follow us:
monday, may 22, 2017
Delhi City Edition
thehindu.com facebook.com/thehindu twitter.com/the_hindu
28 pages 앫 ₹10.00
Arunachal woman sets record by scaling Everest twice in ive days
Trump puts the onus of ighting terror on Muslim world
Govt. plans to make Air India a great global airline: Jayant Sinha
Man City, Liverpool clinch Champions League spots
page 7
page 12
page 13
page 17
Printe d at . Che n n ai . Co i mb ator e . B en galuru . Hyde ra bad . Madu rai . Noida . Visa khapat nam . T hiru vanant hapu ram . Koc hi . Vi j ayawada . Ma ngalu ru . Tiruch ira palli . Kolkata . H ubb a lli . Moh ali . A lla ha ba d . Ma la ppura m . M umba i . Ti ru pati
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
NEARBY
Power perch
to Kashmir issue: Rajnath Accuses Pakistan of fomenting trouble in the State and trying to destabilise India
Tripura will be BJP’s waterloo, says Yechury AGARTALA
EAST
Will ind permanent solution Pelling (Sikkim)
“Kashmir is ours, Kashmiris are ours and Kashmiriyat is also ours,” Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Sunday, asserting that the Modi government will find a “permanent solution” to the Kashmir problem. The Home Minister’s assertion came amid continued unrest in the Kashmir Valley. Addressing a public reception here, Mr. Singh accused Pakistan of fomenting trouble in Kashmir. “But I want to tell all of you that our government will find a permanent solution to the Kashmir issue,” he said, without elaborating.
쑺 PAGE 3
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Calm returns to Jamshedpur KOLKATA
No fresh violence was reported in Jamshedpur on Sunday after the lynching of seven people on Thursday, though anger and anxiety were palpable in certain areas of the town. NEWS
3 soldiers, 4 ultras killed in Handwara
Press Trust of India
The Tripura Assembly elections in 2018 will be the “Battle of Waterloo” for the BJP, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said here on Sunday. He lashed out at the BJP for creating a “war-like” situation to dislodge the Left Front government from power in the State.
쑺 PAGE 10
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
EDGE 쑺 4 PAGES DELHI METRO 쑺 6 PAGES
Winged visitors: Pelicans rest on a high-voltage power line that runs through the Pallikaranai marshland in Chennai. With the city losing over two lakh trees to Cyclone Vardah in December 2016, birds have fewer places to nest this season. SHAJU JOHN *
Hope for change The Minister deplored the fact that there was no change in the “attitude” of Pakistan which wanted to “destabilise” India. “We hope Pakistan will change. If it does not change, we will have to change them. After globalisation, one country can’t destabilise another country as the international community will not forget it,” he said. Unrest has continued in
Peerzada Ashiq Srinagar
Security concerns: Rajnath Singh taking the salute during his visit to 36th Batallion at Gayzing, Sikkim. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *
Kashmir since the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year. There has been an unprecedented involvement of students in the protests, with even girls taking to the streets to fight pitched battles with security forces. Around 80 people have lost their lives in the prolonged violence. Mr. Singh said heads of government of all neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, had been invited to the swearing-in ceremony of the Modi government in 2014 in an indication that In-
dia wanted friendly relations with them. The Home Minister is on a three-day visit to Sikkim during which he attended a conference of Himalayan States to review the security situation and development activities along the Sino-Indian border. He also visited the Nathu La border post, besides a few posts of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and SSB along the Sino-India and IndoNepal borders respectively. POLICE THWART HURRIYAT RALLY 쑺 PAGE 2
Four militants and three soldiers were killed in an overnight operation to foil an infiltration bid in north Kashmir’s Handwara area. An Army spokesperson told The Hindu that the operation launched in the Nowgam Sector in Kupwara district on Saturday afternoon continued into Sunday, with a fresh exchange of firing resulting in further casualties. Two militants and two soldiers were killed in the encounter on Saturday. “Four terrorists have been killed. Three soldiers also attained martyrdom,” the spokesperson said. “The sanitisation operation is on along the LoC,” he said, adding that four weapons and other war-like stores had been recovered from the site. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
Green energy target tough, say oicials
NIA to move cautiously against Geelani
Rooftop solar programme making poor progress as it is not cost-efective
Solid proof needed before knocking on the Hurriyat leader’s door, says oicial
TCA Sharad Raghavan New Delhi
The government is unlikely to meet its much-publicised target of 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022 due to the poor progress of the rooftop solar programme, according to officials in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The Ministry is also considering increasing the contribution of other
sources like biogas and small hydro to make up the difference, they added.
Several issues “You see, there are several issues with rooftop solar,” an official in the Ministry told The Hindu on the condition of anonymity. “The policy issue is that the tariff structure right now is such that it is just not re-
munerative for people to set up rooftop solar. The cost of doing so is higher than the money they stand to make. “The other issue is the use that people put their roofs to. “Most roofs in India are flat, and people find several alternative uses for these such as drying clothes, and even hosting parties or meals. There are parts of In-
dia where people even sleep on their roofs. So they don’t want to cover that whole space with solar panels,” the official said.
New plan The government is aware of these issues and is considering a new plan to incentivise rooftop solar, he said. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
Vijaita Singh New Delhi
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has registered a Preliminary Enquiry (PE) against Kashmiri separatist leaders, for allegedly receiving funds from Lashkar-e-Taiba’s chief Hafiz Saeed to create unrest in the Valley, would be cautious in questioning hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Mumbai snatches victory from the jaws of defeat A. Joseph Antony Hyderabad
Mumbai Indians snatched its third Indian Premier League title with a nail-biting onerun victory over Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Sunday night.
Mumbai’s 129 for eight, largely enabled by Krunal Pandya’s valiant 47 and a 50run stand for the eighth wicket with Mitchell Johnson, was, incidentally, the lowest in the final for a side batting first. Pune’s chase sputtered to
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Of cows, compassion and communal amity Mohammed Iqbal JODHPUR
At a time when cow vigilante groups in the northern States are targeting people on the mere suspicion of eating beef or smuggling cattle, an adarsh gaushala (model cow shelter) set up by a Muslim institution in Jodhpur is taking care of old and sick cows. It is also assisting dairy farmers in a dozen surrounding villages in looking after their animals, and earning goodwill for promoting communal amity. Launched in 2004 by Jodhpur-based Marwar Muslim Educational and Welfare Society (MMEWS), the initiative has won mass appreciation, with hundreds of people handing over cows and bulls to the shelter. Old, weak, sick, abandoned, and neglected cows are given priority at the sprawling gaushala located in Bujhawad village, 12 km from Jodhpur. The shelter claims to be the first gaushala to be wholly owned and managed by the Muslim community. Situated on a large piece of land without any boundary wall, the shelter CM YK
MMEWS general secretary Mohammed Atique at the cow shelter. SPECIAL *
ARRANGEMENT
is currently home to 217 bovines tagged by the State government’s Animal Husbandry Department. The shelter’s full-time caretaker Hakim Khan and his wife Allahrakhi are in charge of the bovines’ welfare. “We are glad to receive appreciation from the majority community, which sees the gaushala as an enterprise promoting communal harmony,” says Mr. Khan. A trained team brings the cows to the gaushala in a specially designed vehicle. The MMEWS is planning to double the shelter’s capacity by taking over a part of the 56 acres of land allotted for the construction of the Maulana Azad University, the society’s general secretary, Mohammed Atique, told The Hindu.
a halt a run short. Working the magic for Mumbai was Johnson (3 for 26), whose bowling display at the death, swung the contest Mumbai’s way. In the very last over, the lethal Queenslander dismissed Manoj Tiwary and Supergiant skipper Steve Smith
(51). Pune, cruising at 71 for two, fell apart in the closing stages as Rohit’s men scripted an incredible comeback. Earlier, Jasprit Bumrah had accounted for M.S. Dhoni, a blow that perhaps paved the way to Pune’s defeat.
Jasprit Bumrah celebrates the wicket of M.S. Dhoni. *
K.R. DEEPAK (SEE ALSO PAGE 15)
A senior Home Ministry official said questioning Mr. Geelani would not be easy and the NIA would require “irrefutable evidence” before it lands at the Hurriyat leader’s door. The Centre has on several occasions charged the J&K government with going soft on the separatists. The NIA said in a statement that it would be scour-
ing over 150 cases of rioting and stone-pelting registered in the Kashmir Valley postBurhan Wani’s killing in an encounter with security forces on July 8, 2016 to find possible links to Kashmiri separatist leaders.
‘No hurry’ “There is no hurry to question Mr. Geelani. We are still not done with questioning
others. Procedures would be followed,” an NIA official said. The agency’s concerns also arise from its experience last year, when a similar PE against Mr. Geelani, to probe his links to two bank accounts, through which money was routed to allegedly create unrest in the Valley drew a blank. CONTINUED ON 쑺 PAGE 10
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
2 NORTH
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
DELHI
Timings
Monday, May 22
RISE 05:27 SET 19:09 RISE 02:52 SET 15:21 Tuesday, May 23
RISE 05:27 SET 19:10 RISE 03:34 SET 16:25 Wednesday, May 24
RISE 05:26 SET 19:10 RISE 04:17 SET 17:32
IN BRIEF
Seven killed, nine injured in road accident AMRITSAR
Seven persons, including three women, were killed and nine injured when an SUV hit a stationary auto-rickshaw and a car at Umranangal by-pass near Beas, around 35 km from here, on Sunday. The incident occurred when the SUV, heading towards Amritsar from Delhi, rammed the three-wheeler and the car which were parked on the national highway. PTI
Man booked for kidnapping minor girl PHAGWARA
A man has been booked for allegedly kidnapping a 16year-old girl here, the police said on Sunday. Rajiv Kumar, a resident of Nasirabad village, has been booked on the complaint of the girl’s father, they said. The complainant alleged that the man took away his daughter on the pretext of marrying her, the police said. PTI
Police thwart Hurriyat rally Separatist leaders prevented from gathering to mark death anniversaries Peerzada Ashiq
Chief Minister promises to visit the soldier’s village
Srinagar
Restrictions by the authorities and a separatists’ shutdown call on the death anniversaries of Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq and Abdul Gani Lone affected life in the Kashmir Valley on Sunday. To foil separatists move to hold a march at the Eidgah in the old city, the authorities imposed restrictions in Srinagar’s Nowhatta, M.R. Gunj, Khanyar, Rainawari and Safa Kadal areas. “All main roads in these areas were barricaded by placing rolls of concertina wires to prevent people from moving towards the venue,” said a Hurriyat spokesman. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who heads a faction of the Hurriyat, had called for a joint rally which was to be addressed by him, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Muhammad Yasin Malik. Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq, father of the present Mir-
Press Trust of India Sambhal
On the watch: Women walk past as security personnel stand guard during a strike in Srinagar on Sunday. PTI *
waiz, was assassinated by unknown gunmen 27 years ago at his Srinagar residence. In 2003, Abdul Ghani Lone fell prey to bullets from unknown gunmen when he was commemorating the death anniversary of the late
‘Take Capt. Saurabh Kalia’s case to ICJ’
Mirwaiz at Edigah.
Crackdown launched In south Kashmir, a crackdown was launched against known protesters and 13 youth were rounded up. Meanwhile, separatists’ call for a shutdown saw most
Ex-servicemen league urges Centre Press Trust of India
The Himachal Pradesh chapter of ex-servicemen league has urged the Centre to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case of Army Captain Saurabh Kalia. During the 1999 Kargil conflict, Capt. Kalia was tortured by his Pakistani captors who later handed over his mutilated body to India.
Jadhav case The league’s HP chapter chief, Major (retired) Vijay Singh Mankotia said Capt. Kalia’s case also be taken to the ICJ, the UN’s highest judicial body, to get justice on
the lines of Kulbhushan Jadhav. The ICJ at the Hague has stayed the execution awarded to Jadhav in Pakistan after a military court summarily convicted him of espionage and engaging in subversive activities after India knocked its doors.
Earlier requests Mankotia said the Indian Exservicemen League and the family of Capt. Kalia had made this demand to the previous governments but could not hear anything positive about it. “Now, after the case of Jadhav in the ICJ, a ray of hope has risen in Kalia’s case too,” he said here on Saturday.
markets closed and few vehicles on the roads. Describing curbs on separatists as “unethical”, Mr. Geelani said, “The situation in J&K is turning from bad to worse. The PDP-BJP’s brute approach towards the leadership is appalling.”
The protesting family members of a soldier, who was killed in Pakistani firing along the LoC in J&K last year, on Sunday agreed to end their indefinite fast saying Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had promised to visit their village. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who was on an official tour to Moradabad, met the father, brother and an uncle of deceased sepoy Sudesh Kumar on Sunday. According to family members, the CM promised to visit not only their village but also those of other jawans, who have laid their lives for the country. “The Chief Minister assured us that development work will begin in our village....He also said that he will visit the house of every
martyr of Uttar Pradesh,” Manoj Kumar, brother of the martyr, said. Adityanath also promised that work for starting an inter-college in the village will begin soon, he added. Manoj said that Uttar Pradesh’s Minister of State for Social Welfare, Scheduled Castes and Tribal Welfare Gulabo Devi will now visit the family to facilitate the ending of their fast.
‘Promises not met’ The soldier’s family had been agitating claiming nonfulfilment of promises made to them. They had also demanded that the CM should visit them. The health of the deceased soldier’s wife Kavita and mother Santosh Kumari had deteriorated on Sunday. Dr. Neeraj Sharma, who inspected the health of the family members on Sunday,
180 Dalit families renounce Hinduism In protest against ‘one-sided police action’ against the Bheem Army Staff reporter
Dharamsala
Family of martyr agree to end fast after meeting Yogi
Meerut
Over 180 Dalit families living in Saharanpur district villages gathered at a canal on Friday and immersed idols of Hindu gods and goddesses in the water saying they “would much rather renounce a faith that doesn’t give them the status of being a Hindu and allows the upper caste to treat them like slaves”. The families from Rupdi, Kapurpur, Ighri and Unali villages near Shabbirpur in Saharanpur said they had renounced Hinduism in “protest against atrocities against the Dalits by the Thakurs, and the subsequent one-sided police action against the Bheem Army”. Saharanpur district had witnessed clashes between Thakurs and Dalits earlier
this month. Narendra Gautam, who was among those who renounced Hinduism on Friday, said the families will go to Delhi to take ‘diksha’ in last week of May in order to officially convert to Buddhism. The families claimed that more people will renounce Hinduism and convert to Buddhism if the Yogi Adityanath government doesn’t stop “targeting the Dalits and the Bheem Army”. Mr. Gautam said: “We’re taking this extreme step as a mark of protest. The Thakur community attacked and burnt our homes because we asked them to respect our saint Ravidas and not play loud music in Shabbirpur this month. Then, the UP government, headed by Mr. Adityanath, who is also a Thakur, took action against
us for protesting against atrocities by the Thakurs. How long should we remain silent? At the time of elections, they call us Hindus. After the elections, they start treating us like slaves.”
Not aware: SSP Saharanpur SSP S.C. Dubey however rejected the renouncement move as “pressure tactic” to avoid police action. The police have booked several volunteers of the Bheem Army on charges of posting “objectionable content and spreading rumours” on WhatsApp and Facebook groups on May 9, which allegedly led to violent protest by the Dalits. “I’m not aware of these conversions,” he told journalists. The renouncement comes days after advocate Chandrashekhar Azad
Ravan, the founder of a Dalit outfit that works for their upliftment in the areas of education and socio-economic empowerment in Saharanpur and its vicinity, appealed to his supporters to attend the protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to show solidarity against atrocities faced by the marginalised community. “I want to ask the Adityanath government why the entire administration remained a mute spectator as 56 houses and 40 shops burnt to the ground, and hundreds of Dalit brothers and sisters were assaulted and humiliated? The administration didn’t do anything against the injustice and atrocities. When the Bheem Army tried to protest peacefully, they weren’t allowed to do so ,” Mr. Gautam added.
said that the blood pressure level of the martyr’s wife and one of his cousins has dipped. He had suggested that both of them must be hospitalised. On May 19, villagers and family members of Sudesh, who laid down his life on October 16, 2016, had sat on a fast in the Pansukha Milak village in this district, claiming that the promises made by the BJP leaders at the time of his death remained unfulfilled. His mother had said if the CM did not visit them, she will commit suicide. The family members had said that they had been promised the sanction for a petrol pump, construction of a road and a memorial in the village and renaming a village primary school in Sudesh’s name, but none of the promises was fulfilled.
Ex-Cong MP shares stage with Minister Press Trust of India Chandigarh
Former Congress MP Arvind Sharma sharing the dais with Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma at an event in Karnal and praising the Narendra Modi and Manohar Lal Khattar governments has triggered speculation of him joining the BJP. “The Modi government, which is completing three years at the Centre, is doing well and the people are happy with it. Khattar, is also an honest man working towards taking the State on the development path,” he said. Mr. Sharma had quit the Congress before the 2014 Haryana Assembly polls to join the BSP. However, he quit the BSP last year. .
Taking on a ‘drinking’ problem head-on in Rajasthan Low-cost water ilter developed by a group of students from IIT-Jodhpur has gained acceptance in rural areas intensive and expensive equipment that has entered urban homes isn't suitable for rural families with limited financial resources. Cost-effective solutions like the filter developed by them, which is based on indigenous knowledge, could effectively meet the needs of villages. The students designed a machine in their laboratory for manufacturing these filters and three machines have been installed in homes of potter families in Sar, Banad and Salawas villages.
areaohammed Iqbal JODHPUR
It took an apple falling on the head of Sir Issac Newton for that ‘aha moment’. All it took a group of students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Jodhpur to come up with gravity as the answer to clean drinking water needs was a visit to ArnaJharna, an open desert museum displaying traditional knowledge systems of local communities on the outskirts of the city in 2013. The mechanical engineering students were inspired to work on a cheap but efficient water filter during an interaction with Kuldeep Kothari of Jodhpur-based Rupayan Sansthan, which functions as an institute of folklore and runs the museum. IIT-Jodhpur Assistant Professor Anand Plappally encouraged them to come up with a solution.
‘G-Filter’ Amrita Kaurwar, Sandeep Gupta, Raj K. Satankar and Devaiah Soyam, and traditional potters worked together in 2013 to develop a ‘G-Filter’ that provides clean drinking water in poor village households at very low costs. The first prototype was developed in December 2016
The 20-litre ilter receptacle looks like a lowerpot and has micro-nano pores through which water percolates due to gravity.
and displayed at the Unnat Bharat Abhiyan pavilion of the India International Science Festival in New Delhi in December 2016.
20-litre capacity The 20-litre filter receptacle looks like a flowerpot and has micro-nano pores through which water percolates due to gravity.
An average of eight litres of water percolates in 10 hours when the receptacle is running at full capacity. During the manufacturing process, sawdust and marble powder are added to the clay to improve the filter’s antibacterial properties. It also provides structural strength to the receptacle, which is kept on a water dispensing
container made of steel or plastic.
Sold by potters The filters, being sold by potters in Jodhpur district at prices ranging between ₹300 and ₹350 each, have gained acceptance in rural areas of western Rajasthan. The students said the reverse osmosis-based, energy-
Workshops for potters The Sansthan also organised a series of workshops for potters to enable them manufacture filters with salt-added clay. Mr. Kothari said the Sansthan was disseminating the technology to individual potters as part of its drive to preserve traditional skills of villagers and promote natural engineered products. Abdul Razak, a potter at Banad village in Jodhpur, said: “I learnt a lot from the workshops organised by the Sansthan. Though we have indigenous knowledge of the filtration properties of sand, I learnt about the right mix of sawdust and marble powder for preparing the
clay from the students. Each water filter weighs about 5kg. It’s very useful and should be kept in every household.”
To clean impurities Dr. Plappally told The Hindu that the filter’s capacity to clean impurities of bacteria, mostly E. Coli, metal contamination and chemical impurities has been certified by the Union government’s National Test House. Besides protection against water-borne diseases, which according to the World Health Organization comprise 65% of ailments, the filter helps maintain robust health and nutritional status of the rural populace, said Dr. Plappally, a post-doctoral fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before joining IIT-Jodhpur in 2012. “We have applied for patent of the process for manufacturing, rather than the filter itself, to facilitate its supply to areas not getting power and water supply,” he added. IIT-Jodhpur has also provided the filter’s knowhow to the Integrated Rural Technology Centre, Palakkad, and Enactus IITMadras, which is a group of IIT alumni in Chennai.
Six persons injured in UP clash Press Trust of India Jaunpur (UP)
Six persons, including two women, were injured when two groups belonging to different communities clashed over a minor dispute at Khadhar village in the Kerakat area, the police said on Sunday.
Bike hits cycle The incident occurred on Saturday night when
a bike of a man of a particular community hit the cycle of the man of another community near the village, following which they entered into an altercation. When they returned to the village, the people of both the communities clashed with each other in which six persons, including two women, were injured. Later, the police
reached the spot and brought the situation under control.
FIR registered A First Information Report has been registered against 11 persons and four have been detained in this regard, the police said. Heavy police force has been deployed to ensure peace in the village, they said.
A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
EAST 3
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Tripura will be BJP’s waterloo: Yechury
IN BRIEF
Anarchy in West Bengal, says State BJP chief
‘Modi govt celebrating three years in oice despite failures’
MALDA
Syed Sajjad Ali
The BJP on Sunday alleged that anarchy was prevailing in the education sector and that democracy was at stake in West Bengal under the ruling Trinamool Congress. “A Naxal-like situation has arisen in the State nowadays. There is an atmosphere of total anarchy in the education sector. Democracy is at stake,” State BJP president Dilip Ghosh told a press conference here. PTI
‘BJD govt in Odisha failing on all fronts’ BHUBANESWAR
The opposition Congress and the BJP on Sunday hit out at the ruling BJD in Odisha, accusing it of failing on all fronts amid rampant corruption, misrule, farmers’ miseries and sluggish industrial activity. “The BJD had promised to transform Odisha, but pushed the State backward with misrule, corruption and neglect of farmers for 17 years,” OPCC chief Prasad Harichandan said.PTI
CPI(M) slams Odisha govt’s approach to ransomware Says State has no concrete, long-term solution in place
Press Trust of India
Staff Reporter BERHAMPUR
Agartala
The Tripura Assembly elections in 2018 will be the “Battle of Waterloo” for the BJP, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said here on Sunday. He lashed out at the BJP for creating a “war-like” situation to dislodge the Left Front government from power in the State. “If it’s a war, then we are ready to fight it. We will fight to win in all the 60 segments of the Assembly,” Mr. Yechury said. He was attending the twoday State committee meeting with his predecessor, Prakash Karat.
‘Stepping stone’ He said the BJP saw Tripura as the “stepping stone” to control Northeast India after wresting power in Assam and Manipur. “The BJP is disillusioned about the outcome of the Assembly elections,” he said. Mr. Yechury asserted that for the BJP, the Assembly elections slated for early
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury at a press conference in Agartala on Saturrday. PTI *
2018 will be the ‘Battle of Waterloo’ that marked final defeat of French emperor Napoleon in 1815. He blamed BJP leaders for making irrelevant statements such as “Chief Minister Manik Sarkar will vote for lotus symbol” and “Election Commission will hold three-tier election in Tripura”. He said the BJP was beating drums despite wresting power by unfair means its back-door power capture in Goa and Manipur, and its
miserable defeat in Punjab in the recent Assembly elections. The voter turnout in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand was less than that for Lok Sabha elections in 2014. He criticised the Modi government for celebrating three years in office despite its “failures”. Party State secretary Bijan Dhar and central committee member Gautam Das were present at the news conference in party’s state headquarters.
Odisha CPI(M) criticised the approach of State government in dealing with the recent threat of the ransomware virus on computers in the State. “Instead of coming out with a concrete long-term solution, the government seems to be helping in marketing an upgraded version of Operating Systems (OS) of private software companies as well as firewalls and antiviruses”, said state secretary of Odisha CPI(M) Ali Kishor Patnaik. The “greatest irony” is that State Information Technology (IT) minister came up with a statement that to fight recent ransomware menace computer users should upgrade to Windows 10 OS and updated versions of anti-viruses, he added.
Open software According to Mr Patnaik, this could have been the right juncture to promote free and safe open software. “Recently, Prakash Rao, the CEO of GSTN, set up to
provide IT infrastructure for GST rollout has stated that this network will not be impacted by the ‘WannaCry’ ransomware attack, as its systems do not run on Microsoft software. He had stated that their software is not based on Microsoft windows operating system and are immune,” Mr. Patnaik said. The GSTN network operates on Linux software which is not affected by the ransomware attack.
High costs But it is ironic that in Odisha, the State government has failed to promote open software among its citizens and goverment offices although the use of official versions of OS like windows involves much expenditure, alleged the CPI(M) leader. He urged the government not to fall into the trap of Proprietary Software and Proprietary Culture being promoted by profit-oriented multi-national software companies. According to him these software companies provide “no knowledge
about the software which is used and try to convert us into mindless support machines for their economic gains” “These profit-based software companies have started to make us believe in a fallacy that computers can only be run by their software. Even our elected leaders have fallen prey to it to declare that paying up money to these companies to upgrade software is the only solution to check computer virus threat,” he said. He cited the example of Kerala, where Linux had been promoted in the official sector.
Grassroot level According to Mr. Patnaik, this is the right time to promote free software at grassroot level to counter the intellectual colonialism of multi-national software companies. “Instead of spending money on upgrading windows software, the government should start shifting its computers to open softwares to check the virus menace,” he said.
Mayachar island residents at wits’ end over land erosion
Animal sightings rise as water dries up
Accuse State govt of not taking any efective measures
Satyasundar Barik
Staff Reporter Kolkata
The lives and livelihood of nearly 6,000 residents of the Mayachar island in Purba Medinipur district is in jeopardy due to land erosion caused by the river Rupnarayan. The residents of the 7-km-wide island, located on the southern bank of the river in the Mahishadal block of the district, have said they are living in constant fear of losing their homes as the river takes up more and more of their land.
