Congress Seeks Key Role for Rahul

A top Congress party official said yesterday that party leaders wanted Rahul Gandhi, the son of Sonia Gandhi, to play a meaningful role in the party.

AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni was answering questions at a media briefing on the proceedings of a Congress Working Committee meeting on the first day of the 82nd Congress plenary here.

“After the party’s conclave in Delhi, Congress leaders wanted Rahul Gandhi to join the organization in a meaningful manner so that more youth can be inspired to join the party to strengthen it,” Soni said.

However, she would not say whether any formal demand was made by any member at the CWC meeting yesterday to induct Rahul into the CWC. “I am not empowered to talk about what transpired at the extended CWC. I am neither denying it nor confirming it,” she said. Soni said the CWC meeting discussed the draft resolutions on political affairs, economic affairs, agriculture, employment and poverty alleviation and international relations and security for nearly four and a half hours.

She said all the 47 CWC members, except A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhary, attended the meeting along with other members of the extended body.
Congress Committee, delegates and over 7,000 state Congress delegates had come to participate in the plenary. Besides, up to 6,000 Congress workers from northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had come to Hyderabad.
“They are neither AICC nor state delegates but ordinary party workers. We are in touch with security officers to let them into the AICC session. But the security agencies have not given clearance so far,” she added.
After the CWC meeting, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee made a presentation to the plenary on the programs of the United Progressive Alliance government. However, neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor Congress President Sonia were present at this presentation.
Soon after the plenary, Sonia is likely to meet Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda to discuss the Karnataka crisis. At her news briefing, Soni, however, maintained that the Karnataka issue did not come up at the extended Congress Working Committee meeting yesterday.
She rejected suggestions that the party was a silent spectator to the imminent fall of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka. “This is not a matter of watching it silently. The man in charge of Congress affairs in Karnataka, A.K. Anthony, and CWC member Ahmed Patel are reviewing the developments in Karnataka. No political party can concede its defeat in such issues. There is every possibility of JD(S) president and Congress president having a meeting to discuss the matter in a few days. There is every possibility that H.D. Deve Gowda will prevail upon his (rebellious) party men. Chief Minister Dharam Singh is confident of surviving the trust vote on Jan. 27,” she said.
She conceded that the crisis in Karnataka had shown the fragility of coalitions. “Coalition governments are formed on the basis of common minimum programs. Sometimes, there are hiccups in coalitions. Such incidents (like the one in Karnataka) occur. But then Congress has been successfully running coalition governments in states such as Maharashtra, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir. There has been a peaceful change of guard in Jammu and Kashmir after three years. The coalition government in that state is a good example of coalitions working well,” she observed.
She said Congress had stuck to its principled stand in Karnataka that there should be no truck with communal forces. “Not a single Congress MLA has deviated from that stand. Deve Gowda has also said that there is no question of his having a truck with communal forces,” she added.
The beleaguered Dharam Singh was conspicuous by his absence at the extended CWC meeting. “I have not seen Dharam Singh here. I don’t know whether he will come here tomorrow or not. His presence is needed there,” she quipped. Soni said Congress would make every effort to see that the coalition governments led by it in the states complete their tenures. “Coalitions, after all, are managed by all coalition partners. The UPA is successfully running a coalition government at the center on the basis of a common minimum program,” she added.

Kerala Pioneer Eyes New Horizons For 'Jackfruit' Industry

By Samuel Johnson in Kochi

A new food processing company in Kerala proposes to market innovative products, the success of which could well place the largely neglected jackfruit in the focus of attention of bigger players in the state’s food processing industry. 

Artocarpus Foods Private Limited, is a newly started food processing company in Kerala. Located at Thaliparamb in Kannur district, it is the country’s first full-fledged jackfruit processing venture. Artocarpus is the genus name of jackfruit’s family of fruits.

For A Post-Colonial Congress

Can the century-old party reinvent itself at Jaipur and meet the challenges at its door?

The Congress’s three-day brainstorming conclave – chintan shivir – in Jaipur from today couldn’t have been better timed. The political crisis in Jharkhand presents new possibilities. Meanwhile, nine other states go to the polls in 2013: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram. The outcome in Congress-ruled Rajasthan and Delhi and BJP-governed Karnataka could provide early clues to the 2014 general elections. 
    
A bruising budget session meanwhile looms. Finance minister P Chidambaram will have to defer around Rs 50,000 crore of Plan expenditure to beyond April 1, 2013 in order to keep the fiscal deficit below 5.5% of GDP. Instructions to cut or defer expenses have already gone out to every Union ministry. But the Congress’s real problem is not economics; it is politics. The precise timing of the 16th Lok Sabha elections will be decided by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati without whose support the UPA government would fall. 
    
At the Jaipur chintan shivir, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi confronts three problems but has solutions to only two. The first problem is the choice of the UPA’s prime ministerial candidate in 2014. If the Congress wins more than 170 seats, the answer is Rahul Gandhi. If it doesn’t, the answer becomes more complicated. The focus will turn to finding an interim CEO for the party to replace Manmohan Singh who will be 82 years old in September 2014. 
    
Singh was leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha between 1998 and 2004 before being elevated to the prime ministership. Sonia may have to pick one from among her senior ministers for a similar role if the Congress can’t form a government in 2014 and it is necessary to sequester Rahul from long-term electoral damage. The chintan shivir will give us a good idea who that CEO could be: the reliable if colourless defence minister A K Antony, the ambitious and controversial P Chidambaram, or a dark horse like the external affairs minister Salman Khurshid.
    
Sonia’s second problem is rebuilding the party organisation in the states from the grassroots. Of the key state assembly elections scheduled to be held in 2013, the Congress is likely to do badly in all except Karnataka where B S Yeddyurappa’s breakaway Karnataka Janata Party and the Janata Dal (S) could create a hung assembly. The BJP faces a rout and the Congress, though lacking a charismatic local leader, may be able to stitch together a coalition government. 
    
Sonia’s third problem is public perception. The UPA is widely regarded as corrupt. It is held responsible for inflation. It has presided over an economic slowdown. And it has encouraged the worst excesses of crony capitalism. The game-changer Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme will provide balm but is not the surgery the Congress needs to redeem public trust. 
    
In 1947 Mahatma Gandhi, freedom achieved, wanted to disband the Congress and form new political organisations to contest free elections. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel agreed. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did not. Nehru’s view prevailed. In 1969, Indira Gandhi split the Congress to sideline the syndicate of regional satraps led by K Kamaraj and S Nijalingappa. The organisational and state-level decline of the Congress began in 1969 though Indira’s 1971 election victory and the euphoria over the Bangladesh war disguised it for nearly a decade. 
    
Nehru inherited a colonial administration. After Independence, it continued to serve the government in power. Colonial laws had been written to often protect British injustice, not deliver justice to Indians. Many remain cast in stone 150 years later, delaying and denying justice to ordinary Indians. Yet, Nehru did not impose chief ministers on states. The party’s local organisation was given a relatively free hand to choose regional leaders. Indira reversed that policy. She imposed state chief ministers, suspended intra-Congress elections, dismissed opposition state governments under Article 356 and undermined the judiciary. 
    
