The Residency in Lucknow is not only a museum of artefacts from the 1857 mutiny. It is also the house of djinns, says Eram Agha

No childhood is different — the inquisitive minds are invariably pampered by wonderful stories that linger for a lifetime. No matter what place you grow up in, there is always someone to tell you about the unseen world of magic and fantasy. The most recurring tale in my growing up years was that of the power of the djinns. Our domestic help, Shabbo, would gather the young brigade for a story session at the 100-year-old 'Iqbal Manzil' in Lucknow.

Her tales had three main characters — humans, djinns and angels. Djinns, by definition, are neither ghosts nor angels but they send a chill down your spine. She would warn the girls, "When you grow up into pretty women, do not venture into an abandoned mosque alone wearing white clothes, overpowering fragrant of attar and flowers. Djinns love paak and pakeezah women and possess them." Her words had such an impact that they restricted my bathing to once in three days for some time and kept me away from deserted domes and pigeon-ridden minarets. Blame the storyteller! Then a time came for me to venture into that famed mosque of The Residency, which is considered to be the place where djinns pray. As I entered the mosque, I met the keeper or khadim, Abbas Hussain. After initial greetings, I gently asked about the presence of djinns in the mosque. He motioned me to silence and gestured we move away from the edifice torn by canons in 1857. "Please move ahead, they can hear us talk," he said. "Who?" I asked. He replied, "Buzurgvaar, (elderly). They are old, they have been here for ages, they are the worshippers of God, they are the djinns! I wouldn't do or say anything to offend them. After all, I work for their convenience."

He took me around the masjid and pointed to the area from where Begum Hazrat Mahal would enter the mosque and the platform where Wajid Ali Shah recited marsiyah, or dirges. You can't miss the many small shapes carved in the walls — taakh. "A masjid with taakh will always have djinns, it is a kind of nameplate that hints their presence. Visitors light agarbatti and candles at the taakh to pay respect to the buzurgvaar," he said. After offering my share of candles and prayers, I moved out to meet Rakesh Kumar Gupta, whom I had always remembered as a master storyteller.

"Have you ever been to Kudwar Ki Bazaar?" he asked me after he heard of my experience. As I shook my head in the negative, he shared a story from his childhood. "I must have been eight when I set out to steal mangoes from the orchard belonging to an old man. My other friends were party to it. The meeting time was fixed at 3 am. The plan was to pluck some mangoes and run away," he said. But no one turned up at night and he found himself alone at that unearthly hour sitting and waiting for his friends under the tree. And then, "I saw a marriage procession entering the abandoned Vahshiya ki masjid, or mosque of the fallen women. This was the mosque named after women who would dance and collect money to build mosques. The baraatis were all dressed in white and played harmonium. I have still not forgotten that smell of flowers, in fact I have never smelt something like that till now," Gupta added.

His most astonishing revelation was that the sweeper woman, who cleans the mosque, gets paid inasharfi dating back to Raja Harsh even today. The next thing Gupta did was take my pen and paper and draw the map for reaching Kudwar Ki Bazaar for experiencing the real stories of India. "Go and meet the sweeper woman who finds an asharfi placed at the taakh after each day's work," he said, and warned, "Hope she didn't sell it off for peanuts to support her family."

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-The Pioneer, 1st September 2013

Any wedding in the Capital is incomplete without a visit to Chawri Bazar, a congested wholesale market area in old Delhi.

From Hauz Qazi to Bade Shahbulla, hundreds of shops occupy every nook and cranny of the area specialising in wholesale trade of paper, wedding cards, hardware materials, utensils and pipes of different makes. The bazaar has been in existence since the Mughal times.

Pedestrians have to fight for their right of way with a range of vehicles — two wheelers, four-wheelers, rehdis and goods carriers amid cacophony of sounds. But if you thought this area was peaceful and less congested in earlier times, it was not.

Theories abound about the origin of the name. Chawri is originally a Marathi word, which means a centrally located area with temporary sheds/tents erected for traders.

"It is believed that during the reign of Shah Alam, the Marathas collected tax from the tehbazari vendors on behalf of the Mughal king for a commission. This was the place they gathered every evening," said Sohail Hashmi, a heritage activist.

RV Smith, a popular historian of Delhi, differs slightly. "No doubt, Marathas were stationed here. But this area was known as Chawri bazaar even before that. The area was known also for the courtesans and dancing girls."

With the advent of Britishers (read Victorian values), the women were looked down upon and the area was equated to what we call red light area in modern parlance. "After Partition, this was shifted to GB Road," Smith added.

-The Hindustan Times. 1st September 2013

The author is awestruck by art that dates from the Palaeolithic to the medieval, all on one stony canvas in Bhimbetka.

Fursat mein kya kare darinda/Ghaaron mein but gadhe darinda/Patta-patta lahu bahaye/Jhaadi-jhaadi chhupe darinda. What does the creature do for leisure/It creates idols in caves/Shedding its blood on leaves/The creature hides in bushes.

Fresh from the book launch of Ijlal Majeed's stunning new poetry collection in Bhopal, I find myself gazing at the rock shelters of Bhimbetka and murmuring these verses over and over again. For indeed there is something subliminal about this place; it makes you question accepted notions of time and timelessness. Looking at the ochre and fire-engine red paintings drawn by human hands several thousand years ago, spotting a buffalo here or a deer there, espying a scene of grief and another of happiness, seeing how our earliest ancestors fought, sang and played makes Bhimbetka a singularly unusual place.