Homes lost The locals have also accused the State government of “not taking any effective measures” to address the issue. However, the State’s Minister of Irrigation and Waterways, Rajib Banerjee claimed that “substantial work” has already been done in this regard.
Withering away: Land erosion by the Rupnarayan river at Mayachar island in Purba Medinipur. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *
“This (land erosion) has been going on for at least a decade. In the last one month, 25 families have lost their homes due to land erosion by Rupnarayan,” Madhusudhan Guchayat, a local school teacher, told The Hindu. He said the situation had put the residents of the island in a spot as, being farmers, they cannot leave their land and relocate
elsewhere. The residents alleged that despite repeatedly urging the district administration, no effective step to curb soil erosion has been taken so far. “The soil of Mayachar is not very firm and hence prone to erosion. Moreover, the State government has not done much to address the situation,” said Mr. Guchayat.
21 candles and a world record
After bail, Sudip returns to Kolkata
Man also held 90 grapes in mouth
Kolkata
Fiery attempt: Manoj Kumar Moharan during the recordbreaking demonstration. L. PANDA *
Staff Reporter BERHAMPUR
In an attempt to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records, Manoj Kumar Moharana — a post-graduate student of mathematics from Ganjam district in Odisha — stuffed the ends of 21 lit candles in his mouth.
Another record Apart from the attempt with candles, he also kept 90 grapes inside his mouth in a second bid to reach the record book. Both these demonstrations took place in the presence of Berhampur Sub-Collector, S.S.Swain at his office on Saturday. Two years’ practice Mr. Moharana, who hails from Khadarada village under Polasara block of Ganjam district, said he had been practising for the potential record in CM YK
these two fields for over two years.“Recent Guinness record for most lit candles in the mouth is 18, by Dinesh Shivnath Upadhyaya of Mumbai on Jan 7, 2017. The current record for most seedless grapes stuffed in the mouth is 88,” said Mr. Moharana. He said that he hopes to be the new record holder after verification by Guinness officials.
Failed attempt Earlier in 2015, he had tried to create a record using his field of study, mathematics. He had attempted to write squares of every number from 1 to 1000 from memory in 49 seconds. “But Guinness authorities did not accept my endeavour, so I decided to try another field to get recognised,” he said.
Staff Reporter
Trinamool Congress(TMC) MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay who was granted bail in the Rose Valley chit fund case on Friday returned to Kolkata late on Sunday evening. The TMC MP who was in an Odisha hospital was admitted to a private hospital soon after he landed at the city's airport. Mr. Bandyopadhyay, an MP from Kolkata North was arrested by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the Rose Valley chit fund scam on January 3. Mr. Bandyopadhyay was granted conditional bail by the Orissa High Court on Friday.
Water scarcity in Odisha forests critical, authorites hope for early monsoon forests that is driving the animals out of their habitats.
BHUBANESWAR
Forest officials across Odisha are keeping their fingers crossed for the early arrival of monsoon as water scarcity in jungles has reached a critical stage, forcing wild animals to stray into human habitations more frequently. Such incidents of animals straying past the jungles have seen a rise over the past fortnight. On Sunday, two persons were injured when a wild boar attacked them near their village in Balangir district while a herd of seven elephants wreaked havoc in Gajapati district.
Elephants’ off-season raid It is apprehended that a further stretch in the current dry spell could aggravate the situation. Sample this; a gaur (Indian bison) was found dead near a water source which had completely dried up in Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary in Angul district recently. Forest officials had noticed
Examinees ransack New Jalpaiguri rly station
Every drop counts: Cement rings are illed with water for animals at Satkosia Gorge Sanctuary. BISWARANJAN ROUT *
that the gaur had made a desperate attempt to access water by digging the soil with its horns before its death. In Rajnagar area of Kendrapara district, a spotted deer strayed into human habitation in search of water as there is acute shortage in Bhitarkanika National park. Incident of elephants coming close to human habitations in the State have be-
come extremely common. Earlier, the elephants were known to raid crops between November and February. In summer, the jumbos are expected to stay deep inside the cooler forest environment. However, they have been regularly found wandering near villages this time around. Experts said that it is the acute water scarcity in
Water tankers While authorities have pinned hopes on early showers for a much-needed relief to animals in forests, Satkosia Wildlife Division, for the first time in Odisha, has started dispatching water tankers to forests at regular intervals to quench the thirst of wild animals. As the situation went out of control, we were forced to set up pits using cemented rings at 80 places. It worked wonderfully well, quenching the thirst of wild animals at this critical juncture, he said. Water shortage is one of the reasons behind dwindling elephant population in Satkosia. “In 2012, we had 229 elephants in Satkosia forest, it dropped to 146 in 2015 and there might be a further drop this year. Residential elephants migrate to other places in search of water,” Mr. Rahmen said.
Siliguri
Irate examinees on Sunday went on the rampage at New Jalpaiguri railway station ransacking the station master’s office, damaging an engine and two AC coaches and trying to set fire to the station. NF Railway Area Manager Parthasarathi Shil said over one lakh examinees from Bihar had arrived here on Saturday to appear for the exams for the Group-D posts conducted by the West Bengal government at various centres in north Bengal. They were on their way back home from New Jalpaiguri junction. However, no trains were available for the return journey, Mr. Shil said. The examinees approached the station master on Saturday night and demanded arrangements for them to stay overnight at the station. However, they were allegedly chased away by the RPF, sources said.
Tyres burnt They then ransacked several platforms and the station master’s office, burnt tyres on the tracks, held up the Awadh-Assam express and damaged its engine and two AC coaches and tried to set fire to the station, Mr. Shil said. The RPF, along with the NJP police, brought the situation under control. Several passengers, however, sustained injuries, the sources said. Mr. Shil said the damage to railway property was estimated to be ₹1 crore and the RPF had lodged an FIR against the agitators. Several superfast and long-distance trains were held up as a result of the agitation, which was lifted around 11 a.m on Sunday, after the Railways provided a special train to transport the examinees to Bihar, Mr. Shil said.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
4 WEST
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Maharashtra releases Koyna water to crisis-hit Karnataka
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Passing of a giant
Oicials say 0.5 TMC water to be discharged over a 10-day period Shoumojit Banerjee Pune
The Maharashtra government on Sunday released water from the Koyna dam in Satara district to alleviate the water crisis in Karnataka. Around 0.5 TMC water will be released over a 10-day period, authorities have said. Water level in the Kaveri river basin has plummeted due to the soaring temperature. This is the second such discharge from the Koyna reservoir to Karnataka. Last month, 2.5 TMC water was released from the reservoir following a high-level meeting between officials of the neighbouring States. This cumulative discharge of 3 TMC follows a direct appeal on part of Karnataka
Being neighbourly: Last month, 2.5 TMC water was released from the Koyna reservoir to Karnataka. FILE PHOTO *
Water Resources Minister M. B. Patil to provide relief to Belagavi, Bagalkot and Vijaypura districts. In return,
Karnataka will release water from the Almatti dam to cater to the needs of Solapur district and others parts in
Maharashtra facing water shortage. Late last month, Maharashtra Water Resources Minister Girish Mahajan had said nine of the 12 dams in Karnataka barely had 20% of their water stock. “The available live storage in the reservoirs has touched an all-time low,” Mr. Mahajan had said, adding that he had ordered the discharge from Koyna dam to bring immediate relief to farmers in Karnataka. With a storage capacity of 105 TMC, the Koyna reservoir is one of the largest dams in the State. It houses the massive Koyna hydropower generation plant. Three consecutive years of drought have aggravated the agrarian crisis in Karnataka, especially in the north.
The remains: A decomposed carcass of a whale, about 8 metres long, washed ashore at the Juhu Chowpatty early on Sunday. *
VIJAY BATE
Get free Wi-Fi at 28 Konkan Railway stations Cong. accuses Goa govt. of Suresh Prabhu inaugurates internet service, facilities for passengers at Kudal, Chiplun stations Prakash Kamat Panaji
Konkan Railway passengers will now get free, unlimited Wi-Fi at 28 railway stations and better amenities at Kudal and Chiplun railway stations. Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu inaugurated the facilities at a function at Kudal railway station on Sunday. Konkan Railway has tied up with Syscon Joister to provide 2 Mbps peer-to-peer 24x7 free Wi-Fi at the 28 stations in line with the Union government’s Digital India Initiative. The same company provides the JOISPOT Wi-Fi service in educational institutes in Pune and Mumbai, and will provide free Wi-Fi bandwidth to rural areas
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu at Kudal station on Sunday.
along the Konkan route as a corporate social responsibility activity. The network covers the station entrance and surrounding area. To access the
*
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Wi-Fi, users have to open the JOISPOT mobile application and register using their name and mobile number. They have to request a one-time password to use the internet.
The facility will be provided at 28 stations from Kolad to Madure in the initial phase. The system can provide access to about 300 users at bigger stations and
100 users at smaller stations. As Kudal and Chiplun are two important stations on the Konkan Railway line, dealing with approximate daily traffic of 5,000 and 3,200 passengers, respectively, Konkan Railway has upgraded the passenger amenities at these stations. The Minister on Sunday inaugurated the improved facilities at Kudal Railway Station which includes several works and cost approximately ₹108 lakh. Improved passenger amenities at Chiplun Railway Station, which were inaugurated remotely, involved an investment of ₹192 lakh, said Mr. L.K. Verma, chief public relations officer of Konkan Railway.
violating Panchayat Raj Act 186 gram panchayats set to go to polls on June 11 Prakash Kamat PANAJI
The Goa Congress has accused the BJP-led State government in Goa of violating the Goa Panchayat Raj Act in the delimitation of reserved panchayat wards ahead of the ongoing election process. All India Congress Committee Secretary Girish Chodankar said in a statement on Sunday that provisions of Article 243 K of the Act specifically give the powers to delimit and reserve wards to the Goa State Election Commission and not the State government. He said the State Election
Commission has filed an affidavit in the High Court in the Mango Foundation case, stating that it is the constitutionally empowered authority to delimit and reserve wards, while the government is illegally taking over these powers. “People have reacted sharply to the delimitation manipulations, even threatening to boycott the elections because of the blunders dividing voters of the same locality and even of the same family into two different wards. These are not human errors, but deliberate moves made to benefit certain candidates of the rul-
ing parties,” Mr. Chodankar alleged. He said the government has not followed any transparent criteria in the reservation process. In some cases, where reservation was not possible, ward numbers were changed to suit the needs of the BJP. He said the government was manipulating the Panchayat elections in such a way that people had no option to approach the court of law. The government notified the reservations on May 17 evening, and the election process was notified the next morning. Goa’s 186 gram panchayats will go to polls on June 11.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
SOUTH 5
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
Another feather in the cap for police station
Mason swept away in bid to save electronic equipment Rain prevented Shanta Kumar from coming back from storm water drain in Bengaluru
KOZHIKODE
The Kozhikode Town Station that secured the title of the first ISO 9001:2008 certified police station in Kerala in 2011 is all set to update its status further by achieving the tag of the city’s first women and child-friendly police station. Work is in full swing to dedicate two rooms with all facilities to make women complainants and their children feel at home.
Singareni unions firm on strike from June 15 PEDDAPALLI
The National trade unions of Singareni Collieries Company Limited have decided to stick to their call to go on an indefinite strike in the Singareni coal mines from June 15, demanding the revival of dependent job scheme to coal miners.
Bengaluru
fused saying he felt safe in the cabin.
A desperate effort to save electronic equipment lying in a storm water drain resulted in 34-year-old Shanta Kumar being swept away by a sudden gush of water during the downpour on Saturday night, according to witnesses. Kumar is a mason who was constructing a concrete retention wall on the drain in Kurubarahalli, north Bengaluru. The contractor for the project is Basavaraj, uncle of Shanta Kumar. Witnesses said labourers had retired for the day and were in their makeshift sheds near the work site. The rain came around 8 p.m. when Shanta Kumar had finished making the weekly payment to the workers. As the rain gained intens-
Strong current But the situation changed within minutes. Water starting gushing from upstream, partly submerging the earthmover, which started tottering. Shanta Kumar tried to get down from the earthmover in a bid to make a dash for higher ground. However, as he was climbing down, he was washed away by the strong current. Fire Services and National Disaster Response Force personnel were deployed, but he had not been traced till 5.30 p.m. on Sunday when the operation was suspended. Shanta Kumar is from a village near Maddur. His wife is a homemaker and they have a nine-month-old son.
Staff Reporter
All-out efort: A search is on for Shanta Kumar, inset, who was washed away in heavy rain. V. SREENIVASA MURTHY *
ity, the workers ran for shelter. However, Shanta Kumar rushed towards an earthmover, which was parked a few feet inside the drain. One of the workers said, “Initially, we did not understand why he ran towards the drain. Later, we realised that he had gone to pick up some
equipment that was lying in the drain. But the rain was so heavy that he couldn't come back.” The squall and heavy rain forced Shanta Kumar to take shelter in the cabin of the earthmover. Basavaraj said other workers offered a long iron rod to help him return to the bank, but he re-
Inebriated minor girl gang-raped by four youth in Vijayawada Her boyfriend too arrested for kidnap and rape Staff Reporter VIJAYAWADA
A 16-year-old girl, who just completed Class X, was allegedly raped by four persons who found her in an inebriated condition on a road last week. The four, all aged around 22, and the girl’s friend Akhil, 20, who also allegedly exploited the minor in the name of love had been arrested. Producing the five accused before media here on Sunday, DCP G. Pala Raju said the girl was having an affair with Akhil, whom she met more than a year ago on social media. On May 16, she left home on the pretext of visiting her friend as she planned a short trip with Akhil and their mutual friend Ajay Samuel. The trio met early in the morning and went to
Mustabada on the city outskirts, had booze and spent some time in an abandoned area, the police said. Akhil and Ajay Samuel dropped the girl near her house at 8.30 p.m. while she was still under the influence of alcohol. The police said the accused gang — Srikanth, Abhishek, Pawan Kumar and Sunil — offered her a ride on their motorcycles to her house. “The girl, who accepted the offer, was then taken to Tadepalli near Vijayawada, where the accused bought liquor and came back to their room in Madhura Nagar. She was again forced to consume alcohol and was raped over the night by the four. At around 7 a.m. the next day, they dropped her near her house,” Mr. Pala Raju said. The parents called police
Jumbo collapses near cofee estate YSRC leader, aide done to Workers noticed the elephant lying on the ground in Hassan district har, a veterinarian. He along with Badami, another vet, treated the elephant. Doctors said, the elephant did not move at all early on, but gradually showed signs of recovery after treatment.
Staff Reporter Hassan
A lactating elephant, aged about 20, was found ill in a private land near Kabbinagadde village in Sakleshpur taluk on Sunday morning. The workers at an adjacent coffee estate noticed the elephant lying on the ground. Initially, they thought it was stuck in the mud. They later realised it was ill and had no strength to get up. Assistant Conservator of Forests Ramesh Babu and other officials reached the spot with veterinarians after being alerted by villagers. “We understood that the elephant had fallen sick after not having eaten for the last couple of days. Our doctors
All hands on deck: Veterinarians and oicials of the Forest Department treating the elephant. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *
treated the animal and it has shown signs of improvement,” Mr. Babu said. The elephant was found near the estate belonging to retired IAS officer I.M. Vittalmurthy. The doctors suspect that
the animal may have contracted an infection and, as a result, had not taken food. “We have given it some fluids and calcium. Blood samples have been taken for examination,” said Muralid-
Kerala animal welfare forum complains against VIPs
Herd nearby Even as the treatment was being administered, other elephants were seen moving in the area. However, none of them came close as many people had gathered there. “The elephant had given birth to a baby 2-3 months ago, and the baby must be in that group. When people leave the spot, the elephant group is likely to come close to the ailing elephant and may try to take her along,” said Dr. Muralidhar.
death in Kurnool district Narayana Reddy sought protection, fearing threat to his life Nandyal and Veldurthi when the attack took place. He is a close relative of former Union Minister Kotla Jayasuryaprakash Reddy.
Special Correspondent KURNOOL
YSR Congress Pathikonda constituency incharge Cherukulapadu Narayana Reddy and his aide Sambasivudu were murdered by members of a rival faction at Ramakrishnapuram in Krishnagiri mandal of Kurnool district on Sunday. Narayana Reddy’s car went off the road near a culvert after a tractor hit it from behind and about 20 to 25 members of the rival group hurled bombs, dragged him and his aide out of the car and attacked them with hunting sickles and knives, killing Narayana Reddy on
Narayana Reddy
the spot. Sambasivudu, who tried to flee, was hacked to death about 500 metres away. The YSRC leader was returning to Krishnagiri after attending marriages at
Earlier attacks The rival group had attacked his house in Cherukulapadu village some time ago and destroyed vehicles on the premises. He was acquitted by a court in a murder case a few years ago. Narayana Reddy had deposited his revolver with the police for renewal of its licence and had urged the State government to provide protection to him as he faced threat to his life.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Pretty drops
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
Will a complaint shot off by an animal lover to the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF) prove to be a headache for a few Kerala Ministers? Revenue Minister E. Chandrasekharan, Agriculture Minister V.S. Sunil Kumar, Electricity Minister M.M. Mani, Water Resource Minister Mathew T. Thomas and Forest Minister K. Raju had visited Kappukadu to assess the efforts that had been undertaken to supply water from Neyyar dam, during which they reportedly witnessed a baby elephant sustaining injuries. V.K. Venkitachalam, secretary of the Thrissur-based Heritage Animal Task Force, has written a complaint to the Inspector-Gen-
Kerala Ministers patting a baby elephant.
eral of Forests, MoEF; Chief Secretary, State Police Chief, District Collector and the Forest Department secretary, alleging that the Ministers and other VIPs had been responsible for the four-year-old elephant losing one of its tusks. According to him, three
baby elephants at the Kappukadu elephant camp had been brought to the place where the Ministers had camped. While they attempted to fondle the animal, it ran away and rammed into a tree, injuring itself in the process. Having lost its tusk, the elephant suffered severe pain and bleeding, Mr. Venkitachalam claimed. With the elephant camp qualifying as a zoo as it collected entrance fee from visitors, the guidelines of the Zoo Authority of India were relevant for the functioning of the facility. In the particular case, the guidelines were violated by the parading of elephants in front of the VIPs, he alleged. However, forest officials were of the stance that no laws had been violated during the Ministers’ visit.
Cool scene: Pre-monsoon shower falls over the plantations in Munnar on Sunday. The IMD has forecast that the southwest monsoon is likely to set in over Kerala around May 30. THULASI KAKKAT *
Heat wave and dried-up rivers have badly hit the animals in Bagalkot district “The crocodile, being a cold-blooded animal, is unable to tolerate high temperatures and lack of food and water,” Mr. Doni said.
HUBBALLI
With the heat wave intensifying and rivers drying up in Bagalkot, crocodiles have been affected badly, with at least three deaths in the past fortnight alone. One of the casualties was a huge crocodile measuring 13.4 feet and weighting 365 kg — a rare find in recent years. Veterinary doctors have conducted a post-mortem and the aquatic reptile’s samples have been sent for further tests and preservation. The heat wave is said to the primary reason for the deaths. However, timely intervention by “well-informed” residents and forest officials has resulted in the rescue of at least 12 crocodiles in Bilagi taluk of Bagalkot alone. Recently, an apparently exCM YK
in Palakkad to be sent back Charity outit fails to present documents; manager in custody K.A. Shaji Palakkad
Huge loss: A crocodile weighing 365 kg died reportedly due to the heatwave in Bagalkot district recently. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT *
hausted crocodile had taken shelter in the sanctum sanctorum of a dilapidated temple in Sonna village of Bilagi taluk, and locals along with officials managed to rescue it. H.B. Doni, Range Forest Officer of Bilagi, told The Hindu that the crocodiles rescued from the banks of rivers Krishna and Ghata-
prabha have been relocated to Chikkasangama.
Lack of food Because of the drought, the Krishna is almost dry, with water available only in pits on the riverbed. Increased temperature and lack of food and water is said to be forcing the crocodiles to venture out of the riverbed.
Kerala godman remanded Staff Reporter THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
The self-proclaimed godman, whose genitals were gashed by a woman a day ago, for alleged sexual advances, has been remanded in judicial custody for 14 days on Sunday. The police said Gangeshananda Theerthapada, alias Hari Swami, was remanded until June 3 by the magistrate who went to the Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College Hospital, where the accused is undergoing treatment. The survivor, who was in the Pettah police station, was shifted to a shelter home run by the Social Justice Department on Sunday.
Bengaluru police out on a bug hunt Bengaluru
12 crocodiles rescued in past two months Children from Noida found Girish Pattanashetti
Motorcycle number Meanwhile, the girl recalled the number of the motorcycle of Srikanth and told her grandmother and parents about the assault. “The parents informed the police about the incident prompting the Satyanarayana Puram police to jump into action and nab the accused in less than an hour with the help of the motorcycle number,” Mr. Pala Raju said. Along with the four, the police also booked Akhil for rape and kidnap under Section 376(d) of Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, Section 366 and 34 of the IPC and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
Staff Reporter
A baby elephant had lost one of its tusks while being displayed Staff Reporter
since she did not return home. They also inquired with the girl’s friends while local police also searched for her.
Awareness needed He said while forest guards have been deployed on patrol duty along the rivers, taluk officials were organising awareness programmes to clear the misconception among people about crocodiles. “When on land, the crocodile is not that active and rarely attacks”,” he said, adding that it goes on the offensive on when intimidated repeatedly. Wildlife warden M.R. Desai said it has become daunting for crocodiles to find water. “While crocodiles can survive in shade, water is a must,” he said.
The district administration has began efforts to send back 14 children from Noida, who were found at a house at Menonpara near here five days ago. Grace Care Society, a New Delhi-based charity organisation, has failed to produce any legally mandated certificate to prove its claim that the children were taken to Palakkad as part of an educational initiative The children, aged between 11 and 14 years, are now housed at Government Children’s Home at Muttikulangara as directed by the district-level Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Meanwhile, the police are investigating the human traf-
ficking angle. A case has already registered at Kozhinjampara police station against the society. Its manager Aji Mathew George was arrested on Thursday and is now in judicial custody. Kozhinjampara Circle Inspector V. Hamza said there were 17 children in the group and three of them had been shifted to Thiruvananthapuram before the police reached the rented house at Menonpara. The three children too would be brought to Palakkad soon, Mr Hamza said. Mr George told the police that the organisation had purchased five acres at Menonpara to set up a school. The plan, he
claimed, was to enrol the children in the school.
Required papers However, he failed to produce any proof of Grace Care Society running an orphanage. “If the children are destitute they should produce the no-objection certificate issued by the Child Welfare Committees of the respective villages. If the children have parents, they should produce a certificate from the village officer stating the parents had handed over the children to the child care home as they were unable to educate them. The society could not produce any documents in this regard,” said Mr. Hamza.
The city police is out on a bug hunt. The Bangalore City Police (BCP) is now asking for assistance from the city’s app developers after a section of iPhone users complained of not being able to use their apps. Bugs in some apps for the iOS platform have resulted in several users uninstalling the app or not using it at all. “We have three apps which have seen plenty of downloads on Google Play as well as Apple App Store. But many users have reported problems with the (recently launched) SurakshaBengaluru City Police app, when they use it on their iPhones,” said City Police Commissioner Praveen Sood. According to him, there have been nearly 10,000 downloads of the app from the Apple store, but around 7,000 users have chosen to uninstall it. “There are issues with receiving the one-time passwords (OTP) as well as other bugs which are spoiling the user experience. We have not been able to determine what exactly is wrong with the app design,” he said. On Sunday, another app, FindMyPoliceStation, which helps citizens locate the jurisdictional police station based on their GPS location, was launched. However, this is only for Android users currently. “We are having trouble with the app submission to Apple’s App Store. If someone can come forward and help us get this app running on iOS, it would be helpful,” Mr. Sood said. Developers say that it is much easier to get an app into the Google Play Store than the Apple App Store. “Getting an app accepted by Apple usually takes a week’s time. They also have a lot of restrictions on what tasks the app can perform,” said Rohit Singh, an app developer. A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
6 NATION
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
Leopard safaris put Rajasthan on tourist map Ashok Kumar
Railways mulling track cleanliness survey
Pali (Rajasthan)
Press Trust of India
Pali has become a popular hotspot for spotting the big cat, which is known to be a very shy and elusive animal otherwise
BJP does not support cow vigilantes: Irani NEW DELHI
The BJP does not support cow vigilantes or citizens taking law into their own hands, Union Minister Smriti Irani said at the India Today Editors Round table event here on Sunday. Asked about the ‘anti-Romeo’ squads and cow vigilante groups in U.P. after the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government came to power, Ms. Irani said: “Everyone should work within the ambit of law. If somebody flouts laws unconstitutionally they will not get support from the BJP.” PTI
Six killed, 34 injured as bus falls into pit in MP DINDORI
At least six persons were killed and 34 injured when a bus fell into a gorge near a village here early on Sunday morning, a police official said. The bus, which belonged to a private operator, was on its way to Dindori from Jabalpur when it fell into a ditch near the ghat section in Jogitikaria village around 4 a.m., said Kotwali police station incharge Shivlal Markam. The bus driver, meanwhile, fled from the spot after the accident. PTI
Property dealer shot dead in Aligarh ALIGARH
A property dealer was gunned down by unidentified assailants when he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Marris road here, the police said on Sunday. Dhiraj Singh, who was a close aide to former SP legislator Rakesh Singh, was shot dead last night in the posh Civil Lines area, they added. No one has been arrested yet, the police said. The incident comes after two jewellers were killed during a robbery in Mathura on May 15. PTI
New Delhi
For over a decade, Patik Patel, an Ahmedabad-based wildlife photographer, has been a regular visitor to Sheoganj in Rajasthan. The area — dotted with low hills and lacking in vegetation — is the place to be if one wants to spot some leopards, the most shy and elusive among the big cats. There are 30-40 sites in neighbouring Pali district — situated in the middle of the Kumbhalgarh-Mount Abu corridor of the Aravallis — where one can sight leopards. The popular among them are located in villages such as Perwa, Jivda, Bisalpur, Sena, Mori, Raghunathpura, Kothar, Velar, Chamunderi and Lundara. As a result, leopard safaris have become common in these areas.
