I have always been intrigued by the number of eminent litterateurs who have been – and continue to be – editors of frontline newspapers in Odisha. I can vouch for the fact that a prominent writer is the first choice of many entrepreneurs when it comes to handing out the editorship of the newspaper they are about to launch. It is as if being a writer, poet or a critic of repute is all that one needs to become an editor.
I have nothing against writers. In fact, I admire the writing of many of those who have turned editors, usually at a ripe old age when they have retired from whatever they were doing all their life. But I am afraid I don’t quite buy the theory that being a writer – even an outstanding one – is enough qualification for someone to don the garb of a newspaper editor. It may have been an eminent qualification at a particular historical juncture when the language – indeed the state itself – was struggling to carve an identity of its own. The history of the pre-independence era and the first two decades of the post-independence period is replete with stalwarts who excelled both as editors and writers.
But the world of newspapers has changed beyond recognition since then. A newspaper today has no place in it for somebody who writes his weekly column containing nuggets of wisdom and scholarship with an occasional write up thrown in between two columns, engages colleagues in profound pontifications on the matters of the world and stays scrupulously clear of the mundane business of hard news. [Most of these grey eminences are also great draws at literary or cultural functions.]
Today’s newspaper editor has to be a hands-on editor, somebody who does not detest the ‘dirty’ business of news but actually revels in it. He cannot afford to be like this editor who, when asked for his email id, asked his PA with the questioner listening loud and clear; “Gouranga! What is my email id?”
May be it is a generational thing because one is yet to see proprietors or promoters opting for a relatively younger writer as an editor. It is almost always a 60-plus veteran who is preferred for the job. The proprietor, if he or she is launching the newspaper, perhaps believes that an eminent writer brings some brand equity to a completely unknown commodity. If it is a case of hiring a writer as editor of an existing newspaper - which, by the way, is very rare – the thinking perhaps is: a well known writer will add some value to the product. [The choice of jargon from new economics is deliberate because that is what a newspaper today is at the end of the day – a ‘product’.]
With due apology to those who have graced the editor’s chair, most of them only have a passing acquaintance with the events happening around them and around the world. Very few of them have definite, well thought out views on the burning issues of the day. I cannot resist sharing here my own experience with a famous writer – and an outstanding one at that, I must say. Unfortunately, my experience with him was not at as a writer but as an editor. Hours before he arrived in the office, a bunch of stapled editorials neatly torn off from the day’s newspapers would be placed at his table by the office boy. The editor would come around 2 pm, run through the bunch of editorials and then settle down to write the day’s editorial. More often than not, the bunch of editorials that he has just gone through would determine not just the subject but also the content of the day’s editorial. The editorials would frequently be a mish-mash of the points already made in them.
I am not for a moment suggesting that every writer turned editor is like this gentleman. But I dare say many of them are a little too removed from the world of news – perhaps deliberately so. And a man who is not in the thick of news is a liability rather than an asset as an editor these days.
The propensity to hire writers as editors perhaps has its origins in a widely popular misconception peculiar to Odisha that somebody with a ‘literature background’ has a much better chance of excelling as a journalist, presumably because both involve the business of ‘writing’. But as someone who comes from precisely such a background, I can assure you that nothing can be farther from the truth. A man with a literary bent of mind, in fact, has to work twice harder to unlearn all that he has been taught in college and university and learn to write for a newspaper - or a news portal for that matter. There is very little scope for the flights of fancy that a man with a ‘literature background’ is highly susceptible to.
Returning to the subject of writers as editors, I cannot really find an explanation for the reluctance of proprietors to make a professional journalist the editor. Most of them would rather ensconce themselves in the editor’s chair and leave the discharge of editorial responsibilities to a professional journalist who is humble enough to work under a non-journalist as an editor and nice enough not to complain about it. I must confess I was really elated when the venerable ‘Samaj’, considered the most conservative media house in the state, appointed one and then another professional journalist as the editor.
[This column first appeared in The Political and Business Daily]
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The price of being a hack
Every profession has its own hazards. But nothing really matches the hazards that a professional hack has to contend with. The hard physical labour is the least of the problem. But the unearthly hours that one has to keep and the unhealthy habits that one has no choice but to acquire, however, are a different ball game altogether. A natural corollary of the two is a constant fight with the family.
