Monthly Archives: August 2018

 

Sachets of Chinese ethylene powder in a mango box to ripen the fruit at the Sector 26 market in Chandigarh on Sunday. S Chandan

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 21

With the Health Department tightening the noose around traders to curb the use of calcium carbide for artificial ripening of fruits at the fruit  and vegetable  market in Sector 26, the traders have replaced it with the Chinese ethylene powder.The market is full of sachets of the Chinese ethylene powder, lying scattered all over the place after being thrown out of cartons used to transport mangoes.These sachets expose visitors to emissions of the hazardous chemical.Experts say exposure  to the chemical can cause the same ill-effects as caused by calcium  carbide. The packets are also dangerous to cows and other animals at the market that survive on vegetable  waste. While the traders claim the use of the Chinese ethylene powder is allowed, officers of the Health Department are waiting for a report of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India on it. The Department of Food  Safety has served notices on all 111 fruit traders warning  them of stern action, including termination of the licence, in case they are found using the banned calcium carbide for ripening of fruits.Sukhvinder Singh, designated officer, Food and Safety Department, said samples of ethylene powder collected  from mango cartons had been sent to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to check for artificial ripening chemicals beyond the permissible limit. “This ethylene is in the form of a starchy powder, which slowly releases ethylene gas that causes mangoes and other fruits to ripen. Sources said besides the Chinese sachets, the use of calcium carbide had not stopped completely in the  market despite thes crackdown.While checks are being carried out at the mandi, there  is no check in apni mandis  where “masala’ is mainly used for ripening of mangoes, bananas and papaya, and sometimes also for cheeku and tomatoes.” They said while the actual process required five to six days for repining of fruits, “with the use of calcium carbide, it takes a few hours to ripen these”.

Papaya gets costlier

Raids conducted by the department has increased the rates of papaya by two times. Papaya was available for Rs 40 a kg on Sunday, the highest this season. A trader said the supply of papaya had decreased by over 50 per cent  after the  raids, which had led to the increase in its prices.Over 3 tonnes of fruits  destroyed so farThe Department of Food Safety has destroyed over three tonnes of mangoes and papaya ripened by using calcium carbide in five raids  conducted in the past one  month.How to identify  artificially ripened mangoesExperts say an artificially ripened mango will have green patches. These patches are clearly distinguishable from the yellow and unlike a naturally ripened mango, it will not have a uniform blend of yellow and green. Artificially ripened mango  will also have an unnaturally bright yellow colour when compared to a naturally ripened mango. The artificially ripened mango causes slight burning in the mouth.

‘Have ordered regular checks’

“I have already issued directions to officers of the Department of Food Safety to carry out regular checks to curb the use of calcium  carbide  for ripening of fruits. The use of calcium carbide is dangerous for human beings.”Dr  Rakesh  Kashyap, Director,  Health Services Traders want an alternative    “The Administration has stopped the  use of calcium  carbide without  providing the traders any alternative. The Chinese sachets for   ripening of fruits are also not available in the  city,  causing a huge  loss to the  traders.”  Brij  Mohan, VP, Fruit & Vegetable Market Assn

India had officially applied for membership of the grouping in May last year. File photo

New Delhi, May 21

The next plenary session of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is likely to be held in Swiss capital Bern next month, but the chances of any breakthrough on India’s entry into the elite group still look slim, given China’s persistent opposition to it.

India had officially applied for membership of the grouping, which controls export of nuclear materials, equipment and technology, in May last year.

The matter came up for discussion at the Seoul plenary session of the NSG in June last year, but yielded little result with Beijing scuttling India’s bid on the ground that it was not a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Ahead of the next NSG plenary session, official sources say, India has renewed its efforts to become a member of the 48-nation group by engaging with all member countries, but resistance from China still remains despite the pro-India push from other key players such as the US, the UK, France and Russia.

China has been pressing for a two-step process which includes setting up criteria — a standard for admission—for the inclusion of countries that are not signatories to the NPT. Beijing also equates India’s case with Pakistan, which, too, has applied for the NSG membership.

The issue of India’s membership is expected to be discussed at the Bern meet, but the “status quo” still remains, a senior official says.