‘Sighting guaranteed’ Sheoganj-based Hotel Woodland, started in 1996, is a pioneer in leopard safari in this region.Its owner, Gopal Singh, claimed that tourists never go back disappointed. “This region has a far better sighting rate for leopards compared to national parks or sanctuaries. This is because it has a lot of barren hills,” said Mr. Singh. A wildlife enthusiast, Mr. Singh recced the area for two years before conducting safaris. Another operator, Thakur Devi Singh Ranawat, a descendant of Maharana Pratap, started the Leopard Lair Resort in Bera village around the same time. Devi Singh’s brother Thakur Baljeet Singh followed in his footsteps to convert his ancestral haveli into “Castle Bera -- A Heritage Home Stay”, one of the most sought-after resorts in the region. Many more followed suit over the few years. Harsh Vardhan, an envir-
Widening its sanitation drive, the Indian Railways will now carry out a cleanliness survey of tracks on busy routes and rank its 16 zones based on performance. The railways had recently released results of a similar survey of 407 stations, carried out by the Quality Council of India. All-out efforts will be made to keep the tracks clean as part of the government’s ongoing cleanliness campaign, said a senior railway ministry official.
On the prowl: There are as many as 30-40 sites in Pali district — situated in the middle of the KumbhalgarhMount Abu corridor of the Aravallis — where one can sight leopards. GOPAL SINGH *
onmentalist, told The Hindu that the leopards in this region mostly come from the sanctuaries in Kumbhalgarh and Mount Abu. Their population has also increased considerably due to good hideouts available in the hills and easy availability of food. “This region is full of granite hills, with cavities which act as good hideouts for the animals. For food,
they are dependent on cattle in the nearby villages. They also feed on rodents in the hills,” said Dr. Vardhan.
‘No man-animal conflict’ He pointed out that the most remarkable feature of the leopards in this region is that they have learnt to live in harmony with humans. “The leopards in this region live in harmony with the villagers. They hardly
prey on sheep, and instead feed on chicken, peacocks, rodents and dogs. Also, it does not need as much food as a tiger requires,” said Dr.Vardhan, who has worked extensively on leopards. Nandu, a resident of Badla village, said they have become accustomed to sighting leopards. “Every village in a way supports a bunch of five-six leopards who frequent the area in the dark to prey on cattle or dogs and quench their thirst at handpumps and wells. But the instances of human-leopard conflict are unheard of in this region,” he said. Aslam, an auto-rickshaw driver in Jawai Bandh in Pali district, claimed that the animals often stray into the railway station and the bus stop. Dr. Vardhan said the forest department should
declare the region a community reserve. “It is not a forest land, but the forest department should declare it a community reserve. At present, there are no fixed timings for tourists to visit these areas. Those conducting leopard safaris use search lights, disturbing the predator, the villagers and the cattle,” he said. Chief Conservator Forest, Udaipur, Rahul Bhatnagar, claimed that 19.58 square km area in the region around Jawai Bandh was declared a leopard conservation reserve, but the locals claimed that the animals are mostly found outside this area. Mr. Bhatnagar further said there was a proposal from the then collector to declare community land as community reserve.
Impending challenges The decision, however, was met with stiff resistance from locals, hoteliers and the mining mafia. Ten licences were also granted for mining in the area a year ago, but the government later withdrew them realising that it was a leopard landscape. The mat-
ter is still in court. The safari operators in the region, meanwhile, have several challenges to overcome. A new entrant, “Jawai Leopard Camp”, started over two years ago, has purportedly kicked off a monopoly battle in the area. “Its entry has been a boon as its owners invite the foreign media, putting the region on the tourist map. The operators, however, have taken several safari sites on lease, gaining exclusive rights for themselves,” said Mr. Baljeet Singh. Another challenge is a new safari hotspot in Jaipur called Jhalana. The safari operators said the region has no less potential as a tourist hotspot than Jaipur, with Udaipur and Mount Abu not very far away from it, but poor connectivity is hurting its prospects. “The region could do better if the area is connected to Goa by rail. The travel agents in Goa promise us more business provided there is better connectivity,” said Shatrunjay Singh, another leopard safari operator in the region.
Human waste a concern Railway tracks at many stretches resemble garbage dump with leftover food, plastic bottles and paper boxes strewn all over. Discharge of human waste from trains is also a cause for concern. The official said accumulation of garbage and human waste from open-discharge toilets were damaging the tracks. Mechanised system In fact, several railway divisions have pressed into service a mechanised system for cleaning of tracks near stations. Besides, installation of bio-toilets in several trains has reduced discharge of human waste on the tracks. The Indian Railways is the third largest rail network in the world, covering 66,000 km and having more than 8,000 stations. It was after the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on October 2, 2014, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the railways launched ‘Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’. The railways has also made operational a ‘Swachh Rail’ portal to showcase cleanliness rankings of various stations.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
NATION 7
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Over the top
Jamsenpa scripts history, scales Everest twice in 5 days Mother of two becomes irst Indian woman to reach mountain top for ifth time
Kajol may lose Prasar Bharati membership NEW DELHI
Press Trust of India
Bollywood actor Kajol may cease to be a member of the Prasar Bharati board for giving crucial meetings a miss. She was appointed a part-time member of the board, which oversees the functioning of public broadcasters All India Radio and Doordarshan, last year. According to the provisions of the Prasar Bharati Act, members absent without taking permission for three consecutive board meetings are understood to have “vacated the office”.
Itanagar
Luxurious Tejas Express to be flagged off today MUMBAI
The much-awaited Tejas Express with ultra-modern amenities on board like LED TV, wi-fi, CCTV et al will be flagged off from the city to Goa by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday. “Tomorrow [Monday] is going to be a historic day for the Indian Railways when Tejas Express will make its maiden run from Mumbai,” D. K. Sharma, general manager of the Central Railway, said on Sunday. He likened Tejas Express with an “aeroplane moving on the ground.” PTI
2 boys stripped, paraded for ‘stealing’ food item THANE
Two minor boys were stripped and paraded with garlands of slippers for allegedly stealing a food item from a sweet shop in Thane, the police said on Sunday. The shop owner and his two sons were arrested after the incident that took place in Ulhasnagar on Saturday, they said. Police said the act was filmed by one of the accused and uploaded on social media. The children, aged 8 and 9, allegedly picked up a packet of ‘chakli’ (a snack) without the owner’s permission and ate it. PTI
Jam-packed: People travel on the roof of an overcrowded train at Patna on Sunday.
*
PTI
Hardik, supporters tonsure heads before protest march Embark on two-day ‘justice yatra’ from Botad to Bhavnagar
‘My only aim’ The 32-year-old had achieved the feat of summiting Mount Everest twice within 10 days in 2011. Ms. Jamsenpa had also climbed it in 2013 from the Nepal side. “My only aim now is to
Special Correspondent Ahmedabad
The Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel and his supporters got their heads tonsured on Sunday before embarking on a two dayyatra from Botad to Bhavnagar to seek justice for members of the community subjected to police atrocities during the agitation and afterwards. On Saturday evening, Mr. Hardik held a massive rally in which thousands of Patidars turned up at Botad where they openly vowed to “avenge” the injustice the State BJP government inflicted upon the community when it had asked for quota in education and government jobs.
Political campaign The 23-year-old leader and 50 members of his Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti got their heads shaved as a mark of protest at Lathidad village during
Climber Anshu Jamsenpa on Sunday scripted history by scaling Mount Everest twice within five days. Ms. Jamsenpa, a mother of two, had conquered the world’s highest peak for the fourth time on May 16 last. The mountaineer from Arunachal Pradesh began her double ascent on Friday morning, her husband Tsering Wange said. Ms. Jamsenpa, along with Nepali climber Furi Sherpa, scaled the peak at 8 a.m. on Sunday. She set the world record for becoming the first woman climber to reach the top of Mount Everest twice within five days. She is also the first Indian woman to reach the top of the mountain for the fifth time.
New heights: Ms. Jamsenpa unfurls the Tricolor on Mt. Everest on May 16. PTI
Ex-Miss India inalist shifted
Navy team reaches top
Press Trust of India
Press Trust of India
Kathmandu
New Delhi
At least six persons, including former Miss India finalist Sangeeta S. Bahl, 52, were on Sunday evacuated from the higher camps of Mount Everest after they suffered from high-altitude sicknesses while attempting to climb the world’s highest peak.
A group of Navy personnel on Sunday conquered the Mount Everest, 50 years after the peak was first scaled by Navy climbers. The feat comes a day after B.M. Sharma became the first Defence Civilian of the Indian Navy to scale the world’s highest peak.
cent expedition from Guwahati on April 2 this year.
Balcony is a small platform above the 8,000-m mark considered the mountain’s “death zone.” Chhewang Sherpa, Managing Director at Arun Treks, said Kumar climbed the mountain at 1:28 p.m. on Saturday.
*
unfurl the national flag once again atop Mount Everest and pay homage to Lord Buddha. I seek blessings and support from my fellow countrymen,” Ms. Jamsenpa was quoted by her PR manager as having said before starting her second ascent. Prayers were organised in monasteries and temples back home in Arunachal and elsewhere in the region. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama had flagged off the mountaineer’s double as-
Indian goes missing An Indian climber has gone missing on Mount Everest after successfully scaling it, officials in Nepal said. Ravi Kumar from Moradabad in U.P. had gone out of contact with the Balcony area, the final resting spot before climbers ascend the south summit of the mountain, after he was descending to lower camps. The
American dies An American climber died on his way to the summit of Mount Everest, expedition organisers said. The 50-yearold mountaineer died close to the Balcony.
Haryana reverses order on felling of trees Staff Reporter GURUGRAM
Heading a stir: Hardik Patel gets his head tonsured in protest against the Gujarat government in Bhavnagar on Sunday. PTI *
their “March for Justice.” “Along with the 50 PAAS members, I decided to get our heads shaved to highlight the atrocities committed by this government on our community in the last two years. Now, we are embarking on the Nyay Yatra to seek justice,” Mr. Patel said. “During this two-day Nyay Yatra, we would pass through 50 villages en route from Botad to Bhavnagar.
This is the beginning of our political campaign ahead of the Assembly polls in Gujarat,” Mr. Patel said. This comes a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to be in Gujarat on a two-day visit during which he will attend the annual general meeting of African Development Bank in Gandhinagar and inaugurate certain developmental projects.
In less than 24 hours after the Haryana government passed an order exempting kikar and mesquite trees from the preview of the Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1990, posing a grave threat to green over in Aravallis mountain range in South Haryana, the order was withdrawn on Saturday saying
that it was “misinterpreted”. In its order dated May 19, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Haryana, P.P. Bhojvaid had categorised kikar and mesquite along with trees such as amrood, eucalyptus, tut and bamboo to exempt from the preview of the Act which meant that no permission was required to cut them. The order had, however, led to strong op-
position from the green activists claiming that it would lead to an open season on the forest cover of the Aravalli hills and on the forest cover of Haryana. “It would have led to fait accompli situation whereby owners of privatised Aravalli common lands could clear the entire landholdings on the basis of the exempt tree order, and then claim that as
there were no trees on their lands, their land was not deemed forest as per dictionary meaning and hence the forest Act would not apply,” said environmental analyst Chetan Agarwal. In the wake of the order, green activists had expressed fear that real estate companies that had built up land banks would be the prime beneficiaries of this.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
8 EDITORIAL
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Addressing the court within India must use this initial victory at The Hague to appeal to our own inest sense of conscience
I
t is arguably the logical consequence of the 2014 Supreme Court order declaring all coal block allocations made since 1993 illegal and arbitrary. The conviction of three Coal Ministry oicials, including former Secretary H.C. Gupta, marks the irst case in which individual criminal liability has been ixed on public servants in the coal block scam. Two previous trials had ended in convictions, but those held guilty were oicials of private companies who had deceived the authorities into allotting them blocks. Mr. Gupta was the chairperson of the screening committee that recommended allocations. It functioned for years without regard for guidelines, norms or transparency, until the apex court halted its irregular run. He and two other public servants have been found guilty of abusing their positions to procure a coal block for Kamal Sponge Steel and Power Limited. While it was fairly clear that the screening committee route was only a mechanism to push through the applications of all and sundry for coal blocks, especially under the irst UPA government, it was not certain if it could be proved beyond reasonable doubt that public servants had manipulated the system to their advantage. Special CBI Court Judge Bharat Parashar has now ruled that Coal Ministry oicials deliberately allowed an incomplete application from an ineligible company to be taken up for consideration. Far from ‘screening’ applications, he inds that the accused actually let all applications pass without any checking so that “they will have an open ield to arbitrarily exercise their discretion in favour of any company”. The verdict is a studied indictment of government processes, or the lack of processes, during the period. Looking at the prosecution charges and the defence claims, it appears there was little clarity on whether the guidelines were being adhered to. The former Secretary and Joint Secretary said in their defence they could not verify applications for completeness and eligibility, as it was the job of the section concerned. The section says this is the job of the administrative ministry or the State government to which applications are forwarded. Other omissions include the failure to evolve any inter se criteria to decide eligibility, or to do any veriication either before or after the screening committee recommended allocations to the Minister. Whether there was a conspiracy between the oicials and the company and whether the prosecution proved that these omissions amounted to deliberate abuse of their positions will be matters that will, no doubt, be taken up on appeal; but the signiicance of the verdict is that it may become a benchmark for other ongoing prosecutions on similar lines. The case also raises questions about the role and responsibility of a Secretary to the government, who is not only the administrative head of a department but also an adviser to the Minister on matters of policy.
suhrith parthasarathy y itself, the International Court of Justice’s order, delivered on May 18, imposing provisional measures injuncting Pakistan from executing an Indian national, Kulbhushan Jadhav, is entirely unexceptional. The ICJ has merely arrived at a prima facie satisfaction — based on an analysis at irst sight — that it possesses the power to rule on India’s application, and that India’s rights, under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, have plausibly been violated by Pakistan’s detention, trial and ultimate sentencing to death of Jadhav. There is now a worry, not without cause, that Pakistan may not comply with the ICJ’s direction, despite its explicitly binding status. What’s more, the internationalisation of the dispute potentially comes with its political ramiications for India. But much as all these considerations can serve as a basis for cynicism, we mustn’t despair at India’s choice. Its victory, impermanent as it may ultimately prove to be, must be celebrated for what it is: a vindication of the rule of law.
B
Dispelling old concerns Too often ontological concerns encumber the study of international law — questions tend to revolve around whether international law is really law at all, and, if so, whether its principles even matter. Despite consistent empirical evidence which shows that international law positively inluences state behaviour, these questions, seeped in scepticism, somehow never seem to go away. India’s choice of the ICJ as a legitimate site for dispute resolution, even if it was borne out of self-interest, can help dispel some of these age-old concerns. But for that to happen, India must take on the additional
T
he resounding victory of President Hassan Rouhani, who had sought re-election on a platform of moderation and engagement with the outside world, is a strong endorsement by the Iranian people for political change. He won one of the most polarised elections in Iran’s recent history, one in which the clerical establishment backed a candidate who was running against a sitting President. The hardliners rallied behind Ebrahim Raisi, who challenged Mr. Rouhani’s economic policies, slammed his outreach to the West and even lung corruption allegations against him. Still Mr. Rouhani won 57% of the vote against Mr. Raisi’s 38.5%. In 2013, Mr. Rouhani was an accidental candidate of the moderates. It was a time when the moderate movement had not recovered from the 2009 crackdown by the state apparatus after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial re-election. Then both the moderates and centrists led by former President Akbar Rafsanjani backed Mr. Rouhani as a consensus candidate. This time there was no Rafsanjani; Mr. Rouhani fought on his own. During the campaign, he assailed Iran’s deep state in a way no sitting President had done. He reached out to women and the ethnic and religious minorities. The numbers suggest a vast majority of Iranians repose great faith in this cleric who promises them hope and change. Now that he has won, the spotlight turns on the challenges ahead. In the irst term, Mr. Rouhani treaded cautiously. His focus was on the nuclear negotiations Iran was undertaking with six world powers and he was averse to upsetting the conservative establishment. His record in ofering more civil liberties fell short of expectations as young Iranians are still waiting for meaningful changes in the clergy-deined social order. The reformist politicians who were put under house arrest in 2011 are still not free, and Mr. Rouhani hardly spoke for them during his irst term. And unemployment has not eased under his government. Now that the nuclear deal is done and he has a second term, it is time for Mr. Rouhani to act boldly. It is unrealistic to expect radical changes in a society that is tightly controlled by the Ayatollahs. Though the President is the highest elected oicial of the republic, real powers lie in the hands of the Supreme Leader. Any attempt to introduce rapid changes will meet with strong resistance from the deep state. But Presidents can pursue a gradualist reform agenda with popular support. Over the years, Iranian civil society, working within several constraints, has kept the moderate current that powers this reform agenda alive, in sharp contrast to several other countries in West Asia where elections are a sham and dissent is a crime. Mr. Rouhani’s biggest challenge is to respond to this current constructively, by launching gradual reforms at home that ofer more civil liberties and better economic opportunities to the people. CM YK
the other country, but also the right of visiting the detained individual, and arranging for legal representation, if the détenu so desires. It is India’s case that these privileges were denied to it. Pakistan alleges that the Convention’s privileges were not only inapplicable, but that the ICJ, in any event, lacks the jurisdiction to decide the dispute. Or, in other words, the court, it says, does not possess the power to make a legal determination on the dispute. Ordinarily, rows between nations can be taken to the World Court only if both parties consent to the court’s jurisdiction. In this case, however, India relies on Article 36(1) of the Statute of the ICJ which accords to the court the power to decide disputes arising out of treaties or conventions that speciically vest the court with compulsory jurisdiction. The Vienna Convention, through an optional protocol that both India and Pakistan are signatories to, is one such agreement.
ICJ in the picture As India has pointed out in its application, the ICJ has, at least in two notable instances, entertained applications under Article 36(1) of its statute for breaches of the Vienna Convention. In 2001, the court ruled that the United States had violated its obligations to Germany in denying consular access to the LaGrand brothers, citizens of Germany who had been convicted and sentenced to death in the state of Arizona. Similarly, in the Avena case in 2004, the court ruled that
ical question, for now, though remains this: will Pakistan obey the court’s provisional measures? Should it choose to ignore the order, it can glean much from the American experience. The U.S., after all, went ahead in executing one of the LaGrand brothers despite an explicit injunction from the ICJ, prohibiting it from carrying out the death sentence, pending a inal adjudication. Ultimately, in 2005, the U.S. withdrew altogether from the Optional Protocol, which grants the ICJ compulsory jurisdiction over claims made under the Vienna Convention.
A glass already half full When we see naked expressions of power such as this, it’s easy to conclude that international law exists in vacuity, that its principles aren’t merely lawed but that they are also law only in their name. However, we can still see the present proceedings as a tunnel that ends with the optimistic light of day. Even if Pakistan were to disregard the ICJ’s order, the case shows us that there do exist concrete sources — a treaty in this case — which impose an ethical duty on nation-states to follow the rule of law. It allows us to consider what the scholar Thomas M. Franck described as “post-ontological” questions, to address not whether international law really is law, but the more normative concerns over how best to enforce its commands. We must therefore use this opportunity to shun scepticism, and appeal to our inest sense of conscience. We can only do this by resisting a push for greater governmental freedom at the domestic level, which invariably tends to carry itself into the sphere of international relations, where our own obligations — think climate change, customary refugee law, fundamental human rights, among others — often stand breached. To set the right moral example we must start from within. Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court
An opportunity being drained away Sound policies on wastewater treatment and use are vital to sustainable development
Rouhani’s moment His emphatic re-election as Iran’s President gives the reformist agenda a chance
responsibility that comes with its choice, to show us that it possesses the moral authority to charge other nations with a breach of the law. To achieve this, we must drive the Indian government towards greater domestic compliance with its own obligations under both treaty and customary law alike, to demonstrate that our own sense of conscience is stirred by the mandates of the world order. First, though, let’s consider the facts of the present dispute, as they are. Although India and Pakistan disagree over the precise nature of who Mr. Jadhav is and where he was arrested, the crux of India’s case, which Pakistan hasn’t particularly disputed on facts, is this: that Mr. Jadhav was denied consular access, despite numerous requests from India. Pakistan claims that these actions do not breach the Vienna Convention, as Jadhav was involved in espionage and sabotage. India submits that the treaty creates no such exception and that the denial of consular access is an infringement for which Pakistan must make reparations. To this end, India has sought, among other things, an order that would declare the sentence of the Pakistani military court as violating Article 36 of the Vienna Convention, which both countries as parties are bound by. This provision deines the rights granted to consular oicials, with a view to helping them exercise their consular functions. Speciically, it accords a privilege to oicials to not only freely communicate with any national of its state detained in
prakash nelliyat
E
ach year a speciic aspect of water is highlighted while observing International World Water Day (March 22); this year’s theme was “wastewater”, which is deined as any water that has been adversely afected in quality by anthropogenic inluences and as a result of domestic, industrial, commercial and agricultural activities. In recent decades, population growth, accelerated urbanisation and economic development have resulted in an increase in the quantity of wastewater and the overall pollution load being generated. Most of our freshwater sources are under threat. When public awareness of pollution is limited, the cost of pollution to our health and the ecosystem is huge. The victims are generally the poor or socially vulnerable communities, and the end result is a high inancial burden on the community and government.
Water facts Globally, over 80% of the wastewater generated goes back to the ecosystem without being treated or re-
used. Another fact is that 1.8 billion people use drinking water contaminated with faeces which increases their risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. Also, 663 million people still lack access to improved drinking water sources. The opportunities for exploiting wastewater as a resource are enormous. Safely managed wastewater is an afordable and sustainable source of water, energy, nutrients and other recoverable materials. The beneits to our health, and in terms of economic development and environmental sustainability, business opportunities and ‘green’ jobs far outweigh the costs of wastewater management. By 2030, the global demand for water is expected to grow by 50%. Most of this demand will be in cities. In low-income areas of cities/ towns within developing countries, a large proportion of wastewater is discharged directly into the surface water drain, without or with limited treatment. Traditional wastewater treatment plants may not remove certain pollutants. In India, about 29,000 million l/day (mld) of waste water is generated from class-I cities and class-II towns, out of which about 45% (about 13,000 mld) is generated from metro cities alone. A collection system exists for only about
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Hack it yourself The bold decision by the Election Commission to throw an open challenge to political parties to prove their claims that EVMs can be tampered with should take the wind out of the sails of parties such as the Aam Aadmi Party, whose top leaders have been shouting themselves hoarse levelling allegations (“EVM hackathon from June 3”, May 21). A constitutional body such as the ECI opting to nail the lie of the doubting Thomases is an unprecedented step in Indian electoral history. The EC’s stock will certainly rise once it succeeds in putting all doubts to rest. Some of our political parties are in for a shock. C.V. Aravind, Bengaluru
■ While it is obvious for anyone losing to cry foul,
achieved despite legislative and policy measures being introduced with huge budgets to solve water pollution issues. Water pollution is not a major topic of political debate as yet.
GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
The coal block allocation case may become a benchmark for other ongoing prosecutions
GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
Coal comeuppance
the U.S. had failed to comply with the Vienna Convention in several instances involving Mexican nationals. The court here directed the U.S. to review and reconsider its convictions and sentences, in a manner that would take into account the breaches made of the treaty. Pakistan, for its part, has resisted references to LaGrand and Avena. It claims that the two countries are governed by a 2008 bilateral agreement on consular access, which efectively exempts Pakistan from its obligations under the Vienna Convention, and which also ousts altogether the ICJ’s jurisdiction. More ominously, however, it argues that the Vienna Convention does not apply when a person has been detained for ofences involving espionage or terrorism, as concerns over national security always trump the demands of consular relations. The ICJ is yet to rule conclusively on any of these arguments. It has only granted India provisional measures pending a inal adjudication. But, on any reasonable inal consideration, Pakistan’s arguments ought not to pass muster. The 2008 bilateral understanding between the countries no doubt imposes particular responsibilities on them, but by no means does it relieve either country from its obligations under the Vienna Convention. As the opinions in LaGrand and Avena make clear, once a foreign national is arrested the state making the arrest has a duty to allow the consular oicials of the sending state to visit the détenu and to render to him all the assistance that he needs. It’s easy to see that Pakistan is in breach of this fundamental obligation. Its endeavour to wriggle out of this responsibility citing concerns over national security is also likely to fail. Were such an argument to be accepted, it would potentially lead to a most dangerous situation, where countries can ignore their consular obligations purely because they consider the sending state an enemy. Whichever way the ICJ’s decision might eventually go, the crit-
30% of the wastewater through sewer lines, while treatment capacity exists for about 7,000 mld. Industrial water consumption accounts for 22% of the global water used. The industrial sector in India discharges around 30,730 million cubic metres of eluents, without proper treatment, into waterbodies. Unfortunately, most common eluent treatment plants are not performing satisfactorily due to improper operations and maintenance. Run-of from agriculture ields is another major source of pollution. India, with 17% of the world’s population, 4% of water resources and 2.4% of land area, extracts water signiicantly for various developmental purposes. Hence, the water low or storage capacity of water bodies has declined substantially, adversely afecting their waste assimilation/sink functions. Past experience shows that signiicant progress has not been
Management strategies There is suicient evidence to suggest that the problem, though complex, is solvable. While it is not realistic to aim for zero water pollution, a level of socially acceptable pollution, respecting the integrity of ecosystems and service provision, can be reached. At the national and regional levels, water pollution prevention policies should be integrated into non-water policies that have implications on water quality such as agriculture and land use management, trade, industry, energy, and urban development. Water pollution should be made a punishable ofence. The efectiveness and power of the “polluter pay principle” should be considered. Various policies, plans and strategies to protect water resources should be participatory, allowing for consultation between government, industry and the public. At the local level, capacity building enables the community to make decisions and disseminate them to the appropriate authorities, thus inluencing political processes. Market-based strategies
such as environmental taxes, pollution levies and tradable permit systems should be implemented, and can be used to ight against or abate water pollution. Incentive mechanisms such as subsidies, soft loans, tax relaxation should be included in installing pollution management devices. In industrial pollution management, technological attempts should be made through cleaner production-technology. Sophisticated pollution management technology developed overseas should be introduced in India. The application of eco-friendly inputs such as biofertilizers and pesticides in agriculture and the use of natural dyes in textile industries can reduce the pollution load considerably. Since fresh water is increasingly getting scarce, wastewater generated in urban areas can be used for sub-urban agriculture, industry, and even sanitation and certain domestic applications after treatment. Wastewater need not be a burden any longer but an asset instead. Prakash Nelliyat works with the Centre for Biodiversity Policy and Law, National Biodiversity Authority, Chennai. Statistical references are from various published papers and the insights from a recent paper by the writer. The views expressed are personal. E-mail:
[email protected]
Letters emailed to
[email protected] must carry the full postal address and the full name or the name with initials.
the EC’s attempt to be transparent should also be used as an occasion to make the political parties concerned apologise should they be proved wrong. With the VVPAT EVMs inding a place in the next Assembly and general elections, one hopes that the trend of ridiculing the EC and EVMs will end. Praveen Patavardhan, Bengaluru
Political alignments After the initial high, O. Panneerselvam now inds his political path riddled with potholes as events are not falling into place as expected. (“OPS camp hints at pact with BJP, retracts”, May 21). The confused attempts to patch up with the Edappadi Palanisami (EPS) faction emanate from a lack of clarity on the way forward. It is diicult for a party to survive solely on
the basis of issues such as “keeping away a particular family” or ordering an inquiry into the circumstances around Jayalalithaa’s demise. As long as the EPS faction has the majority, Chief Minister Palanisami should be allowed to rule. The next elections are some years away and taxpayer money should not be wasted. Corrupt and ineicient governments running their full term is not new either as long as they have the numbers. People will get an opportunity to decide who should govern them. Since both factions have the same ideology, Mr. Panneerselvam should try and get back with the ruling group. V. Subramanian, Chennai
Bobbitised Society needs shock
treatments periodically (“Kerala girl cuts godman’s genitals, ends eight-year ordeal”, May 21). The incident may sound bizarre but such a case is bound to happen when there is progressive moral degradation. What sort of a spiritual guide was he? V. Lakshmanan, Tirupur, Tamil Nadu
Blockbuster As an ordinary cine-goer who watched the ilm “Baahubali 2”, I think that apart from the graphics or spectacular visuals that the ilm ofers, the main thing that made the ilm a grand success is its story which is set away from the harsh realistic world that we live in. It is an escape from the challenges, insecurities and fears that we face in day-today life and of being part of a complex and corrupt society. It is one ilm where
you don’t have to explain to your children about the bad things in life. The director has even upheld respecting women by including a scene where Baahubali chops of the head of a security guard who misbehaves with women. We have not had an Indian superhero for a long time, even after the Shaktimaan era. “Baahubali” has given us one. When we laud
Hollywood ilms such as “Gladiator” or “Troy”, even calling them “classic”, why not appreciate it when Indian cinema makes a similar attempt (“The Bali of Cinema” and “Very Worst Graphics”, The Hindu Magazine, May 14 and May 21, respectively)? Neethu S. Nair, Palakkad
more letters online: www.hindu.com/opinion/letters/
corrections & clarifications: A sentence in the story headlined “A spectre is haunting GOP lawmakers” (May 21, 2017) read: “... in Virginia, Dave Brat could hardly have a word tossed above the din that didn’t stop until he did not stop;” It should have been until he stopped. Wrong headline: It was not Netlix that was heckled at Cannes as given in a Life page (May 19, 2017) headline. It was actually the Cannes projection team which was booed for wrong aspect ratio. The correct headline is: “Cannes projection team booed at Okja première”. It is the policy of The Hindu to correct signiicant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page. The Readers’ Editor’s office can be contacted by Telephone: +91-44-28418297/28576300 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday); Fax: +91-44-28552963; E-mail:
[email protected]; Mail: Readers’ Editor, The Hindu, Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860 Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002, India. All communication must carry the full postal address and telephone number. No personal visits. The Terms of Reference for the Readers’ Editor are on www.thehindu.com A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
OPED 9
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Cool down the rhetoric
FROM THE READERS’ EDITOR
The U.S. will gain little by turning India into an adversary on climate change issues
U.S. President Donald Trump’s accusation against India concerning the Paris Accord that “...the U.S. pays billions of dollars while China, Russia, and India have contributed (to pollution) and will contribute nothing” is inaccurate, misleading and unfair. In fact, India has walked with the U.S. from Stockholm to Paris via Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Copenhagen. New Delhi has fought for climate justice, equity and fairness all the way, demanding that developing countries should be entitled to maintain and increase their greenhouse gas emissions for survival and developed countries should mandatorily cut their luxury emissions. At the same time, India has also been sensitive to the constraints of the U.S. and the other industrialised nations in reducing emissions. Indira Gandhi had exposed the Western efforts to impose environmental colonialism at the Stockholm Conference in 1972 and declared that “poverty is the worst polluter” and demanded that “the polluter must pay”. But she had also conceded that development should be sustainable. India’s Chandrashekhar Dasgupta and U.S.’s Al Gore worked together for the historic agreements in Rio de Janeiro, which led to the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) in 1992.
Grand Rio bargain The concept of “common, but differentiated responsibilities” led to the identification of Annex I countries, which agreed to mandatory cuts. The idea that developed countries should meet the “incremental costs” of developing countries using environmentfriendly technologies was another element in the grand bargain at Rio. Huge commitments were made not only for financial support, but also for technology transfer at concessional prices. The fine balance struck by India and the U.S. culminated in the Agenda 21, raising hopes for a renaissance in the areas of both environment and development. When the U.S. and other developed countries — particularly Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — began to renege on their commitments and began demanding mandat-
GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
T.P. Sreenivasan
ory cuts from China, India and Brazil during the Berlin negotiations (1995), India did not dismiss their demands out of hand. It accommodated various mechanisms to reduce the burden of the developed world. For this reason, the Kyoto Protocol had a reasonable chance of success, but it was the U.S. that refused to sign it and started to wriggle out of every understanding reached. The whole approach was sought to be changed till the adoption of the Copenhagen Consensus, which was disowned by most of the developing countries. In Copenhagen, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally participated in the new understanding that all commitments would be voluntary and that the UN would only supervise and evaluate their implementation. This incurred the wrath of many developing countries. What remained was only a myth that the Kyoto Protocol was still alive and well and that the Rio spirit was intact. The much acclaimed Paris Accord was a requiem for Rio and all that the FCCC stood for. The whole value of the accord has been challenged by those who had worked tirelessly for an international consensus to save the planet. James Hansen, formerly the
chief climatologist of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was forthright in his assessment: “It is a fraud really, a fake,” he said. “It is just b******* for them to say, ‘we will have a 2° Celsius warming target and try to do a little better every five years’. It is just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuel out there, they will continue to be burned.” By its very nature, the Paris Accord does not warrant the argument made by Mr. Trump. It contains no financial commitment from the U.S. or any other country except a vague offer of $100 billion after 2020. The Accord deals with the global commitments of countries regarding emissions, mitigation, adaptation and financing from 2020. The allegation that China, Russia and India are only contributing to pollution and not to climate change fund has no basis whatsoever. The essence of the Paris Accord is only a “strong agreement” to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial
levels. But the “Nationally Determined Contributions” submitted so far make it clear that they will not be able to hold the increase to below 3° Celsius. The advantage that the U.S. and other developed countries have gained from the Paris Accord is that all economies, including China and India, are being made to take action on climate change without any commensurate guarantees from the former on funding and transfer of technology. The financial commitment that the U.S. has undertaken is only to change to new energy sources. Naturally, the cost of the switch will be more for the U.S. than for China or India and this cannot be considered as a payout. As eleven State Governors have written to President Trump, if the U.S. abandons its investments in climate change, India and China will benefit from the low-carbon leadership they acquire over time. By maintaining the momentum in global efforts, the U.S. will benefit through its own transition to clean energy. India had initially hesitated to ratify the Paris Accord out of fear that it might not be able to invest in clean energy like nuclear power, unless it gains entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Apparently, it ratified the accord on the basis of certain assurances in this regard from former U.S. President Barack Obama. India was seen as an adversary at the beginning of the Paris Conference, because of its championship of the Kyoto Protocol. It was only after it virtually abandoned Kyoto by saying that the world had to go beyond the failed agreements of the past that its status changed from that of a “challenge” to a “partner” in the eyes of the U.S. The New York Times’s cartoon showing India as the elephant stopping the Paris train in its tracks was not an exaggeration of the Indian position at the time of the beginning of the Paris conference. India may have eventually embraced the lesser evil of voluntary cuts for everyone rather than mandatory cuts for the main emitters, among which New Delhi itself might have been counted. The U.S. will gain little by turning India into an adversary once again at a time when a whole range of issues in India-U.S. relations are yet to be clarified and taken forward. Walking together on climate change will be beneficial to both. The writer was the vice-chairman of the Conference of Parties of the Framework Convention on Climate Change from 1992 to 1995 and Chairman of the G-77 at the Berlin Conference in 1995
The government and the media There is a symbiotic relationship between popular opinion and the focus of a daily, one that we must examine carefully no one to make them but us.” These stories, in a sense, gives us tools to evaluate the role of Indian newspapers in holding those in power accountable.
A.S. Panneerselvan For nearly a decade, the dispatches from the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) were seen as a harbinger of the new challenges confronting journalism. It documented the crisis in the Western news media industry, it investigated how Silicon Valley companies are upending journalism, it examined the limitation of algorithm-driven journalism, it talked about the failure of the pay wall, and about filter bubbles and echo chambers created by social media and its debilitating influence on journalism. One anticipates its arrival in the mailbox with a sense of trepidation. However, its latest newsletter was a departure. It spoke about the best kind of newspaper war that is happening in the United States right now. It spoke about the competition of competence between the two major U.S. dailies — The New York Times and The Washington Post — in their series of investigative stories about the Donald Trump regime. The CJR writer observed: “It wasn’t that long ago that both papers were in dire straights. Back in 2013, while The Times was struggling to attract digital subscribers and tweaking its pay wall, Jeff Bezos’s purchase of The Post was seen by some as ‘quixotic adventurism’. Four years later, both outlets have stabilised their financial footing, and news consumers are reaping the benefits.”
Scrutinising the White House The close scrutiny of the White House affairs by the two newspaper majors was so intense that Margaret Sullivan, former Public Editor of NYT and the present media columnist for The Post, wrote: “The two papers have been answering each other’s major scoops like smitten teens volleying text messages.” And, to top it, last week also saw Kevin D. Williamson’s article in National Review, “The news ain’t fake,” that addressed the conservative audience who are distrustful of scoops from newspapers seen as left-leaning. He wrote: “We owe it to ourselves to take account of reality. And we owe it to the country, too. It is cheap, it is cowardly, and it is bad citizenship to simply shriek ‘fake news!’ every time reality forces a hard choice upon us. Living in a free, self-governing society means making a great many hard choices, and there is
FROM
SINGLE FILE
Mobilisation of forces in U.A.R. and Israel From the blue of the Mediterranean across the arid desert wasteland to the Gulf of Aqaba armed U.A.R. and Israeli soldiers continue their face-to-face confrontation. No incidents were reported along the 165-mile long frontier in the nearly 48 hours since the U.N. Emergency Force pulled out of its frontline buffer positions. Israel, having completed partial mobilisation of its armed forces – the biggest since the 1956 Sinai battle – is settling back for what could be a long period of waiting. Authoritative Israeli circles vowed that if trouble started it would have to come from the Arab side. But if it comes they are saying, “we can take care of ourselves, with or without U.N. help.” The military build-up in the area has hit high point on the eve of United Nations Secretary-General U Thant’s visit to Cairo on Monday [May 22] for an on-the-spot look at the situation with full mobilisation, including the call-up of reservists in U.A.R.
The movement empowered the women, but also feminised the men Ruchira Gupta
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Ruchira Gupta is an anti-traicking activist and founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide
CM YK
ARCHIVES
FIFTY YEARS AGO MAY 22, 1967
Gender equality, the freedom struggle way
The Champaran trigger When on the famous day of April 16, 1917, Gandhiji was asked by the British sub-divisional magistrate to leave the district of Champaran, and cease recording the plight of indigo farmers, he refused and wrote two letters. In the irst, he asked a friend for volunteers, especially educated women volunteers, for the constructive action of running schools and ashrams where girls would be educated and hierarchies of caste, class and gender would be overcome. In the second letter, he stated his own civil disobedience: he would not leave Champaran without recording the plight of the farmers. By November, he had opened three girls’ schools and ashrams in Champaran. With the sustained help of these ashrams, an increasing number of volunteers completed and submitted a report on the pitiable condition of Indigo farmers to the British, who were forced to withdraw the unjust laws and ofer some redress. Emboldened with their success in the running of ashrams and schools, women during the freedom struggle began to participate in protest politics. They began to organise public meetings, unionise mill workers, picket liquor shops, boycott foreign goods and court arrest. Organising public meetings meant stepping out of the boundaries of home, unionising mill workers meant overcoming the purdah, boycotting foreign-made cloth meant spinning your own, going to jail and running ashrams meant overcoming caste restrictions. India’s national movement included an unprecedented number of women and ended up creating an unmatched number of women leaders. Eventually, these actions changed the women, but also feminised the men, who too learned to cook, clean, wash, spin, weave and stitch. This role reversal embodied the possibility of women doing men’s work and men doing women’s work; a shared humanity that replaced the gendered polarisation of the dominant and the dominated.
[email protected]
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
In this time of toxic masculinity, we must recognise and learn from the successes of the past. Mahatma Gandhi consciously feminised India’s freedom struggle to win against the brute masculinity of British power. He saw his mother Putlibai and his wife Kasturba (in picture) use peaceful resistance against patriarchy at home. His mother would fast to put moral pressure on his father, and his wife would refuse any act that he asked her to do if she did not agree with it. He personally experienced the power that resists rather than destroys. He incorporated this knowledge into a political tool, satyagraha, that combined civil disobedience with constructive action. Not only was each activity in civil disobedience possible for women to do, because it was non-violent, but each act of constructive action was especially suited to women.
Evaluating the NDA government This week will mark the completion of three years in power of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The opinion about the performance of the government and that of the media is evenly divided. Those who support the present government, with an enviable presence on digital platforms, say that newspapers were unnecessarily critical of some of the historic decisions of the government. The other section feels that Indian newspapers have gone into a self-censorship mode and have failed to point out the gap between official rhetoric and the delivery of the official machinery. One criticism, by this section, against the media is that it is focussing more on the acts of omission and commission of the Opposition parties rather than that of the ruling dispensation. Over the next two weeks, this column will look at how Indian newspapers in general, and The Hindu in particular, reported on the government over the past three years. The views of the reading public play a vital role in defining the character of a newspaper’s coverage. There is a symbiotic relationship between popular opinion and the focus of a newspaper. The feedback loop works both ways, implicitly and explicitly. I solicit readers’ views on this crucial topic, which will form the backbone of my analysis. I have no hesitation in agreeing with Milan Kundera’s description of our perception of the present: “There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely… Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.” In this age of information glut — profound, profane, trivia and rumours — we need to take a pause and relook at what type of newspaper war is happening here? Where does the newspaper’s contrarian and adversarial role end and where does it become a force multiplier for the ruling party? I will restrict my analysis only to newspapers because news television is mimicking gladiatorial sport and that requires a different set of skills and language to explain its content.
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO MAY 22, 1917
“Broken coin” case CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
CONCEPTUAL
SHELF HELP
Paradox of value
Making sense of the stock market
Economics A term that describes the phenomenon of the market price of goods essential to life, like water, being way lower than that of goods that are non-essential, like diamonds. It is also called the diamondwater paradox. Even though water is much more valuable to life than diamonds, its abundant availability — as compared to diamonds — causes its marginal value to buyers to be lower than that of diamonds. Hence, water usually costs much lesser than diamonds, unless there is a huge scarcity in its availability. In that case, both the marginal value and price of water would be way higher.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
MORE ON THE WEB
3
The Cannes coverage http://bit.ly/IndiaatCannes
Books that teach about investing in stocks Prashanth Perumal
Got some money to invest in the stock market? Not sure if you should do it yourself or part your hardearned money with a money manager whose performance is very likely to be mediocre? Or just want to know if investing is your cup of tea? Whatever be the case, here are a some good books that can help you understand the fundamentals of investing, if not make you incredibly rich over time. F Wall Street, written by Joe Ponzio, a relatively unknown hedge fund manager, provides everything a beginner needs to know about investing. Unfortunately, it remains a hidden gem. The book provides a strong but accessible introduction to everything — from the philosophy of investing to how to value a business to keeping your patience. An equally good book is One Up on Wall Street, a bestseller by le-
gendary American money manager Peter Lynch. It describes the tale of how Mr. Lynch found stocks whose price multiplied manifold over the years. The book has been criticised for making investment look too simple, but it is likely to open your eyes to the incredible opportunities hidden in the stock market. Lastly, you’re never going to be a good investor until you understand the nuts and bolts of accounting. Sensible investing requires reading and making sense of annual reports,
which is impossible until you understand the language of business. It takes a little persistence, but in case you want to test the waters, Crash Course in Accounting and Financial Statement Analysis, written by Matan Feldman and Arkady Libman, provides a very accessible introduction to accounting for beginners. You’re likely to find a plunge into any introductory or intermediate accounting book a lot less daunting after this one. As a further mention, once you feel you can handle them, all four books written by accounting professors Charles W. Mulford and Eugene E. Comiskey should set you on course to learning everything you need to know about issues on advanced accounting and due diligence. After you’re done reading these books, you’re equipped with all that you need to analyse stocks in an expert manner. Happy investing!
At the Chief Court to-day was dismissed with costs the suit by Mr. Thomas Cochrane, New York Representative of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company Ltd., against Neikban Cinema Syndicate represented in Rangoon by Mr. E. Fernandes. The suit, pending for the last five months, was to restrain the defendant by injunction (which was recently granted by the Court) from exhibiting the picture film known as the `Broken Coin’ episodes Nos. 15 to 22. The plaintiff ’s counsel explained to the court that certain difficulties which had arisen owing to non-arrival of the affidavit of documents which his clients offered to file. It was presumed that they had been lost in sea in transit from America and his instructions were to allow the case to be dismissed. Moreover the agent (Krishna Das) who had filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiff had ceased relations with the plaintiff and difficulty arose as to who would make the affidavit of documents. CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
DATA POINT
A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
10 NEWS
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
FROM PAGE ONE
3 soldiers, 4 ultras killed in Handwara
BJP plays a waiting game Amit Shah says party is yet to decide on candidate for presidential polls keeping a sharp vigil, and the Valley had witnessed such unrest in the past and the situation got normalised back then, he said. The BJP national president also attacked the Congress for criticising the government, claiming that it had no right to do so as the Kashmir problem was an outcome of the policies of its governments since Independence.
Press Trust of India New Delhi
A policeman on Saturday evening decamped with four service rifles in central Kashmir’s Budgam district amid fears that the guns may have landed up with the active militants in south Kashmir. Identified as constable Syed Naved, a resident of Shopian district’s Nazninpora, the policeman was deployed at the Food Corporation of India’s guard room in Nasrullahpora village. Mr. Naved had joined the police in 2012. All the service rifles were self loading INSAS rifles. In
2015, a Peoples Democratic Party leader’s guard, Naseer Ahmad Pandit of the 11 battalion of J&K Armed Police, joined the Hizbul Mujahideen along with two service rifles. Meanwhile, Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman Burhanuddin claimed the policeman had joined his group. “Naveed is asset of this nation. We salute his valour. People like him will continue to join us,” he said. The latest incident has taken the number of service rifles looted in the past month to 14.
NIA cautious on Geelani probe The NIA is yet to find any evidence against Mr. Geelani in the said case. On the 2016 PE against Mr. Geelani, an NIA official said: “There were two bank accounts related to Geelani which are under the scanner. Lots of funds have been disbursed through it. We are finding out the source of funds. The pattern is suspicious. We are taking the help of financial analysts and bank officials in that case.” The NIA quizzed three Hurriyat leaders, Nayeem Khan, Farooq Ahmed Dar alias ‘Bitta Karate’ and Gazi Javed Baba of Tehreeke-Hurriyat, for the second day. Mr. Khan, the National Front chief, was seen on television during a sting op-
eration by India Today TV, confessing to having received money from Pakistan-based terror groups. On Saturday, Mr. Geelani suspended Mr. Khan’s membership from the Hurriyat until “clarification of all related issues comes to the fore.” “The NIA has collected details of 13 accused charge sheeted so far in the cases in the Valley in the recent past, pertaining to the damage caused to schools and public property as part of the larger conspiracy to perpetuate violence and chaos in Kashmir. The NIA is probing all aspects of funding of separatist leaders and use of these funds in fuelling unrest,” the NIA release said.
The BJP is yet to take a decision on its candidate for the presidential election, even as the party rejected the Shiv Sena’s proposal to nominate RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. Replying to a question on the BJP-led NDA’s candidate for the presidential polls in July as the Opposition was already working on putting up a joint candidate, BJP president Amit Shah said in a TV interview that a decision was yet to be taken. “Even if I have a name on my mind, it has to be discussed within the party first,” he said.
Bhagwat not in race He also rejected the Shiv Sena’s proposal regarding Bhagwat, saying the RSS had itself ruled out any such idea. To questions on Kashmir, Mr. Shah said there was no need for even an “iota of
Amit Shah concern” over the situation in the State which had witnessed months of unrest, and asserted that the Narendra Modi government would bring the situation under control. “There is a big gap between the reality and the projection” of the Kashmir situation and the trouble was confined to “three and a half districts”, he said. The government was
Jharkhand lynching Terming the lynching of seven persons in Jharkhand by a mob over abduction rumours an “isolated and stray incident” which happens in a country of 125 crore people, the BJP chief said it would not be appropriate to link such cases of violence to his party. People should look up the crime data to find out if cases of violence have increased under the BJP governments, he said. Ahead of the Modi govern-
ment’s third anniversary, the BJP president said it has won the people’s trust and added that the poor have the belief that it was working for their welfare.
Mass support In a democracy the “biggest certificate is the people’s verdict” and the masses have time and again underscored their support for the BJP-led NDA government, he said in a reference to the BJP’s win in several State elections. The Modi government has been able to rid the country of the politics of casteism, family rule and appeasement, and turned the focus on the politics of performance, the party president claimed. While the United Progressive Alliance government was accused of scams running into ₹12 lakh crore, even rivals of the NDA government have not levelled a single charge of corruption against it, Mr. Shah claimed.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
A house for ex-Presidents
Green energy target tough, say oicials
Restoring the shine: The 10 Rajaji Marg bungalow in Lutyens Delhi, where A.P.J. Abdul Kalam spent his post-presidential years, is undergoing renovation with the term of President Pranab Mukherjee coming to an end in July. The ground loor of the 11,776-sq.ft building has a library and an attached reading space. V.V. KRISHNAN *
“There are talks in the Ministry about what to do about this,” he said. “But at the moment, it looks unlikely that the government will meet the 175 GW target because of this segment, solar rooftops. Every other segment is moving on track.” The government had announced a target of 40 GW of rooftop solar by 2022, but had achieved only about 1.3 GW as of December 2016, which is a little more than 3% of the target. “On current trends, it does look like the rooftop solar target will be missed,” Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment & Water told The Hindu. “The challenges for rooftop solar are different.
The first is that we don’t have financial institutions aggregating demand across a fundamentally disparate set of projects. Unless this is done, it will be difficult to attract the kind of investment needed.” The second issue, Mr. Ghosh said, was the de-risking of investment in the rooftop space. While this has been done for commercial solar projects, it has not been done for rooftop solar. The third problem is that there is no regulatory clarity on guaranteed payment by utilities on the net metering basis. “If these are addressed, then the investment in this area can significantly pick up,” Mr. Ghosh said.
Calm returns to Jamshedpur Anger over lynchings boils over
Under control: Police and RAF teams patrol a suburb of Jamshedpur city on Sunday. MANOB CHOWDHURY *
Special Correspondent Kolkata
No fresh violence was reported in Jamshedpur on Sunday after the lynching of seven people on Thursday, though anger and anxiety were palpable in certain areas of the town. “Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure were imposed from 10 p.m. on Saturday to 6 a.m. on Sunday. The situation is under control, and there is adequate deployment of security forces,” Amit Kumar, District Collector, East Singhbhum, told The Hindu. Eighteen people have been arrested in connection with the lynching and the violence, the Collector said. Tension broke out in the Jugsalai area when the last rites of Vikash Verma and Gautam Verma were performed. The brothers were lynched at Nagadih allegedly over rumours of child-lifting. Meetings were organised by community leaders to ease tensions. Iswar Soren, a tribal leader, held a meeting at Karandi on the outskirts of the city.
Twin episodes Four were lynched at Raj Nagar in Saraikela-Kharwawan district and three at Nagadih in the Bagbera police station limits. Those killed at Raj Nagar were Muslims, said to be cattle traders, while those in Nagadi were Hindus. “Fourteen persons have
Mamata names Will stop Godse memorial, 5 for Rajya Sabha says Maharashtra Minister Special Correspondent Kolkata
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee on Sunday announced five names, including two new faces, for nomination to the Rajya Sabha. Party national spokesperson Derek O’ Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Dola Sen have been re-nominated to the House. The two other nominations are former Congress leader Manas Ranjan Bhuniya, who recently joined the Trinamool, and Santa Chettri, a former MLA from Gorkha National Liberation Front from the Hills
who had earlier joined the party.