The important lesson for Sonia to absorb at the chintan shivir in Jaipur is to not follow her mother-in-law’s autocratic policies and hew instead to Nehru’s liberal, transparent leadership. Nehru made many errors: Jammu & Kashmir, China and even sowing the seeds of dynasty by appointing members of his family to high office – from Indira to sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. The last thing the battered Congress needs is to emulate Nehru’s few missteps and ignore the many excellent examples of governance he set. 
    
In 1998, Sonia took charge of a party fraying at the edges. Fifteen years later, having become the longest-serving president in Congress history, the party’s edges have frayed further. In 1999, the Congress won 114 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lowest in its history. To avoid falling below that in 2014, Sonia has to solve the leadership problem, strengthen the organisation at the grassroots in the states and restore public confidence. 
    
With its vast army of workers and an overflowing party treasury, the Congress remains a formidable force. It has been underestimated before – in 1980 and again in 2004 – when it was supposed to lose the general elections but didn’t. It can resolve its first two problems – leadership and reorganising the states – with the right strategies. The third – public perception – may prove more intractable. On that could rest its fate in 2014. 

Will 'Telangana' Gamble Pay Off For The Congress Party?

By Likha Veer | INNLIVE

SPECIAL REPORT The Congress finally manages to ram the Telangana Bill through. But will the gamble pay off. For all those who fought for Telangana, a 45-year-old struggle has finally borne fruit. More than 900 families had lost a loved one to self-immolation in the name of the cause and each one of them know that the new state could have been formed under better circumstances. 

Everyone wishes that their demand for a separate state had been addressed on its own merit as opposed to what the Congress has pulled off — a cynical move with an eye on elections, delivered with an utter lack of grace.

Naxal Corridor Becomes Suicide Zone For Security Forces

By Mithilesh Mishra | Raipur

India's Red Corridor has turned into a suicide zone for our security personnel fighting Maoists of central and south-central India. Death can surprise our soldiers any time as rebels in the Red zone are inducting experts to carry out explosions in the most innovative ways. The terrain of the area itself poses extreme danger as the rebels manage to operate from deep inside the jungles.

Rebels in the Red zone are killing more soldiers than are dying in all insurgency-hit areas put together. A soldier fighting Maoists deep inside the jungles of central and south-central India is far more likely to be killed than his uniformed brothers taking on militants in Jammu and Kashmir or insurgents in the North-East. 

Who Will Become PM?

By M H Ahssan

This is for all you dummies who will perform your duty as conscientious citizens and vote. For whom will you vote? You may as most people treat this general election as a municipal poll and vote for the candidate most likely to help your son get admission, or get the authorities to remove jhuggis behind your house. If as a serious voter you are concerned with national policy, forget it. Politicians themselves have given up all pretence about concern with policy. Even poor Prakash Karat after vain attempts to forge a Common Minimum Programme has been reduced instead to preparing a Vision Document.

If policy is not the issue, what is? Well, there will be an election and there will be a future Prime Minister. So why not vote for the best PM? In the absence of policy how might you make a choice? Well, think about the qualities of leadership. Obviously one who shows such qualities best deserves a chance. The most basic quality of leadership is his or her ability to protect the interests of followers. On this criterion who is best?

Certainly not Dr Manmohan Singh! He doesn’t want followers. He is content to remain a follower himself of Sonia Gandhi.

Certainly not LK Advani! The Rajnath-Jaitley spat thoroughly exposed him. It is inconceivable that Sidanshu Mittal could have been appointed to oversee the Northeast states without Advani’s consent. When Jaitley objected, Advani did not defend Mittal. When Rajnath Singh refused to oblige Jaitley, Advani did not defend Jaitley. He could neither promote nor defend any follower. What kind of leadership is that?

Certainly not Mayawati! She dumped her loyalists to give election tickets to newcomers who joined her weeks ago. She used her followers to collect money on her behalf and failed to protect them when they were caught. There was no question of course of her sharing any money with her followers.

Certainly not Sharad Pawar! Look how he betrayed his senior party colleague, P Sangma! He agreed that the Congress dismissed the Meghalaya government unconstitutionally. Yet he refused to back Sangma against the Congress in order to further his interests in his own home state.

Certainly not Laloo Yadav! He promoted his wife as Chief Minister. He refused to promote her protesting brother who joined Congress. Or is it that Sadhu Yadav joined Congress with Laloo’s secret blessing? Remember, all the Laloo dissidents who have joined the Congress will cut the votes of his newfound ally, Ram Vilas Paswan. So either Laloo is betraying his followers or conspiring against his ally. Is he fit to lead?

Certainly not Navin Patnaik! With hopes of becoming PM supported by the CPI-M he scrapped his decades old alliance with the NDA. Without batting an eye he endorsed all the policies of the CPI-M which he had opposed throughout his political career.

Certainly not Nitish Kumar! He refused to accommodate his former leader George Fernandes who as a sitting MP wanted to contest. What kind of loyalty is that?

Certainly not Jayalalithaa! For five years she abused Congress. She then attempted to team up with Congress to isolate Karunanidhi. After that failed she went to the Third Front. Meanwhile Karat promoted Mayawati. Jayalalithaa refused to attend Mayawati’s dinner. Now she is edging away from the Third Front. Can a leader who does not know where to stand help the nation take a stand…?

Enough! There’s no point criticizing all the hopefuls for the top job. Some new dark horse could spring a surprise. The prevalent political culture and confusion are stoking ambition in unexpected places. Anything can happen. The Malegaon blast accused Dayanand Pandey from prison has sought the court’s permission to contest the Lok Sabha poll. He favours a seat in Jammu. He could join another Malegaon blast accused, Major Ramesh Upadhyay, who earlier had sought similar permission to contest. With their rich experience in transnational affairs and explosive politics could they bring peace between India and the ISI…?

For the present, isn’t it best to keep an open mind about the next PM?

Selling India To The World, The Great Indian Travel Crisis

By M H Ahssan & Kajol Singh

Home is not where the travel heartland is this summer. Footloose but pennywise, Indian travellers are packing their bags for overseas destinations, shunning domestic attractions. Flying abroad has always held more spell over travelling within India, but over the last decade, Indian tourism had been attracting visitors with well marketed heritage hotels, beaches and experience destinations like Kumarakom in Kerala and the more exotic North-East route. But an unhealthy combination of exploitative airfares and steep hotel tariffs is dissuading Indian tourists from travelling within the country. It is also stopping foreign tourists from flocking in. It’s less expensive for the Indian middle class traveller to fly to Dubai or even London than to fly to Kochi or the Andamans. England, Singapore, Dubai, Germany, Croatia, Spain, France and Thailand are the new hotspots where it is easier to bump into someone from India than in Leh.

