Retail inflation for factory workers rises to 11.06 %
Retail inflation for industrial workers rose to 11.06 per cent in October compared to 10.7 per cent in the previous month mainly on account of rise in price of food items and higher electricity charges.
“The year-on- year inflation measured by monthly Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers (CPI-IW) stood at 11.06 per cent for October as compared to 10.7 per cent for the previous month and 9.6 per cent during the corresponding month of previous year,” a Labour Ministry statement said.
According to a press release, the food inflation stood at 15.02 per cent against 13.36 per cent of the previous month and 9.91 per cent during the corresponding month of 2012. The largest upward pressure to the change in the current index came from food group
contributing 2.53 percentage point to the total change. — PTI
Hope still for Comet Ison
Scientists were studying spacecraft images on Friday to find out whether a small part of Comet Ison survived its close encounter with the sun.
The comet at first seemed to have fallen apart as it approached the sun’s sizzling surface, but new images showed a streak of light moving away from the sun that some said could indicate it wasn’t game over just yet.
“It certainly appears as if there is an object there that is emitting material,” said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The European Space Agency, which had declared Ison’s death on Twitter late on Thursday, was backtracking early on Friday, saying the comet “continues to surprise.”
Comet Ison, essentially a dirty snowball from the fringes of the solar system, was first spotted by a Russian telescope in September last year.
Some sky gazers speculated early on that it might become the comet of the century because of its brightness, although expectations dimmed over time.
The comet was two-thirds of a mile wide as it got within one million miles (1.6 million kilometres) of the sun, which in space terms basically means grazing it.
Two years ago, a smaller comet, Lovejoy, grazed the sun and survived, but fell apart a couple of days later.
Ison’s mysterious dance with the sun left astronomers puzzled and excited at the same time.
“This is what makes science interesting,” said Prof. Fitzsimmons, who specialises in comets and asteroids. “If we knew what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be interesting.” — AP
Mobility matters
The global report on human settlements, recently published by UN-HABITAT, is a timely pointer to what is wrong with current transport planning in India. Despite investing heavily in infrastructure projects, the cities have not resolved traffic issues efficiently. After reviewing various policies across the world, this report, with a special focus on planning for sustainable urban mobility, has rightly concluded that unless transport projects and urban planning are integrated, congestion on roads, inefficient use of infrastructure, and sprawling cities would persist. The working group on urban transport for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan has cautioned that in another two decades the average journey speed of vehicles on the major city roads would come down drastically from 26 to 17 km an hour to 8 to 6 km an hour. Along with it, the trip lengths and number of trips made within cities would also double. This would lead to inefficient use of fuel, inordinate wastage of time and more pollution. To address this problem, the Ministry of Urban Development has proposed an investment of Rs.23 lakh crore to build more roads and rail networks by 2031. The hard reality is that even this colossal infrastructure would not guarantee better mobility.
The main problem with Indian cities is the disconnect between growth and transportation grids. Unlike cities such as Curitiba in Brazil, public transport does not guide their growth. Real estate forces shape them. As a result, the suburbs either lie scattered or grow linearly. The distances between them, the core-city and places where jobs are concentrated increases. Developing a fast lane road network alone cannot change the inefficient travel pattern. What are required are compact neighbourhoods built around mass transport links. To achieve this, the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat recommended that new developments should not be encouraged unless local-street grids are developed, and they must abut existing developed areas with a minimum density of 175 inhabitants a hectare. These recommendations have remained only on paper. Where public transport exists, lack of last mile connectivity between residential neighbourhoods and station points in the form of pedestrian pathways and bicycle tracks has impeded their use. Cities have not innovated institutionally too. Only a few have created the Unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities to integrate different modes of transport and connect them with urban planning. Where present, UMTA is besieged with problems. For instance, in Chennai, the government is yet to notify the UMTA Act that gives it the legal backing. Comprehensive planning alone can relieve our choking cities.
From insurgency to electoral democracy
If grievance ever had legitimate reason to be translated into political rebellion, it was in Mizoram. The Mizo National Front (MNF) was an insurgent group that emerged from the Mizo National Famine Front in 1959 — a formation protesting the widespread famine caused by a regular failure of the bamboo crop due to mautam , and the failure of the Indian state to send adequate relief.