Balancing act The nomination of Dr. Bhunia and Ms. Chettri is being considered in the political circles as a fine balancing act by Ms. Banerjee. On one hand, it is seen a message to the people in the Darjeeling hills that the Trinamool is nominating a representative from the region, while, on the other, it gives a clear indication that those joining Trinamool from other parties will be rewarded as per merit. Dr. Bhunia said he would abide by the instructions of the Chief Minister.
The Hindu Mahasabha is constructing the memorial Press Trust of India Mumbai
Leader of the House and Maharashtra Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil on Sunday assured the Legislative Council that the government would take steps to stop the construction of a memorial of Nathuram Godse being built by an organisation in Saparde village near Kalyan in neighbouring Thane. The assurance came after Congress MLC Sanjay Dutt raised the issue via a point of propriety and demanded that the government ur-
gently intervene. As per reports, the Hindu Mahasabha is constructing the memorial of Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, at the village, six km from Kalyan and land has been acquired for the purpose.
‘Real face’ “After coming to power by promising ‘sabka sath, sabka vikas’, the real face of the ruling government is coming to light, which proves that for them it is actually ‘Mann mein Ram, dil mein Nathuram (Lord Ram in mind, Nathuram in heart),” Mr.
Dutt said. “The fascist forces, who killed Mahatma Gandhi are now blatantly raising their heads once again to throttle Bapu’s ideals and teachings, while the government is turning a blind eye to it,” Mr. Dutt said. He said the Congress, along with all secular forces, would not allow it to happen, no matter what. “Nathuram’s memorial coming up in Kalyan is a blot on progressive Maharashtra and sends a very wrong message across India and even internationally,” the Congress MLC said.
been arrested from Mango in Jamshedpur town. While 10 of them were involved in stone-throwing on Saturday, four were behind orchestrating the violence on Saturday,” Mr. Kumar said. Violence broke out in Mango when members of the Muslim community called for a bandh protesting against the Raj Nagar incident. Certain shops were open in the area, leading to large-scale violence. The police and the administration have appealed to the people not to believe rumours. The State government announced a compensation of ₹2 lakh to the kin of each of the victims. Rumours of child-lifting gangs operating in certain parts of the State, including Jadugoda in East Singhbhum district, surfaced on WhatsApp on May 10. Senior officials told The Hindu there seemed to be a chain from where the WhatsApp messages originated. The police were trying to ascertain if the rumours were systematically floated as part of a conspiracy to destabilise law and order or were just acts of mischief. The local people said parents in certain areas stopped sending their children to school following the rumours. “While Facebook and other social media sites can be monitored it is difficult to keep a check on WhatsApp forwards,” a senior police official said.
Man held for ‘illegal entry’ into Pak. Press Trust of India Islamabad
An Indian national has been arrested here for not possessing travel and visa documents, a media report said on Sunday. Sheikh Nabi Ahmed from Jogeshwari East in Mumbai was taken into custody on May 19, The Express Tribune reported. The police said he was walking on Nazimuddin Road in Sector F-8 when he was stopped at a checkpost. The police demanded his visa documents after he told them that he was an Indian. He has been booked for illegal entry and stay in the country under Foreigners Act 1946.
Cong. seeks to repeat Punjab model 1,800 IAS oicers fail to disclose asset details Press Trust of India
Party’s Dalit outreach had garnered a majority of reserved seats in the Assembly Smita Gupta New Delhi
The success of the Congress’ Dalit outreach plan in the Punjab Assembly elections earlier this year has encouraged the party to attempt a repeat in the upcoming State polls in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, K. Raju, who heads the party’s SC Cell said. In Punjab, of the 34 seats reserved for SCs, the Congress won 22, as well as a general seat for which it had fielded a Dalit candidate. In the 2012 elections, the party won just 10 reserved seats.
SP alliance fiasco The strategy however, failed in Uttar Pradesh, where, again the Congress’ SC Cell had carried out an extensive campaign specifically targetCM YK
K. Raju
ing Dalits. Party sources told The Hindu that while the failure was still being analysed, two things were apparent: one that the Congress’ alliance with the Samajwadi Party had failed completely, and two, the success of such an experiment would be determined by the general health of the party in that State.
There is also a sense that the presence of a powerful Dalit party in Uttar Pradesh, combined with the natural antagonism between Dalits and Yadavs — represented by the Samajwadi Party — and the eventual Hindu-Muslim polarisation would have come in the way. As one party source stressed, “We can’t work in isolation from the party not having the potential to win. It has to be part of a broader campaign and involve the Dalit leadership.”
One-on-one contact In the case of the six States now chosen, the Congress is in power in two, Karnataka and Himachal, and is the second party in the four other largely bipolar States. “We will activate the main Congress in every constituency, and conduct a silent
ground level campaign. We will choose six to 10 Dalit youth in every village to make person-to-person contact,” party sources said. In Punjab, where Dalits account for almost 32%, the Congress had kicked off with a convention for them in Amritsar in September last year. They had declared that 33% of chairmanships in the State would be exclusively reserved for Dalits. Additionally, the party had promised 300 units of free power would be provided to dalit households. In U.P., the party had conducted a Dalit Yatra through the State. The campaigns were centred round three issues critical to Dalits — shiksha or education, suraksha or security and swabhiman or self respect.
New Delhi
Over 1,800 IAS officers have not submitted details of their immoveable assets to the government within the timeframe this year. As per Department of Personnel and Training data, as many as 1,856 IAS officers have not submitted their returns for 2016. Of them, the highest of 255 such officers are from the Uttar Pradesh
cadre. As many as 153 are from Rajasthan, 118 from Madhya Pradesh, 109 from West Bengal and 104 from the AGMUT cadre. As per norms, civil services officers are also supposed to give details of their assets and liabilities to the government. Besides, the officers need to take prior permission from the Central government before accepting gifts worth more than
CBI court to resume Ayodhya case trial today Press Trust of India Lucknow
The trial in the politicallysensitive 1992 Babri Masjid demolition case by a special CBI court will resume here on Monday, following a Supreme Court order to it to hear the case on a daily basis and deliver the verdict
in two years. The SC had on April 19 directed the special court to start the proceedings within a month. The CBI court during its first hearing in the State capital granted bail to five VHP leaders named as accused.
₹5,000. They also need to inform government if they accept gifts of over ₹25,000 from their relatives or friends, according to the rules. There are 82 IAS officers from Karnataka cadre, 81 from Andhra Pradesh, 74 from Bihar, 72 each from Odisha and AssamMeghalaya, 70 from Punjab, 67 from Maharashtra, 64 from Manipur-Tripura and
60 from the Himachal Pradesh cadre who have not submitted the IPR for 2016, according to the DoPT data. As many as 56 IAS officers of Gujarat cadre, 55 of Jharkhand, 52 from Haryana, 51 of J&K, 50 from Tamil Nadu, 43 of Nagaland, 38 of Kerala, 33 from Uttaranchal 29 from Sikkim and 26 from newly-formed Telangana have also not submitted their IPRs, it said.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
NEWS 11
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
Defence deals await private irms The contracts totalling ₹1.5 lakh crore will be taken up under the new strategic partnership model Dinakar Peri New Delhi
Mary Kom discusses boxing with Goel NEW DELHI
Union Sports Minister Vijay Goel on Sunday met boxing champion and Rajya Sabha MP Mary Kom to discuss ways to promote boxing as a sport in the country. They discussed measures that the Centre should take to improve the training process. “Tournaments should be held twice a year. This will provide more exposure at national and international level to the upcoming sportspersons,” Ms. Kom said. ANI
Twin blasts rock Manipur town, 4 policemen hurt IMPHAL
Two bomb blasts rocked Moreh, a border town in Manipur, on Saturday night. The police said the first blast took place at 9.30 p.m. on the perimeter wall of the town police station. The second occurred at midnight at Gamnom Veng in the town. Four policemen were injured in the twin blasts. Earlier, two troopers of 165 Territorial Army were killed and two others injured along Trans Asian Highway No 2 that leads to Moreh.
The Union government will unveil mega defence deals estimated at over ₹1.5 lakh crore involving the private sector under the strategic partnership model to build a domestic defence manufacturing base in key areas such as submarines and fighter aircraft. “It should possibly be cleared in the next few weeks, likely within the month,” a senior official told The Hindu on Sunday. The Defence Acquisition Council approved the framework of the model on Saturday. The policy will now go to the Finance Ministry and then to the Cabinet Committee on Security for final approval, which is expected to be a formality as the Prime Minister’s Office has already been briefed on the issue. The new model, which is a chapter under the Defence Procurement Procedure, has four segments —submarines, single-engine fighter aircraft,
helicopters and armoured carriers/main battle tanks — and specifically intends to open up defence manufacturing to the private sector. “These big companies will be the lead integrators. The contract will be spread across the Indian industry at various levels. The current model plans to build an ancillary network which works far more efficiently,” the official said. This, he said, will indigenise the sub-systems and components and after a couple of cycles “everything should be built here”. Pointing out that the other aspect of the policy is the export potential, the official said, “We will then get into a supply chain with the global original equipment manufacturers.”
Projects lined up Projects already lined up under the four segments have been held up because of a delay in formulating the policy. The Ministry is gearing up to quickly roll them
companies for each of the projects, officials said. A pool of capable companies will be selected based on technical and financial evaluation and they would then tie up with a foreign OEM which will be short-listed concurrently.
Full order sheet: Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders is building the Scorpenes now. More orders are in the pipeline. PTI *
out once the policy is in place. Of the four deals, submarines and helicopters are for the Navy. The single-engine fighter is for the Indian Air Force and armoured vehicle for the Army. The deal for six submarines under Project-75I is ex-
pected to cost around ₹50,000 crore, the one for 100-plus fighter aircraft is estimated at ₹60,000 crore and the Future Infantry Combat Vehicle (FICV) programme is estimated at ₹50,000 crore. Expression of Interest (EoI) will be issued to Indian
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Remembering a leader
Police seize explosives, liquor in Rohtas district
To spread ‘save the cow’ message Press Trust of India Lucknow
The iftars to be organised by the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, a wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in Uttar Pradesh during Ramzan this year will serve only cow’s milk and its products to drive home the messages of “save the cow” and how consumption of beef invites diseases. Mahiraj Dhwaj Singh, national co-convener (organisation) of the MRM for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, said that for the “first time”, people observing roza (fast) would be ending it with a glass of cow’s milk. “Emphasis will be laid on the use of cow’s milk and other dairy products at the iftars. And, it will be for the first time that such an iftar will be held in Uttar Pradesh,” Mr. Singh said. Citing the benefits of cow’s milk, Mr. Singh said, “Even Muslim scholars are
The police on Sunday seized a consignment of explosives and liquor from a pick-up van from Mufassil police station area in Bihar’s Rohtas district, a police officer said.The police intercepted the pick-up van near Karbandia petrol pump during routine checking and seized the explosives and liquor, the SP said. PTI
Chandigarh
UNNAO
Floral tributes: Congress president Sonia Gandhi, along with her son Rahul Gandhi, pays homage to the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his 26th death anniversary at Vir Bhumi in New Delhi on Sunday. R. V. MOORTHY *
The Border Security Force and the Punjab Police in a joint operation on Sunday claimed to have busted a terror module with links to Canada and Pakistan after arresting two suspected Khalistani terrorists. The two were arrested from the Indo-Pak border area when they were trying to recover weapons that were earlier smuggled into India from Pakistan, a Punjab Police spokesperson said. “Those arrested have been identified as Mann Singh (40) from Sri Hargobindpur in Gurdaspur and Sher Singh (28) from Kartarpur in Jalandhar,” he said. Security forces have seized an AK-47 assault rifle, five hand grenades, a modified machine-pistol (MP),
five pistols and over 450 rounds of ammunition of different calibre from the duo, he said “The terrorists during preliminary interrogation have said their module was raised and indoctrinated by an Ontario- based Sikh hardliner Gurjivan Singh, who was in touch with them for the past two years, and had motivated them to commit terror strikes in Punjab,” the spokesman said. “Gurjivan made two trips to Punjab in the last six months, and had arranged the arms and ammunition for their operations through his Pakistan-based Khalistani contacts,” he said. The spokesman said they were planning to target “enemies of the Panth”. They also said during his last two trips to Punjab, Gurjivan had imparted them
Urjit to brief MPs’ panel on note ban only in June
Explain Gorshkov cost: CIC
Framing of monetary policy to hold up RBI Governor
New Delhi
Navy asked to disclose reasons for accepting price escalation by Russia Press Trust of India
Press Trust of India New Delhi
Manmohan to the rescue Mr. Patel has been asked to appear on May 25 after former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prevailed upon the BJP MPs on the
Urjit Patel
panel, who were opposed to summoning the RBI Governor again. It was Mr. Singh who had rescued Patel from a tough grilling during the January meeting when he intervened to say the Reserve Bank and
the Governor’s position as an institution should be respected. He should not be put to odd questions, Mr. Singh, who himself was RBI Governor once, is believed to have told the standing committee. Instead of Mr. Patel, all secretaries from the Finance Ministry will be present on May 25 to update the panel about digital economy. The panel is chaired by Congress leader M. Veerappa Moily, . BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who is a member of the panel, has suggested to the chairman that it now deliberate on digital economy, as “demonetisation was not an issue any more”. The members are now likely to question Mr. Patel on how much money has come back into the system.
The Central Information Commission has asked the Navy to disclose the reasons for India agreeing to cost escalation by Russia for purchase of the refurbished aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. The deal for purchasing the now 30-year-old warship renamed INS Vikramaditya was signed in 2004 by the then NDA government for $974 million which was increased to the final price of $2.35 billion in 2010. The commission has also directed the the Navy disclose the “net final cost” incurred on the modifications, renovation and remodelling done on the ship, besides dates of payments made by India. The Navy had earlier told the Commission that the information was to be provided by the Defence
New role: The Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier of Russia was renamed INS Vikramaditya after India acquired it. AFP *
Ministry, which claimed the relevant files were with the naval headquarters and that they have been asked to disclose the details. Information Commissioner Amitava Bhattacharyya directed the Navy to disclose the file notings, correspondence, and documents related to the acceptance of cost revisions sought by the Russians. Mr. Bhattacharyya noted
In India, it is more of waiting than lying Air traveller only spends around 24.68% of the total travel time, in a one-stopover light, actually lying Soumya Pillai New Delhi
Have you ever had to wait endlessly at an airport for a connecting flight? You may not be alone in suffering the predicament in India. A study by the School of Planning and Architecture shows that an Indian air traveller on an average only spends around 24.68% of the total travel time, in a one-stopover flight, flying. The rest of the time is spent waiting at the airports. The research, carried out by Amal Jose, a postgraduate student of the institute, unCM YK
Welcomes move Waseem Raini, president of Lucknow-based Pasmanda Muslim Samaj said, “If sweets such as pedhaa made using cow’s milk are served during iftar, we have no objections. This will increase brotherhood between Hindus and Muslims.”
BSF nabs two suspected Khalistani terrorists Press Trust of India
Lokmanya Tilak express derails at Unnao in U.P.
RBI Governor Urjit Patel will appear before a parliamentary panel for a second briefing on demonetisation on June 8, and not on May 25 as scheduled, as work on framing the monetary policy will be under way at that time. The Standing Committee on Finance, which had questioned Mr. Patel on January 18 on the move to ban notes of ₹500 and ₹1,000 denominations, allowed him to appear at a later date after he made a request expressing his inability.
of the view that it is good for health, and ghee made using this milk is medicine.” Mr. Singh said that during Ramzan, special prayers would be offered through which appeals would be made to protect cows. “All living beings (animals, birds, trees and plants) owe their existence to Allah. If we adopt a humane approach towards them, we will incur His blessings,” he said. “During Ramzan, prayers will be held. A message to end animosity and spread love, bonhomie and brotherhood will be disseminated,” he said.
They were arrested from the Indo-Pak border area
DEHRI-ON-SONE
Eleven coaches of the Mumbai-Lucknow Lokmanya Tilak Express derailed here on Sunday, but there was no report of any casualty, in the sixth such incident in U.P. in seven months. At around 2 p.m., 11 coaches of the train derailed when it was crossing platform number 3 of the Unnao railway station, 20 km from Kanpur. PTI
Indian bidders According to officials, for the submarines, the likely contenders are Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd., which have their own shipyards and the public sector Mazagon Docks Ltd., which is building the French Scorpene submarines. For the fighter and helicopter segments, the likely bidders are Tata Advanced Systems Ltd. and Mahindra, both of which have a footprint in the aviation sector. In the armoured segment, the FICV programme under way will be taken up under the SP model. L&T, Mahindra and Tata Motors are leading the race, for which bids have already been submitted.
RSS wing to hold iftars with milk
der guidance of Sewa Ram, Senior Professor of Transport Planning, is a comprehensive study of over 60 airports in India. It has analysed major and minor airports of various countries on parameters such as air, network and land accessibility. The study shows that in India if a passenger takes a flight with one stopover, on an average she spends 75.32% of the total travel time only waiting at airports. This waiting time increases when the passenger has two or more stopovers,
where the average waiting time becomes 83.55% and the flight time is the remaining 16.45%. This means, for example if a person is flying from New Delhi to Bagdogra in Darjeeling, in a direct flight, she takes around two hours. However, if she stops over at either Guwahati or Kolkata, the total travel time more than doubles mainly because of the waiting time at the airports. This, the study states, when compared to its international counterparts is an inconvenient state. Sample
this—in China an air traveller, who takes a flight with a single pit stop, spends as much as 70.20% of her total travel time actually flying, which means only about 29.80% of the time is spent waiting at airports. With over two interchanges, the average flight time still remains 54.20%, which is fairly high. In western countries such as the U.S. and the Europe, the waiting time is not very high. In the U.S., a single stopover amounts to a passenger spending around 67.9% of the time actually
travelling. With two or more stopovers, the percentage of average flight time becomes 58.5. In European countries, this average flight time stands at 61.3% of the total travel time in a single stopover flight, and with two or more, it slumps to 52.1%. To pack it together, the study shows that an Indian air traveller on an average spends as much as 458 minutes waiting at the airports, when taking a flight with a single stopover. This is at least four times higher than China.
that the Navy was trying to put the onus of disclosure on the Defence Ministry whereas the Ministry made it clear that the reply was to be furnished by the force. The Commission has ordered the disclosure to be made as it found “larger public interest” was involved. The Ministry and the Navy had withheld the information on the grounds of national security.
Mr. Bhattacharyya also directed the Navy to disclose reasons why India chose to opt for a refurbished warship instead of buying a new one. The RTI application was filed by activist Subhash Agrawal who had demanded a range of information on the acquisition of the 44,500-tonne aircraft carrier. The ship was originally commissioned by the erstwhile USSR on December 20, 1987 and was decommissioned in 1996. After being inducted into the Navy as Vikramaditya, the ship is now a floating 284-metre airfield. It is a 20-storey steel megastructure from the keel to the highest point. The ship can carry over 30 aircraft. With 22 decks and a capacity to house 1,600 personnel, the warship can sustain itself at sea for 45 days up to 13,000 km.
theoretical training on handling arms, including the AK-47 rifle, he said. “One of the arrested has said the Ontario-based hardliner travelled with them to Uttar Pradesh to procure arms but were unsuccessful. Subsequently, Gurjivan had promised to arrange it through his Khalistani contacts in Pakistan and their ISI handlers,” the spokesman said. During the interrogation, Mann also confessed to having made several visits to Pakistan and being in touch with some Khalistani activists there, he claimed. The spokesman said the arms and ammunition seized during the operation were found buried close to the Indo-Pak border and the suspects had been provided with the co-ordinates of the spot.
Navy rescues Maldivian landing craft Special Correspondent NEW DELHI
The Indian Navy rescued a Maldivian landing craft 120 nautical miles east of Male on Saturday evening. A Dornier aircraft of the Navy spotted the landing craft Maria 3 floating 60 nautical miles from its last known position and informed the INS Kirch, which was 50 nautical miles away. “The ship’s forward ramp collapsed, so it was unable to propel. A joint boarding party was sent... to provide assistance. All crew members are safe. The Maldivian National Defence Force has been informed,” a Navy spokesperson said on Sunday. Maria 3 was travelling from K Thulusdhoo to L Gan with a six-member crew on Thursday when it went adrift. (With inputs from PTI)
Japan plans war museum in a Manipur hillock Site held Japanese camp during Second World War: envoy Iboyaima Laithangbam IMPHAL
Japan plans to build a war museum in a hillock at Maiba Lokpa in Bishnupur district of Manipur where a Japanese camp was located during the Second World War, the country’s Ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, said here on Sunday. Mr. Hiramatsu said about 70,000 Japanese soldiers died from March to June in 1944 during battles in Im-
Kenji Hiramatsu
phal and Kohima. He said the mortal remains of those soldiers would be located for the last rites, seeking the co-
operation of the people in the region. The Ambassador said that 25 persons from Nagaland and Manipur would be invited to visit Japan. A seminar would also be organised in November to help students interested in pursuing studies in Japan. Welcoming the museum plans, Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh promised assistance to the Japanese government for implementing the project. A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
12 WORLD
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
ELSEWHERE
Trump puts the onus on Muslim world to combat terrorism In speech to Arab and Muslim leaders, President rejects notion of clash between the West and Islam
China killed, jailed CIA informants It crippled spying operations for years The New York Times Washington
Associated Press
Indian-origin Minister may become Irish PM LONDON
An Indian-origin doctor and Ireland’s irst openly gay minister has emerged as the frontrunner in the prime ministerial race. Leo Varadkar, 38, the son of an Indian father and Irish mother, has won support for his leadership bid from several senior Ministers. PTI
Taliban kill 20 soldiers in coordinated attacks KABUL
Militants launched attacks on several check points in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 20 soldiers, a provincial official said on Sunday. Gul Islam Seyal, a spokesman for the provincial Governor in Zabul province, said the battles began late on Saturday when dozens of Taliban fighters launched coordinated attacks on security posts in the Shah Joy district. AP
Turkey’s ruling party elects Erdogan as leader ISTANBUL
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has returned as leader of the country’s ruling Justice and Development Party on Sunday, pushing back against criticism that his tenure has curtailed freedoms and polarised the country as he vowed to serve the nation and combat terror. Mr. Erdogan was was the only candidate for the post of party chairman. AP
Riyadh
U.S. President Donald Trump called on Middle Eastern leaders to combat a “crisis of Islamic extremism” emanating from the region, casting the fight against terrorism as a “battle between good and evil”, not a clash between the West and Islam. Mr. Trump’s address on Sunday was the centrepiece of his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, his first stop overseas as President. During a meeting of more than 50 Arab and Muslim leaders, he sought to chart a new course for America’s role in the region, one aimed squarely on rooting out terrorism, with less focus on promoting human rights and democratic reforms. “We are not here to lecture we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship,” Mr. Trump said, speaking in an ornate, multi-chandeliered room. “Instead, we are here to offer partnership based on shared interests and values to pursue a better future for us all.” Even as the President pledged to work alongside Middle Eastern nations, he put the onus for combating terrorism on the region. Bellowing into the microphone, he implored Muslim leaders to aggressively fight extremists — “Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities.” The President has been enthusiastically embraced in
Important message: U.S. President Donald Trump delivering a speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit, the centrepiece of his visit to Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh on Sunday. AP *
Riyadh, where the ruling royal family has welcomed his tougher stance on Iran, its regional foe. Sitting alongside Mr. Trump, Saudi King Salman declared: “The Iranian regime has been the spearhead of global terrorism.” Mr. Trump’s welcome in the region was also put on display during a series of individual meetings with Arab leaders. He praised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah alSisi, telling him: “You have done a tremendous job under trying circumstances.” Mr. Trump promised to schedule a trip to Egypt soon, and he singled out the Egyptian’s choice of foot-
Pak. detains social media activists Those held have been critical of the military and Islam MUBASHIR ZAIDI KARACHI
Pakistani authorities have launched a crackdown against social media activists critical of the country’s military and Islam. Several of them have been detained, officials of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) cyber crime cell confirmed on Sunday. A source in the FIA, requesting anonymity, confirmed that 13 people are being questioned for criticising the military and Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa, and three people for mocking the judiciary, while four people are being questioned for ridiculing Islam. However, no case has been registered against anyone so far, the source added. Political parties and human rights activists have condemned the detentions,
claiming that the social-media activists did not commit any crime. Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a senior leader of the Opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which is headed by Imran Khan, confirmed that two of the party’s social-media activists had been questioned. “We have repeatedly instructed our activists to follow the laws and they have been doing that. But a general case has been registered by FIA to question the activists.”
Online campaign Salar Sultan Zai from Quetta was brought to Islamabad and released after questioning, but Owais Khan, the other person held, is still under detention. The PTI has launched an online campaign to protest against the detentions. “We stand by
U.N. experts’ murders raise tough questions They had no protection in DR Congo The New York Times
Zaida Catalán was on to something, and it was making her jumpy. Weeks later, Ms. Catalán, a U.N. investigator with little training and no safety equipment or even health insurance, headed into a remote area teeming with militia fighters to find the culprits behind a massacre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A grainy cellphone video shows what happened next: a cluster of men with rifles and red bandanas lead Ms. Catalán, a 36-yearold Swedish-Chilean, into a grove with her American colleague, Michael J. Sharp, 34. The two investigators are barefoot. Mr. Sharp starts arguing. He and Ms. Catalán are forced onto the ground. Suddenly, shots are fired, hitting Mr. Sharp first. Ms. Catalán screams and tries to run for cover. She is shot twice. Their bodies were discovered weeks later in a shallow grave. Ms. Catalán had been decapitated. Her head had been taken. Their deaths raise tough questions about the U.N. CM YK
and its work in the most dangerous places in the world. Almost two months passed before the U.N. even assembled a panel to look into what went wrong. The U.N. Security Council could go further and order a more formal investigation, but more than two months after the murders, it has taken no steps in that direction. Instead, it has left the investigation to Congo, a nation where violence, corruption and impunity are widespread.