The Horror of Indian Jails: Dark Sub-Culture Dominated By Murky Underworld Of Organized Gangs And Criminals Supported By Poor Legal Aid And Careless Machinery

Right to Justice bill: Helplessness, psychological disorders torture Indian prisoners. An extensive investigation by INNLIVE reporters across the country has exposed a dark sub-culture thriving in jails across the country, not very different from the murky underworld of organised gangs and criminals. In the absence of proper legal aid, the poor and the vulnerable, especially women and youngsters, unwittingly become part of the sordid system.

Any discussion on prisoners in a sympathetic manner evokes a sharp response: "Why should you worry about these people? They are dangerous criminals, murderers and rapists, why complain if they are ill treated ? They deserve it." 

India's Education Sector: Moving Toward a Digital Future

The typical Indian classroom was once characterized by students sitting through hour-long teacher monologues. Now, technology is making life easier for both students and educators. Schools are increasingly adopting digital teaching solutions to engage with a generation of pupils well-versed with the likes of PlayStations and iPads, and trying to make the classroom environment more inclusive and participatory.

Take Smartclass from Educomp Solutions, one of the first Indian companies in this space. Smartclass is essentially a digital content library of curriculum-mapped, multimedia-rich, 3D content. It also enables teachers to quickly assess how much of a particular lesson students have been able to assimilate during the class. Once a topic is covered, the teacher gives the class a set of questions on a large screen. Each student then answers via a personal answering device or the smart assessment system. The teacher gets the scores right away and based on that, she repeats parts of the lesson that the students don't appear to have grasped.

"Technology makes the teaching-learning process very easy and interesting," says Harish Arora, a chemistry teacher at the Bal Bharti Public School in New Delhi who has been using Smartclass since 2004. "For instance, [earlier] it would easily take me one full lecture to just draw an electromagnetic cell on the blackboard. Though I could explain the cell structure, there was no way I could have managed to show them how it really functions. This is where technology comes to our aid -- now I can show the students a 3D model of the cell and how it functions. Instead of wasting precious time drawing the diagram on the blackboard, I can invest it in building the conceptual clarity of my students."

According to Abhinav Dhar, director for K-12 at Educomp Solutions, more than 12,000 schools across 560 districts in India have adopted Smartclass. More importantly, the number is growing at almost 20 schools a day. On average, in each of these schools eight classrooms are using Smartclass.

"When we launched Smartclass in 2004 as the first-ever digital classroom program, it was an uphill task convincing schools to adopt it," Dhar notes. "These schools had not witnessed any change in a century.... It is a completely different scenario now. Private schools across India today see [technology] as an imperative. A digital classroom is set to become the bare-minimum teaching accessory in schools, just like a blackboard is today."

Dhar recalls that one major roadblock for Educomp's proposition in the early days was on the price front. At US$4,000 (at the exchange rate of Rs. 50 to a U.S. dollar) per classroom, schools found the product very expensive. To get over this hurdle, Educomp quickly decided to make the initial investment and gave the schools an option to pay over a period of three to five years. The strategy worked. Enthused by the market response, in January Educomp launched an upgraded version -- the Smartclass Class
Transformation System -- with more features, including simulations, mind maps, worksheets, web links, a diagram maker, graphic organizers and assessment tools.

HUGE POTENTIAL
According to the "Indian Education Sector Outlook -- Insights on Schooling Segment," a report released by New Delhi--based research and consultancy firm Technopak Advisors in May, the total number of schools in India stands at 1.3 million. Of these, private schools account for 20%. Educomp's Dhar points out that only around 10% of the private schools have tapped the potential of multimedia classroom teaching whereas in government schools, it has barely made any inroads.

"The current market size for digitized school products in private schools is around US$500 million," says Enayet Kabir, associate director for education at Technopak. "This is expected to grow at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20% to reach the over US$2 billion mark by 2020. However, the market potential then might get as big as S$4 billion [i.e. if the total population of private schools that could adopt multimedia actually adopt it.] Apart from this, the current market size for ICT [information and communications technology] in government schools is US$750 million. We expect this to grow five times by 2020 due to the current low level of penetration in government schools."

Kabir lists Educomp Solutions, Everonn Education, NIIT, Core Education & Technologies, IL&FS and Compucom as dominant players in this sector. New entrants include HCL Infosystems, Learn Next, Tata Interactive Systems, Mexus Education, S. Chand Harcourt (India) and iDiscoveri Education. Except for S. Chand Harcourt, which is a joint venture between S. Chand and US-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, all the others are Indian firms.

A recent trend is that schools in tier two and tier three cities are increasingly adopting the latest technology. Rajesh Shethia, head of sales and marketing at TataInteractive Systems, which launched Tata ClassEdge in early 2011 and has partnered up with more than 900 schools, says that "more than half of the demand for digital classrooms is from tier two and tier three cities." According to Shethia, schools in these smaller cities realize that it is difficult for their students to get as much exposure as students from tier one cities. "[So] they proactively subscribe to solutions such as ours, which richly benefit both teachers and students by simplifying the syllabus....

Even parents want the best for their wards and are not averse to paying a little extra. They see value in these initiatives by schools to modernize the way teaching is imparted today." Making some back-of-the-envelope calculations Shethia adds: "If we consider the top 100,000 private schools in India as the captive market, the potential is approximately two million classrooms of which currently just about 80,000 have been digitized."
Srikanth B. Iyer, COO of Pearson Education Services, also sees tremendous potential in the smaller cities. Pearson provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment. Its multimedia tool, DigitALly, has been adopted in more than 3,000 private schools across India since 2004. "DigitALly installations have been growing at three times the market for the past two years," Iyer says. "Currently, more than 60% of our customers are from tier two and tier three towns, such as Barpeta (in the state of Assam), Sohagpur (in Madhya Pradesh) and Balia (in Uttar Pradesh)."

In order to make its offering attractive to the schools, Pearson has devised a monthly payment model under which a school pays around US$2 per student per month. "As the price point is affordable, schools across all locations and fee structures find it viable to opt for our solution," Iyer notes. "We focus on tier two and tier three towns and cities where penetration is relatively low and desire for adoption of technology is high." HCL's Digischool program, which launched about 18 months ago, has also made a strong beginning, with a client base of more than 2,500 schools.

PARTNERING WITH STATE GOVERNMENTS
Meanwhile, state governments are also giving a boost to the adoption of technology in schools. Edureach, a divison of Educomp, has partnered with 16 state governments and more than 30 education departments and boards in the country, covering over 36,000 government schools and reaching out to more than 10.60 million students.

"Edureach leads the market with 27% of the total schools where ICT projects have been implemented," says Soumya Kanti, president of Edureach. "We are looking [to add] 3,000 more schools this fiscal year and 20,000 to 25,000 additional schools in the next five years." As of now, Edureach has created digital learning content in more than 14 regional languages for these projects.