An archaeologist, Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar, chanced upon these rock shelters in 1957 while travelling by train to Bhopal. Hidden by a dense, almost impenetrable, forest inhabited by wild animals, these shelters had long existed in aboriginal folklore and found mention in the popular culture of the Adivasis. With the advent of the Buddhist era, some stupas too came to be built in the vicinity and, though still unexplored, the region became associated with Buddhist lore. The name Bhimbetka, however, is associated with Bhima, the warrior-prince from the Mahabharata known for his immense strength. The word 'Bhimbetka' is said to be derived from Bhimbaithka, meaning the baithak (a sit-down) of Bhima. Wakankar's serendipitous discovery brought the 700-odd rock shelters — spread over 10 km — and the stunning paintings in red or white with the occasional flash of yellow or green to world attention, causing UNESCO to declare them a World Heritage Site in 1970.

Situated 45 km from Bhopal, at the southern edge of the low-lying Vindhyachal hills, these rock shelters comprise precariously balanced massive sandstone rocks forming natural shelters from the sun, wind and rain. On the smooth underside of the rock faces are painted scenes from an ancient past showing the earliest traces of human life in India. Scientists believe that these rock shelters, deep in the forested heart of the Indian sub-continent, were inhabited by hominids such as Homo erectus more than 100,000 years ago. The rock paintings found here are approximately 30,000 years old, i.e. belonging to the Palaeolithic Age. A cluster of rock shelters, called the 'Zoo', shows a profusion of animals and birds in the most vivid colours and lifelike forms. Also the most densely painted, the scenes painted here span from the Mesolithic to the mediaeval: boars, elephants, rhinoceros,barasingha, spotted deer, cattle, snake account for its well-deserved name.

Elsewhere, scenes depicting hunting, fishing and food-gathering as well as communal dances, childbirth, the use of musical instruments, drinking, funerals and burials make these rock surfaces come alive with a thousand stories. Recognisable animals like boar, elephants, buffalo, deer, bison, dog, and monkey appear in many scenes as do humans — both alone and in groups — thus indicating that the concept of a society that had already emerged in the Palaeolithic period. The Mesolithic Age that began nearly 8,000 years before Christ — understood to be the transitional age between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ages — was the time when traditions and religious beliefs based on nature and ecology began to take shape. The Bhimbetka paintings bear witness to how a great civilisation came into being, how its foundations were laid in crude line drawings and how later generations filled these outlines with colour, detail, a sharp eye and a lively imagination.

Different peoples belonging to different evolutionary groups used the same rock surfaces as their canvas; thus multiple scenes are either superimposed or drawn alongside. The oldest and most muted — also with, comparatively speaking 'cruder' paintings belonging to the earliest periods — are usually closer to the rock base. As the eye travels upwards the scenes are remarkable for their detailing: a spotted deer, a gaily decorated horse, a man carrying a plumed hand-held insignia similar to the ones still used by Adivasi dancers, horse-borne riders carrying blunt stone instruments and then, progressively, bows and arrows, and massed figures engaged in battle.

Overwhelmed by the tableaux set out before our unbelieving eyes, our small party of three sought a quiet corner to take in the enormity of human evolution displayed almost chronologically before us. We were happy when we found a ledge at the far corner of 'View Point'. Propped up against a smooth rock-face, we sat in companionable silence gazing at the patchwork quilt spread out by Nature. The setting sun was turning the fields of mustard to molten gold, the tender green of unripe wheat alternated with the darker olive of stately Sal trees, and the earth and sky seemed to meet in perfect harmony on the distant horizon.

Just as we were visualising how utterly magical the view from 'our' ledge would be during the rains and making mental plans to come again during the monsoon, the magical thread of stillness was snapped in the rudest manner possible. The Great Indian Tourist arrived unbidden and, like the proverbial bull in a china chop, proceeded to have a long and loud conversation on his cell phone, thus breaking into smithereens the silence that we had been revelling in. Supremely unaffected by our glares and pointed 'shhhhss' he continued an endless monologue in his booming voice till, finally, we conceded defeat and chose to get up and leave. But nothing and nobody could take away the awe we carried home with us — awe in the primeval being that is the Homo sapien, an awe that still makes me break out in goose bumps as I visualise Bhimbetka in my mind's eye.

-The Hindu, 1st September 2013

Residents around the Hauz-I-Shamsi in Mehrauli are worried about their water body.

Unchecked mosquito breeding is creating unhygienic conditions in the area as water hyacinth continues to grow abundantly in the lake despite the inflow of sewer from neighbouring colonies being stopped nearly two years ago.

Hauz-I-Shamshi, popular locally as Shamsi Talab, was earlier spread over 100 hectares. Over the years, not only has the lake shrunk, but the catchments have also seen construction. Both the lake and its neighbour Jahaz Mahal fall under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) purview.

"Some unknown people have again routed the drainage into the lake. Moreover, dumping of garbage continues unabated," said Lalit Gupta, secretary of the Shamsi Talab resident welfare association.

After Vinod Jain of NGO Tapas moved court for saving Delhi's lakes and water bodies, court orders ensured that Shamsi Talab was cleaned at least 3-4 times in the past decade. But the cleaning has not been done in recent years.

"We have also written to the Delhi Parks and Garden Society for support and are in the process for getting the ASI NoC for involving the society," Gupta added.

"We will approach the Delhi Jal Board for desilting of the lake. If needed, we can make provision in our budget for funding it," said Vasant Swarnakar, ASI's Delhi circle chief.

-The Hindustan Times, 2nd September 2013

Excavators stumbled upon something unexpected in a 10th century temple in Andhra Pradesh - four gold coins with the image of Napoleon Bonaparte III.

The 18th century French coins were of Ksheera Ramalingeswara Swamy temple at Palacole in West Godavari district.

