Spooky troop movements

Army chief General V K Singh dismissed as “absolutely stupid’’ a newspaper report that said the “unusual’’ movement of a mechanized infantry unit and elements of a Para Brigade towards Delhi in mid-January had “spooked’’ the government. Gen Singh said “some people were unnecessarily trying to throw muck’’ at both the government and the Army. “Such people should be taken to task,’’ he said during his ongoing visit to Kathmandu. The report had said the government got unnerved over the movement of troops as it interpreted them as a show of solidarity for their chief, who at that time was engaged in the age battle. In a dramatic twist, extracts of his interview to a weekly three weeks ago had established that he was apprehensive of an effort to portray routine exercise by army units as unusually sinister.

A Spice Park in Jodhpur

Rajasthan Chief minister Ashok Gehlot and the Union commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma will inaugurate the first Spice Park of the state and second in the country on Saturday. This park has been constructed at Rampura Bhatiyan village near Mathania in Jodhpur at a cost of Rs. 27.5 crore and will cater to the needs of spice producers and exporters. The Spice Board of India had mulled a project of providing direct benefit to the spice producers of Jodhpur. For the purpose, an area of 60.07 acre land was allocated at Rampura Bhatiyan village in Mathania by the state government. “This park will extend the facility of the storage of the spices, chilies, onions and garlic among others. Besides, quality check and authentic certification facilities for the export of the spices will be given at the park,” district collector Siddharth Mahajan said. Gaurav Surana, technical assistant of the Spice Park said the park will provide post-harvest facilities to seed and spice producers along with laboratory facilities to the exporters. “Besides this, 18 plots have been earmarked for the export units in this park, the basic infrastructure of which has been provided by the Spice Board of India,” he said. With the spice park coming up, agri experts feel that those dealing in spices in the region will find a strong support, which will lead to increase in production of spices here.

Of taller cities....

The skyline of Indian cities could soar as the government considers permitting vertical growth with the aim of checking runaway realty prices and generating resources to upgrade urban infrastructure for future growth. A Planning Commission steering committee, in its draft report, has recommended providing additional FSI (floor space index; the ratio between built-up area and plot size) as development rights, but said it should not come free of cost. The panel said the charges for additional FSI and land-use conversions should be at least 50% of the circle rate in the area and should be determined professionally. It added that additional FSI should be permitted selectively. The commission’s steering group on urbanization said the revenue from grant of additional FSI should be “suitably ring-fenced for funding infrastructure projects to sustain higher FSI”. “The proposals, if accepted, would substantially increase availability of housing stock and moderate realty prices,” said an urban development ministry official. Calling the present density regulations in Indian cities “archaic”, the report noted that Indian cities had the lowest FSI in the world. “This (densification) should be part of a balanced strategy for expanding the effective supply of prime land and, in the process, raising funds to finance urban infrastructure improvements,” the committee noted. The Centre should introduce incentives that encourage states and cities to pursue densification strategies for future urban development, it said. Many cities were already levying such charges for additional FSI in some form or the other, it noted. Hyderabad, for instance, has a ‘city level impact fee for highrise buildings’ and Ahmedabad has systematically been selling a limited amount of additional FSI. The committee said higher FSI should go hand in hand with provisions such as amalgamation of plots to make housing more affordable. Rather than the current practice of having a blanket FSI across a city, the panel wanted mixed land use promoted through the concept of granular FSI. “Densification with mixed land use as a planning strategy needs to be followed by the authorities to accommodate future urbanization needs,” said a ministry official.

Another tiger poached

Three poachers who had struck a deal to sell a tiger’s pelt, jaw bones and claws to a police decoy team near Periyapatna, 60km from Mysore, tried to make good their escape by firing in the air in the early hours on Friday. Two of them scooted, but the third was caught near Naviluru in Periyapatna taluk. According to forest officials, the tiger was felled a month ago and the poachers were trying to make a killing by selling off its pelt and bones. The poaching incident sheds new light on the Nagarahole tiger reserve, which was in the eye of a storm recently when some 2,000 hectares of the forest was destroyed in what is said to be man-made wildfire. The police have recovered the tiger pelt from the arrested person and reported the big cat’s death to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). After an initial probe, forest officials said the poachers felled the big cat on the tiger reserve fringes. PCCF (wildlife) B K Singh said: “The tiger is a territorial animal and may have moved out of the core area due to territorial conflict.” Singh said the tiger was from the Nagarahole reserve.