Sharp debate The killings have also stirred a sharp debate over the U.N.’s responsibility to prepare and protect the people it hires to investigate wrongdoing around the world. Asked whether the U.N. had done enough to prepare and protect the experts, José Luis Díaz, a spokesman, said the organisation was asking itself the same question. “This is why the U.N. is looking at the whole sequence of events. We want to assess whether things worked as they should, and if what we have in place is adequate or robust enough.”
each and every PTI volunteer. Even if they get summoned and searched by anyone all they will find is love for Pakistan,” the party tweeted. Meanwhile, the PML(N), Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s party, also confirmed that one of its socialmedia activists — Dr Faisal Ranjha from Lahore — had been detained. He was picked up on Saturday morning from a government hospital, when he was treating patients. A journalist from Islamabad, Taha Siddiqui, was questioned over phone. Earlier this year, four bloggers were picked up by the authorities and detained illegally for over a month for allegedly questioning the military and religion. All the four left the country after being released as they feared for their safety.
wear, a pair of shiny black shoes. “Love your shoes. Boy, those shoes,” he said. Reinforcing his theme of U.S. economic deals, the U.S. President told Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad AlThani they would discuss “lots of beautiful military equipment because nobody makes it like the United States”. To Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, Mr. Trump declared that the two nations had a lot in common and “there won't be strain with this administration”. The King lauded the relationship and said it had led to “great stability in the region and prosperity”.
Swiss vote against use of n-power Associated Press
And in a meeting with the emir of Kuwait, Sabah alAhmad al-Sabah, Mr. Trump noted Kuwait bought large amounts of U.S. military equipment. The Kuwaiti leader referred to Mr. Trump as “my brother”.
Welcome escape For Mr. Trump the visit has been a welcome escape from the crush of controversies that have consumed his administration in recent weeks. He’s been besieged by a series of revelations about the ongoing federal investigation into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia and his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, who had
been overseeing the Russia probe. The President’s trip to Saudi Arabia also served as something of a reset with the region following his presidential campaign, which was frequently punctured by bouts of anti-Islamic rhetoric. He once mused that he thought “Islam hates us”. And only a week after taking office, he signed an executive order to ban immigrants from seven countries Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen from entering the United States, a decision that sparked widespread protests at the nation’s airports and demonstrations outside the White House. That ban was blocked by the courts. A second order, which dropped Iraq from the list, is tied up in federal court and the federal government is appealing. But on Sunday, Mr. Trump was full of praise for Muslim world’s history and culture. He declared Islam “one of the world’s great faiths”. White House officials said they considered Mr. Trump’s address to be a counterweight to President Barack Obama’s debut speech to the Muslim world in 2009 in Cairo. Mr. Obama called for understanding and acknowledged some of America’s missteps in the region. That speech was denounced by many Republicans and criticised by a number of the United States’ Middle East allies as being a sort of apology.
The Chinese government systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterwards. Current and former U.S. officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the CIA had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the CIA used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
Huge damage But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former U.S. officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the CIA’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the CIA. Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the CIA’s sources in China, according to two
North Korea ires mid-range missile U.S. says it will continue to apply economic, diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang Associated Press
named his new Foreign Minister nominee and top advisers for security and foreign policy. He did not make a public statement.
SEOUL
BERLIN
Swiss voters are supporting a referendum to withdraw the country from nuclear power in favour of renewable energy. A projection from Sunday’s referendum shows a majority of cantons (States) voted for the plan. Under Switzerland’s direct democracy system, initiatives need a majority of both cantons and votes to pass. The projection for SRF public television showed 58% of voters in favour and 42% against the proposal. The government wants to ban the construction of new nuclear power plants and decommission the country’s five existing ones at the end of their technically safe operating lives.
former senior U.S. officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build. Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of U.S. assets lost in China, officials said, rivalled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the CIA and the FBI, who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years. The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting U.S. spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The CIA considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there. At a time when the CIA is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the Internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the FBI probes possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China probe demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counter-espionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.
North Korea fired a mediumrange missile on Sunday, U.S. and South Korean officials said, the latest ballistics test by a country speeding up its development of nuclear weapons and missiles. The rocket was fired from an area near the North Korean county of Pukchang, in South Phyongan Province, and flew eastward about 500 km, said South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. Pacific Command said it tracked the missile before it landed in the sea. White House officials travelling in Saudi Arabia with President Donald Trump said the system that was tested, which was last launched in February, had a shorter range than the missiles fired in North Korea’s
Perilous times: A man in Seoul passes by a news show showing the image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sunday AP *
most recent tests. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said both economic and diplomatic pressure would continue to be applied to North Korea. “Hopefully they will get the message that the path of continuing their nuclear arms program is not a path-
way to security or certainly prosperity. The ongoing testing is disappointing, disturbing and we ask that they cease that,” he said. South Korea’s new President, Moon Jae-in, held a National Security Council meeting to discuss the launch, which came hours after he
‘Challenge to the world’ An official from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff also said the missile appeared to be similar in range and apogee to the mid-range missile that North Korea testfired in February. The missile launched on Sunday reached a maximum altitude of 560 km, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules. In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the launch a “challenge to the world”, and vowed to bring up the issue as the “main agenda” of this week’s G-7 summit in Italy.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
BUSINESS 13
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
‘Centre has plan to make AI a great global airline’ Working on strategy to strengthen inances and improve corporate governance for the ailing carrier, says Jayant Sinha Somesh Jha NEW DELHI
Bajaj Auto looks to rev up sales this iscal NEW DELHI
Bajaj Auto is hoping to put up an improved sales show in 2017-18 on the back of recoveries in both domestic and export markets after a rough ride last iscal. With an aim to increase its overseas shipments, the company plans to enter at least ive new markets this iscal. The company’s total sales declined by 5.85% in 2016-17 at 36,65,950 units as against 38,93,581 units in 2015-16. PTI
Natco gets green nod for ₹480-crore project NEW DELHI
Natco Pharma has received the environment clearance for its ₹480-crore expansion project in Telangana that would generate 1,500 jobs. The proposal is to increase the production capacity of 66 Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and API intermediates at a time with R&D activity from 115.5 tonnes per annum (TPA) to 645 TPA in the existing land area of 34.17 hectare at Mekaguda village. PTI
Centre may block PSUs from buying GDF stake NEW DELHI
The Oil Ministry may block any attempt by state-owned GAIL, IOC, ONGC and BPCL to buy the 10% stake of France’s GDF International in Petronet LNG Ltd. as it is keen to keep the liqueied natural gas importer a private limited company. GDF, a unit of French energy giant Engie SA, has decided to sell its entire stake in Petronet to the company’s principal promoters — GAIL (India) Ltd, ONGC, Indian Oil Corporation and BPCL. PTI
The Central government has a ‘winning’ strategy for its ailing national carrier Air India which is to turn it into a “great” global airline, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said in an interview. His comments come days after Cabinet Minister for civil aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju said that the Centre is reviewing a range of options, including possible disinvestment, to revive Air India. “I think Air India has a terrific future ahead of itself because India does need a great global airline like British Airways, Lufthansa, Qantas or Emirates and we think that Air India, in that regard, has a winning strategy to become a great global airline for India,” the Minister said in an interview
to The Hindu. Interestingly, all the flag carriers mentioned by the Minister, except United Arab Emirates’ Emirates, have been privatised a long time ago by their countries. While British Airways, flag carrier of the U.K., was privatised in 1987, Australian carrier Qantas was partly privatised in 1992 and fully in 1995, while Germany’s Lufthansa was fully privatised in 1997.
Global share Till March this year, Air India operated its flight on 118 domestic and 64 international routes. The share of Indian airlines in total international traffic has declined to 36% in January-March 2017 from 38% a year earlier. International carriers ferried 64% of Indian passengers abroad in JanuaryMarch 2017, compared with
Crushing load: We have to ensure that the debt burden of the airline is reduced, says Jayant Sinha. SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY *
62% a year earlier. While Jet Airways carried the most number of international passengers to and from India (14.5%), it was followed by Air India (10.7%) and Emirates (9.5%) in the period.
Mr. Sinha said the government is working on a “robust” multi-dimensional transformation plan for Air India which includes strengthening its financial position, improving corpor-
ate governance, strengthening the airline’s board and inducting new people in its management. When asked if Air India would shift its focus from domestic to international markets, Mr. Sinha said, “It’s not one or the other because the reality is if you want to win as far as the international routes are concerned, you need a strong domestic network that feeds your international route as well.” To a question on whether disinvestment for the national carrier is being contemplated, the junior civil aviation Minister said, “We are considering a number of different alternatives.”
NITI roadmap The Centre recently asked NITI Aayog to formulate a roadmap for Air India’s future as the government is reconsidering its strategy on
future equity infusion into the national carrier. As part of the turnaround plan, the Centre has infused ₹24,745 crore as equity into Air India, as at the end of 2016-17. He said that the Centre had to ensure that the current debt burden of the airline, which is a “crushing load” on its performance, is reduced. “Due to the debt burden that they are carrying right now, it is very difficult for them to invest in their equipment, services, marketing, talent development and so on. So, the debt burden which, of course, we inherited from the previous government, is a crushing load that Air India is carrying right now and we have to find a way of restructuring it,” the Minister said. Air India’s debt stood at ₹50,357 crore at the end of 2015-16.
Bid to boost India, Africa trade ties PRESS TRUST OF INDIA GANDHINAGAR
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will discuss potential areas of boosting cooperation between India and Africa here on Monday. Mr. Jaitley will open the IndiaAfrica Cooperation session being held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB). The sessions will cover areas such as trade and investment, agriculture, renewable energy and manufacturing among others. Total trade between India and Africa increased almost fivefold between 2005-06 and 2015-16, and stood at $52 billion in March 2016-17. This is the first time that the African Development Bank is holding its annual meeting outside of the African continent.
Softbank-Saudi tech Nasscom steps up U.S. lobbying fund raises $93 billion on immigration, visa issues
Sinor withdraws resignation from BBB
Other investors include Apple Inc.
He had resigned citing ‘despondency’
REUTERS RIYADH
The world’s largest private equity fund, backed by Japan’s Softbank Group and Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund, said it had raised over $93 billion to invest in technology sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics. “The next stage of the Information Revolution is under way, and building the businesses that will make this possible will require unprecedented large-scale, long-term investment,” the Softbank Vision Fund said. Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, chairman of Softbank, a telecommunications and tech investment group, revealed plans for
the fund last October and since then it has obtained commitments from some of the world’s most deep-pocketed investors. In addition to Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the new fund’s investors include Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment, which has committed $15 billion, Apple Inc, Qualcomm, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology and Japan’s Sharp Corp. The new fund made its announcement during the visit of President Donald Trump to Riyadh and the signing of tens of billions of dollars worth of business deals between U.S. and Saudi companies. Mr. Son was also in Riyadh.
Money spent on such activities rose by a third, a report says PRESS TRUST OF INDIA WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI
Facing rough weather amid large-scale layoffs and visa curbs in the U.S., the Indian IT industry body Nasscom has significantly stepped up its lobbying with the American lawmakers with a more than one-third increase in money spent on such activities. According to the latest lobbying disclosure reports filed with the U.S. Senate, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) paid a total amount of $1,50,000 (about ₹1 crore) to its two registered lobbyists in the first quarter of 2017. This marks a significant rise from $1,10,000 paid to
Nasscom has paid $1,50,000 to its two lobbyists in the irst quarter of 2017.
the two lobbyists in the previous quarter ended December 2016. Among the two lobbyists, The Lande Group was paid $50,000 in the JanuaryMarch quarter of 2017 — the same amount as in the four
quarters of 2016. But the other lobbyist, Wexler & Walker, a unit of Hill+Knowlton Strategies, LLC, was paid $100,000 in the first quarter of 2017, as against $60,000 in the previous three-month period and in many of the previous quarters. As per the lobbying disclosure report, the “specific lobbying issues” undertaken by this lobbyist included those related to immigration. The “general issues” included tax and trade matters. The houses of Congress and federal agencies with whom it lobbied on behalf of Nasscom, included the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives.
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Mumbai
H.N. Sinor, the veteran banker who resigned from the Bank Board Bureau (BBB) on May 12 as a non-official member, decided to ‘re-engage’ with the bureau, the BBB said in a statement on Sunday. “In what he perceived as inadequate progress that the recommendations of the Bureau were making, and the resulting despondency, he had offered to withdraw his engagement with the Bureau,” the statement said. “However, following a detailed discussion with Vinod Rai, the Chairman of the Banks Board Bureau, Mr. Sinor has decided to re-engage with the activities of
H.N. Sinor the Bureau, with his usual fervour and vigour,” the statement added. The BBB has also decided to appoint two ‘alternate' experts,’ former Allahabad Bank chairman and managing director S. Panse and Pradip Shah, former managing director of rating agency Crisil.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
14 BUSINESS REVIEW
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Rainbow turns out to be a mirage
GUEST COLUMN
The conclusion to the two-part series says that there are no easy answers to the NPA problem faced by Indian banks their ‘advice’. And, who in India does not know that a king’s ‘advise’ is actually an ‘order’? All in all, the amendment is unlikely to make any significant dent on the NPA situation, except at the margin perhaps.
S4A a non-starter This is also a non-starter, with only three cases cleared so far. While there is excitement and expectations surrounding the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, it is well-nigh impossible that resolution of even the largesized NPAs can be brought about within a reasonable period of time under the mechanism contained in this
EXPLAINER
*
A solution for the NPA problem for PSU banks has proved elusive so far. The authorities have been in denial mode for long and the problem’s depth and extent have been revealed only recently. The efforts of RBI have not borne fruit: The 5/25 scheme which permitted extension of loan amortization period up to 25 years with interest reset every 5 years did not work as the higher interest burden due to tenor extension required additional borrowing which worsened the initial problem. The sale of NPAs to Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARC) has so far been very low due to two main reasons: banks have been reluctant to sell NPA at a price reflecting their realisable economic value; and, banks received only 15% of the NPA sales consideration in cash, while the rest was given by way of security receipts (SR) which meant that the seller bank continued to be exposed to the risk of short recovery of the loan from the borrower. The Strategic Debt Restructuring scheme (SDR), unveiled in June, 2015, involved banks taking over companies by converting debt into equity, replacing the promoters and thereafter selling their equity holdings to new investors. However, as of December, 2016, only two such cases of sale had materialised. The Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets (S4A) was introduced in June, 2016, whereby the outstanding bank loan is required to be bifurcated into sustainable and unsustainable portions, enabling the borrower company to be revived and making it possible for the sustainable portion to be repaid.
GETTYIMAGES/ISTOCK
Sivaprakasam Sivakumar Himadri Bhattacharya
< > path would lead The insolvency
to a ‘ire sale’ in a growing economy statute. The judicial authority for this purpose — the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) — currently clears 6,620 cases a year and it has a backlog of 24,900 cases. Further, both resolution and bankruptcy will cause significant loss to banks. But the boards and senior management of PSU banks have all the incentive to prefer a much higher loss through resolution or bankruptcy visa-vis a commercially driven write-off decision. The insolvency route would lead to a “fire sale” of assets in a growing economy — a paradox of sorts. This is a sad reality that lies at the core of resolving the NPA problem.
A para-banking solution? Like all grand ideas, the proposition to set up a Public Sector Asset Rehabilitation Agency (PARA) a la what China did in the past catches attention. The details are sketchy, untenable, and even confus-
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Prompt corrective action for banks thresholds are breached. There are three risk thresholds which are based on certain levels of asset quality, profitability, capital and the like. The third such threshold, which is maximum tolerance limit, sets net NPA at over 12% and negative return on assets for four consecutive years. Manojit Saha MUMBAI
As the financial health of banks had deteriorated over the last three years, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revised the norms for prompt corrective action early last month, and has promptly imposed those norms on a couple of public sector lenders.
What is PCA? 쐍 PCA norms allow the regulator to place certain restrictions such as halting branch expansion and stopping dividend payment. It can even cap a bank’s lending limit to one entity or sector. Other corrective action that can be imposed on banks include special audit, restructuring operations and activation of recovery plan. Banks’ promoters can be asked to bring in new management, too. The RBI can also supersede the bank’s board, under PCA. The provisions of the revised PCA framework will be effective April 1, 2017 based on the financials of the banks for the year ended March 31, 2017. The framework will be reviewed after three years. When is PCA invoked? 쐍 The PCA is invoked when certain risk CM YK
What are the types of sanctions? 쐍 There are two type of restrictions, mandatory and discretionary. Restrictions on dividend, branch expansion, directors compensation, are mandatory while discretionary restrictions could include curbs on lending and deposit. In the cases of two banks where PCA was invoked after the revised guidelines were issued — IDBI Bank and UCO Bank — only mandatory restrictions were imposed. Both the banks breached risk threshold 2. What next? Some more lenders are expected to come under the corrective action framework as and when their asset quality worsens, putting profitability under pressure. Some public sector banks have breached the net NPA parameter as well as the profitability parameter. These banks are comfortable on the capital parameter, thanks to the government’s commitment to ensure the PSU banks are not starved of capital. However, as the government has its own commitment for maintaining fiscal discipline, it remains to been seen how long it can afford to infuse capital in these banks.
쐍
ing, though. By way of illustration, if PARA were to operate professionally and not on political principles, it will be required to buy NPAs at prices that will involve deep writedowns by banks. How is it conceivable that PSU banks that are reluctant to agree on debt workout involving writeoffs will be enthusiastic in doing so while selling NPAs to PARA? More importantly, if the PSU banks are to cleanse their balance sheet within a year of PARA coming into existence, their aggregate credit loss of around ₹4 trillion will have to be funded upfront. Who will do this? The accompanying table illustrates the debt of top ten stressed corporate groups aggregating ₹7.5 trillion, which needs to be written down to spur their revival. It is beyond the ability of the government to do this even over three years. The idea that a slice of RBI’s capital can be used for funding PARA (or loss of PSU banks?) is almost irresponsible. If RBI parts with a portion of its holding of government securities, the resultant loss will have to be absorbed either by its current income
or through a drawdown of its usable equity (equity that can be freely used to meet any kind of loss) which, in RBI’s case, is almost identical with its internal reserves. The RBI took a policy decision in 1997 to achieve and maintain a ratio of internal reserves to assets at 12% to ensure adequate risk capital for its balance sheet. The ratio increased steadily thereafter, exceeding 12% in 200910 and remaining close to 12% in the following year. It fell subsequently and now it is at 7.5%. Needless to say, the last three years have witnessed a sharp drop in the usable equity of RBI. By all indications, RBI is undercapitalised right now. Asking RBI to deplete its usable equity further will worsen its financial position, thereby undermining its ability to pursue policies independently.
Amendment to BR Act From an operational perspective, the amendment has two new elements: (i) Direct power for the government (to be exercised through RBI) asking banks to initiate insolvency proceedings against specific delinquent borrowers. (ii) RBI to
constitute oversight authorities/committees for providing ‘advice’ to banks in taking decisions on debt resolution. Seemingly, both the elements are intended to take care of the unwillingness or lethargy of PSU banks in dealing with corporate stressed assets. What is interesting here is that the initiative/approval of the ‘state’ is sought to be introduced where the boards of PSU banks should be able to take decisions themselves based on commercial considerations alone. This bears the hallmark of a ‘rent-seeking’ economy. An unintended consequence here will be that PSU banks will henceforth be reluctant to initiate any insolvency proceedings on their own. As for the government, will there be clear and transparent guidelines as regards which of the defaulters to proceed against? There is every possibility that debt resolution will henceforth follow a political process. The same logic applies to oversight authorities/committees. It goes against the very grain of corporate governance because the boards of banks will have to heed
No magic solution There is no magic solution. Nor is there any possibility of finding a solution within the extant political-bureaucratic paradigm that seeks to keep the PSU banks within a ‘command and control’ framework. A genuinely fresh ‘out-ofthe-box’ approach is needed. We propose a framework with six elements: One, U.S. style stress tests should be introduced to determine the capital shortage in respect of each PSU bank; two, the government should devise and declare a policy for capital infusion based on objective performance criteria; three, mergers and acquisitions of PSU banks by the private sector and foreign banks to be allowed, as there are too many PSU banks; four, banks should give priority to those loan restructuring where institutional investors are willing to provide equity for business turnaround. Such restructuring can be an eclectic combination of all the schemes launched so far, the guiding principle being loss-sharing: the promoters should shed their equity in favour of banks at realistic valuation to the extent the latter are reducing debt. The incentives of all concerned in a debt resolution aimed at a business turnaround, namely the promoter, the bank and the new investor will be aligned through a combination of debt writedown, reduction in promoter’s stake and infusion of fresh equity at realistic valuation; five, boards of banks should have full freedom to decide on restructuring; and six, vigilance action to be taken if, and only if, there is clear evidence of malfeasance as distinct from post facto detection of decision error. (Sivaprakasam Sivakumar is MD, Argonaut Global Capital LLC, U.S., and Himadri Bhattacharya is Senior Advisor, RisKontroller Global)
Before sunlight turns shadowy K.E. Raghunathan
The per unit price of solar power in India has dropped from ₹15 to ₹2.44 in 5 years In fact, it has fallen from ₹4.50 within one year. Has the technology improved so much in the solar sector to facilitate this fall? Has solar become commercially viable and attractive for everyone? Have government incentives enabled this price fall? How much further will prices fall in the next five years? Is this sustainable? If this sector is in profitable growth mode, why have giants like Sun Edison, Solar World, Sungevity Beamreach, Climate Energy and Mark Group filed for bankruptcy in the past year? Also, Yingli Green Energy, a former world leader in solar panel volume, recorded a loss of $267.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2016 on $294 million in revenue. So, all is not hunky dory with the industry.
Viability questions The per unit price is the price that state utilities pay the developer for power supplied. For unit cost of ₹2.44 to be viable, it would mean an a seven-year RoI and functioning of the plant for 20 years. The project cost needs to be under ₹3 crore per MW, excluding land and connectivity. Also assumed is that all power generated gets consumed by state-run generation and distribution companies (Gedcos) and all dues get paid in 30 days. Is it possible to run such projects profitably? The quality of material used becomes suspect. Interest costs alone can be substantial. A 60 GW solar capacity, the Centre’s 2022 goal for ground-mounted projects, would need 3 lakh acres and ₹2,50,000 crore in investment. The assumptions are: the average cost per MW would be ₹3.5 crore; and generation of 240 million units a day into the grid. Assuming average tariff of ₹4.50, it would mean a daily payout of ₹100 crore by a Gedco. Is this feasible, given their financial ill health? If a state becomes power surplus, it must export solar
power generated to other states. Such sale cannot occur at a price lower than the ₹4.50 per unit at which the state has bought the power. If other states can buy power at rates now lower than ₹4.50, the selling state is left with no buyers. Also, who will account for transmission losses and distribution costs? If there is viability gap funding, and if the projected power is not generated after a few years, then the subsidy is wasted.
eiciency of < > The equipment should determine the level of import duty Imports of China-made solar modules without any duty, irrespective of their efficiency or quality is hurting industry prospects. If the modules fail to generate adequate power after a while and if the firms that supplied the modules with 25 years warranty go bankrupt, what happens to the plant?
What is needed? Duties based on efficiency of the material imported would discourage poor quality. On arrival of shipment at an Indian port, a sample module must be submitted to an MNRE-approved testing centre for measurement of efficiency and accordingly customs duty should be levied. Lower the efficiency, higher the duty. This will allow quality imports and promote ‘Make in India’ — whose incentives can make benefit the solar industry. The Centre should also publish the actual quantum generated monthly by each solar power plant feeding into the grid, state wise. A minimum generation criteria per MW is to be fixed. Failure to meet this target should result in a penalty. Power purchase agreements must ensure that failure to generate a certain million units per MW a year for two consecutive years would result in cancellation of the PPA and in the recovery of land. (The author is MD, Solkar Solar Industry Ltd. and National President, All India Manufacturers’ Association)
Google woos start-ups to heat up its cloud Ofers technology that combines a large amount of storage and computing to ventures that study Earth and simulate cities This includes its telco and transport network, power grid, sewage systems, housing demographics and even the way in which people move around and interact with the city. “This is the largest simulation of its kind, ever created,” said Mr. Narula, chief executive at Improbable. The company intends to foster a community where developers can share code, and build and create new services and businesses. Mr. Narula said the age of closed systems and trying, in effect, to get developers into committing to a closed ecosystem were over. “We can’t succeed unless you succeed and I think Google recognises that,” he said.
Peerzada Abrar BENGALURU
Google is wooing some of the world’s hottest start-ups to sell its cloud computing technology. These include ventures that send satellites into the space to study the changing earth, firms that convert traditional manufacturing plants into smart factories and start-ups that are simulating entire cities. Google is offering cloud technology that combines a large amount of storage and computing. It then sells it to customers who may want to enhance or set up new data centres. Planet Labs, Inc, a start-up which is on a mission to image the entire Earth every day, and make the global change visible, said that it has switched to Google Cloud to host its imagery and do data processing. “There are a handful of companies that can offer storage and processing, we are really impressed by Google Cloud’s core technology,” said Will Marshall, cofounder and chief executive of Planet Labs, at Google Cloud Next conference held recently in San Francisco.