Just one instance of what a journo has to endure will suffice. Early on Saturday morning came the information that the two interlocutors named by the Maoists would hold a press conference at the State Guest House. Having appeared at a live chat on the subject on the issue on a TV news channel at 9.00 am, this columnist had to file a story before going for the press conference. By the time the copy was through, it was 10.45 am. As I began to rush out, my better half (bitter half is perhaps a more appropriate description) started her usual lament about my skipping breakfast. When I said I would eat something outside, she was furious. With very little time to engage in a prolonged argument with wife, I had to settle for a compromise formula – a glass of fruit juice instead of a regular breakfast.
So far, so good. But the important part of the story was in what followed. When I reached State Guest House a couple of minutes past 11 am (thanks to the short argument with his spouse), there was not a soul to be seen. Surprised, I went upstairs and asked one of the interlocutors, who said the press meet had been postponed to 12.30 pm as they were busy preparing the note. Anxious to utilize the intervening time, I rushed to the bank for some urgent transaction and then finished a couple of other chores before ringing up a colleague who had stayed put in the Guest House since morning to find out if the rescheduled press conference had begun. “No yaar, the two Secretaries –Pradeep Jena and Sanrosh Sarangi - are huddled with the two negotiators inside the room. The press conference will start only after they finish their confabulations”, the fiend informed.
By the time I returned to Guest House, it was 1 pm. There were plenty of souls around this time, but all of them were loitering around the campus. There was no sign of either the negotiators or the government officers emerging out of the room. The only development that had taken place was that the Home Secretary had joined in a few minutes back. There was no word on when the talks would end. But returning home was not an option since no journalist worth his pen (or mouse) would want to miss out on such an important event – especially if s/he belongs to the electronic media. So, along with a host of journalists, I too had to hang around the place despite repeated queries from home over the ubiquitous mobile phone (one gets nostalgic thinking about the happy pre-mobile days).
The booms of about 15 television channels remained laid out on the table for nearly two hours before the three Secretaries finally entered the State Guest House lounge at 3 pm. But lo and behold! The ‘press conference’ lasted precisely 60 seconds with the Home Secretary speaking three sentences each in English and Odia and refusing to take any questions. The assembled journos, including me, were made to look foolish. Is this what they had wasted half the day for, we wondered.
Worse was to follow when I reached home. As I was beginning to settle in front of the computer, the ‘bitter half’ almost screamed; “Do you have some sense of proportion? Do you realize that it is nearing 4 and you have not had a grain inside the stomach since morning?” Having realized long ago that discretion is the better part of manly valour on such occasions, I quietly settled on the dining chair for lunch.
[This blog was first published in The Political and Business Daily]
Just one instance of what a journo has to endure will suffice. Early on Saturday morning came the information that the two interlocutors named by the Maoists would hold a press conference at the State Guest House. Having appeared at a live chat on the subject on the issue on a TV news channel at 9.00 am, this columnist had to file a story before going for the press conference. By the time the copy was through, it was 10.45 am. As I began to rush out, my better half (bitter half is perhaps a more appropriate description) started her usual lament about my skipping breakfast. When I said I would eat something outside, she was furious. With very little time to engage in a prolonged argument with wife, I had to settle for a compromise formula – a glass of fruit juice instead of a regular breakfast.
So far, so good. But the important part of the story was in what followed. When I reached State Guest House a couple of minutes past 11 am (thanks to the short argument with his spouse), there was not a soul to be seen. Surprised, I went upstairs and asked one of the interlocutors, who said the press meet had been postponed to 12.30 pm as they were busy preparing the note. Anxious to utilize the intervening time, I rushed to the bank for some urgent transaction and then finished a couple of other chores before ringing up a colleague who had stayed put in the Guest House since morning to find out if the rescheduled press conference had begun. “No yaar, the two Secretaries –Pradeep Jena and Sanrosh Sarangi - are huddled with the two negotiators inside the room. The press conference will start only after they finish their confabulations”, the fiend informed.
By the time I returned to Guest House, it was 1 pm. There were plenty of souls around this time, but all of them were loitering around the campus. There was no sign of either the negotiators or the government officers emerging out of the room. The only development that had taken place was that the Home Secretary had joined in a few minutes back. There was no word on when the talks would end. But returning home was not an option since no journalist worth his pen (or mouse) would want to miss out on such an important event – especially if s/he belongs to the electronic media. So, along with a host of journalists, I too had to hang around the place despite repeated queries from home over the ubiquitous mobile phone (one gets nostalgic thinking about the happy pre-mobile days).