They were lying nine feet underground in the dhwajastambham which collapsed some time back due to heavy rain, a newspaper report said on Monday.

Napoleon Bonaparte III was a descendant of Napoleon -- the first emperor of France. The temple's dhwajastambham was built about 150 years ago.



-The India Today, 2nd September 2013

Uttarakhand will soon be having the Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary which is known for its rich flora and fauna, in its tourist map as the State forest department is planning to equip this hitherto less traversed wild habitat with necessary tourist infrastructure, allowing tourism activities there.

The Nandhaur valley that falls in the Haldwani forest division was accorded the status of the wildlife sanctuary only about a year ago. The interesting fact is that the officials concerned of the Haldwani forest division are also planning to open this wildlife sanctuary for tourism purpose by creating requisite infrastructure. "We have got fund Rs 30 lakh initially sanctioned, for equipping the Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary with necessary basic infrastructure like proper roads, drinking water services, hutments, dormitory to name a few," PC Arya, SDO, the Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary, told The Pioneer in an exclusive interview.

"The basic objective behind integrating wildlife conservation activities here with tourism is to create awareness among the masses about the wildlife. Providing access to the people to the wildlife will definitely help them understand the role of wildlife and the forest in our eco-system," he said. As the wildlife as well as tour operators here believe, putting the Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary on the tourist map may go a long way in promoting tourist as well as wildlife conservation activities in this region with this area having easy access from both the Haldwani and Tanakpur sides.

The Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary flanked by the Gola river in the west and the Sharda river in the east, also has the Nandhaur river passing through the thick forests of this sanctuary, which finally disappears in the tarai area.Though there are many other small rivers in this landscape, but the Nandhaur river can be described as the lifeline for the wildlife here with substantial water which remain available throughout the year.

This wildlife sanctuary also has large swathes of undisturbed forests which have virtually no habitation. Thus, this region would definitely be a new attraction for the nature lovers, maintained the wildlife experts here. The Nandhaur wildlife sanctuary consists of mainly Sal, Shisham, Bamboo, Teak, Chir Pine and riverine forests and houses tiger, leopard, elephant, Sloth Bear, Mahaseer and Great Pied Hornbill to name a few. At the same time threat to the wildlife in the said wild habitat is not less concerning, said the officials concerned, saying integrating the wild conservation efforts with tourism may come in handy in protecting the flora and fauna in this sanctuary.

-The Pioneer, 2nd September 2013

Days after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India rapped the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) for 15 monuments/ sites under Delhi circle that had been classified as "missing", ASI officials have claimed that they have traced eight of them.

The physical verification during the CAG performance audit had shown 15 missing monuments/sites as against 12 communicated to Parliament since 2006, the report said.

Across India, CAG had claimed that 92 monuments/ sites were missing from the 1,655 it had inspected.

CAG had also criticised the ASI for not "maintaining reliable database of protected monuments".

For Delhi circle, it had pointed out a discrepancy of 25 monuments as it found only 149 monuments as per circle/sub-circle records as against 174 monuments/sites as per the ASI.

Delhi circle officials have now claimed that these are not exactly missing monuments.

"There were dual notifications for some monuments, some such as Jogabai Mound are heavily encroached upon and hence not visible," said Vasant Swarnakar, ASI's Delhi circle chief.

'Joga Bai mound' is now buried deep inside colonies such as Batla House, Zakir Nagar, Joga Bai and Mehboob Nagar.

"The ASI has carried out a survey using the total station method and the revenue authorities too have confirmed the location. But the mound is badly encroached upon," he said.

For instance, ' Hauz- eShamsi' in Mehrauli has been notified also as 'Shamsi Talab'. The 1928 Government of India listing mentions 'Moti Gate of Sher Shah', which is actually 'Sher Shah Gate', again a case of dual notification.

'Statue of General Nicholson' was gifted away by the Centre in the 1960s to Ireland but has not been de-notified even now. 'Sat Narain Bhawan' figured in the 1974 list but the high court had quashed the notification. Three monuments/sites that are actually missing are 'Pul Chaddar' — which government records claim was demolished during Delhi-Rohtak road modernisation — and two seize batteries once located inside Qudsia Garden.

"The updated list has been sent to the headquarter and we will initiate a process for delisting of these monuments," Swarnakar said.

If these monuments/sites are de-listed, it would mean the number of Delhi's ASI protected monuments would come down from 174 to 166.

The number can further go down if the ASI is able to able to confirm/verify the status of remaining seven monuments/ sites and delist them too.

-The Hindustan Times, 2nd September 2013

The forest department has prepared an action plan to save the Delhi Ridge that is struggling to survive the onslaught of concrete, illegal occupation and truckloads of debris.

The action comes after Hindustan Times in a threeday series from August 19 to 21 highlighted the terrible plight of Delhi’s original forest and the city’s lungs.

The plan looks at plantation of indigenous tree species, creation of nurseries, demarcation of forest boundaries, removal of encroachment and garbage dumps and settlement of land disputes -- all through increased budgetary provisions and greater manpower.

Admitting to “negligible field monitoring” in the 7,777-hectare ridge because of lack of vehicles, the department has sought four four-wheelers and six two-wheelers.

The action plan for the current and the next three financial years has been pegged at R3.92 crore. It will be submitted to the Ridge Management Board for approval.

The rocky outcrop of the Aravali ranges, which includes the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary and the Aravali Biodiversity Park, prevents hot winds and sand dunes from Rajasthan.

Conservation of this arid, open scrub forest with ‘kikar’ being the dominant tree species is critical because it provides a buffer against rising pollution levels in Delhi.

