Sarvajan Hitay Sarvajan Sukhay-For The Gain of The Many and For The Welfare of The Many
C.M. on Punjab and Jammu visit from November 16
Lucknow : 15 November 2007 The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Km. Mayawati would be on a visit to Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir states from tomorrow (Friday, November 16th). The C.M. would arrive at Ludhiana (Punjab) at 3.30 p.m. tomorrow. On Saturday, November 17th, she would take part in the Bahujan Samaj Party rally being held at the Dal Mandi grounds in Ludhiana. Km. Mayawati would proceed to Jammu in the forenoon of Sunday (November 18), where she would address another BSP rally to be held at the Parade grounds in the city (Jammu). Thereafter, she would come back to Lucknow in the afternoon. ********
Indian cricketers help spread the message to ‘Bowl Out Polio’
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| © UNICEF India/2007 |
| Indian cricketer R.P. Singh presents a special cricket bat with a message on eradicating polio to the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Sushri Mayawati as part of the ‘Bowl Out Polio’ campaign. |
UTTAR PRADESH, India, 14 November 2007 – After a recent one-day cricket match between India and Pakistan, victorious Indian cricketer R.P. Singh received a special award from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Sushri Mayawati.
Before accepting the highly anticipated award, Mr. Singh presented Ms. Mayawati with a cricket bat signed by all the players of his team as a show of support for the ‘Bowl Out Polio’ campaign. The message on the bat read: ‘We want to see the children of India run and play. Let’s bowl out polio.’
The Bowl Out Polio campaign was launched in 2003 through a partnership comprised of UNICEF, Rotary International, NPSP-WHO and the Board for Control of Cricket in India. Since that time, Indian cricketers have been involved in the campaign and are helping to spread the message about polio eradication.
“The Indian cricket team will always do its best for India,” Mr. Singh said while being cheered on by a crowd of some 40,000. “We want every parent and everyone associated with the polio programme to do their best, too. We want Uttar Pradesh to bowl out polio.”
A longstanding collaboration
During the India-Pakistan series in 2004, the captains of both teams collaborated to run alongside children who were holding banners bearing the polio campaign slogan. Both countries are polio-endemic, with India reporting 367 cases so far this year.
As part of an ongoing initiative to involve cricketers in the effort, three special bats with messages about polio eradication have been signed by the Indian team. Two of the bats are for the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The third bat will be presented to the Union Health Minister, Dr. Ambumani Ramadoss, at the launch of the next polio immunization round on 25 November at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi.
The immunization round coincides with the cricket test match between India and Pakistan. Indian team players will attend the launch before they start the day’s play.
Motivating communities through cricket
Cricketers have helped to make the campaign more visible by visiting remote districts in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where they immunized children and motivated grassroots workers.
Said former Indian cricket captain and winner of the ‘Champion of Champions’ trophy, Ravi Shastri: “If I can be of service … I will feel a great sense of satisfaction of having made a contribution to improve the lives of the people of India, especially those who are marginalized and most susceptible to diseases such as polio.”
This spirit of community is a guiding force in the campaign, and as the cricketers travel from place to place, they are bringing the message of polio eradication with them.
‘No Indian firm may qualify for Rs 25,000 crore UP expressway’ NEW DELHI: Most of the Indian construction firms may fail to clear the tough norms of the Uttar Pradesh government if they make individual bids for the Rs 25,000-crore Balia-Greater Noida 950 km, eight-lane express state highway, top industry officials h ave said. “The conditions laid down for the project are such that I doubt whether any Indian company can qualify. The State Government must relax some conditions to provide level playing field for the domestic companies,” Mr M K Agrawal, Vice- President, Unitech E xecutive said at the pre-bid meeting on the Request for Qualification (RFQ) here today. According to one of the conditions, a company must have completed a single road projects worth Rs 830 crore as a threshold size for meeting the technical requirements. The Uttar Pradesh Government is however, willing to accept the bids in consortia of fi rms, which can jointly meet the criteria. “An individual company may not be able to meet the criteria, but there can be consortia of two-three firms,” Mr Atul Kumar Gupta, Principal Secretary of the UP Government said. He said this was not only a road project. There would be many other activities like river embankment and real estate development attached to it. “We are looking at combined experience of more than one company for the project,” he said. Mr S P Agarwal, Executive Director, DLF said, “it is absolutely unachievable for any Indian company to meet the criteria.” Since no state government has ever taken up the project of this magnitude, not many Indian firms have gained such experience, he said. Starting from Greater Noida, the proposed expressway will run along the banks of the Ganga. - PTI 
Lucknow, Nov 14 - A tiger that strayed into a village in Laklhimpur Kheri district four days ago is giving villagers sleepless nights after it killed two cattle in a row.