The booms of about 15 television channels remained laid out on the table for nearly two hours before the three Secretaries finally entered the State Guest House lounge at 3 pm. But lo and behold! The ‘press conference’ lasted precisely 60 seconds with the Home Secretary speaking three sentences each in English and Odia and refusing to take any questions. The assembled journos, including me, were made to look foolish. Is this what they had wasted half the day for, we wondered.
Worse was to follow when I reached home. As I was beginning to settle in front of the computer, the ‘bitter half’ almost screamed; “Do you have some sense of proportion? Do you realize that it is nearing 4 and you have not had a grain inside the stomach since morning?” Having realized long ago that discretion is the better part of manly valour on such occasions, I quietly settled on the dining chair for lunch.
[This blog was first published in The Political and Business Daily]
The Prodigy vs. The Normal Boy
Debates are meant to end in a resolution, with one side prevailing over the other or – more often than not – both sides conceding some ground and agreeing to settle for a middle ground. But this one has dragged on for close to seven years now with no end in sight. One is talking about the debate over what is right for Budhia Singh: training and preparing him to be a future marathon champion or allowing him to be a ‘normal’ child; leaving him in the care of a dedicated coach like the late Biranchi Das or providing him ‘scientific’ training that does not take a toll on his tender body; acknowledging the fact that he is a prodigy and grooming him accordingly or rejecting the claim that he is made of some special stuff altogether.
There are forceful arguments to back each of these positions. Those who believe that he could have been groomed as a possible marathoner say champions are made not by pampering children but by putting them through the rigorous training regime that is the lot of every aspiring athlete. A ‘normal’ child leading a normal life with his/her share of fun, mischief and toffees, they maintain, can never become a champion. The counter argument is equally unexceptionable. A child is a child and nothing is more important than his/her childhood – not even the prospect of an Olympic medal some day.
Budhia’s present coach Rupanwita Panda, while acknowledging her ward’s amazing endurance, points to the fact that he was made to run marathon distances at a very tender age with not enough gap between two runs by his erstwhile coach when even adult marathoners are advised to undergo a one-month long period for recovery after every run. Running marathons frequently could have proved fatal for him, she says. But the other side says for all the ‘scientific’ training that Budhia has had at the Sports Hostel, he is not winning even school races, forget about running a marathon. It sincerely believes that for all practical purposes, Budhia has been ‘lost’ for good. The rejoinder to this argument by the votaries of the scientific training school is that Budhia has never really been a short distance sprinter; he has always been a marathoner and his strength has always been his ‘endurance’ rather than his speed.
Budhia’s endurance, however, is one thing over which there is very little argument. He can still take six laps at a stretch of the 400-meter track where he trains (the maximum allowed by his present coach) without any sign of fatigue. His coach still believes that he can be a very good middle distance runner, if not a marathoner, in future. She points to Budhia’s steadily improving timing in doing the laps to justify her belief. But at the same time, she is emphatic that rushing things at this stage could be disastrous.
Meeting Budhia recently was an eye opener. The boy that one met in Kalinga Stadium bore very little resemblance to the Budhia of yore who lived in the Judo Hall in BJB Nagar. He has grown bigger, taller and fairer (may be it is the ‘scientific’ training that has done the trick). He is a much mellowed child now. Gone is the fun-loving, mischievous and at times irritable boy with wild mood swings. In its place, there is now a 10-year old who listens to you with rapt attention, speaks confidently and coherently (though the peculiar twang remains) and even joins his hands in a ‘namaste’ when you finally bid goodbye. The shoeless, shabbily dressed Budhia has been replaced by a neatly shoed, immaculately dressed boy of 10 who even speaks a smattering of English these days (after all, he is studying at one of the most sought after schools in town – the Chandrashekharpur DAV School).
It is clear that his days at the Judo Hall are a hazy, distant memory for Budhia. It does not appear that he misses his old pals at Judo Hall much. He does, however, remember and miss his first coach. He gives the distinct impression of a happy, contended boy at ease with his surroundings and circumstances.
Certain things, however, remain unchanged. As was the case in the Judo Hall, he is still the baby of the team in his new abode – the Sports Hostel. All other boarders of his hostel are at least four years older than him. (The minimum age for entry to the hostel is 14, Budhia being an exceptional case.) Like in Judo Hall again, he is apparently loved and pampered by all his seniors in the hostel.
The distance from the Judo Hall to the Sports Hostel inside Kalinga Stadium is no more than seven kilometers. But in traversing that distance, it would seem, Budhia has stepped into a whole new world. The promise of an Olympic medal in marathon is now a long forgotten dream. He now strongly resembles the ‘normal’ boy that many wanted to make out of him. A ‘normal’ boy who plays a bit of sports!