In the northern state of Haryana, CORE Education and Technologies is implementing a US$59 million ICT project that aims to benefit 5 million students across 2,622 schools. Five of these schools will be developed as "Smart" schools. CORE is also implementing ICT projects in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya, Punjab, Maharashtra and Nagaland. The scope of work in these projects ranges from implementation of computer-aided learning in schools, installing bio-metric devices to monitor attendance of teachers, and setting up computer hardware, software and other allied accessories and equipments.

"The task has not been an easy one," admits Anshul Sonak, president of CORE. "There are several logistical issues. Delivery of equipment to rural areas is a big challenge in itself.... There is lack of basic infrastructure -- either there are no classrooms or there are ones with no windows.... Some schools don't even have toilets. Moreover, the power availability in these areas is often poor and we have had to deploy generator sets in many schools."

But despite the challenges, educationists are optimistic. Rahul De, professor of quantitative methods and information systems area at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) believes that "ICT can have a huge impact on our education system." He points out that ICT can result in increasing the reach [of education] and in keeping the costs low. "With increasing penetration of mobile phones and Internet kiosks, the potential is indeed immense," he adds.

A study conducted by De in 2009 on the economic impact of free and open source software (FOSS) in India found that it resulted in significant cost savings. "FOSS can play a huge role in education," De notes. "In the state of Kerala, it has already had a huge impact in both saving costs and providing state-of-the-art access computing to students in government schools. FOSS has a huge number of packages for school students, many of which can be ported to local languages and used in schools. It is also helping disabled students in a big way, by enabling them to access digital resources using audio-visual aids."
Edureach's Kanti adds that a study by the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research in Dharwad in Karnataka in 2006 revealed significant improvement in student enrolment and attendance, as well as a reduction of student dropouts due to ICT interventions. "Yet another study conducted by the Xavier Institute of
Management in Bhubaneswar in 2007 revealed that computer-aided education has improved the performance of children in subjects such as English, mathematics and science, which are taught through computers using multimedia-based educational content."

ALL IN A TAB
In line with this increasing interest in technology for school education, there has been a rush of education-focused tablet computers in the market. The most high-profile of these has been Aakash, which was launched by Kapil Sibal, union minister for human resource development, in October 2011. The Aakash project is part of the ministry's National Mission on Education through Information & Communication Technology (NME-ICT). It aims to eliminate digital illiteracy by distributing the Aakash tablets to students across India at subsidized rates. While the project itself has become mired in delays and controversy, it has generated a lot of awareness and interest among students around the educational tablet.

Meanwhile, DataWind, the Canada-based firm that partnered with the union government for the Aakash project, has also launched UbiSlate7, the commercial version ofAakash. "The opportunity for low-cost tablets in India is huge. In the next two years, it will exceed the size of the computer market in India i.e. 10 million units per year," says Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind.

In April, technology firm HCL Infosystems launched the MyEdu Tab, which is priced at around US$230 for the K-12 version. The device comes preloaded with educational applications and also books from the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government organization. Anand Ekambaram, senior vice-president and head of learning at HCL Infosystems, is in the process of partnering with more than 30 educational institutes across India for MyEdu Tab. "MyEdu Tab has content offline and can be accessed over the cloud. It allows students to learn at their own pace," Ekambaram notes. "With a topic revision application and a self-assessment engine, students can evaluate their skills and knowledge on their own. Teachers can upload content, which can be accessed by students and parents for tasks such as homework and progress reports on their respective devices. The parent can monitor the progress of his or her child through the cloud-based ecosystem."

Earlier this year, Micromax, a leading Indian handset manufacturer, also launched an edutainment device called Funbook. Micromax has also partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make available relevant content for students. Susha John, director and CEO at Everonn, was upbeat at the launch. "Digital learning facilitated through tablets will revolutionize the educational space," John said. "Everonn has invested in developing content and services targeted toward tablet audiences. To start with, we will offer our school curriculum-learning modules ... and at home live tuition products on the Funbook. Students can now have access to good teachers, educational content and a great learning experience anytime, anywhere."

At Pearson, Max Gabriel, senior vice-president and chief technology officer, is "focusing on K-12 content in English to begin with. We are sitting on a huge repository of existing content. Adding the right level of interactivity and richer experience will be our priority." Meanwhile, Educomp is gearing up to launch content that is device agnostic and can be run on any tablet.

But even as schools in India are going through this transformation powered by technology, one key question is how big a role technology will play in the education sector.

In an earlier interview S. Sadagopan, founder-director at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, pointed out that there are four parts to learning -- lectures, library, laboratory and life -- noting that, "Technology plays a critical role in all these." Kabir of Technopak adds another perspective. "Despite numerous studies on the impact of ICT in education, the outcomes remain difficult to measure and open to much debate. It needs to be understood that technology is only an enabler and a force multiplier and cannot be treated as a panacea. We believe that impressive gains in teaching-learning outcomes are possible only through an integrated approach rather than a piecemeal intervention."

Don Huesman, managing director of Wharton's innovation group, recommends caution in considering potential investments in educational technologies. "These are very exciting times for online and distance education technologies, but there are risks facing parents, educators and policy makers in evaluating the opportunities these new technologies, and their proponents, represent."

Huesman points to the recent growth in high-quality, free, online educational courseware offered on websites like the Khan Academy and the Math Forum, as well as the work of the Open Learning Initiative in developing intelligent cognitive tutors and learning analytics. "But such technologies, available from a global network of resources, only provide value when understood, chosen and integrated into a local educational community," he says. As an illustration, Huesman offers the example of cyber kiosks, provided in recent years by foundations at no cost to rural communities in India, exacerbating the "gender divide" in many traditional communities in which young women congregating at public cyber cafes, also frequented by young men, would be considered taboo. "Interventions by governments and NGOs must be inclusive of local community concerns and aware of local political complications," Huesman notes.

'Nearly 20 Lakh Private Arms Licensed In Half India': RTI

By Ashmit Sinha | INNLIVE

ALARMING SITUATION Governments across Indian states have issued 19.80 lakh private gun licences in 324 districts, or in just under half the country’s 671 districts.

States that have suffered terrorism and those with poor social indicators top the list. Uttar Pradesh, which has 16.50 per cent of the country’s population, has issued 11.23 lakh private licences, according to a government affidavit filed in the Allahabad High Court last year. The district-wise data were received over four years from queries sent to 600 districts; many didn’t respond. For the 324 that did, the average works out to 6,113 licences per district.

Should President's Rule Be Imposed To Create Telangana?

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

Contrary to the prevailing opinion, in this country, new state formation has never been smooth. Nor were the procedures exactly similar. Each state formation was unique and had followed a different sequence of steps.

The only thing common to all the state formations so far in Independent India has been the rigid applicability of Article 3 in its truest sense, where Parliament is given the supreme authority to carve out states irrespective of the opinion of the involved State Assemblies.

While the NDA followed a convenient procedure in the creation of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in 2000, where the state assemblies initiated the demand for separation, such a procedure is neither legally mandated nor is constitutionally prescribed and deviates from most other prior state formations. 

