Govt. to promulgate fresh ordinance on Land Bill
Even as the opposition to the Land Acquisition Bill continues in different quarters, the NDA government is determined to bring to Parliament its amended Bill through a fresh Ordinance. The amended NDA
Hindu
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Buddhadeb appeals for peace at Nandigram
MAKING AMENDS: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee distributing land ownership deeds to landless farmers in Nandigram, East Midnapur in West Bengal on Tuesday. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee appealed to Opposition parties in Nandigram on Tuesday "to join hands [with the State Government] and work together for development in Nandigram which is only possible if there is peace' but cautioned against allowing Maoists to re-enter as they were bent on fomenting fresh unrest in the area. "I believe peace will gradually return but we must be cautious against the Maoists who have now fled from re-entering Nandigram. We have information that they are training in areas like Jharkhand and planning to return. They should not be allowed in under any circumstances. They are an army of killers,' Mr Bhattacharjee said. He was speaking on the occasion of the handing over of pattas [land ownership deeds] in the Nandigram area to landless peasants who included those from the scheduled castes and tribes and the Muslim community. Admitting that his government had failed to convince the people of Nandigram the need for setting up industries in the area "which is our misfortune' and referring to the violence spreading over 11 months last year, the Chief Minister said: "I have not come here to blame any party but to tell all including [supporters of] both the Communist Party of India [Marxist] and the Trinamool Congress to work towards peace and development. Time has come to forget what had happened over the past year,' he said. It was his second visit to Nandigram since hostilities between the BUPC and the CPI(M) ceased in November 2007. There has been sporadic violence over the past two days and security arrangements were elaborate in view of the Chief Minister's visit. "We have learnt our lesson [from the Nandigram experience] and industries will only be set up where the local people are agreeable,' Mr. Bhattacharjee said, denying reports attributed to the Trinamool Congress-led Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh [Resistance against Eviction from Land] Committee (BUPC) that the State Government will acquire land from peasants in Nandigram once the rural polls scheduled for May are over. "That will never happen,' he asserted. "We have made a mistake and will never go in for any acquisition of land in Nandigram. The chemical hub that was to have been set up here will come up at Nayachar instead and we hope will provide job opportunities even to those from here,' the Chief Minister said. "There can be no development in the State without setting up new industries. But we are also aware of taking the responsibility of those whose lands need to be acquired for the purpose. They will be provided jobs and other alternative means of earning a livelihood. Factories cannot come up with people shedding tears,' Mr Bhattacharjee said. Listing his plans for the Nandigram area, the Chief Minister said while agricultural development will be given priority, assistance will be provided to boost local trade and improve educational facilities. "The local panchayats have not been able to function during the past months of violence, development work has been held up and the people have suffered. Time has now come to work, work and work', Mr Bhattacharjee said.
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Govt. to strive for growth with low inflation
Even as there were no easy ways of balancing high economic growth with low inflation, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday said the Government would strive to peg the overall growth rate at near nine per cent while containing the inflation rate at close to four per cent. In his post-Budget interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here, Mr. Chidambaram said: "The goal is to have a growth close to nine [per cent] and inflation close to four [per cent]. That is why we assume 13 per cent [nominal] GDP growth.' Pointing out that in this exercise, while the Government sometimes succeeded and also missed the target at other times, he said: "In a country where economy is growing close by over eight per cent, close to nine per cent, there is bound to be some inflation.' Inflation in India, he said, was caused by supply-demand mismatch between food items and the oligopolistic tendencies in some industries. Besides, the growth in money supply was yet another reason which, in a sense, was a reflection of the high growth the country was experiencing. However, to keep the India growth story intact, Mr. Chidambaram pointed to the numerous measures announced in the budget for 2008-09. "I think we have announced a number of measures that are intended to ensure that the growth story is intact... I am betting on your [corporates] growth. I am bullish on your growth. I hope you are as bullish as I am about the growth story,' he said. Projecting that India Inc. would provide Rs. 5,50,000 crore next year by way of taxes, excluding personal income-tax, Mr. Chidambaram noted that while steps had been taken to provide more money to the consumer for spending, the fiscal stimulus to the economy would come from the cuts in excise and customs duties and the Central Sales Tax. "Unless my friend Shubhashis Gangopadhyay [Adviser to Finance Minister] and other economists are hopelessly wrong about their economics, all these make up for the text-book prescription for higher growth,' he said. These measures together, including the across-the-board excise cut from 16 per cent to 14 per cent, were a powerful combination to keep the growth story intact. "I have taken the first step to signal the whole country, especially States, that I prepare to look forward in order to accommodate my financial interests with the final number [for goods and services tax], and you can prepare to accommodate your financial interests with the final number,' Mr Chidambaram said.