Natural disasters Founded in 2010 by ex-NASA scientists, Planet Labs operates the largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites. These satellites are collecting a new data set with realworld applications such as tracking natural resources, quantifying agricultural yields and assisting first responders after natural disasters. To image the whole of the Earth every day means preparing for 7 to 10 terabytes of data daily. Google
On cloud nine: Start-ups such as Planet Labs, Improbable and Oden Technologies have got into Google’s bandwagon to reap technological beneits. GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCK *
Cloud now hosts this growing photography repository and the data processing for Planet Labs. “We have the capacity to image every point on the earth every single day and the sea changes that happen. We see every port, every city, every farm and every forest,” said Mr. Marshall. In February, with help from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO), the California-based firm successfully launched 88 Dove satellites to orbit. This is the largest satellite constellation ever to reach orbit. These satellites rode aboard ISRO’s workhorse — the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV rocket) from
the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. Planet Labs has now introduced a tool called ‘Planet Explorer Beta’ that provides data to individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, developers and researchers around the globe.
Immersive experience Google also provides its cloud platform to Improbable, a London-based startup co-founded by Indian-origin entrepreneur Herman Narula. It is dedicated to building technology to enable powerful virtual worlds and simulation designed to help solve previously stubborn problems. In gaming and enter-
tainment, this enables the creation of richer and more immersive virtual worlds. For instance, top studios are building their products on Improbable’s distributed operating system, SpatialOS. These include top video games like Worlds Adrift, Rebel Horizons and Chronicles of Elyria. Improbable has now taken a huge leap of simulating entire cities that could impact everything ranging from city planning to healthcare. At the Google Cloud conference, Mr. Narula said that Improbable has built a complete simulation of an entire British City, in conjunction with a public sector partner.
Smart factories Manufacturing is one of the most important sectors of the U.S. economy. The gross output of U.S. manufacturing industries was $6.2 trillion in 2015, about 36% of U.S. gross domestic product. But these industries have less access to the new technological advancements in the information technology sector, according to Oden Technologies, a leading industrial Internet of Things venture. The New York-based firm is betting big on changing this and it runs its entire platform on the Google cloud platform. Using a combination of IoT — a technology where devices communicate with each other intelligently — wireless connectivity, and big data, Oden is helping manufacturers enhance production efficiency. “We probably wouldn’t be comfortable scaling up to thousands and thousands of
factories, tens and thousands of machines, all streaming data, if we didn’t know we had the infrastructure of Google to allow us to do that,” said Willem Sundblad, founder and chief executive of Oden Technologies. For example, Google’s cloud platform provides the base for obtaining and storing data collated by Oden’s wireless devices. It captures and stores about 10 million metrics on each manufacturing line per day. This includes highly granular details, such as melt profile of the materials and measure of power moving to the machines. Environmental insights like temperature and humidity are also obtained. This way, manufacturers can find if there are weather-related consequences on their manufacturing efficiency. In March, Mountain View, California-based Google also acquired Kaggle, a community platform for data scientists. The Kaggle community has used machine learning to grade high school essays, diagnose heart failure and increase the discovery significance of the Higgs-Boson, an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. Making Google Cloud technology available to its community will allow it to offer access to powerful infrastructure and the capability to store and query large data sets. “We are going to enable our community to do far more powerful things,” said Anthony Goldbloom, chief executive of Kaggle. (The writer was recently in the U.S. at the invitation of Google) A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
SPORT 15
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Mumbai Indians has the last laugh
Former players hold court
Heartbreak for Rising Pune Supergiant as it falls short by just one run IPL-10 FINAL A. JOSEPH ANTONY HYDERABAD
Poised on the precipice, Mumbai Indians, powered by Mitchell Johnson’s stupendous bowling (three for 26) at the death, sneaked home to its third title in the Indian Premier League at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Sunday night. Rising Pune Supergiant, shepherded by skipper Steve Smith’s masterly 51, requiring 11 off the last over, fell a run short in what could be its last hurrah, unless the championship is expanded to 10 teams in the next season. For Mumbai skipper Rohit Sharma, he was party to a fourth title, three as captain and earlier with the now-defunct Deccan Chargers. Whirling arms, wiles and guiles, Jasprit Bumrah’s bootlace bombs swung things Mumbai’s way. He drew blood first, rapping Rahul Tripathi on the pads. On his second spell, he got M.S. Dhoni, promoted to twodown, caught behind by Parthiv Patel, a blow that perhaps impacted Pune more than it would have wished. Ajinkya Rahane (44, 5x4) nearly perished on 14, lobbing Lasith Malinga to Krunal Pandya, who spilt the chance at cover. Off the next over, the stylish striker sent the Sri Lankan slinger to the fence, this time with a fullblooded hit. With Pune in charge for most of the chase, the reprieve for Rahane could have proved costly, the placidfaced Pune batsman despatching Johnson to the Mumbai dugout, as if to rub it in. Bringing right knee down
to the turf, he swept Pandya to long-leg. His captain Steve Smith was content playing second fiddle. Rahane departed six short of a half-century, picked up by long-on, Kieron Pollard, clutching the catch inches above the grass.
Lowest total Earlier, Mumbai skidded to the lowest total in a final when batting first, logging 129 for eight. The previous nadir was Deccan Chargers’ 143 at Johannesburg in 2009, while the all-time depths were plumbed by Chennai Super Kings’ 125 against Mumbai Indians in 2013. Pune’s wicket-to-wicket assault left little room for Mumbai openers Lendl Simmons and Parthiv Patel but scamper for singles. Throttled thus in the first two overs, Parthiv grew restless and reckless too. Taking a swipe across at a rising Unadkat delivery, he spooned a simple catch to Shardul Thakur at mid-on. Parthiv’s partner fell three balls later, Simmons’ leading edge lapped up by a leaping Unadkat, raking up the catch with his ring finger and off his own bowling. If Pune’s new ball operators Unadkat and Washington Sundar were miserly, Shardul Thakur was no less niggardly, keeping the explosive pair of Rohit Sharma and Ambati Rayudu on a tight leash. Mumbai’s first boundary came in the sixth over, from Rohit’s pat off Lockie Ferguson. In fine touch Slopping talent like a careless barman spilling expensive drinks, Mumbai’s captain barely brought blade to ball to send it racing to the ropes four times in that over off the Kiwi seamer.
Star-studded: A bevy of celebrities, including Sushant Singh Rajput and actress Kriti Sanon, witnessed the IPL inal at Hyderabad on Sunday. K.R. DEEPAK *
A. JOSEPH ANTONY Hyderabad
Unbelievable: Mumbai Indians celebrates a nerve-wracking victory. Rayudu was ‘thrown out’ by mid-off Smith’s direct hit to the non-striker’s end. The Hyderabad-born batsman had set out for a sharp single. It was Adam Zampa who struck the next blow. Rohit’s pull to mid-wicket found Thakur take an outstanding catch, his balancing act to hold the lofted shot well within the bounds of the taped hoardings skirting the boundary. The eighth-wicket pair of Krunal (47, 3x4, 2x6) and Johnson provided the proverbial lash from the lower order, mopping up Mumbai’s most valuable partnership of 50.
SCOREBOARD
*
K.R. DEEPAK
MUMBAI INDIANS VS RISING PUNE SUPERGIANT
Mumbai Indians: Lendl Simmons c & b Unadkat 3 (8b), Parthiv Patel c Thakur b Unadkat 4 (6b), Ambati Rayudu run out 12 (15b, 1x4), Rohit Sharma c Thakur b Zampa 24 (22b, 4x4), Krunal Pandya c Rahane b Christian 47 (38b, 3x4, 2x6), Kieron Pollard c Tiwary b Zampa 7 (3b, 1x6), Hardik Pandya lbw b Christian 10 (9b, 1x6), Karn Sharma run out 1 (5b), Mitchell Johnson (not out) 13 (14b, 1x6); Extras (b-1, lb-2, w-5): 8; Total (for eight wkts. in 20 overs): 129. Fall of wickets: 1-7 (Parthiv, 2.1 overs), 2-8 (Simmons, 2.4), 341 (Rayudu, 7.2), 4-56 (Rohit,
10.1), 5-65 (Pollard, 10.6), 6-78 (Hardik, 13.2), 7-79 (Karn, 14.1), 8-129 (Krunal, 19.6). Rising Pune Supergiant bowling: Jaydev Unadkat 4-0-19-2, Washington Sundar 4-0-13-0, Shardul Thakur 2-0-7-0, Lockie Ferguson 2-0-21-0, Adam Zampa 4-0-32-2, Dan Christian 4-0-34-2. Rising Pune Supergiant: Ajinkya Rahane c Pollard b Johnson 44 (38b, 5x4), Rahul Tripathi lbw b Bumrah 3 (8b), Steve Smith c Rayudu b Johnson 51 (50b, 2x4, 2x6), M.S. Dhoni c Parthiv b Bumrah 10 (13b, 1x4), Manoj Tiwary c Pollard b Johnson 7 (8b, 1x4), Dan
Christian run out 4 (2b), Washington Sundar (not out) 0 (1b); Extras (b-1, lb-5, w-3): 9; Total (for six wkts. in 20 overs): 128. Fall of wickets: 1-17 (Tripathi, 2.2), 2-71 (Rahane, 11.5), 3-98 (Dhoni, 16.2), 4-123 (Tiwary, 19.2), 5-123 (Smith, 19.3), 6-128 (Christian, 19.6). Mumbai Indians bowling: Krunal Pandya 4-0-31-0, Mitchell Johnson 4-0-26-3, Jasprit Bumrah 4-0-26-2, Lasith Malinga 4-0-21-0, Karn Sharma 4-0-18-0. Toss: Mumbai Indians. Man-of-the-Match: Krunal Pandya. Mumbai Indians won by one run.
Under a densely overcast sky, the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium saw quite a sprinkling of stardust before the showdown for the Vivo Indian Premier League trophy got underway. From the pantheon of the game’s greats, striking a sparkling presence were Sunil Gavaskar, Kevin Pietersen and Scott Styris. What set them apart was the stylish kurtas they donned, underscoring the Indian ethos of the over month and a half long extravaganza. Years spent in the middle of cricket arenas across the world and never far from the spotlight even after hanging up their boots, the trio holding court in the media box showed no signs of stage fright. The stadium, half full already a good one and half hours before the summit clash, broke into spontaneous applause on seeing a curly haired gent going by the name of Sachin Tendulkar. Staying close to the season’s last practice ses-
Kumble explains Poonam, Mithali salary structure guide India to win theme to CoA, BCCI
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Full entertainment
Mumbai
India’s head coach Anil Kumble is understood to have impressed upon the Committee of Administrators (CoA) and BCCI officebearers to take an encompassing look at revising the Indian team salary structure, both central contracts and match fees. Kumble made a power point presentation to them in Hyderabad on Sunday. During the course of the India-Australia Test series, the CoA met Kumble and skipper Virat Kohli and support staff members to ascertain their views on the player remuneration. On being asked to make a presentation, Kumble submitted a report after the series. Kumble seems to have taken note of the salary structures followed by Cricket Australia and England and Wales Cricket Board and accordingly
Having fun: Fans cheer during the IPL inal between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiant in Hyderabad on Sunday. K.R. DEEPAK *
Gurindervir, Abhishek strike gold
CM YK
Ghalay inishes 31st Sports Bureau Munich
The scores: South Africa 156 in 40.2 overs (Luus 55, Goswami three for 22) lost to India 160 for two in 33 overs (Poonam Raut 70 not out, Mithali Raj 62 not out).
The results: Men: 50m rifle prone: 1. Kim Jonghyun (Kor) 248.3 (628.8), 2. Stian Bogar (Nor) 248.2 (625.4), 3. Thomas Mathis (Aut) 227.1 (627.3).
Mithali Raj...captain’s knock. *
AP
Elina Svitolina ights of Simona Halep for the women’s title
Sports Bureau Bordeaux
Agassi to work with Djokovic
Agencies
Two bronze medals India also won two bronze medals through Akshay Nain (boys’ 400m) and Seema (girls’ 3,000m). Mohit narrowly missed the decathlon gold, his 5976 a mere seven points behind the gold winning score. Another Mohit won the silver in shot-put with an 18.82m.
Taking a closer and keen look at the gleaming trophy was Match Referee Javagal Srinath. The assembly of a cross-section of cricket’s whos-who was not surprising considering it was a culmination of the game’s most compact format.
Purav-Divij pair triumphs
Sports Bureau
Gurindervir Singh and Abhishek Mathew won gold medals for India at the Asian youth athletics championship in Bangkok on Sunday. Gurindervir clocked 10.77s for the 100m gold while Abhishek pipped Sri Lankan Harsha Dissanayaka in a photo-finish to win the 800m in 1:54.99s.
In the other half of the ground, standing tall with the aura of cricketer evolved into the game’s elder statesman was Stephen Fleming.
‘Sacha’ Zverev masters Djokovic in inal ITALIAN OPEN
Bangkok
worked on a fair formula for the Indian team. Kumble may have also conveyed to the CoA and BCCI the need for long-term professional coaching system, delivering contracts on time and most importantly, maintaining continuity. Kumble replaced Ravi Shastri (Team Director) and has met with extraordinary success. His tenure will end at the conclusion of the ICC Champions Trophy. Kohli interacted with the CoA and BCCI members through video conference and was on the same page as Kumble on the burning issue the India captain raised with the BCCI before the IndiaNew Zealand Test series last year. Recently, the CoA doubled the central contracts remuneration for Grade-A players to ₹2 crore, Grade-B to ₹1 crore and Grade-C to ₹50 lakh.
If anyone from the country could come close, it could only have been Robin Singh, who was also at hand. Keeping an eye on the Mumbai attack’s preparations was another worldbeater in the pace-bowling department, a policeman turned cricket pro — Shane Bond.
played top form throughout the tournament. Raut had scored an unbeaten 109 against Ireland while Raj came to the final after scoring two half—centuries. Chasing a modest target, India lost opener Deepti Sharma and Mona Meshram cheaply before Raut and Raj completed the job in a clinical fashion.
Potchefstroom
G . Viswanath
Mumbai’s fielders couldn’t have found a better guru than the South African who continues to be a livewire, bat in one hand and baseball glove in the other to collect the throw-ins.
Sushil Ghalay (622.7) finished 31st in the 50m rifle prone event at the shooting World Cup in Munich on Sunday, placing ahead of Chain Singh (37th with 622.1) and Sanjeev Rajput (65th, 616.6). Gagan Narang shot in the MQS section and returned a score of 622.1. In the 25m rapid fire pistol event, Neeraj Kumar shot 578 for the 18th place. Harpreet Singh had 577 and Gurpreet Singh 572, which meant none of the Indians was close to qualification, with 585 being the cut-off. In the women’s 50m rifle 3-position elimination round, Tejaswini Sawant shot 581 and Gaayathri Nithyanadam 580, while Elizabeth Susan Koshy had 575. The qualification phase and the final will be held on Monday.
Press Trust of India
Poonam Raut and Mithali Raj shared an unbeaten 127run stand as India defeated South Africa by eight wickets in the final of the Women’s Quadrangular Series here on Sunday. Veteran Jhulan Goswami starred with the ball with three wickets, helping India dismiss South Africa for a paltry 156 in 40.2 overs. Raut (70 off 92 ) and Raj (62 off 79) then delivered with the bat, taking India to a comfortable win in 33 overs after a rather jittery start to the chase. The win was more sweet considering India had lost to South Africa in the league stages. Captain Mithali not only guided the team to a resounding win, but also became the first Indian to lead the side in 100 ODIs. The tournament also turned out to be good preparation for India ahead of the World Cup, which begins in the UK next month. Both Raut and Raj dis-
sion, also in the blue hue of the Mumbai Indians was a fielder non-pareil — Jonty Rhodes.
Rome
Alexander Zverev stunned four-time Rome champion Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-3 to win his first Masters title on Sunday, confirming his status as a Roland Garros danger-man. The 20-year-old became the youngest player in a decade to win an ATP 1000 title, and he will now move to World No. 10. Djokovic, who turns 30 on Monday, was the previous youngest Masters champion, winning Miami as a 19-year-old in 2007. “Playing against Novak, one of the best players to ever play — it was an honour being on the court with you,” said Zverev. “You’re an amazing player. Unfortunately this week you didn’t win, but I’m sure as we get closer to Paris you’ll be one
D
A landmark triumph: Alexander Zverev’s irst ever Masters triumph will see him enter the top-10 in the World, and he will head to Paris as a dark horse. AP *
of the favourites.” Djokovic had 27 unforced errors to 14 for Zverev, who also had 16 winners to the Serb’s 11. “I wish you go on to win many of these titles,” Djokovic told the young German. “Yesterday I played what I
thought was one of the best matches of my life on clay (in beating Dominic Thiem 6-1, 6-0 in the semifinal). Today I played something else. But that’s sport.” Elina Svitolina won the women’s title with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 victory over Simona Halep.
jokovic said on Sunday that Andre Agassi will be his new coach. “I spoke to Andre the last couple weeks on the phone, and we decided to get together in Paris. So he’s gonna be there,” said Djokovic, adding there was no long-term commitment. “It’s just us trying to get to know each other in Paris.” Djokovic, who said he had “persuaded” Agassi, added: “He had this approach to tennis and to life that was quite different from others. That’s why he’s so interesting.”
Third-seeded Purav Raja and Divij Sharan won their first title of the season as they beat fourth seeds Santiago Gonzalez and Artem Sitak 6-4, 6-4 in the final of the €106,000 Challenger here on Sunday. It was smooth passage to the title for the Indian pair, which had won four Challenger titles apart from a Tour title last season. Purav and Divij, who had won all their matches in straight sets, except for the quarterfinals against Alex Bolt and Thanasi Kokkinakis, collected 110 ATP points and €6,580. The duo had defeated second seeds Leander Paes and Scott Lipsky in the semifinals, for the loss of five games. It will be a better level next week for Purav and Divij as they will compete in the €540,310, ATP 250 event
Winning combination: Purav Raja and Divij Sharan, who took the honours in the €106,000 Challenger in Bordeaux on Sunday. FILE PHOTO *
in Lyon, France, with a tough first round against Jonathan Erlich of Israel and Andre Sa of Brazil. Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan has also a got a wild card entry for the same event with Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia. There was some good news from the $250,000 WTA event in Strasbourg (France), as Prarthana
Thombare won her first WTA-level match with Vera Lapko of Belarus. The results: €106,000 Challenger, Bordeaux: Final: Purav Raja & Divij Sharan bt Santiago Gonzalez (Mex) & Artem Sitak (Nzl) 6-4, 6-4. WTA Strasbourg International: First round: Vera Lapko (Blr) & Prarthana Thombare bt Liang Chen (Chn) & Katarzyna Piter (Pol) 6-3, 6-4. A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
16 SPORT
THE HINDU
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Oloitiptip, Cheptai emerge winners
IN BRIEF
World record-holder Komon inishes eighth N. Sudarshan
TCS WORLD 10K
BENGALURU
Irene Cheptai, the reigning women’s World cross country champion, made a memorable 10k road race international debut by winning the TCS World 10k here on Sunday. The Kenyan clocked 31:51 and even threatened to break compatriot Lucy Kabuu’s course record set in 2014, but fell three seconds short. Ethiopia's Worknesh Degefa was next, nine seconds behind and Helah Kiprop of Kenya a further two seconds away. On the men's side, Kenya’s Alex Korio Oloitiptip, the champion here in 2013, won in 28:12. Compatriot Edwin Kiptoo came number two but was 14 seconds slower. Stephen Kissa, the pacemaker, after staying true to his role for half the race, staked a claim for the ultimate prize before settling for third (28:28). Two-time defending champion Mosinet Geremew was a pale shadow of his former self, coming in a rather dispiriting 10th. World record-holder Leonard Komon was equally uninspiring in eighth. Among the Indians,
Anderson sufers groin injury LONDON
England’s James Anderson missed the whole of Saturday’s play in Lancashire’s Roses clash with Yorkshire because of a groin injury and may take no further part in the match. Anderson has not been in action at Old Trafford since limping off clutching his groin on Friday’s first day. AFP
Harikrishna outwits Nepomniachtchi MOSCOW
Indian GM P. Harikrishna defeated Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the eighth round of the Moscow FIDE Grand Prix. With his second win, Harikrishna climbed to the 12th spot with four points. He will take on Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in his last game in his quest to achieve a higher rank and find a spot in the Candidates tournament.
Naveen Kumar and Saigeeta Naik crossed the tape first among men and women respectively with times of 30:56 and 36:01. Neither the late start times nor the high summer temperatures leading up to the race made any dent. While overnight rains had brought down the temperatures significantly, persistent cloud cover ensured that the athletes wouldn't tire easily. It perhaps reflected in the results — the top four in both men and women all had better times than the 2016 winners in the respective categories. Of the two, the women’s race shaded the men’s. Pacemaker Carolyne Jepkosgei dropped back rather early, leaving Cheptai, Degefa and Gladys Chesir to push each other. The result was a slow 16:19 5km split. Cheptai and Degefa were neck and neck, but at about the 8km-mark Cheptai decided to break away. She sprinted towards the end even as Degefa couldn’t find the same finishing kick. Chesir, who was all along in with a chance to be in the
NBA: Durant sinks Spurs
Thomas out for rest of playofs BOSTON
Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas will miss the remainder of the NBA playoffs after aggravating a hip injury during Game Two of the Eastern Conference final, the team announced on Saturday. Reuters
Warriors lead 3-0 in the series
top three, tapered off towards the end, with Helah Kiprop, a marathon runner with enough lasting power, completing the podium. Among the men, Oloitiptip was part of the leading pack from the start and finished with aplomb. His closest challengers were first Kiwi Zane Robertson and Kiptoo and then Kissa. At the 6km mark, Robertson fell by the wayside and then a kilometre later Oloitiptip decided to leave everyone behind. A fierce battle ensued for the second spot before Kiptoo passed Kissa with barely a few hundred metres left. The results: Overall: Men: 1. Alex Korio Oloitiptip (Ken) 28:12s; 2. Edwin Kiptoo (Ken) 28:26s; 3. Stephen Kissa (Uga) 28:28s. Women: 1. Irene Cheptai (Ken) 31:51s; 2. Worknesh Degefa (Eth) 32:00s; 3. Helah Kiprop (Ken) 32:02s. India: Men: 1. Naveen Kumar 30:56s; 2. Sandeep Tayade 31:02s; 3. Shankar Man Thapa 31:07s. Women: 1. Saigeeta Naik 36:01s; 2. Kiran Sahdev 36:30s; 3. Preenu Yadav 36:46s. Winner's Prize money: Men: $26,000; Women: $26,000. Indians: Men: ₹2.5 lakh; Women: ₹2.5 lakh.
BURIRAM (THAILAND)
India’s racer Armaan Ebrahim and his teammate Jack Bartholomew of the UK continued their good run in the Super Trofeo Asia Series, clinching a second successive podium despite engine problems at the Chang International Circuit here on Sunday. Spearheading the FFF Racing team, Armaan and Jack did well in race 2 to finish third.
Bengaluru
All too easy: Kenya’s Irene Cheptai came up with a strong inish to easily best the ield. K. MURALI KUMAR *
Mahindra’s Heidfeld on the podium again
San Antonio
Shiv Kapur produced a magnificent finish for the second straight time with a closing eight-under 63, which almost brought him a second successive win. Kapur, who had a closing bogey-free eight-under 64 during his win in Taiwan, had no less than 10 birdies besides two bogeys in his 63
on Sunday. With 65-63, Kapur was 14-under for the weekend and was tied second with Gaganjeet Bhullar (67) at 19-under. Rattanon Wannasrichan (67) totalled 21-under to complete a sensational victory. Jeev Milkha Singh (72) was tied-32nd, while Shankar Das (70) and Khalin Joshi (70) were tied-42nd.
Press Trust of India Paris
Mahindra Racing recorded its best ever double-points finish in the Formula E Championships, with Nick Heidfeld and Felix Rosenqvist taking third and fourth places in the Paris E-Prix here on Saturday. This performance bettered Mahindra’s performance at last week’s
Kevin Durant.
*
AP
Double for Bulgaria's Ivet Lalova-Collio Kawasaki
Vaishali reigns Chennai
India’s R. Vaishali won the women’s title with eight points from nine rounds in the Asian continental Blitz chess championship in Chengdu on Sunday. She was at her best in the Blitz event, winning seven games and posting two draws in the nineround event. Padmini Rout finished third with seven points after a last round victory over Yuxin Song of China. Soumya Swaminathan (5.5) took the 12th spot,
Thompson posts world leading time KINGSTON
Double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson cruised to a world leading equalling 22.09s to win the 200m at the Jamaica International Invitational meeting on Saturday. Thompson is the fifth fastest woman over the distance with 21.66. Reuters
TV PICKS NBA: Sony Six & Six HD, 6 a.m.
Monaco E Prix where Heidfeld got third and Rosenqvist sixth. With six races left in the FIA electric-powered car racing series over three double-header weekends, Team Mahindra is in the third spot in the constructors’ championship. In the drivers’ standings, Heidfeld is in fourth place while Rosenqvist is in sixth place.
Gatlin claims 100 metres gold Reuters
Press Trust of India
Hockey Chandigarh clinched the seventh Hockey India sub-junior boys’ National championship 2017 (‘A’ Division) title after registering a fluent 4-0 victory over Sports Authority of India in the final here on Sunday. Sanjay, with two goals, starred for Chandigarh in the summit clash. Coming into the game as the firm favourite after dominating in all its previous matches, Chandigarh took time to get off the blocks against the solid defence of SAI. After a goalless first-half, Sanjay broke the deadlock by converting a penalty corner. Chandigarh then
Kapur and Bhullar inish joint second Bangkok
The result: Warriors 120 (Durant 33, Green 10, McGee 16, Thompson 17, Curry 21) bt Spurs 108 (Simmons 14, Aldridge 18, Ginobili 21, Gasol 12, Murray 10).
Principal Correspondent
MOTORSPORTS
Press Trust of India
Armaan & Bartholomew finish third
A walk in the park: Hockey Chandigarh dominated from the start to win 4-0 against SAI.