Exclusive: Loyal Congressman GK Vasan quits party after 14 years: Here's why Gandhis should be worried?

The first major fissure in the Congress has surfaced, with former minister GK Vasan all set to break away from the party to revive his father’s legacy and outfit, the Tamil Maanila Congress in Tamil Nadu. Vasan’s move may have its roots in the conviction of AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa who had to step down as chief minister thereby creating a politically fluid situation in which both the ruling party as well as the opposition DMK are in a state of flux.

"This has raised hopes in other parties and leaders who think they can create space for themselves in the state which was dominated by either the AIADMK or the DMK for close to half a century. This is the best opportunity to come their way. And this includes the BJP which is stands benefit the most from the situation in the state where it wants to set up its footprint," said a Congress leader.

Will This Election See Higher Turnout After 'Poll Tamasha'?

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

ANALYSIS While an increased turnout in Assembly elections is not an indicator of the same in Lok Sabha elections, aggressive campaigning points toward a higher turnout in this poll.

If the pattern of turnout in the Assembly elections held over the last couple of years are of any indication, the turnout in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections should significantly increase. Almost all the Assembly elections held in different States between 2012-13 witnessed a higher turnout compared to those held in previous years. 

Congress Seeks Key Role for Rahul

A top Congress party official said yesterday that party leaders wanted Rahul Gandhi, the son of Sonia Gandhi, to play a meaningful role in the party.

AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni was answering questions at a media briefing on the proceedings of a Congress Working Committee meeting on the first day of the 82nd Congress plenary here.

“After the party’s conclave in Delhi, Congress leaders wanted Rahul Gandhi to join the organization in a meaningful manner so that more youth can be inspired to join the party to strengthen it,” Soni said.

However, she would not say whether any formal demand was made by any member at the CWC meeting yesterday to induct Rahul into the CWC. “I am not empowered to talk about what transpired at the extended CWC. I am neither denying it nor confirming it,” she said. Soni said the CWC meeting discussed the draft resolutions on political affairs, economic affairs, agriculture, employment and poverty alleviation and international relations and security for nearly four and a half hours.

She said all the 47 CWC members, except A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhary, attended the meeting along with other members of the extended body.
Congress Committee, delegates and over 7,000 state Congress delegates had come to participate in the plenary. Besides, up to 6,000 Congress workers from northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had come to Hyderabad.
“They are neither AICC nor state delegates but ordinary party workers. We are in touch with security officers to let them into the AICC session. But the security agencies have not given clearance so far,” she added.
After the CWC meeting, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee made a presentation to the plenary on the programs of the United Progressive Alliance government. However, neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor Congress President Sonia were present at this presentation.
Soon after the plenary, Sonia is likely to meet Janata Dal (Secular) leader and former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda to discuss the Karnataka crisis. At her news briefing, Soni, however, maintained that the Karnataka issue did not come up at the extended Congress Working Committee meeting yesterday.
She rejected suggestions that the party was a silent spectator to the imminent fall of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka. “This is not a matter of watching it silently. The man in charge of Congress affairs in Karnataka, A.K. Anthony, and CWC member Ahmed Patel are reviewing the developments in Karnataka. No political party can concede its defeat in such issues. There is every possibility of JD(S) president and Congress president having a meeting to discuss the matter in a few days. There is every possibility that H.D. Deve Gowda will prevail upon his (rebellious) party men. Chief Minister Dharam Singh is confident of surviving the trust vote on Jan. 27,” she said.
She conceded that the crisis in Karnataka had shown the fragility of coalitions. “Coalition governments are formed on the basis of common minimum programs. Sometimes, there are hiccups in coalitions. Such incidents (like the one in Karnataka) occur. But then Congress has been successfully running coalition governments in states such as Maharashtra, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir. There has been a peaceful change of guard in Jammu and Kashmir after three years. The coalition government in that state is a good example of coalitions working well,” she observed.
She said Congress had stuck to its principled stand in Karnataka that there should be no truck with communal forces. “Not a single Congress MLA has deviated from that stand. Deve Gowda has also said that there is no question of his having a truck with communal forces,” she added.
The beleaguered Dharam Singh was conspicuous by his absence at the extended CWC meeting. “I have not seen Dharam Singh here. I don’t know whether he will come here tomorrow or not. His presence is needed there,” she quipped. Soni said Congress would make every effort to see that the coalition governments led by it in the states complete their tenures. “Coalitions, after all, are managed by all coalition partners. The UPA is successfully running a coalition government at the center on the basis of a common minimum program,” she added.

Where Are Our Missing Children?

In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.

If you are a parent, go hug your child before you read this piece. We have an epidemic on, an epidemic that gets but a passing mention in the newspapers, an epidemic that is real and tangible only for those parents who wait for the call that never comes, the child who never returns, who do the rounds of the police stations, photographs in hand, who put out advertisements in the newspapers, describing what their child was wearing when he or she went missing, who live a life in limbo. Our children are going missing. One child every eight minutes across India. 

“In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.” Wall Street Journal India Realtime.

On October 25, 2012, firstpost.com stated, 

“According to the police, a newborn boy was kidnapped from Wadia Hospital in Central Mumbai. The day-old boy was stolen during visiting hours when his mother, Jasmine Naik (28), was taking an evening walk in the corridor of the hospital, they said. She had left the baby unattended in the ward and was taking a stroll when someone took him away, police said, adding the hospital, run by a private trust, didn’t have CCTV cameras.” 

DNA pointed out in its October 26, 2012 issue, 

“The Bombay High Court in 2009 issued 23 guidelines for enhancing security in government, semi-government and BMC-run hospitals after a four day old baby of Mohan and Mohini Nerurkar was kidnapped from the maternity ward of BMC-run Sion hospital. The HC order said that sensitive areas such as the neo-natal, post-natal and paediatric wards should have CCTV cameras. The court said they should also be installed at all entry and exit routes. However, not one camera has been installed inside the premises of Wadia Maternity Hospital. The management has left a proposal to install CCTV cameras worth Rs 1 lakh pending for three years.” 

In its July 8, 2012 issue, DNA pointed out, 

“Three year old Sangita, who was kidnapped from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on June 10, was rescued from her kidnapper at the Haridwar bus station by the Haridwar Police on Saturday afternoon. The alleged kidnapper, identified as Raju, was also arrested by the Haridwar police. The Government Railway Police (GRP) of Maharashtra recently released shocking CCTV footage of the kidnapping. It shows a limping man alighting from a train and wandering about the station before spotting the sleeping family and three year old Sangita, who was not asleep at the time. The man then sat beside her and took her away.” 

Sangita’s parents were lucky that she was found. Not all kidnappings have a happy ending; some children are never found, or are found dead. 

Perhaps the most chilling are the 2006 Nithari killings, where remains of 17 children were found in drains outside a bungalow. 