Indicating that there was no change in China’s position towards India’s NSG bid, Chinese Ambassador here Luo Zhaohui at an event last month had said, “On the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) issue, we do not oppose any country’s membership, believing that a standard for admission should be agreed upon first.”

India has repeatedly said that China is the “one country” which has been blocking its bid.

The two sides conducted two rounds of talks between China’s nuclear negotiator Wang Qun and India’s then Secretary for Disarmament Amandeep Singh Gill on September 13 and October 31 last year.

The NSG consultative group’s meeting in November last year also ended like the Seoul plenary session. It remained inconclusive on India’s application as China continued to oppose the entry of non-NPT nations and called for a two-step “non-discriminatory” solution for admission of such countries into the grouping.

Over the last one year, India has tried to get more support for its NSG bid, but not all its efforts have proved to be successful. For instance, Turkey has agreed to support India’s bid to the group, but it also favours Pakistan’s bid.

New Zealand has also not given any concrete assurance on supporting India’s bid.

“Prime Minister (John Phillip) Key stated that New Zealand would continue to contribute constructively to the process currently underway in the NSG to consider India’s membership. New Zealand is committed to working with NSG members to reach a decision as soon as possible,” a joint statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Kiwi counterpart John Key said after the latter’s visit to New Delhi in October last year. PTI

General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff, interacts with officials of the Chetak Corps in Bathinda on Saturday. A Tribune photo

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 13

General Bipin Rawat, chief of the Army Staff, visited the Chetak Corps here on Saturday. The one-day visit was in continuation of his visit to the Sapta Shakti Command headquarters on May 12.He interacted with Formation Commanders and was briefed by Lt-General Ashwani Kumar, General Officer Commanding, Chetak Corps, on training and operational matters.He was satisfied with the high standards of training and operational readiness of the Corps and complimented the Formation Commanders for maintaining and ensuring all-round professional excellence.

A security guard stands at the entrance to the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on May 14, 2017. — AFP photo

Beijing, May 14

India on Sunday skipped the opening ceremony of China’s Belt and Road Forum following sovereignty concerns over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

No Indian delegation was seen at the opening ceremony addressed by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

When inquired, Indian diplomats here pointed to the statement issued by MEA spokesperson Gopal Baglay last night.

“…No country can accept a project that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.

Few Indian scholars attended the meeting. Media was not permitted into the conference hall, where the opening ceremony took place.

Indian scholars, who took part in the meeting, said no Indian delegation was spotted.

The meeting, called the Belt and Road Forum (BRF), is being attended by 29 heads of state and governments, including Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif and his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickrmasinghe, besides official delegations from other South Asian countries.

Leaders and officials from various countries, including Russia, US, Japan, UK, Germany and France, are attending the meeting.

In a strongly-worded statement issued on Saturday night, India had said that the connectivity initiative must be pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“Guided by our principled position in the matter, we have been urging China to engage in a meaningful dialogue on its connectivity initiative, ‘One Belt, One Road’ which was later renamed as ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. We are awaiting a positive response from the Chinese side,” Baglay had said in a statement. — PTI

Director Defence Services, Brig Jatinder Singh Arora, distributes cheques among ex-servicemen during a camp at Raikot on Thursday. A Tribune Photograph

Our Correspondent

Raikot, May 11

A panel of office-bearers of the District Defence Services Office, Ludhiana, redressed problems of over 400 ex-servicemen and widows of defence personnel from various localities of the subdivision during a camp organised here today.Director, Defence Services, Brig Jatinder Singh Arora, presided over the function and district welfare officer, Lieut-Col (retd) Jasbir Singh Boparai, was the convener of the camp. The organisers distributed cheques to beneficiaries of various schemes being launched by the Union and the state governments for families of ex-servicemen from time to time.Illustrating modalities for availing welfare schemes for the defence personnel, the speakers including Brigadier Arora, Lieutenant Colonel Boparai, Wing Commander Gurpreet Singh Mangat, Major Bahadur Singh and Major Gurdeep Singh, said members of families of defence personnel and ex-servicemen should consult officials at the district defence welfare office in Ludhiana according to their convenience.The speakers highlighted salient features of various schemes and facilities being provided to families of ex-servicemen and defence personnel from time to time.Concessional supply of durable and consumable items, education for wards of ex-servicemen and reservation in various departments of the Union and state governments, were cited among special facilities.