There are forceful arguments to back each of these positions. Those who believe that he could have been groomed as a possible marathoner say champions are made not by pampering children but by putting them through the rigorous training regime that is the lot of every aspiring athlete. A ‘normal’ child leading a normal life with his/her share of fun, mischief and toffees, they maintain, can never become a champion. The counter argument is equally unexceptionable. A child is a child and nothing is more important than his/her childhood – not even the prospect of an Olympic medal some day.
Budhia’s present coach Rupanwita Panda, while acknowledging her ward’s amazing endurance, points to the fact that he was made to run marathon distances at a very tender age with not enough gap between two runs by his erstwhile coach when even adult marathoners are advised to undergo a one-month long period for recovery after every run. Running marathons frequently could have proved fatal for him, she says. But the other side says for all the ‘scientific’ training that Budhia has had at the Sports Hostel, he is not winning even school races, forget about running a marathon. It sincerely believes that for all practical purposes, Budhia has been ‘lost’ for good. The rejoinder to this argument by the votaries of the scientific training school is that Budhia has never really been a short distance sprinter; he has always been a marathoner and his strength has always been his ‘endurance’ rather than his speed.
Budhia’s endurance, however, is one thing over which there is very little argument. He can still take six laps at a stretch of the 400-meter track where he trains (the maximum allowed by his present coach) without any sign of fatigue. His coach still believes that he can be a very good middle distance runner, if not a marathoner, in future. She points to Budhia’s steadily improving timing in doing the laps to justify her belief. But at the same time, she is emphatic that rushing things at this stage could be disastrous.
Meeting Budhia recently was an eye opener. The boy that one met in Kalinga Stadium bore very little resemblance to the Budhia of yore who lived in the Judo Hall in BJB Nagar. He has grown bigger, taller and fairer (may be it is the ‘scientific’ training that has done the trick). He is a much mellowed child now. Gone is the fun-loving, mischievous and at times irritable boy with wild mood swings. In its place, there is now a 10-year old who listens to you with rapt attention, speaks confidently and coherently (though the peculiar twang remains) and even joins his hands in a ‘namaste’ when you finally bid goodbye. The shoeless, shabbily dressed Budhia has been replaced by a neatly shoed, immaculately dressed boy of 10 who even speaks a smattering of English these days (after all, he is studying at one of the most sought after schools in town – the Chandrashekharpur DAV School).
It is clear that his days at the Judo Hall are a hazy, distant memory for Budhia. It does not appear that he misses his old pals at Judo Hall much. He does, however, remember and miss his first coach. He gives the distinct impression of a happy, contended boy at ease with his surroundings and circumstances.
Certain things, however, remain unchanged. As was the case in the Judo Hall, he is still the baby of the team in his new abode – the Sports Hostel. All other boarders of his hostel are at least four years older than him. (The minimum age for entry to the hostel is 14, Budhia being an exceptional case.) Like in Judo Hall again, he is apparently loved and pampered by all his seniors in the hostel.
The distance from the Judo Hall to the Sports Hostel inside Kalinga Stadium is no more than seven kilometers. But in traversing that distance, it would seem, Budhia has stepped into a whole new world. The promise of an Olympic medal in marathon is now a long forgotten dream. He now strongly resembles the ‘normal’ boy that many wanted to make out of him. A ‘normal’ boy who plays a bit of sports!
The court as the ultimate arbiter
We Indians have a time honoured tradition of knocking on the doors of the court for just about everything under the sun. The reasons for the recourse to court range from the sublime to the bizarre. Courts have been asked to adjudicate on matters as diverse as whether or not Ram Lalla was born at the disputed site where the Babri mosque stood till December 6, 1992 and whether consensual gay sex should or should not be a criminal offence. More often than not, however, it is a mundane matter of life and death which brings an individual, a group or an oragnisation to the doorsteps of a court room: a poor man harassed by the local administration, government employees denied their rightful dues by an apathetic government, tribals fighting for their forest based livelihood threatened by a mining or industrial project and so on.
There are two primary reasons for our obsession with courts: an inability (or is it unwillingness?) to come to a mature, mutually satisfying conclusion with the other party and an innate belief that the court knows best.
Two recent judgments – one each in the Supreme Court and the Orissa High Court – call into question this assumption that the court is the last word on everything: from how much compensation an accident victim should get to whether or not the election of a candidate is void.