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Tata open to global licensing of Nano
Steals show: The $2,500 (Rs. 1 lakh) Tata Nano attracts attention during the press day of the Geneva International Motor Show on Tuesday in Geneva. Tata Motors is considering the possibility of global licensing of the production of people's car Nano, which, when launched abroad, will be positioned on the same platform as the one back home
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Due provision will be made for waiver'
Hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday blamed the previous regime for the agrarian crisis and inflation, and said the UPA government's "unprecedented' initiative to waive farmers' loans was to meet the "unpaid distress bill' left behind by the NDA government. Replying to the discussion in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks to the President's address, he said: "We have done nothing more than pick up the unpaid distress bill, which the NDA government had left behind.' It was the distress of the peasantry that brought the United Progressive Alliance to power, while the NDA was talking of
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BrahMos test-fired
BrahMos, the supersonic cruise missile, on Wednesday lifted off from the Indian Naval ship "Rajput' speeding in the Bay of Bengal and destroyed a target on an uninhabited island in the Nicobar group of islands situated in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. It was the 15th launch of BrahMos but this was the first time that the missile was fired from a ship towards a target on land. "We kept a target on the sand dunes of the island. It was hit. It was a precision-mission. This is an important mission for us because the Navy is acquiring the capability, with the same BrahMos, to destroy targets on the coast,' said A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited. The previous 14 flights of BrahMos were from ship to ship, land to ship, and from land to land. Dr. Pillai, who spoke from the Campbell Bay island, called it "a fantastic test.' The launch was executed by trained Naval personnel on board the Rajput. The test-firing took place at 10.30 a.m. BrahMos travels at a speed more than three times that of sound and can hit targets 290 km away. It is a joint product of India and Russia. Dr. Pillai said Defence Minister A.K. Antony phoned him up to congratulate the missile technologists of BrahMos Limited, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia on the success. Mr. Antony said it was a major breakthrough in enhancing the capability of BrahMos.
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Raje Govt. to expand food for poor scheme
The Rajasthan Government is planning to expand its ambitious "Akshay Kaleva' scheme for providing cooked food to the poor at subsidised prices at public places in Jaipur by seeking charitable contributions from private donors on their personal and family occasions. State Local Self Government Secretary Manjeet Singh said at a review meeting of the department here that prominent people and interest families in the city could arrange for food under the scheme on festive occasions such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries and get-together. The Akshay Kaleva scheme is run by the Jaipur Municipal Corporation in association with a non-government organisation, Akshay Patra, to serve cooked food at a subsides rate of Rs.5. The scheme is being introduced in other districts as well. Mr. Singh said urban development would be strengthened through e-governance and evolving alternative sources of income for the local bodies. Progress of schemes The progress of schemes such as Nirmal Ghat, Pannadhay Jeevan Amrit and urban landscape improvement was also reviewed at the review meeting. Jaipur Mayor Ashok Parnami said dwelling units for the urban poor would be constructed shortly on 28 bighas of land earmarked in Shastri Nagar, while the cremation and burial grounds would be developed under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.
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Robots to replace animals in toxic chemical tests
U.S. regulators have announced plans to reduce the number of animals used to test the safety of everyday chemicals. Instead of using animals such as rats and mice, scientists will screen suspected toxic chemicals in everything from pesticides to household cleaners using cell cultures and computer models. Safety of chemicals More than 3.1 million experiments in the U.K. were carried out on animals in 2006. Of these more than 420,000 were done to test the safety of chemicals. According to the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), more than 100 million animals are used annually in experiments in the U.S., of which 15 million are used in toxicity tests. The plans to replace animals in the U.S., announced recently in Boston, will see researchers from the national institute of health and the environmental protection agency develop robotic machines to screen the chemicals. Implications They said if successful the robots could test a greater number of chemicals more quickly. This could have implications for the EU's Reach legislation, which requires retesting all synthetic chemicals used in member countries. Critics are worried that the new rules will increase the number of animals used. The screening machines will be inspired by those developed for medical research, which can quickly test thousands of different molecules in a few days to see if any have potential as useful drugs. Chemical genomics "We now are seeing tools newly available to us for chemical genomics research deployed for greater refinement, speed and capacity in chemical toxicity screening,' said Francis Collins, director of the national human genome research institute and author of a paper published recently in Science. Describing the proposed techniques, Catherine Willett, science policy adviser at Peta, said: "This is a significant change in the perspective of U.S. agencies, which have historically relied heavily on animal testing out of habit and have been resistant to change.'