“There is a need for a young and passionate forestry consultant to study the soil and weather conditions, select plant species and monitor the restoration work. The department needs a technical expert for electronically mapping forest land and encroachment,” the plan says.

The indigenous species of trees proposed to be planted include shisham, neem, kachnar, imli, pilkhan, gular, amaltas, peepal, ber, sharifa, jamun and harsingar.

Mining of quartize rocks created a large number of pits, which now act as water recharge points. The ridge prevents erosion and siltation and provides aesthetics and recreational opportunities.

“A major part of the ridge was notified in 1994 and 1996 after which no construction should have been allowed. Development has all but destroyed it,” the plan says. The plan mentions “a dusty, unlicensed village” in the ridge.

“The ridge is rapidly shrinking, falling prey to construction activities, land diversion, encroachment and garbage dumping. The ridge must be conserved and kept free of unrestricted and unplanned urban development,” the plan says.

The Hindustan Times, 4th September 2013

In a bid to make commuting easy, the New Delhi Municipal Council has uploaded a detailed map of its area that shows several points of interest. Officials believe the Council has become the first in the country to do so.

With VVIP area under the council's jurisdiction, NDMC chairman Jalaj Srivastava said with smartphones and GIS mapping, people should be able to know where they are headed without fear of wasting time on roundabouts.

Mapping would also reduce the response time for emergency services, Srivastava said.

"The map has been uploaded and with smartphones and 3G technology. I want every person struggling with routes to navigate the area easily. Not just that, people may be able to help reduce the response time if a calamity occurs. Suppose a tree falls on a road, the person can send us the picture or text and we can reach there in minimal time by getting the coordinates of the place," Srivastava said.

The details include road intersections, flyovers, private and public land, primary buildings, secondary buildings, public trees (large and small) and private trees (large and small), streetlights, transformers, manholes, dustbins, park lights, and every house in the area. The area map can be searched through various keywords such as address, home owner, road location, and road intersections.

The map gives out details about buildings, civic services, electrical sub-stations, community centres, houses, road intersections, mosques, kerb land, water bodies, overhead and under-construction Metro line, petrol pumps and footpath land.

The chairman also said the effort to map the area and upload it was initiated when Rakesh Mehta was in-charge, but could not be implemented.

"We want everyone to make use of technology. We understand that this is a very important and sensitive area but we will do our best to protect it through technology. This area is visited by lots of foreigners, tourists, expats and our own commuters. Instead of understanding the area through maps, we want people to make use of technology now available on their phones," Srivastava said.

The Indian Express, 3rd September 2013

Okhla Bird Sanctuary is in danger . At least 10 realty projects within a kilometre radius of its Noida boundary might just sound its death knell. High rises , flyovers , malls and heavy traffic on roads on both sides of the ailing sanctuary have not just driven away the winged visitors , but also destroyed the microhabitat that could have been an excellent groundwater recharge system as well as the city's lung . 

The projects have come up on the potential eco-sensitive zone (ESZ ) of the sanctuary without environmental clearance or the wildlife board's permission , exposing the collusion between realty giants and the government . When TOI visited the sanctuary , it found a strip of small trees on the Noida side, which could hardly protect the fragile habitat of the sanctuary from the pollution caused by the projects that have encroached upon the eco-sensitive zone occupying 10km radius , as defined by the Supreme Court . The Delhi side is absolutely bare . The boundary wall towards the Jamia Nagar side in Delhi has been broken up in places to dump waste . Uttar Pradesh is one of the many states that have not notified the ESZ around its national parks and sanctuaries , leading to degradation of the Okhla sanctuary's rich wetland ecosystem . Data with the Noida Authority shows there are 53 projects in various stages of construction within the ESZ . 

Birder Nikhil Devasar , a regular at the sanctuary , says over 150 species no longer visit the park . "The sanctuary is a shadow of its former self. Mayawati's palace on the boundary has replaced thousands of trees . Now, realty projects have completely taken over the buffer zone ," he says . Nikhil recollects spotting more than 50,000 ducks six to seven years ago ; nowthere arelessthan 5,000. While the staff doesn't share the number of birds electrocuted by the high-tension power lines acrossthe park ,it admits the wires have obstructed their pathway . Species like Redcrested Pochards , Ferruginous Pochards , Bar-headed Geese, Greater Flamingos and Oriental Hobbys are said to be missing . 

"The bird park is the common target . We had to stop Noida Authority from constructing a building here a few years ago . The officials want to adorn the area with exotic tree species . We explain to them that the sanctuary has to be wild, not necessarily beautiful ," says a staff member . Despite restricted entry , cars and bikes can seen roaring through the area . "Wetlands are crucial for areas in need of a groundwater recharge system , such as the NCR, as they absorb floodwater .They are also a source of livelihood . The encroachments points to a conspiracy between the state government and the environment ministry . An independent probe is needed ," says Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams , Rivers and People . Activists and bodies like Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS ) had suggested that the sanctuary be classified as a Ramsar site to allow for international scrutiny , but neither of the two states paid heed. Ramki Sreenivasan ,conservationist and birder ,says wetlands across the country are neglected as they are often on prime property unlike forests . "The UP government could create an authority on the lines of the lake development authority in Bangalore for protection of wetlands.”

The Times of India, 3rd September 2013

After they were threatened with closure, restaurants in the bustling Hauz Khas Village have promised to comply with state pollution laws, a Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) official said on Tuesday.

Thirty-four restaurants in the village were issued notices by the DPCC on August 14 for failure to treat waster water. The establishments were told that they would be made to shut if steps were not taken to ensure treatment of waste water.

According to DPCC regulations, any restaurant with a seating capacity of 36 and above is required to manage its effluents and obtain a certificate, which would be given once it passed an emission inspection by the DPCC.

