Large parts of culture get exterminated through slight shifts in policy instruments than through armed conflicts. Just as nature’s creations do not require a tsunami to destroy them, the destruction of culture can be caused by something as small as a bureaucrat’s benign decision. Even a well-intentioned language census can do much damage.

Over the last many decades, successive governments have carried out a decadal census. The 1931 Census was a landmark as it held up a mirror to the country about the composition of caste and community. War disrupted the exercise in 1941, while it was a rather busy year for the new Indian republic at the time of the 1951 Census It was during the 1961 census that languages in the country were enumerated in full. India learnt that a a total of 1,652 mother tongues were being spoken. Using ill-founded logic, this figure was pegged at only 109, in the 1971 Census. The logic was that a language deserving respectability should not have less than 10,000 speakers. This had no scientific basis nor was it a fair decision but it has stuck and the practice continues to be followed.

Hits and misses

The language enumeration takes place in the first year of every decade. The findings are made public about seven years later as the processing of language data is far more time consuming than handling economic or scientific data. Early this month, the Census of India made public the language data based on the 2011 Census, which took into account 120 crore speakers of a very large number of languages. The Language division of the Census office deserves praise but the data presented leaves behind a trail of questions.

During the census, citizens submitted 19,569 names of mother tongues — technically called “raw returns”. Based on previous linguistic and sociological information, the authorities decided that of these, 18,200 did not match “logically” with known information. A total of 1,369 names — technically called “labels” — were picked as “being names of languages”. The “raw returns” left out represent nearly 60 lakh citizens. And because of the classification regime, their linguistic citizenship has been dropped.

In addition to the 1,369 “mother tongue” names shortlisted, there were 1,474 other mother tongue names. These were placed under the generic label “Others”. As far as the Census is concerned, these linguistic “Others” are not seen to be of any concern. But the fact is that they have languages of their own. The classification system has not been able to identify what or which languages these are and so they have been silenced by having an innocuous label slapped on them.

The 1,369 have been grouped further under a total of 121 “group labels”, which have been presented as “Languages”. Of these, 22 are languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, called “Scheduled Languages”. The remainder, 99, are “Non-scheduled Languages”. An analysis shows that most of the groupings are forced. For instance, under the heading “Hindi”, there are nearly 50 other languages. Bhojpuri (spoken by more than 5 crore people, and with its own cinema, theatre, literature, vocabulary and style) comes under “Hindi”. Under Hindi too is the nearly 3 crore population from Rajasthan with its own independent languages. The Powari/Pawri of tribals in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh too has been added. Even the Kumauni of Uttarakhand has been yoked to Hindi. While the report shows 52,83,47,193 individuals speaking Hindi as their mother tongue, this is not so. There is a similar and inflated figure for Sanskrit by counting the returns against the question about a person’s “second language”.

English use

As against this, the use of English is not seen through the perspective of a second language. Counting for this is restricted to the “mother tongue” category — in effect bringing down the figure substantially. Given the widespread use of English in education, law, administration, media and health care, a significant number of Indians use English as a utility language. To some extent it is the language of integration in our multilingual country. Therefore, isn’t the Census required to capture this reality? It can, given the data on the language of second preference, but it does not for reasons that need no spelling out. So the Census informs us that a total of 2,59,678 Indians speak English as their “mother tongue” — numerically accurate and semantically disastrous.

The language Census may not attract as much attention as news about fuel prices. But in the community of nations, the Indian census is bound to be discussed. A body such as UNESCO will look at it with interest. From the 1940s, when its General Council decided to establish a Translation Bureau to years later, in 2008, when its Executive Board debated “Multilingualism in the Context of Education for All”, UNESCO has progressively developed its vision and deepened its understanding of global linguistic diversity.

Focus points

From time to time, UNESCO tries to highlight the key role that language plays in widening access to education, protecting livelihoods and preserving culture and knowledge traditions. In 1999/2000, it proclaimed and observed February 21 as International Mother Language Day, while in 2001 the ‘Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity’ accepted the principle of “Safeguarding the linguistic heritage of humanity and giving support to expression, creation and dissemination in the greatest possible number of languages.” In pursuit of these, UNESCO has launched a linguistic diversity network and supported research. It has also brought out an Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, which highlights the central place of language in the world’s heritage. Is our language census consistent with these ideas and principles?

One expects that the Census in India should adequately reflect the linguistic composition of the country. It is not good practice when data helps neither educators nor policy makers or the speakers of languages themselves. The Census, a massive exercise that consumes so much time and energy, needs to see how it can help in a greater inclusion of the marginal communities, how our intangible heritage can be preserved, and how India’s linguistic diversity can become an integral part of our national pride.

G.N. Devy is a literary critic and a cultural activist. E-mail: ganesh_devy@yahoo.com

Taliban rejects peace talks with govt.

Taliban rejects peace talks with govt.

·         The Taliban on Saturday refused to hold direct peace talks with the Afghan government, dealing a blow to international efforts to revive long-stalled negotiations aimed at ending the deadly 14- year insurgency.
·         The statement, which comes as face-to-face talks were expected to start in Islamabad this week, stressed longstanding preconditions for dialogue, including the departure of foreign troops from Afghanistan.
·         The Taliban’s seemingly intractable position follows a string of military victories for the insurgent group after NATO formally ended its combat operations more than a year ago.
·         The announcement marks a setback in efforts by Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the U.S. to restart negotiations aimed at ending the insurgency.
·         Delegates from the four countries had met in Kabul late February for a fourth round of talks aimed at reviving the nascent peace process, which stalled last summer. The quartet had called for a direct dialogue between the Taliban and Kabul by this week, a deadline that some analysts called “completely unrealistic”.
·         “We unequivocally state that the esteemed leader of Islamic Emirate [Taliban] has not authorised anyone to participate in this meeting and neither has the Leadership Council of Islamic Emirate decided to partake in it,” the Taliban statement added.
·         The group also accused the U.S. of duplicity, saying it had boosted troop numbers, in- creased air strikes and night raids against the insurgents in tandem with its efforts to re- vive talks. The Taliban have also stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan - even in the winter months when fighting usually abates - underscoring a worsening security situation.
·         Afghan security forces have suffered record casualties since NATO ended its combat mission in December 2014, leaving them to battle the resurgent Taliban largely on their own.
·         In recent months the Taliban briefly captured the northern city of Kunduz, the first urban     centre to fall to the insurgents, and have seized territory in the opium-growing southern province of Helmand.
·         Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions if and when the talks resume.