Deprivation soon led to open rebellion. On February 28, 1966, the MNF launched Operation Jericho under which about 1,500 MNF cadres overran Lunglei, Aizawl and Champhai districts by beating back the Assam Rifles personnel stationed there. India’s Home Minister at the time was Gulzarilal Nanda who recommended “stern action” against the rebels. This meant a two-column assault by the Indian army on Lunglei and Champhai on March 7, 1966. A week later, the Indian army recaptured these districts, albeit after the air force was called in to launch an aerial assault on Aizawl.
The turning point
Mizoram has just finished polling in its latest round of Assembly elections with a very high voter turnout of 81.19 per cent. How did a decidedly secessionist State turn from the insurgent path towards accepting a place in the Indian Union, and what form of politics developed after the end of the insurgency? Accommodative politics, knitted with political incentives for the insurgents, helped pave the way for the MNF to turn into an electoral force. After that turning point, the tussle between the regional force and the Centre has taken the form of an electoral competition between the Congress and the MNF. We argue that this successful channelling of insurgency into manageable electoral competition is a model that can be emulated in other States of the northeast.
The 20 years that followed Operation Jericho were interspersed with severe counterinsurgency battles that involved not only regular fighting with the rebels but also village resettlement schemes, which resulted in 80 per cent of Mizos being relocated and resettled by 1972 in 102 population centres. The aim of the resettlement was to drive the MNF into the jungles and cut off its recruitment base and supply lines.
Electoral experiment
Alongside, the Indian government also opened a dialogue with the rebels, keeping in mind that the region was remote and the MNF enjoyed immense popularity among various Mizo sub-tribes. Also, for a fledgling country it seemed imperative to address the northeast’s insurgent threats through any means possible — war or diplomacy — so that the rebellions didn’t become a model for other groups in the region. While the latter aim didn’t work as well for the Indian state, what did emerge were negotiations and offers of peaceful elections with the MNF competing in them. When such an electoral experiment was conducted in 1978, the MNF’s Pu Laldenga lost to Brig. Sailo of the People’s Conference. As the MNF stepped up its insurgent activities in response to an electoral loss, the government decided to end the matter more decisively.
In 1986, the Union of India under Rajiv Gandhi and the MNF signed the Mizoram Peace Accord. Pu Lalthanhawla, the Congress Chief Minister, was made to step down and Pu Laldenga of the MNF was made Chief Minister. Rajiv Gandhi was clear about one thing — the MNF violence had to end and Mizoram had to stay in the Union. Practising accommodative politics seemed the right way forward even if it meant replacing the Chief Minister with Pu Laldenga, who had spent the better part of his adult life deep in the jungles of Myanmar raising two armed brigades to fight the Indian state.
Stabilisation
Today, Mizoram is a State that cradles several oddities. It is a Christian majority state where the Presbyterian Church has immense sway over everyday life and politics. It is one of the few States with Prohibition due to an intervention by the Presbyterian Church. It is also one of the few States with a remarkably high voter turnout. Further, electoral politics took a healthy competitive turn after two decades of violence, as we describe below.
After the peace accord, the MNF won the Assembly elections in 1987. However Laldenga’s government survived for barely two years. Nine of the 24 MNF MLAs defected to the Congress, and President’s Rule was imposed in the State in September 1988. The Congress under Lalthanhawla returned to power after the 1989 polls and continued its winning streak in the 1993 elections by forging an alliance with the Mizoram Janata Dal (MJD). The two Opposition parties, the MNF and the Mizoram People’s Conference (MPC), formed a pre-poll alliance and won in the 1998 Assembly elections. The MNF won 22 seats, the MPC won one seat, and the Congress got only six of the 40 seats. The incumbent Congress Chief Minister, Lalthanhawla, also lost his seat in the election. MNF leader Zoramthanga (Laldenga’s successor) was sworn in as the new Chief Minister.