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Eco-friendly energy efficient project
Leading power equipment manufacturer, OSRAM, on Thursday announced that it had joined hands with the largest German power generation company RWE to launch their first energy efficiency project in India based on the Kyoto Protocol guidelines at a cost of 150 million Euros. Under the programme, high-quality OSRAM energy-saving lamps will be distributed to around 700,000 households in the Vishakhapatnam region in the first phase. The project will be financed exclusively via CO{-2} certificates under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) based on the Kyoto Protocol for reducing CO{-2} emissions in developing and emerging countries, according an official release here. The energy-saving lamps are being distributed by the local power supply company in cooperation with self-help groups. At the same time, ordinary light bulbs will be collected from the households and sent for eco-friendly recycling. In all, this project is likely to save up to 400,000 tonnes of CO{-2}. "The project together with our partner RWE will reduce CO{-2} emissions in India and help the country keep its energy requirements down. It will also give a broad cross-section of population who would not otherwise be able to afford energy-saving lamps the opportunity to save money,' said Wolfgang Gregor of OSRAM.
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TDP to launch new programme for farmers
In its bid to woo the farming community, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is now planning to launch another programme across the State on the lines of Eruvaka. "The TDP has got an impressive response from the public, in particular, the farming community when our party leaders took out several road shows as part of the Eruvaka programme to enlighten farmers on the need for enhancing minimum support price (MSP) for paddy to Rs 1,000 per quintal. The party has now decided to launch similar programme with another name to raise agriculture-related issues further in the coming months across the State. And the whole objective is to exert pressure both on the Centre and State government to implement recommendations of M. S. Swaminathan Commission as well as Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP) in toto and in particular, the MSP for paddy and wheat. Hence the party will launch a programme, whose name will soon be finalised,' TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu told reporters on Wednesday. He was here to attend a marriage function of TDP senior leader Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy's daughter. Lack of clarity Claiming credit for the Centre's decision to waive farm loans, Mr. Naidu said that the Finance Minister would not have announced it, had TDP and UNPA not taken up the farmers' cause. "As a whole, the incentives announced in the Union budget are peripheral, while certain aspects lacked clarity. For instance, the definition of small and marginal farmers is a broad one. We want the Government to adopt a new definition as there is a different definition for marginal farmers in dry land, non-irrigated and irrigated lands.' When asked whether the TDP is still committed towards an integrated Andhra Pradesh, the TDP president ducked a direct reply by taking a dig at the Congress on separate statehood to Telangana. "Let the Congress first spell out its stance on the issue clearly. As the single point agenda of the Congress is to defeat TDP in elections, the party forged an alliance with Telangana Rashtra Samiti president K. Chandrashekhar Rao, who left the TDP on the separate statehood agenda after he was denied a ministerial berth. The ruling party had an understanding even with naxalites and cheated both of them along with its electoral partners CPI and CPI(M).
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Loan waiver scheme for all farmers
Seeking to stave off criticism that the Centre's loan waiver scheme would mainly benefit defaulting farmers, the Congress Government in the State has decided in principle to extend it to those farmers who have promptly repaid their debts. The State Government will initially request the Centre to somehow allow the benefit of waiver to all farmers or, at least, bear the financial burden partially. If there is no positive response from the Centre, the Government may work out a scheme on its own. Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy held detailed discussions with Ministers and senior officials here on Thursday on the loan waiver scheme. Apart from the Opposition's criticism, Dr. Reddy has himself expressed reservations on the scheme benefiting only the defaulters while ignoring those farmers who repaid their debts sincerely. He is credited with the view that it would benefit only 50 per cent of the small and marginal farmers even though the expenditure on it in the State would be around Rs. 10,000-12,000 crore. Speaking to reporters later, Finance Minister K. Rosaiah said the Government would formulate its plan once the Centre issued guidelines on the scheme which would reveal the actual number of beneficiary farmers and also the extent of the financial burden. Essential commodities Mr. Rosaiah said another scheme on the anvil, also outside the budget proposals, was to ensure sale of some more essential commodities in addition to rice, to card-holders at subsided prices and thus arrest inflationary trend in the open market. Edible oil would be sold for Rs 60 a kg and red gram for Rs 35 a kg. Asked whether the Government was justified in taking these policy decisions without referring them to the Legislature, now in its budget session, Mr. Rosaiah said the Chief Minister had already informed the Assembly about the plan to sell oil and pulses at subsidised rates while the loan waiver for SCs and STs announced on Wednesday was a relief and not a policy decision.