DPCC officials said the none of the 34 restaurants in Hauz Khas Village was complying with these rules.

"They had 15 days to come up with a plan to start complying with the regulations," DPCC Member Secretary Sandeep Mishra said. "Most of them have responded and ensured compliance," he said.

The restaurants and DPCC were put on the spot by social activist Pankaj Sharma, a resident of Kucha Pati Ram in Old Delhi, who submitted a petition to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in July this year, pointing out the violations which he found through several RTI requests.

Sharma emphasised that the waste water issue mentioned in his petition could cause soil pollution and result in the spread of diseases.

Mishra said now that the DPCC had sent out the message, restaurants were seeking guidance and have been granted further time to comply with the regulations.

The National Green Tribunal on Tuesday rejected the Delhi government’s stand on illegal extraction of groundwater as “imaginative” and formed a committee to check the problem.

“Water levels in Delhi have gone down in the recent past by hundreds of feet. The figures (of illegal borewells and action taken) seem imaginative,” the tribunal said. “No consumer (using illegal borewells) is paying the price. This becomes an incentive, which leads to loss of groundwater and shortage of potable water. Despite a government notification issued in 2010 to check illegal extraction, things have gone from bad to worse,” it said.

The committee headed by Delhi’s environment secretary will in a month prepare a comprehensive plan to check the illegal extraction of groundwater. It will list all legal and illegal tubewells in Delhi. It will also ensure cases are filed against those flouting the rules.

“All legal tubewells will have water meters. The committee will recommend a charge for use of groundwater,” the tribunal said. The committee will recommend measures to prevent pollution and check depleting groundwater levels in Delhi and suggest methods to encourage rainwater harvesting.

The chief executive officer of the Delhi Jal Board and the deputy commissioner (south west) of Delhi’s revenue department said there were only 806 legal and 205 illegal tubewells in Delhi.

Suggest steps to check illegal extraction of groundwater.

Ensure cases are filed against violators. Ensure legal tubewells have water meters. NGT will hear the matter on Oct 4, when the panel files its report.

The green watchdog was far from impressed even by the latest stand and said: “It has been reported before us that there are more than 4.5 lakh tubewells extracting underground water in Delhi. Be that as it may, it cannot be disputed that there are a large number of illegal tubewells operating in Delhi.”

Suggest measures to check falling groundwater levels in the city, encourage rainwater harvesting. nal is hearing a petition filed by the legal aid cell of the national green tribunal bar association. The committee will submit its report by October 4, when the matter is heard next.

Senior lawyer Raj Panjwani, who appeared for the bar, said: “DJB’s claim that it’s a mere water supply authority and doesn’t permit borewells will not hold. Its CEO is also part of the committee formed by the court.”

The Hindustan Times, 4th September 2013

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday expressed concern over the "one-track mind" report filed by PWD regarding an elevated road project on Outer Ring Road in West Delhi. It said "there was not a single word in the report about saving trees".

The tribunal has directed the agency to inform how it intends to save trees in the area, which falls under the project, and has also asked the Delhi government in a separate case to not lay any road inside the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in the southern Ridge area.

After going through the PWD report on the elevated road project proposed in West Delhi, a bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar directed the Conservator of Forests, Delhi government, and the PWD to jointly inspect the site to decide whether transplantation or removal of the 75 trees is necessary for continuing the work.

The tribunal in its order also directed that if it is not possible to transplant the trees, then afforestation in the ratio of 1:20 be undertaken by the PWD.

Currently, the area under the project has 1,485 trees. The bench has directed the PWD Chief Engineer to file a personal affidavit giving all details of trees which require to be felled, those that can be transplanted to the sides of the proposed road and those that will be transplanted to another site.

"There is not a single word in the report regarding saving trees. That is what concerns us. This is a one-track-mind report. The engineer is only concerned about the project. We need to know how many trees can be saved and how many are going to be felled. We also want to know about the compensatory afforestation to be taken up. This report is silent on all these issues," the NGT bench said on Wednesday.

The Indian Express, 5th September 2013

New IPCC report raises questions over urgency or seriousness of climate change

The climate has not been warming over the past 15 years at rates predicted earlier, the latest report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be released September end, is going to say.

The report is also going to accept that carbon dioxide gas concentration in atmosphere may not be as potent in causing global temperature increases as was believed earlier. The Hindu accessed the report’s Summary for Policy Makers — a precise guide for political leaders and negotiators on what the latest science of climate change is indicating.

The report says: “The rate of warming over the past 15 years (from 1998-2012) at 0.05 degree Celsius per decade is smaller than the trend over the longer period 1951-2012 which stands at 0.12 degree Celsius per decade.” This means that in the last 15 years, the rate of warming has been 40% slower than in the period 1951-2012.

But the facts do not take away from the reality of anthropogenic climate change. They instead suggest that the understanding of the emissions-temperatures-nature linkages is being revised and that the level of urgency or seriousness of the issue is being revisited by science as well as policymakers.

The IPCC is the apex body of the U.N., providing guidance to the countries on what is the best, the latest and the most authentic science available on climate change. The summary is in the form of a final draft, which is going to be fine-tuned by negotiators days before being released on September 27. But it is now almost certain that the sudden dip in global warming — often called the hiatus — is going to become the most controversial and key element of the report. The last time the IPCC brought out such studies in 2007 as part of the ‘4th Assessment Report’, it led to a high-pitched demand for greater action against climate change and consequently a high-profile meeting of the countries at Copenhagen in 2009.

This report and others to be produced by the IPCC through the next few months are going to form a critical input into the new global agreement that the world is supposed to finalise by 2015. But this report has brought back on top the question that a sluggish global economy is expected to push: is there really an emergency or has the latest science shown that countries may have more time at hand to sign the new agreement?

