gfiles Magazine October Issue 2011

...by the way

 

Fine show by JP Dutta & Co

THE run-up to the 58th edition of the Film Festival of India saw its share of glissaded-over glitches which will be remembered. First, jury chief JP Dutta put a pertinent query to fellow jury members after finalising the names of the winners – who will write the citations? Nobody had given a thought to this aspect, amidst the flurry of viewing the films.

 

Chandraprakash Dwivedi, the director, writer and lead of TV serial Chanakya, offered his services on one condition – he would write the citations in Hindi. There was no option but to agree. Within four hours, he handed them in and, for the first time in the history of the Festival, the citations were translated from Hindi to English. 

 

Next, the jury was faced with the high cost of laundry! It was lodged for 27 days in Park Hotel, which charges about Rs 350 per item for dry cleaning. The total bill would have amounted to almost a lakh of rupees. So the jury came up with a solution. Each member carried his or her clothing in a bag to a local drycleaner, saving the Directorate a good deal of money.

 

 

 

 

Farming the poorest

FARMERS constitute one segment of society that has perennially been exploited. The lot of Uttar Pradesh farmers is a case in point. Their land was acquired by the government decades ago. Some of them received compensation while others have been running from pillar to post to wrest their legitimate dues but to no avail.

 

Under the law, the State allots 5% of the land acquired to the farmer after proper colonization in addition to the cash compensation. But the UP government has been unable to allot the plots as promised. Meanwhile, the cost of land has sky-rocketed and the officials of Noida and Greater Noida perceived an opportunity to make a quick, and handsome, buck. They bought the claim documents from the farmers at cheap prices, making down payments in cash, and saw to it that all the claims were settled within no time.

 

Now, these plots are available in the market at comparatively low prices. However, they still constitute a windfall. If the claim documents have been bought at Rs 200 per sq m, the market price is around 50 times higher. The real claimant, the farmer, remains penurious while someone else is minting money.

 

 

 

Something’s rotten... in Haryana

IT’S bare logic: if there are no apparent problems in the administration in the capital, it actually means there is a heap of problems existent in the corners of the State. But, in Haryana, the Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, seems to have shut his eyes in pigeon fashion.

 

The fourth floor of the Secretariat is overrun with horrifying rumours of maladministration all over the State. There are allegations that even Deputy Commissioner-level officers in southern Haryana are accepting bribes – that too from tehsildars and patwaris. Even the Panchkula tehsildar is running a flourishing racket. The MLAs who posted these officials are silent. There are very few review meetings at Secretary-level. A meeting is called rarely – when the CM instructs the officials closest to him to call one. Files keep piling up, decisions are delayed. Worse, there are some officers who are not informing the CM about issues of administration. It is only due to Hooda’s good public relations that the media is not highlighting this lackadaisical attitude of the Secretariat officers.

 

 

 

 

No adhar for UID

THE Unique Identification Project has fallen into a limbo, owing to a veritable war between the officials of the Planning Commission and those of the Finance Ministry. The project was basically the brainchild of the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who drafted in Infosys’ Nandan Nilekani to implement this gigantic programme of the Government of India.

After two years of the exercise, it was observed at a recent Home Ministry meeting that the programme is inconsistent with the National Population Register. The UID’s Aadhar card is not mandatory. Home Ministry officials are trying to decide on a formatted mechanism for a national identity card. Higher-level officials feel the Aadhar card is not in step with the other data inputs of the Central and State governments. The States will have to spend to align their data with Aadhar. 

 

 

Among the many objections is the fact that the UID number is chosen at random. Senior officials have informed their UID counterparts that 10 crore Aadhar cards have to be completed by March 31, 2012. After that there will be a complete review of the issue. g