The tiger was first spotted in a paddy field, where a local farmer even photographed the animal. The first kill was made on the night of Nov 10 when it grabbed a calf. But after beating of drums and gunfire by some locals, it abandoned the calf and fled to a neighbouring sugarcane field. The following day, a carcass of a blue-bull was recovered from the field. After these two incidents, forest officials are on high alert to catch the animal. A special team led by M.P. Singh, director of the neighbouring Dudhwa National Park, has been camping near the sugarcane fields to catch the animal. ‘We laid a trap by using the remains of the blue-bull as bait, but the animal was smarter and managed to give us a slip,’ Singh told IANS over telephone from Ramuapur village about 200 km from here. ‘We have been carrying out extensive search in the sugarcane fields and in the neighbouring areas with the help of two captive elephants. But to locate the tiger is proving difficult since it takes cover of the standing crops,’ he said. ‘We are trying to push the animal back into the forest. If we fail, we will lay another trap to capture it and later release it in the forest,’ Singh said. |
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Online edition of India’s National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 15, 2007
UP expressways authority set up
Special Correspondent
It will be headed by Chief Executive Officer
Hathras gets new name for the fifth time
LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh Government on Wednesday decided to constitute the UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority to ensure proper implementation and development of the proposed Rs.30,000-crore Greater Noida-Ballia Expressway along the left bank of the Ganga in the State.
This decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Mayawati.
The Authority, which will also oversee development of the link expressways which constituted an integral part of the mega road project, will be constituted under the Uttar Pradesh Industrial Area Development Act, 1976.
The functioning of the Authority will be monitored by a Board and a separate corpus will be established for meeting its expenditure.
To begin with, the corpus will have Rs.10 crore in the form of grant from Noida (New Okhla Industrial Development Authority), Greater Noida and UP State Industrial Development Authority.
The proposed body will be responsible for acquiring land for the expressway and will also finalise the bid document for the Ganga Expressway and the link expressways.
The Authority would be headed by a Chief Executive Officer, who will be a senior bureaucrat.
To be developed by private players, the 900-km-long Greater Noida-Ballia Expressway will consist of an eight-lane highway linking the eastern corner (Ballia) of the State with its western corner (Greater Noida).
The Cabinet also decided to re-name Hathras district as Mahamaya Nagar. Hathras had been christened Mahamaya Nagar by Ms. Mayawati in her second term as UP Chief Minister in 1997. When the BJP Government headed by Kalyan Singh came to power, the district reverted to its original name in 1998. However, when Ms. Mayawati returned as CM in 2002, Hathras again became Mahamaya Nagar.
In 2006, the Mulayam Singh regime dropped Mahamaya Nagar for Hathras.
It is for an unprecedented fifth time in the last decade that the pendulum has swung from Hathras to Mahamaya Nagar, back to Hathras and again Mahayamaya Nagar.
The district owes its name to Gautam Buddha’s mother Mahamaya.
Another decision pertained to the Cabinet nod for extension of the UP Diversified Agriculture Project (UPDASP).
The project was being implemented in 32 districts but following its success in increasing agriculture productivity, it was decided to extend the scheme to the 38 remaining districts. The project will now cover the entire State.
One farmer’s suicide every 30 minutes
P. Sainath
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have together seen 89,362 farmers’ suicides between 1997 and 2005.
On average, one Indian farmer committed suicide every 32 minutes between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has become one suicide every 30 minutes. However, the frequency at which farmers take their lives in any region smaller than the country — say a single State or group of States — has to be lower. Because the number of suicides in any such region would be less than the total for the country as a whole in any year. Yet, the frequency at which farmers are killing themselves in many regions is appalling.
On average, one farmer took his or her life every 53 minutes between 1997 and 2005 in just the States of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh). In Maharashtra alone, that was one suicide every three hours. It got even worse after 2001. It rose to one farm suicide every 48 minutes in these Big Four States, and one every two and a quarter hours in Maharashtra alone. The Big Four have together seen 89,362 farmers’ suicides between 1997 and 2005, or 44,102 between 2002 and 2005.
K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), who has studied farmers’ suicides between 1997-2005 based on the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, divides the States into four groups. The worst of these is Group II which includes, besides the Big Four, the State of Goa which shows a high farmers’ suicide rate (FSR) — that is, suicides per 1,00,000 farmers. However, Goa’s rate is based on tiny absolute numbers. All Group II States have high general suicide rates (GSR) — suicides per 1,00,000 population — and have seen large numbers of farm suicides.
Of these, Andhra Pradesh shows some decline in 2005. And the government claims the numbers have fallen further in 2006. But there is no NCRB data to support this as yet. In all, if the NCRB data are valid, then Andhra Pradesh saw 16,770 suicides between 1997 and 2005.
Decline in Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh was the first State after the 2004 polls to appoint a commission to go into the agrarian crisis. Based on the commission’s advice, it also took some steps towards handling that crisis. It restored compensation for the suicides that had been stopped by the previous regime in 1998. It persuaded creditors to accept a one-time settlement of debt in several cases. This possibly helped see a decline after the terrible years of 2002-04. However, Andhra Pradesh has begun to mimic Maharashtra in one unhappy aspect. The number of “non-genuine” cases — those the government does not accept as distress-linked — keeps mounting each month while the “genuine” suicides decline.