“For the last two years, more than forty young children and women went missing from a small urban hamlet of Nithari, at the centre of Noida, a satellite town bordering Delhi (India). The local media regularly covered the incidents of missing children; the National Commission for Women also took cognisance of the matter, but the children continued to vanish in thin air. However, in the last week of December 2006, by sheer chance some human remains were spotted at the backyard of a palatial house situated at the edge of the village of Nithari. When the spot was searched further what emerged was a chilling tale of cold blooded serial murders that perhaps qualify as the biggest serial killings any where in the world.” http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Child/2007/nithari.html 

The unimaginable horror of Nithari killings, were further abetted by a lackadaisical police force that refused to take complaints of missing children. 

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), almost 60,000 children were reported missing in 2011. Of these, 22,000 are yet to be located. However, according to a report by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), nearly 11 children go missing every hour, and at least, 4 of them are never found. According to BBA, the number of missing children could be as high as 90,000 per year. West Bengal topped the charts of missing children with 12,000 children missing in 2011. Madhya Pradesh followed with 7,797 cases, while Delhi had 5,111 cases. These are merely reported cases that discount those children who might run away due to various factors, ranging from abuse to dysfunctional homes, and exam stress, or some who might get lost while families travel. Majority of the missing children are just taken away. The statistics are scary – in 2011, 15,284 cases of kidnapping were reported. This was up 43 percent from the previous year. 

Children are kidnapped for human trafficking, illegal organ transplantation, prostitution, child porn racketing, child labour in factories and unpaid domestic help. Many children are forced to beg; some are mutilated to evoke sympathy for more earning potential, and a small percentage for ransom. 

Kidnappings for ransom are on the rise, and in some cases even after paying up, the parents never see their children again. According to a report in the Guardian, 

“Figures from Delhi police show that kidnap for ransom is on the rise. In 2008, there were 1,233 cases in the national capital; by last year that had soared to 2,975. In the first three months of 2011, 802 cases were registered.” 

According to an estimate by NGOs, only 50 percent of missing children are actually reported to the NCRB. Urban slum children are the most vulnerable as they are easily lured into promise of good food and clothes. According to news reports, there are over 800 gangs with 5,000 members involved in the kidnapping and trafficking of children, much in the same way they would traffic drugs, or contraband. Some parents are so poor; they don’t have recent photographs to give the police. Children between the ages of 6 and 13 are the most targeted and vulnerable. Infants are also taken; sometimes from the very hospitals they are born in, or from railway stations, and other crowded places. The children, who are lucky enough to be found and rescued or have the presence of mind to run away, speak of being sold into agricultural or factory labour. 

Why do we have so many missing children and why are they not found? 

It starts with how the investigation is done. Very often, First Information Reports are not registered; just an entry is made into a list of missing persons at the police station, and a photograph of missing child sent across city police stations. Cases are only investigated if the person reporting the missing child files a case of kidnapping. 

Delhi scores better in this regard – if a child is not found within 24 hours, a case of kidnapping is to be filed mandatorily. An initiative called Pehchaan (recognition) in Delhi has policemen taking pictures of children in slums for record, and copies are provided to their families. The Crime Branch has launched an exclusive portal (www.trackthemissingchild.gov.in) to track down missing children across the country. All states have to compulsorily put this facility into place. A PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan, states that over 1.7 lakh children have gone missing in the country between January 2008 and 2010. In response to this PIL, Supreme Court has instructed the chief secretaries of all states and union territories to ask police stations to register an FIR, and start an investigation. Supreme Court also directed that all police stations should have a special juvenile police officer. 

This may be too little, too late for those parents who have waited endlessly. For those children, who have already become statistics in the long lists, these measures might not be of any help. But we can, and we must push for more attention to the growing menace; we cannot let this get brushed under the carpet.

Nobody’s Missing Children

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again.

“Nobody seems to be concerned about the missing children. This is the irony,” stated a bench of the Supreme Court on Feb 5. The remark is indicative of the apathy shown by the Centre and state governments toward the issue of missing children. The court had directed the Centre and the various states to file status reports on the status of the missing children in the country and in their states in March 2012. The notices were issued by Justices Altamas Kabir and SS Nijjar in response to a Public Interest Litigation by the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan on the escalating numbers of missing children in India. Unfortunately, a year later, these status reports are still to be filed by the Centre and several state governments.

The Supreme Court, taking serious note of the absence of the chief secretaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu despite being directed to be physically present and not through their counsels, threatened to issue non bailable arrest warrants against them. The West Bengal counsel incidentally submitted that the status report had not been filed since there was no instruction, which the SC took exception to. Of the five States whose chief secretaries had been specifically asked to be present, only the chief secretaries of Goa and Orissa were present. Not only the Centre but also the governments of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttrakhand, West Bengal and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, NCT of Delhi and Lakhshadweep have not filed their status reports, the court noted.

The numbers are scary. According to the figures filed by BBA in its PIL, over 1.7 lakh children had gone missing between January 2008 and January 2010. The exact figures given were 1,17,480 children who had gone missing, of which 41,546 children were still untraced. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one child goes missing in India every eight minutes. Forty per cent of these children will never be found and will end up as mere statistics in an ever growing list of missing children in this country, children who are picked up from streets, from outside their homes, from railway stations, even from hospitals as newborns. Many of these children will end up trafficked, either as cheap labour, or to beggar syndicates or into the sex trade. For their parents it is a nightmare they live through every single day, the waiting for news that their child has been found, the hoping against hope, catching a sudden glimpse of someone in a crowded place who resembles their child, receiving information from distant places, that perhaps their child has been spotted there, only to rush there and be disappointed.

In 2011, 15,284 children were kidnapped, up 43 percent from the previous year. Around 3,517 cases of child trafficking were reported in the same year, buying and selling girls for the sex trade, for marriage, as well as trafficking of children for the organ trade, as drug mules, into bonded labour in the unorganised sector and to begging syndicates across the country. According to unconfirmed reports, there are close on 800 organised child trafficking gangs across the country. Traffickers target children from the lower income groups, where the families do not have the financial strength or the political connections to pursue their cases with the authorities. They pick up children who aren’t watched over too carefully from slums and congested areas. Merely a handful of the children who get kidnapped are taken for ransom. Sometimes, if the parents pay up, or the police locates the kidnapped child, the child is reunited with its family. Sometimes, despite paying up, some kidnapped children are brutalised and killed.

The highest number of untraced children are from Delhi, followed by Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore, city wise. According to the BBA, the number of missing children is highest in Maharashtra followed by West Bengal, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh and the number of untraced missing children is highest in West Bengal followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Sadly, 75 per cent of missing children in Kolkata and 65 per cent in Delhi “continue to remain untraced” according to a two-year study, titled ‘Trafficking of Women and Children in India’, compiled by Shankar Sen and P M Nair, with a team of ISS researchers. The report also found that sometimes, these children are actually sold to traffickers by their own family or people who know them, at times for as little as Rs 5,000. The survey interviewed over 500 rescued children who were now in homes. Of these, 40 percent told the surveyors that they had been sold when they were younger than ten, the rest were sold when they were between 11 and 14 years of age. Of these, only a mere seven percent of the rescued children stated they had been trafficked by total strangers.