GOLF
Reuters
Kevin Durant scored 33 points, 19 of them in the decisive third quarter, and pulled down 10 rebounds as Golden State Warriors easily dispatched San Antonio Spurs 120-108 on Saturday in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals. Warriors lead 3-0 in the best-of-seven series with Game 4 set for Monday in San Antonio.
Hockey Chandigarh clinches title
while Mary Ann Gomes finished 16th. In the open section, Tamil Nadu’s Aravind Chithambaram finished fourth with a tally of seven points. He won six games, drew two and lost one. M.R. Lalith Babu (6.5 points), Vidit Santhosh Gujrathi (6.5 points) and B. Adhiban (6 points) finished seventh, eighth and 10th respectively. Surya Shekhar Ganguly was 22nd, while Sandipan Chanda and S.P. Sethuraman were 24th and 25th.
Veteran American sprinter Justin Gatlin fended off the challenge of a host of Japanese hopes when he won the men's 100 metres in 10.28 seconds at the Golden Grand Prix here on Sunday. The Rio Olympic silver medallist started slowly but rallied to dip ahead of Asuka Cambridge, who finished .03 seconds behind the American, while another Japanese, Shuhei Tada, came third in 10.35. Any hopes of clocking a fast time were scuppered by a 1.2-metre headwind at the Todoroki Stadium, although Gatlin said he was pleased with his performance in testing conditions. “It was a tough wind, but the competition was even
Breezing through: Justin Gatlin, right, strides ahead of Aska Cambridge, centre, and Abdul Hakim. AP *
tougher going against some of the future stars of Japan,” the 35-year-old was quoted as saying by Kyodo. “They put together a good race, and they're going to be formidable opponents. I've been a little bit injured, not being able to train as hard as I want to, but I've been work-
ing on my finish and it helped out today.” Canada's Aaron Brown won the men's 200m in 20.62, while Bulgaria's Ivet Lalova-Collio claimed the women's 100 and 200m. The winners: Men: 100m: Justin Gatlin (USA) 10.28. 200m: Aaron Brown
(Can) 20.62. 800m: Timothy Kitum (Ken) 1:47.03. 3000m: Paul Kipngetich Tanui (Ken) 7:52.67. 3000m steeplechase: Jairus Kipchoge Birech (Ken) 8:19.54. 110m hurdles: Xie Wenjun (Chn) 13.51. 400m hurdles: Quincy Downing (USA) 48.96. High jump: Michael Mason (Can) 2.30. Pole vault: Hiroki Ogita (Jpn) 5.60. Long jump: Wang Jianan (Chn) 8.14. Triple jump: Wu Ruiting (Chn) 17.18. Javelin: Thomas Roehler (Ger) 86.55. Women: 100m: Ivet LalovaCollio (Bul) 11.40. 200m: Ivet Lalova-Collio (Bul) 22.98. 1500m: Nelly Jepkosgei (Ken) 4:06.86. 100m hurdles: Queen Harrison (USA) 12.65. Long jump: Tianna Bartoletta (USA) 6.79. Shot Put: Jeneva Stevens (USA) 18.48. Hammer: Gwen Berry (USA) 74.13. Javelin: Liu Shiying (Chn) 66.47.
began to attack in droves. Amandeep struck a field goal in the 47th to double the lead. Five minutes before time, Sanjay recorded a brace, and a minute from the final whistle, Harpreet Singh made it 4-0. Earlier, Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy finished third in the championship after defeating Hockey Odisha 3-2 in the third-place playoff match. The results: Final: Hockey Chandigarh 4 (Sanjay 40, 65, Amandeep 47, Harpreet Singh 69) bt Sports Authority of India 0. Third-place playoff: Madhya Pradesh HA 3 (Haider Ali 8, Shailendra Singh 27, 32) bt Hockey Odisha 2 (Sunit Lakra 25, Sushant Toppo 37).
Harinder bags title
Harinder.
*
FILE PHOTO
Sports Bureau Makati City (the Philippines)
Close on the heels of his Malaysian success, India’s Harinder Pal Sandhu bagged another PSA title, his second in a little over a week’s time and seventh overall, when he beat Mohd Syafiq Kamal of Malaysia 11-5, 11-7, 11-7 in the final of the Nissan Makati Open, a PSA World Tour event here on Sunday. The second seed had moved into the final late on Saturday night after accounting for fourth seed Tang Ming Hong of Hong Kong 11-5, 11-7, 11-6 in the semifinals.
Bangalore races cancelled BENGALURU: The Stewards of the Bangalore Turf Club decided to cancel the races scheduled to be held here on Sunday (May 21), due to heavy overnight rain, according to a BTC press release.
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
THE HINDU CROSSWORD 12013 1
2
3
4
5
9
6
7
8
10 11
12
16
17
21 22
24
25
26
23
27 28
29
17 Man wearing old clothing in vehicle (5)
7 They are set up to go down in game (8)
24 The sort of documentation with which Father's curiously paltrier (5,5)
19
20
6 One minute past insect's inal stage (5)
21 Wild man could summon PAC (6)
14
18
15 Celebration fast dissipates — with odd wife entering (6)
20 One's related nice concoction to go with drug (5)
13
15
(set by Gridman)
27 Chacha longingly exhibited symbol of goodness (4) 29 Nigh to new leader in good time (6)
30
30 Stay with more crazy puzzle (8) 31
32
31 Make a logical conclusion: 'cut' is what's needed (6) ■ ACROSS 1 Flower best ward dissected (8) 5 By half-a-minute present a small ish (6) 9 Tattered like a leather watchstrap? (4-4) 10 King going through Venetian passage becomes lustful (6) 12 Out to all but press forward work (4) 13 Clumsy person's shoe (10)
CM YK
11 One has to show it to prove who one is (1,1,4) 14 Exercise over the Italian's stack (4) 16 Son's card game is gloomy (6) 17 Snare section put up (4) 18 Such a gift is still wrapped up (8) 19 Secretly planned material put under river (4-4)
Solution to puzzle 12012 22 Women confuse duck movement (6)
■ DOWN
23 Heads of Hard Recruiters hiring men back to back results in dismay (6)
2 City in West Bengal is nearly slow twice (3,3)
Eicacy of worship
8 Being erudite, scanned perfectly (4-4)
32 There's no doubt: it's a signal that the danger's over (3,5)
1 Continue hitting with head for a fastener? (6)
FAITH
SUDOKU
25 Historical object about to be discarded by mad cleric (5)
3 Pulls bookworm up (4)
26 Plan by learner is perfect (5)
4 A range of hearing (5)
28 Record of Lambadi school (4)
N O B O D I E S
I M E E T H R A N N E
I S T R R E U A M I
R O V T E R S T R MA D N N E O O U P D A L E R E K S T A
D W R O R I C E S T R E R E S H I R K E
A D E F F E N E U S T A R A T I S O N N
MO N I S H S N O C A T E R A E D A R R A T E R S P E N S E R E A D O R N D U T W I S T E R C S A L A T I O N T D C S E R E N E
Solution to yesterday’s Sudoku
The Gita offers a comprehensive account of the two basic forms of worship: meditation on the unmanifest form of the Lord known as Nirguna or Akshara Brahman and on the His manifest form, with attributes and auspicious qualities, known as Saguna Brahman. Krishna dwells at length on matters such as Brahma Tatva, the state of Yoga Nishta, Vibhuti yoga, Viswarupa yoga, and so on, right from the second chapter to the eleventh and asserts that meditation on Nirguna Brahman is capable of granting Moksha. Then when He reveals His cosmic form to Arjuna, the Lord highlights the worship of the Saguna Brahman and states that His bhaktas are also able to reach Him. So Arjuna wishes to know which of these upasanas is better and which is to be adopted, pointed out Sri K. Ramasubramania Sarma in a discourse. Krishna makes it clear that both types of upasakas are equally qualified to attain Him if single-mindedness is the basis of their worship. Nirguna Upasana implies an aspirant who perceives the oneness of creation behind the diversity, who transcends his attachment to the body and the pulls of the senses and is always compassionate to all objects and beings. The Saguna upasaka is drawn by the Lord’s auspicious qualities and form and develops unswerving devotion to the Lord. But the efficacy of devotion is determined by bhakta’s ability to dwell on the Supreme Brahman at all times, and by dedicating his thought, word and deed to Him, whatever may be his form of worship. When one’s mind and heart is filled with desires and one’s attention is diverted by the senses and emotions, and one yields to selfish longings that do not allow him to be considerate towards others, his meditation is of no use. This applies to any upasaka, the onus being solely on involvement, concentration, sincerity, renunciation and purity of mind. A ND-ND
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
THE HINDU
SPORT 17
NOIDA/DELHI
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Man City and Liverpool romp to CL spots Arsenal has to settle for Europa League; Kane wins Golden Boot; Terry celebrates last game at Chelsea EURO LEAGUES
Bengaluru FC wins Fed Cup Vineeth scores a brace in extra-time
Reuters
Y.B. Sarangi
London Cuttack
Manchester City made sure of third place in the Premier League when it romped to a 5-0 win at Watford on Sunday to ensure a Champions League berth for next season. Over at Anfield, Liverpool ensured a return to the Champions League by beating relegated Middlesbrough, although it will have to play in a qualifying round after finishing fourth in the Premier League, two points behind Manchester City. But for the first time in 20 years Arsenal won’t be part of the premier continental championship as even a 3-1 win over Everton 3-1 with 10men was not enough to secure a top-four finish. Chelsea celebrated its title and captain John Terry’s last game at Stamford Bridge with a 5-1 defeat of relegated Sunderland, bringing its season’s Premier League win tally to a record 30 games. A third-minute goal on the rebound from Sunderland’s Javier Manquillo did not mar the festivities and five minutes later Willian equalised after sustained Chelsea pressure. Most of the Chelsea players, as though warming up for the FA Cup final next Saturday, had a pop at the beleaguered Sunderland goal during the game.
Tearful goodbye Antonio Conte, aiming for the double in his first season in charge, brought Terry off in the 26th minute — his shirt number — to a standing ovation. The former England captain wept as he hugged his teammates and brought to an end a 22-year career at Stamford Bridge. Harry Kane won the Premier League Golden Boot for the second successive year after scoring a second
Archana Girish Kamath.
India wins all gold medals on ofer Press Trust of India New Delhi
India added six more golds on the concluding day to take home all the 10 gold medals on offer in the South Asian junior table tennis championships at Mount Lavinia, near Colombo, on Sunday. India also claimed four silvers. India and Sri Lanka booked their berths in the Asian junior championships at Ansan, Korea, from June 29 to July 4. Manav Thakkar defeated Parth Virmani 11-6, 6-11, 11-7, 11-9 for the junior boys’ gold while Sri Lanka’s P.D. Umesh Tennakon and K.D.V. Madhushan took bronze. In junior girls’ final, Archana Girish Kamath accounted for Priyanka Pareek 11-9, 11-5, 11-7. Sri Lanka’s S.H.S. Imasha De Silva and K. Hansani Puimila won bronze.
One last hurrah: John Terry holds the Premier League trophy at the end of a glittering Chelsea career, while the others, right, take selies with the prize before the presentation ceremony. AP *
hat-trick in four days as Tottenham thrashed relegated Hull City 7-1.
Stuttgart wins promotion Meanwhile, VfB Stuttgart won promotion to the Bundesliga a year after its relegation following a 4-1 demolition of Wuerzburg on Sunday in the season finale. It will be joined by Hannover 96, which was also relegated last season, courtesy of its 1-1 draw at Sandhausen. The results: Premier League: Swansea City 2 (Jordan Ayew 71, Llorente 86) bt West Brom 1 (Evans 33); Burnley 1 (Vokes 23) lost to West Ham 2 (Feghouli 27, Andre Ayew 72); Chelsea 5 (Willian 8, Hazard 61, Pedro 77, Batshuayi 90, 90+2) bt Sunderland 1 (Manquillo 3); Hull City 1 (Clucas 66) lost to Tottenham Hotspur 7 (Kane 11, 13, 72, Alli 45+2, Wanyama 69, Davies 84, Alderweireld 87); Leicester City 1 (Vardy 51) drew with Bournemouth 1 (Stanislas 1); Liverpool 3 (Wijnaldum 45+1, Coutinho 51, Lallana 56) bt Middlesbrough 0; Watford 0 lost to Manchester City 5 (Kompany 5, Sergio Aguero 23, 36, Fernandinho 41, Jesus 58); Manchester United 2 (Harrop
15, Pogba 19) bt Crystal Palace 0; Arsenal 3 (Bellerin 8, Sanchez 27, Ramsey 90+1) bt Everton 1 (Lukaku 58-pen); Southampton 0 lost to Stoke
City 1 (Crouch 58). La Liga: Atletico Madrid 3 (Torres 8 & 11, Correa 89) bt Athletic Bilbao 1 (Williams 71); Celta Vigo 2 (Aspas 54-pen,
Hjulsager 90) drew with Real Sociedad 2 (Oyarzabal 82, Juanmi 90+4); Valencia 1 (Nani 54) lost to Villareal 3 (Soldado 1, Trigueros 58, Sansone 88).
The Juventus juggernaut rolls on The sixth consecutive title is something extremely significant, said Juve’s 39year-old goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who has won eight Serie A titles at the club.
Reuters Milan
Juventus became the first team to win the Serie A six times in a row when it beat Crotone 3-0 on Sunday to clinch the title with one game to spare. Mario Mandzukic, Paulo Dybala, with a stunning free kick, and Alex Sandro shared the goals as the Turin side also won a league and cup double for the third time in a row and stayed on course for a treble. Juve’s win over its relegation-threatened opponent, took it to 88 points from 37 games, four clear of AS Roma which won 5-3 at Chievo on Saturday. Napoli is a further point behind in third, the Champions League playoff
AFC Cup finalist Bengaluru FC redeemed some pride by edging out Mohun Bagan 2-0 in the summit clash and claiming its second Federation Cup crown at the Barabati Stadium here on Sunday. In the tightly contested tussle befitting a final, BFC overcame a bit of hard luck to ride on C.K. Vineeth’s extra-time brace and bag the prestigious title despite the unavailability of two of key players, Sunil Chhetri and Cameron Watson. BFC showed a big heart and fought bravely even as Bagan had the ball in control for most part of the goalless first half. Most importantly, the Blues stuck to their well-planned defensive structure, led by John Johnson, Juanan Fernandez and Sandesh Jhingan, to close the gaps and force Bagan have a go at the goal through corners, free-kicks and long balls. The stout BFC defence marked Bagan’s main weapon, Sony Norde, strongly and brought down the Haitian twice within the first quarter. Norde retaliated by pushing Harmanjot Khabra to invite a yellow
card. BFC, which witnessed some failed attempts from the industrious Udanta early in the second half, was again caught in the offside trap. Lyngdoh’s free-kick from the left was headed by Johnson and kicked in by Juanan, but the effort was flagged to the utter frustration of BFC. Bagan stepped up its attack and had its chances too. Balwant utilised a Norde pass to fire a long ranger, but Amrinder Singh dived to his right to palm away the threat. Soon, Norde’s angled shot missed the target by a whisker. Amidst free flowing action towards the end of the regulation period, Bagan had a couple of opportunities but could not break the deadlock. The Blues tasted success when C.K. Vineeth’s shot from just inside the box got deflected from a defender to beat Debjit in the 107th minute. The Keralite, who had replaced Udanta around the hour mark, sealed the match by hitting home again following a brilliant solo. The result (final): Bengaluru FC 2 (Vineeth 107, 119) bt Mohun Bagan 0.
“We have written indelible pages in the history of football,” he said.
Right on top: Juventus’ Leonardo Bonucci lifts the trophy as the rest celebrate their unprecedented sixth consecutive Serie A title. AP *
spot. Juventus, which is Italy’s most successful side in domestic terms with 33 league titles, will face Real
Madrid in the Champions League final on June 3 when it will attempt to complete the treble.
The results: Empoli 0 lost to Atalanta 1 (Gomez 13); Genoa 2 (Rigoni 32, Simeone 54) bt Torino 1 (Ljajic 89); Juventus 3 (Mandzukic 12, Dybala 39, Sandro 83) bt Crotone 0; AC Milan 3 (Deulofeu 69, Honda 73, Lapadula 90+1) bt Bologna 0; Sassuolo 6 (Magnanelli 7, Berardi 12, Politano 13, Sensi 34, Iemmello 56-pen, Matri 90) bt Cagliari 2 (Sau 25, Ionita 60); Udinese 1 (Thereau 5) drew with Sampdoria 1 (Muriel 64-pen).
Perfect ploy: Bengaluru FC coach Albert Roca got his tactics spot on by not giving space to Bagan’s key player Sony Norde. BISWARANJAN ROUT *
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
18 LIFE
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
IN BRIEF
Cool of with self-ventilating gym wear MIT researchers design moisture-responsive suits that have laps lined with live microbial cells an example, and this can let people know you are running in the dark. In the future we can combine odourreleasing functionalities through genetic engineering. So may be after going to the gym, the shirt can release a nice odour,” said Wang.
Press Trust of India Boston
Prince Harry’s girlfriend at Pippa’s reception WASHINGTON
She might not have made it to the wedding but Prince Harry’s girlfriend Meghan Markle made it to the reception of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews’ on Saturday evening. Markle is said to have skipped the morning ceremony to avoid stealing the spotlight from the bridge and groom. ANI
Schnabel to make Vincent van Gogh ilm CANNES
Julian Schnabel will direct a film about Vincent van Gogh starring Willem Dafoe as the Dutch post-impressionist master. The film was announced on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival by production company Rocket Science. Schnabel has earlier made a film on artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. AP
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S., have designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete’s body heat and sweat. These flaps are lined with live microbial cells that shrink and expand in response to changes in humidity. The cells act as tiny sensors and actuators, driving the flaps open when an athlete works up a sweat, and pulling them closed when the body has cooled off.
Mositure wicked away: (Left) An athlete wearing the breathable garment before exercise when ventilation laps are lat; after exercise, the laps have curved (right). MIT
Shoes too The researchers have also fashioned running shoes with an inner layer of similar cell-lined flaps to air out and wick away moisture. The moisture-sensitive cells require no additional elements to sense and re-
spond to humidity. The microbial cells used have proven to be safe to touch and even consume. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers engineered moisture-sensitive cells to not only pull flaps open but
Uber is expanding into a new field with a version of its on-demand ride application that lets truckers book cargo hauls with simple taps on smartphones. The app, Uber Freight, rolled out at first in the U.S. would match truckers with customers. Movement of the cargo can be tracked in real-time. AFP
It was in May 1968 that filmmaker Jean Luc Godard, along with directors Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut, coaxed the Cannes Film Festival to be brought to a halt as a mark of solidarity with the students’ protest in Paris. On Saturday, Michel Hazanavicius’ Le Redoutable on the same phase in Godard’s life was delayed by about an hour at the festival due to security concerns at the Salle Debussy theatre lending an additional unintended layer of irony to the viewing of the film. Hazanavicius treats Godard with a cheeky, straightfaced irreverence than put-
negating his own early work. A man wanting to break away from the past, trying to bring the revolution on the streets to the process of filmmaking as well by embracing the “auto-managed” cinema of the Dziga Vertov school.
ting him up on the pedestal. Godard himself comes across as the one who shares the filmmaker’s sense of humour —risqué, not always in good taste and often directed at his own self.
An odd combination Godard is a man oddly charismatic and charming even when he is confrontational, a man with a razor sharp tongue and a man committed to politics, a man preoccupied with Palestine and Che Guevara’s idea of the “inner Vietnam”. It’s not Godard, the cheer- Bold take: French director Michel Hazanavicius. AFP leader of the French New Wave cinema, who we en- apart for La Chinoise. Here is “making love to a dead wocounter on screen but the a man who is cynical of film- man” and who is being one who is being ripped making itself comparing it to whipped for disgracing and *
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
Chasing rainbows
A breath analyser to spot diseases Press Trust of India Washington
Picture perfect:The Kampung Pelangi village in Semarang, Indonesia, has painted all its houses in bright colours hoping to make itself a tourist attraction. REUTERS *
Scientists have developed a low-cost, disposable sensor that can detect disease markers in one’s breath, giving patients an early warning sign to call the doctor. The device is made of a thin square of an organic plastic. “We developed this method to directly print tiny pores into the device so we can expose these highly reactive sites. We increased the reactivity by ten times and can sense down to one part per billion,” said Ying Diao, professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the U.S. For example, monitoring the change in ammonia concentration in the breath could give patients a warning sign to go for a kidney function test.
The little women who stand tall The International Dwarf Fashion Show aims for inclusivity in the world of glamour Ms. Khumri said. She does manage to buy tops and dresses off-the-rack, she said, “but with a bit of difficulty since I do have to search in the petite section. Sometimes in the kids’ section.”
Agence France-Presse Dubai
Colleen Theriault has her hands full with her fouryear-old son and a full-time career as head baker at a patisserie in the U.S. state of North Carolina. But the 24-year-old is also an advocate for a budding movement that is breaking into the international fashion scene. Its models, like their initiative, are small but strong.
No barriers to beauty The International Dwarf Fashion Show, a non-profit organisation that aims to “reverse the discriminatory diktats of beauty”, brought seven women with dwarfism to Dubai this week for a show dedicated to raising awareness about the need for more inclusivity in fashion. Zahra Mufaddal Khumri lives with dwarfism and is married to a man who has CM YK
Press Trust of India Washington
Astronomers have created the first map of the largescale structure of the universe based entirely on the positions of quasars. Quasars are the incredibly bright and distant points of light powered by super-massive black holes. “Because quasars are so bright, we can see them all the way across the universe,” said Ashley Ross of the Ohio State University in the U.S. “That makes them the ideal objects to use to make the biggest map yet,” said Ross. The amazing brightness of quasars is due to the supermassive black holes found at their centres. As matter and energy fall into a quasar’s black hole, they heat up to in-
An artist’s conception of a quasar. ESO *
credible temperatures and begin to glow. To make their map, scientists used the Sloan Foundation Telescope to observe an unprecedented number of quasars. During the first two years of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s survey, astronomers measured three-dimensional positions for more than 1,47,000 quasars.
Michel Hazanavicius has documented the most politically radical period of Jean Luc Gordard’s life as a comedy Namrata Joshi
SAN FRANCISCO
also light up in response to humid conditions. “We can combine the cells with genetic tools to introduce other functionalities into these living cells,” said Wen Wang, a former MIT scientist. “We use fluorescence as
Astronomers track bright light
Redoubtable in Cannes: cheeky portrait of a revered ilmmaker Cannes
Uber extends on-demand service to trucking
*
Bacterial role The researchers first worked with the most common nonpathogenic strain of E. coli bacteria, which was found to swell and shrink in response to changing humidity. They further engineered the cells to express green fluorescent protein, enabling the cell to glow when it senses humid conditions. They then used a cell-printing method they had previously developed to print E. coli onto sheets of rough, natural latex. The team printed parallel lines of E. coli cells onto sheets of latex, creating two-
layer structures, and exposed the fabric to changing moisture conditions. When the fabric was placed on a hot plate to dry, the cells began to shrink, causing the overlying latex layer to curl up. When the fabric was then exposed to steam, the cells began to glow and expand, causing the latex flatten out. After undergoing 100 such dry/wet cycles, Wang said the fabric experienced “no dramatic degradation” in either its cell layer or its overall performance. The researchers worked the bio-fabric into a wearable garment, designing a running suit with cell-lined latex flaps patterned across the suit’s back. “People may think heat and sweat are the same, but in fact, some areas like the lower spine produce lots of sweat but not much heat,” said Lining Yao, a former graduate student at MIT.
Mapping the universe with quasar positions
Breaking norms: A model with dwarism advocates for diversity on the ramp. INTERNATIONAL DWARF FASHION SHOW *
the same condition. After living in Dubai for more than a decade, she recently set up a Facebook support group. She and her banker husband have built “a pretty good life” for themselves in the global shopping hub, she said, but even there the basic
task of finding clothes that fit has remained a struggle. The couple generally seek out the help of a tailor to alter or make garments to be the right size, particularly traditional Indian clothes. “You should be comfortable in anything you wear,”
Turning the tide It was witnessing first-hand the exasperation of a woman with dwarfism shopping for basic staples that inspired Myriam Chalek to set up the International Dwarf Fashion Show. “It was seeing this little lady shopping in a kids section — very frustrated, not finding clothes that fit her,” she said. “I work in the fashion industry, so you always deal with designers and clients who ask you for tall and skinny,” Ms. Chalek added. “Even though some people are trying to turn the tide, like we are, unfortunately that still remains the norm.”
A touch of impertinence Watching the film I also wondered what would have happened if we were to make a film with a similar brazen tone on one of our revered filmmakers. The impertinence of Hazavanicius may rile many, Godard himself may have called the film a “stupid idea”, but the fact is that it hasn’t just got made but is also in competition for the Palme d’Or,
the highest prize in Cannes. It’s proving to be a good innings at Cannes for Netflix. The reactions may not have been as tremendous as for Okja but its second production in the competition section also walked away with a fair amount of appreciation on Sunday. Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected) is a finely wrought slice of family life with a nicely in-tune ensemble. Dustin Hoffman as the pater paterfamilias and Emma Thompson as his current wife are expectedly solid but it’s the children, the halfbrothers and half-sister who reach out. The loser brother Danny
(Adam Sandler) and the perennial winner Matthew (Ben Stiller) surprise with their unusually mature and mellow turns as does Elizabeth Marvel as the sister Jean. It’s a family that is dysfunctional in its normalcy. It’s about the tiny bad things they do to each other — the little regrets and disappointments, the unthinking discrimination amongst kids, the concomitant sibling rivalries — than some devastating, crushing, scarring issue. The incessant chatter through the film underlines the larger chaos in relationships yet there is an all round warmth and humour that makes it so viewable and easy to connect with.
![TH ADFREE 25.09.16 [ Knowledgephilic.com].pdf](https://p.pdfkul.com/img/300x300/th-adfree-250916-knowledgephiliccompdf_5ace64567f8b9a8f5f8b4570.jpg)