The report does not say the temperatures are not rising over the long run as emissions of greenhouse gases go up in the atmosphere but that the somewhat linear relation many presumed up to now about the two may not be true. The long-term trend though is rather clear as per the report. Various reasons are provided for why it may be so. The report, however, does say that each decade has been warmer than all preceding decades since 1850 and the first decade of the 21st century has been the warmest.

But the nature of international political processes that come together at the UN climate negotiations and the general economic lull is expected to play up the hiatus. At the last Major Economies Forum meeting recently and before that too some countries had hinted that 2015 may not be the year that the new agreement is all completely sealed up. They suggested that large and critical elements may be agreed upon by 2015 and the details of how countries would really act could flow in later by the time the agreement gets operationalised in 2020. The report on the hiatus and warming impact of CO emissions could further compound the reticence of many countries.

The report predicts that by the turn of the century, the temperatures are likely to exceed 1.5° above pre-industrial era. The chances that the temperatures will go beyond 2° above the pre-industrial era are less likely under most scenarios. Temperatures shooting more than 4 degree higher above the benchmark are rather unlikely.

Because these predictions are probabilistic in nature, terms such as ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ refer to a range of probability that an ‘event’ may take place.

Another controversy has been finally addressed in the UN’s IPCC report — how strong is the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on the atmosphere in raising the global temperatures. The new report has brought down the lower range of the impact of the gas concentrations by a substantial level. This impact is measured by predicting how much the global mean surface temperatures would change after the concentration of the gas (in this case CO) is doubled in the atmosphere and the natural systems allowed to reach a new equilibrium. Earlier the IPCC said the likely range of increase would be 2° Celsius to 4.5° Celsius. The new report says with high confidence scientists conclude the doubling of CO emissions could have as low an increase in global temperatures as 1.5°.

This again leads some to say that the fear that the world may be staring at an immediate crisis could be exaggerated and the global community could have just a bit more time at hand than it has been presumed earlier. But many do contend that the slow pace of negotiations and the effort being made are already too little to check climate change impacts.

The science reproduced in the IPCC reports is the latest research gathered over the past few years by a large panel of scientists. The IPCC had earlier come in for criticism for letting less than well established facts creep in and the climate sceptics have always blamed it for pushing the reports beyond legitimate limits and ignoring contrary scientific signals. The new report does take a more ‘moderate’ view on some impacts and scientific facts related to science but continues to be unequivocal, and in fact more confident, that global warming is hastening even though there might be some vagueness about how the warming will alter natural processes, especially at regional and local levels.

The Hindu, 5th September 2013

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has demanded a complete ban on animals, including elephants, in circuses. PETA officials said they found rampant and widespread abuse of various animals, including elephants and exotic birds, used in circuses, during an investigation of circuses across India along with NGO 'Animal Rahat' authorised by Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI).

The team inspected 16 registered circuses across India during the investigation from November last year to July this year and found only one circus that featured "only human" shows.

PETA officials said they found rampant violations of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (PCA) 1960, Performing Animal Rules and Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. "The findings from our extensive investigation reveal that cruelty to animals is inherent in the circus business, a conclusion that has already led numerous countries to ban use of animals in circuses. It is high time for a ban on use of animals in Indian circuses," Dr Manilal Valliyate, director of veterinary affairs at PETA, said.

PETA officials said they have submitted their report to AWBI and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF). The Central Zoo Authority (CZA), through a circular issued in November, 2009, has already banned elephants from zoo collections throughout the country.

PETA has demanded that AWBI deregister all animals used by circuses and no more animals should be registered to circuses. PETA officials said since circuses are classified under zoo collections as per the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, CZA should confirm a ban on use of elephants in circuses by enforcing its circular issued in 2009.

"Once AWBI deregisters animals in circuses, CZA should remove it from the definition of 'zoo collections' under the Recognition of Zoo Rules 2009," PETA has recommended. The investigations revealed that there was rampant use of weapons, including iron hooks with knife-like ends, on animals and many of the animals had died from inadequate care or had simply gone missing.

PETA investigations also found that nearly constant chaining and caging was done to elephants, dogs and various animals. The team also found drunk circus staff handling the animals. "Frightened animals were made to perform dangerous acts in violation of the Performing Animals (Registration) Rules 2001 and there was also use of animals not registered with AWBI amongst others. In many cases, it was found that wings of birds were cut with scissors or blades," Valliyate said.

PETA report said in March, an elephant died during transport reportedly as a result of negligence on the part of circus staff.

The Times of India, 5th September 2013

Neglect of world heritage sites and lack of an updated conservation policy are some of the main complaints against the Archaeological Survey of India in a recent CAG report. The report also says that ASI does not have a database for the total number of antiquities in its possession and 95% of artifacts in museums have never been on display.

Since world heritage sites generate maximum revenue for ASI, they should have more visitor facilities, better conservation and improved security, the CAG report says. India has 19 world heritage sites of which three are in Delhi. However, it has been found that basic measures for security are missing as are public amenities. Encroachments and unauthorized constructions are rampant.

A number of encroachments were noticed in Red Fort and Qutub Minar. Security equipment like handheld metal detectors and scanners were not available at seven world heritage sites and CCTVs were missing in 16 out of 19 sites. In a case study at Red Fort, problems of encroachment, unauthorized construction and poor maintenance of monuments inside the complex were mentioned. Highlights included missing plaster and floral designs, need for chemical cleaning, damaged pathways and ill-kept gardens.