A K Antony

A spate of controversies about the Indian Army may have been a result of the vicious factional feud within the force, but indications are now that the controversies are also being used as fodder to target defence minister A K Antony. Allegations of insubordination against Army chief Gen V K Singh, ranging from deployment of off-the-air interceptors to unauthorized troop movements to the capital, may have emanated from rivalries within the force, but many now suspect that these are being used to make a case against Antony for his “inaction” and his inability to handle the delicate equation between the political leadership and the Army. The reasons for the suspicions are twofold. First, with the Army chief set to retire on May 31, the principal worry of his rivals has ceased to exist. Second, because of his uncompromising stand against corruption Antony has antagonized a whole range of interests: arms lobbies, middlemen, foreign governments and armament firms. Rarely has a defence minister attracted this sort of hostility. Just last month, Antony, often accused of inaction by his detractors, did something few defence ministers have dared to do: he banned six top armaments companies, including four foreign companies —Israeli Military Industries (IMI), Singapore Technologies Kinetics, Rheinmetall Air Defence (Zurich) and Corporation Defence (Russia)—for a period of 10 years. It’s said that some warned him against this radical step, saying the backlash could be severe. But he kept the top political leadership in the loop, and blacklisted the companies in his deep belief that defence procurement by the world’s largest arms importer should be completely free of any taint. Antony has also made it clear that the gigantic $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) deal to acquire 126 French Rafale fighters, which is in the final stages of commercial negotiations now, won’t be sent to the finance ministry for clearance till an inquiry into allegations made by an MP about the selection process is completed. His quest for corruptionfree defence purchases has been attacked as impractical and he has been blamed for delaying the modernization of the armed forces. But while this argument has virtually been turned into conventional wisdom, facts prove that the armed forces have fared much better under Antony in using up budgetary allocations. Last year, the defence ministry spent the entire allocation. It would have achieved the feat this year had the finance ministry not cut Rs 3,000 crore of the committed allocation because of a larger fiscal problem. While all this should please the soldier, Antony’s tough regime has distressed those who flourished under the previous dispensations. Antony is probably the first defence minister who does not meet representatives of private armaments companies. In a ministry where even arranging meetings can reap millions of dollars, Antony has dried up the business of several middlemen and strategists. He has also been issuing warnings to armament firms that India wouldn’t hesitate to cancel deals if any allegations are proven. Over the years, Antony has also ordered a series of CBI investigations into various cases, from the Adarsh scandal to the Tatra deal. Actually, he found in Gen V K Singh a similar desire to crack down on corruption, and the combination of the two made matters worse for the arms lobby.

China warns India

India will pay a heavy price for exploring oil in the disputed areas of South China Sea, said a leading Chinese official a day after China lost political ground on the issue at the ASEAN summit that ended in Cambodia .“China will not stand any joint cooperation in our claimed maritime areas,” said Wu Shicun, president of the government-run National Institute of South China. Wu was referring to joint exploration project by ONGC-Videsh and a Vietnamese oil company in South China Sea. Beijing had lobbied hard to block discussion on the South China Sea dispute at the summit but it failed to keep the dispute out of the agenda. Three ASEAN members — Vietnam, Malaysia and Philippines — are in a bitter dispute over the ownership of the 52 islands in South China Sea. “There are a lot of economic and political risks” for the Indian oil company, Wu said, adding that the Indian company involved in exploring oil in the disputed area should do a proper cost benefit analysis. About 40% of the area in the two offshore blocks under exploration by India falls in the disputed zone, he said. He added that the Chinese government will not dilute its claims over the disputed islands because “nationalism prevails strongly in China.” China directly controls only seven of the 52 islands in the Spratly Islands area of the sea. But it claims ownership of 90% of the area.

Nuclear Power production

The stalling of the Kudankulam nuclear power project for nearly six months has not prevented the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL), overseeing the controversial project, to surpass all records in electricity generation for the financial year 2011-12. The NPCIL, under which there are 19 nuclear reactors operating across the country, has produced 32,455 million units (MU) compared to 26,473MU produced last year —an increase of about 23%. NPCIL chairman S K Jain said, “The turnover of the company has increased to Rs 7,500 crore compared to Rs 6,000 crore last year. Tarapur Atomic Power Station unit-3 (TAPS-3) achieved a remarkable feat of a continuous operation for 522 days. It joined the fleet of 10 nuclear power reactors, which operated continuously for more than a year. Safety continued to be accorded highest priority in all the nuclear power reactors, and there were no incidents even while achieving the excellent operational performance.” After the Fukushima disaster, the company conducted safety review of the operating nuclear power reactors as well as those under construction and claimedthat the reactors were safe from extreme natural events like earthquake and tsunami, the chairman said. “The achieved target included production from unit 1 of the Kudankulam plant. But the protests derailed our plans. But due to better performance of the other plants, we were able to meet the target,” S A Bharadwaj, director NPCIL said. The NPCIL have planned launch projects with power generation capacity of 17,000MW in the current five-year plan With the completion of these reactors, the nuclear power capacity is expected to reach over 20,000MW by 2021- 22