There are other problems too. Several States, notably Maharashtra, have made identification of farmers’ suicides extremely difficult by using indicators that rule out vast numbers from being categorised as such. One problem with such corruption of data is that it will eventually reflect in and distort future NCRB reports as well.
Karnataka too records some decline in 2004 and 2005, after a disastrous five-year period. And the State’s 15 per cent increase in non-farmers committing suicide in the 1997-2005 period is five times higher than the rise in farmers’ suicides (3 per cent). But the damage of those earlier years was huge. Karnataka saw as many as 20,093 farm suicides in the period. Again, it is unclear whether the lower numbers for 2004-05 were largely due to policy measures or whether there have been new and creative accounting techniques.
“Madhya Pradesh appears to have long been a problem State for farmers, though this has not been so far acknowledged,” says Professor Nagaraj. “The increase in farm suicides over the nine-year period 1997-2005 is not so high, at 11 per cent, but the absolute numbers have been very high for a long period. Much higher than in many other States. However, here too, the rise in non-farmer suicides, at 48 per cent, is more than four times the increase in farmers’ suicides.” Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh) saw 23,588 farm suicides in the 1997-2005 period. However, Madhya Pradesh has mostly escaped the media radar as a farm crisis State. In Group II States, farm suicides as a percentage of total suicides reached 21.9 in 2005 against a national average of 15.5. In short, more than one of every five persons taking his or her life in these States that year was a farmer. Also, one in every four suicides in this group was committed using pesticide.
One State outside the Big Four that has seen high numbers of farmers’ suicides is Kerala. It saw a total of 11,516 in 1997-2005. Worse, many of these occurred in small districts such as Wayanad. Kerala shows a fluctuating but declining trend over the nine-year period. The years 1998 to 2003 were clearly its worst period. More than 70 per cent of its farm suicides occurred in those years. From 2004, the numbers begin to drop. So much so that unlike the Big Four, it shows no increases in farm suicides for the whole period. The post-2003 fall, in fact, makes its overall figure minus 7 per cent.
Kerala created a “Debt Relief Commission” soon after the change in government there in 2005. The Commission held a case by case scrutiny of the debt problem, while the government halted aggressive loan recovery measures by banks and money lenders. On the Commission’s advice, the government also decided to declare the entire Wayanad revenue district distress-affected.
Kerala still vulnerable
The improvement is quite fragile and could easily see a downturn. Kerala’s farm suicide rate for the period is very high, and the State remains vulnerable to volatility in the prices of, for instance, coffee, pepper, cardamom or vanilla. A fragility enhanced by the fact that major relief on the debt front requires Central help. Besides, State bureaucracies are extremely hostile to debt relief for farmers. Also, India’s free trade agreements with nations and neighbours that produce the same cash crops as Kerala hurts badly. The State’s balance on the farm suicides front is very delicate. Complacence would be, literally, fatal.
Group I States are those which have very high general suicide rates. That includes Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, West Bengal, and Tripura. “However, Group I’s share of both total suicides and of farmers’ suicides declined between 1997 and 2005, even as that of Group II steadily rose,” points out Professor Nagaraj.
Group III States (Assam, Orissa, Gujarat, and Haryana) are those which have “moderate general and farm suicide rates,” while Group IV States (Bihar including Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh including Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Rajasthan) report “low general and farmers’ suicides rates.”
Generally speaking, the Gangetic plain region and eastern India have seen fewer farm suicides. States such as Uttar Pradesh (including Uttaranchal), Bihar (including Jharkhand) and Orissa report very few suicides of this kind. These States are in many respects the opposite of the Group II or ‘Suicide SEZ’ States. These are overwhelmingly food crop regions. They are not intensive input zones, and their costs of cultivation are much lower. Use of chemicals is not anywhere at the levels it is in the Group II States. Government support prices for food crop provide some minimal stability. And there is obviously a better water situation.
States such as Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat also report few farm suicides but their data have been challenged. Haryana, for instance, reports fewer suicides but its increase over the nine-year period was 211 per cent. This springs not from the recording of huge increases in recent years, but because the base year data appear highly flawed. For 1997, Haryana reports a spectacularly low 45 suicides. Which distorts the figure of increase in farm suicides across the period, pushing it upwards. “It could just have been that the counting operation was really shoddy or that it collapsed or was incomplete when data were sent in 1997,” says Professor Nagaraj. The numbers after the low 1997 figure remain roughly within a 170-210 range each year. Which again is strongly contested by farm unions and activists.
There are peculiar indications in Gujarat. Pesticide suicides — a common tool in farm suicides — are 84 per cent higher here than farm suicides. At the national level, they are just 28 per cent higher. Why is the gap three times bigger for Gujarat? Even for Group II States, pesticide suicides are only 21 per cent higher than farm suicides. Which raises the question whether several deaths in Gujarat ended up being recorded as just “pesticide suicides” without being acknowledged as suicides by farmers.