ASI's failure to provide amenities to visitors has been highlighted. To make monuments visitor-friendly, ASI is expected to provide drinking water, toilets, ramps for physically challenged and notice-boards in Braille. The Persons With Disability (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 calls for the provision of ramps in public buildings and adaptation of toilets for wheelchair users.

However, CAG found that ASI has failed to provide basic amenities at most of 2,461 sites. At least 96% monuments did not have Braille signboards and 82% had no toilets, while A total of 72% did not have drinking water. In Delhi, only seven monuments had drinking water and toilets and three sites had complaint registers for tourists. "This adversely affects footfall and reduces quality of experience for tourists," said the report.

ASI has been following the John Marshall guide of 1912. It's working on updating the manual. The report also says ASI does not have a policy for management of antiquities. Storage conditions of these antiquities in monuments like Safdarjung's Tomb and Purana Qila are deplorable. Given space constraints, museums worldwide have devised a policy for periodic rotation of display items but museums in India including National Museum are yet to adopt it. "More than 95% objects are lying in reserve," said the report.

The Times of India, 5th September 2013

Delhi's only triple arched gateway bears a new look. The original facade has been covered with new plasterwork that in no way resembles its original look and the floral motif designs above some of the arched openings have vanished completely. Unfortunately for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the 'new' look of this 400-year-old gateway has failed to impress conservationists and experts who consider it irreversible damage to an ancient monument. ASI is now in salvage mode.

Conservation work on the Tripolia Gateway was awarded to a private contractor nearly two years ago. While the priority was to lower the road level of the gateways as heavy vehicles used to hit the surface of the structure while passing through the arched openings, conservation of the facade was also in focus. With years of neglect, there were minor cracks in the surface and more than a year ago a passing truck had rammed against one of the gateways leading to a massive crack in the facade.

"A contractor was roped in for the conservation of the gateways but during an inspection last year it was found that the work was not up to the mark and full payment was stopped. They have been told to rectify the mistakes found in the inspection,'' said an ASI source.

More than a year after the shoddy conservation work came to light, there has been no rectification. There are two such gateways with three arched openings each located on either side of a carriageway on the Grand Trunk Road. While the floral motifs and geometric patterns in six arches (three on each side) of one gateway can still be found, in the other the Islamic pattern in four of the six arched openings has completely vanished. "The original details of the monument have been defaced in the conservation work. Even the John Marshall conservation manual highlights that missing floral motifs can be recreated if strong evidence exists and in this instance, evidence in the other arches is fortunately clearly visible," said an expert. ASI officials said an internal committee was looking into the Tripolia conservation work and a report is expected soon.

The shoddy conservation job was also mentioned in a recent CAG report which hauled up ASI for poor monitoring of the contractor. "In November 2011, during a site inspection, the deputy superintending archaeological engineer observed that the plaster work executed by the contractor did not match the original plaster as the original had various block, moulded and ornamental designs besides floral motifs above the arches of the gate. The contractor executed plain plaster work... instead of the ornamental designs, thus defeating the basic purpose of conservation and restoration," said the CAG report. "However, ASI still made a payment of Rs 8.17 lakh. The circle informed the contractor that the work executed by him had destroyed the very character of the monument and destroyed the aesthetic view of the monument, which would be difficult to restore at this stage," the report added.

The Times of India, 5th September 2013

The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday ordered an interim stay on a road proposed to be constructed in the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in Delhi’s southern Ridge. 

The order came after Hindustan Times on August 19 published a report headlined “Troubled road ahead for Delhi’s lone sanctuary” and exposed the public works department of the Delhi government that wanted to build the road.

No construction can take place inside a wildlife sanctuary without permission from the national board for wildlife, headed by the prime minister.

“The Delhi government must state whether any road is proposed in the sanctuary. If that is so, they will not do any construction in that area till the next date of hearing (September 30),” the tribunal said.

Senior lawyer Raj Panjwani brought the HT report to the notice of the tribunal and said, “Instead of implementing a Supreme Court order by persuading illegal occupants in the sanctuary to move out, as provisions have already made for their rehabilitation, the government is building roads for them.”

Panjwani is assisting the tribunal as amicus curiae in matters related to the ridge.
The PWD in May sought to build the road but the forest department rejected the proposal.

 “It’s a 12-km and 10-feet road and had always been there. That’s the only way for residents of Sanjay Colony to get out and move towards Chhatarpur. We’re only maintaining it,” PWD executive engineer Jai Singh told HT recently. “The budget for the project is R15 crore and work on a 10-km stretch is complete. The remaining 2 km needs to be done,” he said.

Sanjay Colony, an entire village of 25,000 people, lives illegally in the sanctuary. After a Supreme Court order, the government shifted two smaller colonies from the sanctuary in 2006. But the illegal occupants of Sanjay Colony have not been shifted yet.

The Hindustan Times, 5th September 2013

A National Green Tribunal (NGT) judge on Thursday warned the Uttarakhand government to stop giving permission for sand mining after a resident claimed that the state is blatantly violating the court's recent ban on it.

The application by Dehradun's Khush Naseeb Khan claims the state, vulnerable after this year's calamitous floods, is allowing large-scale mining for reconstruction, further degrading the land. Khan also alleged the sand is openly sold in markets. The NGT on August 5 had re-enforced a 2012 Supreme Court judgement stating that mining of minerals, including sand, must get clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests or the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority.

"I'll hold you in contempt. Let that be clear," Justice Swatanter Kumar told the counsel representing Uttarakhand. "Please do not issue any more permits."

Khan's application, represented by advocate Ajit Sharma, was one of three brought up before the Tribunal Thursday.

Sharma said Uttarakhand has issued notices that lift its own ban on mining during monsoon to allow people to reconstruct what was destroyed during the floods.