India has the largest number of child labourers in the world, even though child labour is prohibited by the law. Data suggests that 12.66 million children are employed illegally in cigarette, bidi, firework and carpet weaving factories. Children are also employed at construction sites and in homes as domestic workers. Many of these are victims of child trafficking.

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again. The way missing children are investigated by our authorities is another reason why recovery rates are so low. Except for a few states, FIRs are not registered for missing children. The name of the missing child is just entered into a list of missing persons at the police station where it is reported. This does not lead to an in depth investigation. Photos of the missing child are sent to all police stations in cities like Mumbai but no active investigation into the disappearance of the child is done, unless the person who reports the child missing asks the police to file a case of kidnapping. Post the horrific Nithari murders in 2006, the law in Delhi requires a case of kidnapping to be filed by the police if a child is not located within 24 hours of being reported missing. In the Nithari killings, children had begun going missing from the neighbourhood for two years, but the police refused to register complaints or investigate the cases.

As a start, the police have begun sharing an integrated database of missing children, www.zipnet.in, as well as unidentified children found. Some of the parents of the children on the database are so poor, they don’t even have a recent photograph of the child they can provide. There is an interesting recent initiative by the Delhi police where it goes into the slums, photographs and registers all the children so that in the event of the child going missing recent photographs and details of the child are available. What is of immediate need though is an integrated country wide database that allows states to track missing children who are trafficked across states and work in tandem to rescue trafficked children, as well as trace children who might have run away for reasons ranging from dysfunctional homes, to exam pressure to a desire to see a big city. A standard protocol procedure to deal with a case of missing children needs to be put into place across the country by investigation and law enforcement agencies.

The Supreme Court’s annoyance on this issue is well justified. The “last opportunity” given to the Centre and the states to file their affidavits is now February 19. Whether the status reports will be filed by February 19 or not remains to be seen, but the fact remains that we, as a country, are not concerned about our missing children. They disappear into files, remain photographs on posters and morph into mere statistics. The parents live through the nightmare every single day of not knowing whether their child is alive or dead, or if alive, living under what unimaginable conditions. And we need to hang our heads in shame at our collective apathy to this terrifying issue.

Survey: 'UPA To Lose 2014, Regional Parties Will Hold Key'

INN Live Election Desk

The Congress-led UPA is set to lose the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and regional parties will be a key factor in deciding who gets to rule India, said a survey just released. The INN Live-C Voter survey showed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) gaining a winning edge over the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Regional parties, it said, were expected to get as many as 240 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. 

Exclusive: Bizarre UPA-Era Figures Revealed 70% Of Delhi Used For Organic Farming In 2012 And Records Can't Explain Where 100 Crore Subsidies Gone?

Believe it or not, almost 70 per cent of the national Capital was used for organic farming in 2011-2012, according to National Project on Organic Farming (NPOF), which comes under the Ministry of Agriculture. 

While the total geographical area of Delhi is 1.48 lakh hectares, NPOF data shows 100238.74 hectares (almost twice the size of Mumbai) was used for organic farming during that period. 

What smacks of data fudging and a gigantic scam took place between 2009 and 2012 when the Sheila Dikshit government was in power in Delhi and the Congress-led UPA ruled at the Centre.

In India, the comedy of power-sharing

By M H Ahssan

Twelve days after the very surprising Indian election results were out, 10 days after Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam chief V Prabhakaran's body was found by the Sri Lankan army near Nandikadal lagoon, nine days after Aung San Suu Kyi's trial began in Myanmar, three days after Nepal turned a corner in its tumultuous politics, and a day after suicide bombers ripped through the heart of Lahore, a government finally took shape in New Delhi.

For once, it seemed history - carrying its burden of sub-continental deaths, destruction and tales of intimidation - was about to outpace contemporary politics. It was an unusually protracted wait outside the delivery room.

But wasn't this supposed to be an emphatic vote for continuity, for the comfort of the familiar? So what took Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi so much time to put a team together? Surprisingly, the huge mandate the Congress got turned out to be the hindrance. A bigger victory betokened not a bigger pie, but a larger number of people that justifiably expect a piece of it.

Thus, the louder the celebratory firecrackers outside 10 Janpath - the New Delhi residence of the Congress president - the longer the queue of fat cars became. No sooner had the exercise of choosing cabinet ministers begun, aspirants made sure they were in the frame. (In the case of the mercurial Farooq Abdullah, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, this was accomplished by petulantly and noisily storming off to watch the Indian Premiere League cricket finals in South Africa when his name didn't figure in the first round.) Even in this spectacle of democratic power-sharing, rendered as full-blown comedy, there were significant patterns, a few markers for the future.

But the bustle around the Congress, the haggling, the noise of the bazaar, was itself a sign of how things had changed in a very short while. A few days before the May 16 results, a senior Congress functionary had predicted ruefully that "a government can be in place only by the end of the month". Everyone present had concluded that he meant to indicate - and he most probably meant to - the uncertainty of a fractured verdict, the legal quagmire of a hung parliament. His statement turned out prophetic. For all the wrong reasons though. In a twist in the tale worthy of the masters of the genre, it was not a number drought that caused the delay but its opposite, a downright embarrassment of riches.

Political parties, even from camps not particularly friendly to the Congress, voluntarily rushed to the president of India to submit their letters of support to the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The numbers with the UPA climbed to 325, way beyond the simple majority mark of 272 that everyone thought would be out of everyone's reach. The comfort levels rose to such a point that it quickly started getting suffocating. By lending unprompted support, everyone was clearly looking for a quid pro quo.

Almost a breathless fortnight later, Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi admitted managing the strong supply line was "a difficult and taxing job". But it had to be done for the sake of present equilibrium and future growth. Forming a government was not simply a corporate-style question of finding the right people for the right job - that basic imperative had to married with the subtler demands of representative politics. Pruning, grafting and retooling an old team for a new game, thwarting the unreasonable and satisfying those who won't be denied, all this had to be done while managing perceptions.

Such a composite play offers all the pleasures of a minefield. The first major explosion - actually a series of sharp ones - was reported as Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the chief of Congress's southern ally Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), rode into town with his entire entourage of sons, daughters, grand-nephews and other grandees, all aspiring ministers. Having scripted a win that no one would have bet their money on, the wheelchair-bound Karunanidhi expected to be handsomely rewarded with plum portfolios, no less than nine. Three cabinet berths and the rest junior ministers.

Surprising though it may seem for a group of top Tamil politicians, no one here had Sri Lanka on their minds. No talk of the Tamil refugees herded into camps in the warzone, of relief measures, or of the need to put pressure on Colombo to ensure a political package is worked out for the island's long-suffering Tamil population. The emotive election was past - the rhetoric had already delivered the votes. Now was the time to stake claim to your own relief package, to stock up on ammo to take care of the coming five years.