In the 2003 Assembly elections, the MNF retained power after winning 21 seats while the Congress won 12 seats. The MPC and the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) combine got four seats. The biggest loser was the MPC — from 12 seats in the previous Assembly, its strength was reduced to two seats. During the last Assembly elections in 2008, the Congress stormed back to power with 32 seats, while the MNF was reduced to three seats. In a humiliating blow to the MNF, Pu Zoramthanga lost both his seats. The MPC and the ZNP contested as pre-poll allies but got only two seats each.
For the 2013 Assembly elections, Mr. Zoramthanga formed a pre-poll alliance with the MPC and the Maraland Democratic Front (MDF). This was seen as essential by the MNF to wrest power from the Congress and reinstate itself as the guardian of the Mizo people’s political and cultural rights. The other main party in the State, the ZNP, contested on its own.
New political front
On October 21, 2013, 10 regional political parties in the northeast formed a new political front — the North-East Regional Political Front (NERPF) — and adopted 17 resolutions, which include an end to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a return to paper ballots and a fresh look at the Centre-State relations. The Front elected former Assam Chief Minister, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, as the chief adviser and the Nagaland Chief Minister, Neiphiu Rio, as the convener.
This development went unnoticed but the front will gain momentum after the counting of votes in Mizoram. The formation of NERPF is a signal that regional parties in the northeast are ready to take on bigger roles at the Centre, and have realised that it pays to band together to secure the region’s interests. They have realised that during the government formation in New Delhi in May 2014, they may be in a position to bargain hard, as every seat may matter. In this way, the 10 parties as a bloc can offer more to any coalition and secure for themselves, perhaps, a more important place in the Lok Sabha.
The normalisation of electoral politics in Mizoram is important as an instance of accommodative politics in India. The reduction in violence brought about by the end of the insurgency and the crippling counterinsurgency campaigns can perhaps be replicated in other States of the northeast.
( Vasundhara Sirnate is the Chief Coordinator of Research at The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy. She and Rahul Verma are Ph.D candidates at the Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. )
Accommodative politics, combined with political incentives, helped pave the way
for the Mizo National Front to turn into
a mainstream political party
Angola accused of ‘Islam ban’ as mosques closed
Angola has been accused of “banning” Islam after shutting down most of the country’s mosques amid reports of violence against women who wear the veil.
The Islamic Community of Angola (ICA) claims that eight mosques have been destroyed in the past two years and anyone who practises Islam risks being found guilty of disobeying Angola’s penal code.
Human rights activists have condemned the crackdown. “From what I have heard, Angola is the first country in the world that has decided to ban Islam,” said Elias Isaac, country director of the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (Osisa). “This is a crazy madness. The government is intolerant of any difference.” Officials in the largely Catholic southern African nation insist that media reports of a “ban” on Islam are exaggerated and no places of worship are being targeted.
The U.K. has just named Angola as one of its five “high-level prosperity partners” in Africa and the two countries have a burgeoning trade relationship. The Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Africa’s second-longest serving head of state at 34 years, has long been accused of corruption and human rights abuses.
Religious organisations must seek legal recognition in Angola, which currently sanctions 83, all of them Christian. Last month the Justice Ministry rejected the applications of 194 organisations, including one from the Islamic community.
Under Angolan law, a religious group needs 100,000 members and to be present in 12 of the 18 provinces to gain legal status, giving them the right to construct schools and places of worship. There are only an estimated 90,000 Muslims among Angola’s population of about 18 million.
David Ja, head of the ICA, said on Thursday: “We can say Islam has been banned in Angola. You need 100,000 to be recognised as a religion or officially you cannot pray.” There are 78 mosques in the country, according to the ICA, and all have been closed except those in the capital, Luanda, because they are technically unlicensed. “The mosques in Luanda were supposed to be closed yesterday but because of an international furore about reports that Angola had banned Islam, the government decided not to,” Ja said.
He said the government began shutting mosques in 2010, including one that was burned down in Huambo province, “a day after authorities had warned us that we should have not built the mosque where we had and that it had to be built somewhere else. The government justified by saying that it was an invasion of Angolan culture and a threat to Christian values.” Another mosque was destroyed in Luanda earlier this month, Ja said, and 120 copies of the Koran burned.