Let us start with the one nearer home. Adjudicating on a petition filed by Nishikanta Mishra of Nationalist Lawyers’ Forum, the Orissa High Court ruled that the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) can draw water from Mahanadi through an under-construction intake well in Cuttack for its refinery project in Paradip. The honorable court supposedly based its verdict on the report of an expert committee which had apparently concluded that drawing of water – a small matter of just 40 million gallons a day - for the refinery would neither affect the drinking water and irrigation needs of the people of Cuttack and surrounding areas nor threaten the embankments of Mahanadi in Cuttack city.
This columnist is too much of an ignoramus on the subject to even think of questioning either the verdict that the honorable court delivered in its wisdom or the report of the expert committee on which the verdict was presumably based. But certain questions do come to the mind. The first: why do expert committees appointed by courts on matters of a technical nature are almost always headed – and manned, one may add – almost entirely by retired bureaucrats? Are they the sole repository of all knowledge and wisdom on matters technical? For all knows, there could be an expert outside the cozy circle of ex-bureaucrats who could argue that the remedy suggested by the expert committee and accepted by the court – the dredging of the riverbed on a 6.5 km stretch from Naraj to Jobra – is worse than the disease. Should not such voices also be heard before ruling on a matter of life and death (and that precisely is what it is for millions of people dependent on the Mahanadi)?
But what takes the cake in the judgment of the honorable High Court is the list of do’s it has drawn up for the public sector giant: pay Rs. 10 crore to the Cuttack Shishu Bhavan, Rs. 3 crore to the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Police Commissionerate for the modernization of infrastructure for safe and smooth flow of traffic and five hi-tech ambulances and construct a water treatment plant in Cuttack city to meet the drinking water needs of its people “as part of its corporate social responsibility”.
Sorry, Your Honour! But one thought you were requested by the petitioner to rule on whether or not the intake well at Hadiapatha would affect the drinking and irrigation water needs of the people and endanger the embankments along Mahanadi in Cuttack city. It was infinitely more important than the CSR obligations of a corporate house. If you thought, in your wisdom, that it would not impact either, the matter should have rested there. Why make the company pay for things totally unrelated to what it wants: water for its refinery. What, pray, is the link between the sufficiency or otherwise of water in Mahanadi and the number of beds available in the Cuttack Shishu Bhavan and the number of high-tech ambulances at the disposal of the authorities in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar? [In fact, IOC can legitimately challenge the High Court verdict asking it to pay what it has been asked to pay when its basic contention – that the intake well at Hadiapatha would not affect the people – had been upheld by the court. I have, however, no doubt whatsoever that it would do nothing of the sort, relieved as it is having the monkey off its back.]
The other question that comes to mind has to do with something entirely different. Was the fact that IOC is a public sector behemoth weigh, even if it was so small on the scale as to be called negligible, with the honorable judges? And the related question; would the verdict have been different had it been a private and a much smaller company?
Now to the other judgment, incidentally also related to rivers and water, delivered by the Supreme Court in the last week of February. In a judgment that could have far-reaching consequences, the apex court chided the Union government and asked it to implement the ambitious project of interlinking rivers in a ‘time-bound manner’ because delay in its implementation was raising the cost of the project. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia also appointed a high powered committee manned mostly by babus from both Union and state governments, save two ‘social activists’ to oversee the implementation of the project.
The debate on the desirability of the inter-linking project has not even begun in right earnest in the country and it will take years before a conclusion is arrived at. Given the fact that the idea faces such stiff opposition from environmentalists, farmers and even experts, it is entirely possible that a solution may never emerge at all. They are of the firm view that inter-linking would lead cause serious ecological imbalance, lead to displacement of millions and still not fulfill the purpose for which it was conceived in the first place: to raise the irrigation capacity of the country to 160 million hectares by 2050. Murmurs of protest against the SC verdict have already begun and there are unmistakable signs that the opposition is going to get more and more vociferous in the days to come.
The petitioner in the Mahanadi case at least has the option of challenging the High Court decision in the Supreme Court, though there is no guarantee that the apex court will overturn the HC ruling. But where does one go if one has a problem with a verdict delivered by the Supreme Court (I am sure millions of people have a serious problem with the SC ruling on inter-linking of rivers)?
There are two primary reasons for our obsession with courts: an inability (or is it unwillingness?) to come to a mature, mutually satisfying conclusion with the other party and an innate belief that the court knows best.