In the outgoing government, the DMK held plum infrastructure portfolios: shipping, surface transport, IT and communications, to name a few. This time, they not only wanted what they had but some more, such as railways, health and commerce. But between 2004 and now, a key equation had changed. From being a 145-member party in parliament, very much at the mercy of its coalition partners, the Congress has regained its stature with 206 seats. It would not yield so easily to "friendly" bullying. Karunanidhi left Delhi in a huff, threatening not to join the government. A few days of sulk ended with a bit of cajoling over the phone by the prime minister, and he returned meekly to accept whatever was on offer.

Finally, the DMK had to settle for textiles, chemicals and fertilizers plus IT and communications - all ministries that oversee those particular sectors. And, a few junior ministers of state, a subordinate position, to sugar-coat the deal. (Work allocation to junior ministers largely depends on the cabinet minister's whims. Often they are left with very little to do except answering difficult parliamentary questions.) The DMK had been cut to size. If Karunanidhi accepted the deal, it was only because it helped him control the vaulting ambitions in his own ranks.

But taming the DMK solved only part of the problem. As Sonia and Manmohan realized, Congress leaders themselves could act equally peevishly. Having won 206 seats, they thought it was their "party" as well. Individual leaders exerted themselves to keep old allies and willing suitors out of the race so they did not have to share the pie. Such was the clamor for cabinet-rank postings that portfolio distribution had to be held back even after the ornate Ashoka Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan - the palatial, colonial-era residence of the Indian president - had played host to two rounds of oath-taking.

The prime minister himself took his oath of office on May 22 along with 19 others. The all-important finance portfolio was allocated to party veteran and second-in-command Pranab Mukherjee; the home ministry stayed with P Chidambaram (the glib corporate lawyer moved there from finance after the Mumbai terror strikes of last November); railways went to the leader of the largest ally, Mamata Banerjee; the squeaky-clean A K Antony expectedly kept defense; and foreign affairs went unexpectedly to S M Krishna (a former chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka).

The rest were kept waiting without portfolios until the morning of Friday, May 29. The portfolios of 78 ministers were announced at one go, one day after the second swearing-in ceremony where as many as 59 ministers took oath. "Several factors like availability of talent and other considerations played a role in the making of the team. People expect more than business as usual," Manmohan said in his usual workaday fashion afterwards.

So at the end of two weeks, it turned out to be one jumbo cabinet. No less than six former chief ministers jostled their way in, including two ex-chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir (Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad), two of Karnataka (Veerappa Moily and S M Krishna). Seventy-seven-year-old Krishna's induction was the most astonishing event. Not only did he not contest the elections, he was cooling off after losing the last assembly elections in his home state to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Known to have "good access" to Manmohan, he was perhaps chosen for the calmness of age. He's suave, soft-spoken and can be expected to bring a non-belligerent, if copybook, approach to the ministry. Analysts, however, feel it might equally call for sagacity and creative initiative to deal with a South Asia in flames.

Another surprise was the shifting of former commerce minister Kamal Nath, who had pulled off quite a coup at the World Trade Organization talks in Davos, to the gritty and unglamorous ministry for surface transport. Some see this as a clear signal of intent from the prime minister; he wants the more energetic hands rolling up their sleeves to rev up basic infrastructure (in this case, roadways and highways). This ministry was with the DMK and saw little work in the last five years, with contracts worth $10 billion stuck in the pipeline.

Manmohan has been responsible for key paradigm shifts whenever he has been in government. He completely overhauled India's economic policy in the early 1990s, bringing in reforms. By 2008, he had formally changed the course of India's foreign policy by signing the India-United States nuclear deal. This time, he is expected to open up the higher education sector to foreign participation. His choice of Kapil Sibal, a senior Supreme Court lawyer and science and technology minister last time, is being seen as significant.

Although some allies lost out, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar - his prime ministerial ambitions decisively thwarted - has retained his hold over the agriculture portfolio. An acknowledgement of his work, notwithstanding his controversial decision to import wheat. It needs to be seen how the social welfare slant the Congress would like the Manmohan government to take can be married to the market orientation of Pawar's agriculture policy.

The coming days would show whether a faultline develops between Pawar and the Congress leadership. The Congress sees its victory in this elections as an unambiguous vote for welfarism, as enshrined in the rural employment guarantee scheme and the massive farm loan waiver of 2008, and it would soon like to bring in a food security bill. How Pawar responds to it would be interesting to watch.

The biggest straw in the wind is the fact that the Congress leadership chose the socialist-minded Mukherjee over the aggressively pro-reform Montek Singh Ahluwalia as finance minister. It is widely rumored that Manmohan's preference for Ahluwalia, currently the Planning Commission deputy chairman, was shot down by a cautious party. Mukherjee, expected to present the budget in parliament in early July, could bring an urban employment guarantee scheme (on the lines of the rural job scheme) and cut interest rates of loans for farmers and the poor. He's also hinting at another economic stimulus package for infrastructure by way of massive government investment.

Mukherjee, who has returned as finance minister after a quarter of a century, would have to step up spending to support growth even at the risk of widening fiscal deficit. The Indian economy has been hit much more by the global recession than the government is prepared to admit. He also has to create jobs in this recessionary market to meet the aspirations of the youth who are said to have voted for Congress.

Youth is fast becoming an obsession of the Manmohan government. The young Gandhi scion, Rahul, is held to be instrumental in attracting young voters (the Congress won 75 of the 82 seats for which he campaigned) and has been demanding more representation for them. Thus has been born a new constituency within government, leading to the induction of seven junior ministers below the age of 40. The youngest of all is Agatha Sangma, a 27-year-old law graduate from the northeastern state of Meghalaya.

Now to see if this elaborately wrought vehicle - this "mix of youth and experience", as Manmohan himself proffered - can move as fast as he wants to meet his 100-day targets.

New Initiative: Humble Jackfruit Eyes Haute Cuisine Status

By Swetha Reddy / INN Bureau

Of the abundant quantities of jackfruit grown in India annually, an estimated 70 per cent rots away, due to lack of awareness and difficulties of usage. Now, a joint initiative by an academic institute and a farmers' group seeks to change that. Sixty seven-year-old Prema Bhat Thottethodi, a farmer woman, was restless. Leaning on a walking stick, she was busy running around in the massive kitchen. Age and her knee-ache couldn’t deter her spirit. Later in the day, she stole the show by demonstrating many ‘unknown’ preparations.

What Cow-Loving India Should Focus On: Making More Fodder Available To Starving Cattle

With forests overrun by weed and other unwanted growth, free-grazing lifestock face a grim situation.

Much passion is now generated in our country on the subject of protecting cattle. However, a dispassionate narration of the reality about the fodder situation for them seems to be largely missing. There are 108 million adult female cows in a cattle population of 200 million, according to the National Dairy Development Board. In addition, there are about 100 million buffaloes in the country.