AMRITSAR: After the central government’s failure to install fullbody truck scanners at the Attari Integrated Check Post (ICP) even five years after the proposal was mooted, the customs authorities have acquired modern hand-held detectors for identification of narcotics and explosives traces.

COURTESY: LASER­DETECT.COMThe I­scan equipment, which has the ability to detect traces of explosives and narcotics.

Imported from Israel, one of the equipment called I-scan will be utilised to check the baggage of Samjhauta Express passengers as well as goods trains from Pakistan. “I-scan, which is capable of detecting traces of explosives and narcotics, will come in handy for checking both trucks and scanning baggage of the passengers,” says a customs official, on the condition of anonymity.

The official further added that the testing of I-scans is currently going on and the gadget will be put to use within a week’s time.

Along with three I-scans, which cost around ₹30 lakh, the customs authorities have also bought another device called video boroscope, which will help in checking cavities in the trucks.

The department says it has acquired four video boroscopes.

TRUCK SCANNERS STILL MISSING

The authorities have failed to set up the much hyped full-body truck scanners at the Integrated Check Post (ICP), which was inaugurated to facilitate trade between India and Pakistan in 2012.

INSAS shell casings found at spot indicate use of weapon snatched from police

SRINAGAR: Militants of the homegrown outfit Hizbul Mujahideen abducted and killed off-duty army officer Ummer Fayaz in Kashmir’s Shopian, possibly with arms snatched from security forces, a top police officer said on Thursday.

Two news agencies quoting defence sources, however, said six militants of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were involved in the killing of Ummer, a 22-year-old lieutenant who was on leave for the marriage of his cousin sister.

The army has termed the killing of the young officer, which has sparked outrage across the country, a “watershed moment” that will turn the people of Kashmir against militancy.

“A local Hizbul Mujahideen module was involve(in the killing). Though we have identified the militants, their names cannot be revealed immediately,” inspector general of police Javeed Gillani said.

Investigators recovered two empty cartridges of INSAS rifle from the spot where the officer’s body was found on Wednesday. The officer was shot twice.

A probe was on to check if these were the same cartridges snatched from policemen a few days ago, he added. The made-in-India INSAS rifles are used by police as well as the army deployed in the valley for counter-insurgency operations.

“Although police are yet receive the post-mortem report, preliminary examinations revealed there were no torture marks on his body,” Gillani added, refuting reports that militants assaulted the officer before shooting him dead. The Hizbul Mujahideen is the only homegrown militant outfit in Kashmir battling security forces. The killing of one of its leaders, Burhan Wani, by security forces last year had sparked violent street protests that left nearly hundred people dead, including security personnel.

Hundreds of others, including children, were blinded by pellet guns fired by security forces, stoking public anger. Police said around 200 militants are operating in the valley, out of which around 88 are local youth hailing from South Kashmir.

The military wants a greater say in policy matters, but it wants to keep civilians out of its domain

Speaking to a military audience in 1973, the eminent war historian Michael Howard said that he was tempted “to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong.” But he went to add: “it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives”. I was reminded of this speech after reading the recently unveiled Joint Doctrine for the Indian Armed Forces. The first such doctrine to be published by the Indian military, it has been panned by many perceptive analysts of military affairs.

All the same, the doctrine is an important attempt by the armed forces to inform and influence public debates on strategic issues. From this standpoint, the most curious part of the document is an appendix on “Civil-Military Relations”. These couple of pages lay out the military’s perspective on what is wrong with our existing institutional arrangements of civil-military relations and how to set it right.

Civil-military relations in India have been balancing on the brink of a crisis over the past few years. Controversies over one-rank onepension and the latest pay commission were symptoms of deeper problems. Yet successive governments have done nothing to address them. The doctrine’s attempt to flag this issue in public attests to the military’s deepening disquiet on this front.