Two recent judgments – one each in the Supreme Court and the Orissa High Court – call into question this assumption that the court is the last word on everything: from how much compensation an accident victim should get to whether or not the election of a candidate is void.
Let us start with the one nearer home. Adjudicating on a petition filed by Nishikanta Mishra of Nationalist Lawyers’ Forum, the Orissa High Court ruled that the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) can draw water from Mahanadi through an under-construction intake well in Cuttack for its refinery project in Paradip. The honorable court supposedly based its verdict on the report of an expert committee which had apparently concluded that drawing of water – a small matter of just 40 million gallons a day - for the refinery would neither affect the drinking water and irrigation needs of the people of Cuttack and surrounding areas nor threaten the embankments of Mahanadi in Cuttack city.
This columnist is too much of an ignoramus on the subject to even think of questioning either the verdict that the honorable court delivered in its wisdom or the report of the expert committee on which the verdict was presumably based. But certain questions do come to the mind. The first: why do expert committees appointed by courts on matters of a technical nature are almost always headed – and manned, one may add – almost entirely by retired bureaucrats? Are they the sole repository of all knowledge and wisdom on matters technical? For all knows, there could be an expert outside the cozy circle of ex-bureaucrats who could argue that the remedy suggested by the expert committee and accepted by the court – the dredging of the riverbed on a 6.5 km stretch from Naraj to Jobra – is worse than the disease. Should not such voices also be heard before ruling on a matter of life and death (and that precisely is what it is for millions of people dependent on the Mahanadi)?
But what takes the cake in the judgment of the honorable High Court is the list of do’s it has drawn up for the public sector giant: pay Rs. 10 crore to the Cuttack Shishu Bhavan, Rs. 3 crore to the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Police Commissionerate for the modernization of infrastructure for safe and smooth flow of traffic and five hi-tech ambulances and construct a water treatment plant in Cuttack city to meet the drinking water needs of its people “as part of its corporate social responsibility”.
Sorry, Your Honour! But one thought you were requested by the petitioner to rule on whether or not the intake well at Hadiapatha would affect the drinking and irrigation water needs of the people and endanger the embankments along Mahanadi in Cuttack city. It was infinitely more important than the CSR obligations of a corporate house. If you thought, in your wisdom, that it would not impact either, the matter should have rested there. Why make the company pay for things totally unrelated to what it wants: water for its refinery. What, pray, is the link between the sufficiency or otherwise of water in Mahanadi and the number of beds available in the Cuttack Shishu Bhavan and the number of high-tech ambulances at the disposal of the authorities in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar? [In fact, IOC can legitimately challenge the High Court verdict asking it to pay what it has been asked to pay when its basic contention – that the intake well at Hadiapatha would not affect the people – had been upheld by the court. I have, however, no doubt whatsoever that it would do nothing of the sort, relieved as it is having the monkey off its back.]
The other question that comes to mind has to do with something entirely different. Was the fact that IOC is a public sector behemoth weigh, even if it was so small on the scale as to be called negligible, with the honorable judges? And the related question; would the verdict have been different had it been a private and a much smaller company?
Now to the other judgment, incidentally also related to rivers and water, delivered by the Supreme Court in the last week of February. In a judgment that could have far-reaching consequences, the apex court chided the Union government and asked it to implement the ambitious project of interlinking rivers in a ‘time-bound manner’ because delay in its implementation was raising the cost of the project. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia also appointed a high powered committee manned mostly by babus from both Union and state governments, save two ‘social activists’ to oversee the implementation of the project.
The debate on the desirability of the inter-linking project has not even begun in right earnest in the country and it will take years before a conclusion is arrived at. Given the fact that the idea faces such stiff opposition from environmentalists, farmers and even experts, it is entirely possible that a solution may never emerge at all. They are of the firm view that inter-linking would lead cause serious ecological imbalance, lead to displacement of millions and still not fulfill the purpose for which it was conceived in the first place: to raise the irrigation capacity of the country to 160 million hectares by 2050. Murmurs of protest against the SC verdict have already begun and there are unmistakable signs that the opposition is going to get more and more vociferous in the days to come.
The petitioner in the Mahanadi case at least has the option of challenging the High Court decision in the Supreme Court, though there is no guarantee that the apex court will overturn the HC ruling. But where does one go if one has a problem with a verdict delivered by the Supreme Court (I am sure millions of people have a serious problem with the SC ruling on inter-linking of rivers)?
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