Muslims have been instructed to dismantle mosques themselves, he added. “They usually issue a legal request for us to destroy the building and give us 73 hours to do so. Failure to do so results in government authorities doing it themselves.” Women who wear the veil are also being targeted, Ja said. “Most Muslim women are afraid to wear the veil. A woman was assaulted in hospital in Luanda for wearing a veil, and ... a young Muslim lady was beaten up and told to leave the country because she was wearing a veil.
“Most recently, young girls were prohibited from wearing the veil in Catholic schools and, when we went there to confront the nuns, they simply said they couldn’t allow it. Although there is not an explicit written law prohibiting the use of veil in Angola ... women are afraid to express their faith in that sense.” The ICA’s complaints were supported by Rafael Marques de Morais, a political activist and leading journalist in Angola. “I’ve seen an order that says Muslims must destroy the mosques themselves and clear away the debris, or they will be charged for the cost of the destruction.” He suggested the government wanted a diversion from growing hostility towards Chinese and Portuguese workers in Angola. “The government need to deflect attention ... to find a scapegoat for economic pressures and saying Islam is not common to Angolan values and culture.
“They believe a blanket law against Islam will get the sympathy of Angolans and those in the international community who equate Islam with terrorism.” Asked about the potential for Muslims to protest, Marques replied: “If the Muslims try to show any anger, they will be deported the following day.”
But the Angolan government denies any attempt to ban Islam. “There is no war in Angola against Islam or any other religion,”
Manuel Fernando, director of religious affairs at the culture ministry, said. “There is no official position that targets the destruction or closure of places of worship, whichever they are.” — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2013
IAS officer held guilty of contempt of court
Justice L. Narsimha Reddy of the A.P. High Court on Friday held Principal Secretary Education, Rajesh Tiwari, guilty of contempt of court. The quantum of punishment to be imposed on the IAS officer would be decided next week. The judge was dealing with a contempt case filed against Mr. Tiwari by Aided Sanskrit Schools Managements Association of AP and another petitioner. The judge on December 4, 2012 had directed the School Education Department to take steps to fill half of the vacant posts of Sanskrit teachers in the aided institutions. With the authorities failing to implement the order, the petitioners moved the contempt petition.
Justice Reddy observed that there was negligence on the part of the authorities in protecting the educational institutions run with government aid. He lamented that the officers seemed to have a firm resolve to permit such institutions to die a natural death, even while thousands of crores of rupees were doled out for scholarships to the students studying professional courses in private and corporate institutions. The court was told by the government that staff from other institutions was being posted. The delay in issuing notification was attributed to the need for sanction.
Justice Reddy did not appreciate such an explanation . The judge then proceeded to record the finding that contempt of court had been committed and adjourned the matter to hear the plea of the petitioner on the quantum of punishment.
“India must participate in global mega-science projects”
Emphasising the importance of critical research, eminent physicist and principal scientific adviser to Government of India R. Chidambaram said here on Friday that the country needs to participate in “global mega-science projects.”
“We need excellence in basic research... including directed basic research that is directed towards the needs of industry and society in the long term. As a civilised country we must also participate in global mega science projects aiming to find out for example the ultimate structure of matter or the origin of the universe,” he said, while addressing the annual convocation of the University of Calcutta.
Stressing that “the way we do science is changing,” Dr. Chidambaram referred to the setting up of a multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a particle accelerator at the Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva which helped in the finding of Higgs Boson.
Referring to India’s role in the epoch-making discovery, he said the nation, through the Department of Atomic Energy (RRCAT, Indore), “contributed 40-million dollar worth of high-tech equipment, numerous components and some advanced grid software.”
On “internationalisation of science,” Dr. Chidambaram said “both students and scientists are getting more and more mobile” and “universities involved in higher education must factor in these ground realities in planning their higher education programmes.”
Dr. Chidambaram, a noted nuclear scientist and metallurgist also associated with India's nuclear energy programme, emphasised the need of nuclear energy for the country.
“India has to go for nuclear energy in a big way... All energy-based options are important for India. There must be a balance between environmental protection and imperatives of economic development,” he said.
Pointing out that the metrics of basic research is considered as the number of publications, Dr. Chidambaram said they also sometimes do not truly represent the “quality and originality of research.
Bharathapuzha richest among Kerala rivers in fish diversity