The appendix on civil-military relations opens with a quote from an air marshal: “Direction in the Civil-Military Relationship in any democracy is strictly the right of the political leadership and not bureaucracy”. This harks to the military’s longstanding complaint that civilian control has turned into civil service control. There is something to this claim, though it tends to be overstated in military discourse. Nevertheless, the doctrine is right in observing that “it is prudent that institutional and structural mechanisms exist that facilitate free flowing communication between the two, thereby enabling critical and timely decision making. The functionaries in the MoD ought to be enablers of this relationship.”

More problematic is the military’s own view of how these arrangements should function when it comes to such critical areas as the use of force. The doctrine states: “Military professionals are experts in the use of force under the political institution of the State. Apropos, it would always be essential for the civilian authority, in consultation with military (as part of decision making process) to decide the Military Objective and then leave it to the military professionals to decide upon the best way of achieving the objective.” In other words, the military should have a say in deciding the aims and should be left free to pursue it.

The underlying premise about military professionalism is not as compelling as it sounds. As scholars of civil-military relations have pointed out, the military is quite unlike other professions. Few military officers have actual experience of fighting wars: our top military leadership, for instance, joined the services well after the 1971 war. Treating them as experts in the management of violence is a bit like entrusting a crucial surgery to a doctor who has prepared all his life to perform a surgery without ever having done one. To be sure, the military will always know more about military affairs but there is no reason to presume that they know best.

Equally dodgy is the subsequent claim about operational independence for the military. Earlier, the doctrine quotes Clausewitz’s famous dictum about war being a continuation of politics. But the demand for operational independence is inconsistent with the Clausewitzian view. If war is a continuation of politics, then politics will influence and intervene at levels of warfare down to the tactical. As the recent incident of using a human shield in Kashmir shows, even tactical actions can have political consequences. Hence, there can be no inviolable military sphere–either in theory or in practice. Acquiescing in such a demand will be deeply damaging. The history of our own wars underscores these problems.

It is curious that on one hand the military wants greater say in policy matters, but on the other it wants to keep the civilians out of its domain. The former demand is entirely understandable, but the latter is incompatible with any properly integrated system of civil-military relations. The military can’t have its cake and eat it too. If strategy is the bridge between political ends and military means, then it will have to be jointly constructed by the civilians and the military.

Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, May 9

Even as the state government today appointed Maj Gen Dharam Vir Singh Rana (retd) as Chairman of the Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC), the appointment of the outgoing Chairman KS Tomar as Chief Information Commissioner could not be made despite a meeting of the selection committee.Rana hails from Bhattu village in Kangra district and will head the commission for six years or attainment of 65 years of age. There have been several occasions when senior Army officers have occupied the post of chairman or member of the HPPSC with Maj Gen CK Sharma (retd) and Brig Lokender Chauhan (retd) also occupying these posts recently.A meeting of the selection committee to finalise the names of the next State Chief Information Commissioner (SCIC) and State Information Commissioner (SIC) was held here today at a very short notice. The meeting was attended by Virbhadra, senior Cabinet minister Vidya Stokes and Leader of the Opposition PK Dhumal amid hectic lobbying by contenders. Even as it was being expected that a decision on the new SCIC and SIC would be taken, it has been decided to invite fresh applications till May 24. As per the fresh advertisement, issued by the Administrative Reforms Department, the applicants, who had applied for the post in May 2016, need not send fresh applications.Besides Tomar, the other front runner for the SCIC is Narender Chauhan, Additional Chief Secretary, Public Works Department (PWD), who also holds an LLM degree and enjoys impeccable integrity. Some other retired IAS, IPS and IFS officers too are in the race for the post of SCIC lying vacant for the last over one year.The post of Chairman, HPPSC, fell vacant on May 7 on the completion of the term of Tomar. A total of 137 applications had been received against the advertisement on May 13, 2016, after the completion of the term of Bhim Sen, a former IAS, who completed his term on March 23, 2016. The post of State Information Commissioner (SIC) too fell vacant last month on the completion of the term of KD Batish. A total of 37 applications have been received to fill the lone post of SIC.

Hails from Kangra

• Maj Gen Dharam Vir Singh Rana (retd) hails from Bhattu village inKangra district
• He will head the commission for six years