"The state's intention may be good, but they have not considered the environmental impacts. If you extract sand during the rainy season, it causes damage to rivers and more floods," Sharma said.

The Indian Express, 6th September 2013

An idol heist from Karnataka in July, among the biggest in decades, remains as mired in mystery as ever after the recovery of some of the idols and four arrests from a crime network that spreads through at least four states.

Police claim to have recovered eight of the 15 Jain idols, said to be worth several thousand crore rupees, but say five of these idols have been melted. The trustees of the temple where the idols belonged are not convinced that these are indeed the molten remains of the lost idols, and have hired a private detective to trace the originals. They have also uploaded CCTV footage of the theft on YouTube, and jewellers who have seen the video believe such a thief couldn’t possibly have melted the idols, which they guess have probably been smuggled out of the country.

The main accused is part of a jewellery chain and related to its owner, who is based in Raipur and among the leading jewellers in Central India. The trustees allege that Karnataka police have told them that the Chhattisgarh police are not cooperating as the jeweller is “highly influential”. The idols, dating back two centuries before Christ, belonged to Guru Basadi temple in Moodbidri, a religious town of Dakshin Kannada. The theft was discovered on July 6. The locks were found broken and CCTV cameras had recorded the thief’s image. His face was covered but based on local inputs police identified him as Ghanshyam Das, alias Santosh, of Orissa. A week later, Karnataka police raided the home of his father-in-law, Digambar Mohanty, in Bhubaneswar and recovered three intact idols and “five that had been melted”. Mohanty and Das’s wife Diptimayee were arrested from there, and Das later from Srikakulam by the Andhra Police police. Following the interrogation of Das, Karnataka police raided in early August the Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, showroom of Anoopchand Trilokchand Jewellers, among the biggest jewellery chains in central India, and arrested Subhash Sancheti alias Rajaji, owner of the Bhilai branch and brother-in-law of the chain’s owner.

“Our probe found that the idols had been disposed of at their

The Financial Express, 6th September 2013

Blamed frequently for delaying green clearances to key infrastructure projects, the MoEF has come up with new and more "realistic" timelines that can be met, giving more time to both states and the Centre to process projects that require forest clearance.

The new timelines, suggested under draft Forest Conservation (Amendment) Rules 2013, propose to extend the current 150 days time limit for disposing a forest clearance proposal to a maximum of 300 days, for projects involving forest land diversion of over 100 hectares.

The new rules also propose varying and tiered timelines for projects depending on the requirement of forest land — so a project involving only diversion of 5 hectare forest land will be processed faster than one involving over 100 hectare of forest land. The MoEF has proposed detailed and tiered timeline fixing deadlines at each official level from the state to the Centre including provision for a transit period.

The Forest Conservation Rules 2003, that are currently in effect, prescribe a blanket rule that asks state governments to duly examine and recommend to the Centre fresh forest clearance proposals within 90 days (3 months) of the receipt of the proposal from the user agency and for the Centre to reject/approve it within 60 days. This process drags on for two years or more in certain cases.

"The idea is to make the system work without affecting the quality of project appraisal. The fact is that current timelines are far too unrealistic and therefore hardly adhered to. Also, uniform timelines currently in effect do not really work as project appraisal depends on the forest land involved. Hence a tiered system is proposed," sources in the MoEF said.

The draft rules also clearly say that in case a state government exceeds the stipulated timeline, it will have to give a valid explanation for the delay along with details of action taken against the individual held responsible for the delay.

The Indian Express, 6th September 2013

Contesting the claim made in the recent CAG report that 92 monuments had gone 'missing', Culture Minister Chandresh Kumari Katoch on Friday said the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) has looked into the issue and found that no more than 22 monuments are untraceable.

Katoch said the existence of 64 monuments has been physically verified. Of these, 38 are physically present, 12 submerged and 14 encroached upon. The verification process for six is currently on. The Ministry is now preparing a list of notified monuments under the ASI, which have gone "missing", so it can seek their denotification.

"We are compiling a list of monuments that have come under roads or bridges or have been submerged in dams. After compiling these, I am going to move the Cabinet to denotify them so we can focus on monuments that are important and have not been notified," Katoch said.

The Indian Express, 7th September 2013

The tomb of Ghiyas-ud-din Balban lies in a neglected state

The Delhi Sultanate forms a major part of any school kid’s history textbook. The Sultanate’s a vibrant story, with unexpected and expected events changing the course of our country’s history. The throne of Delhi passed from the hands of one king to another (and for once, even a queen) and tracing its course brings us to the threshold of the Modern Era.

One of the most important structures that the Delhi Sultanate left behind is the Qutb Mînâr and its complex that also contains the ‘Alâ’i Mînâr, the tomb of Iltutmish and the tomb of Alauddin Khilji as well as the first extant mosque in India, the Qûwwatu’l-Islam. On any given day, the Qutb Mînâr complex is filled with tourists, guides (or people pretending to be guides), security guards and street vendors selling water and food items, pamphlets and books about the monument. The complex today is one of the quintessential symbols of Delhi.

Barely a few yards away from the Qutb Complex is its little-remembered cousin, the Mehrauli Archaeological Park. The park, spread over acres, has over 80 monuments. One may not be entirely wrong in deeming it to be richer than the Qutb complex itself. About a decade ago, the park was all but a jungle and the structures all but in ruins. During 2001-02, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), in collaboration with the Delhi Chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), salvaged the area from decay. Now the park lies in a much better state than before, offering interesting vignettes from a bygone era.

Like the Qutb complex, the park is also scattered with unmarked graves and structures. Though quite recently, the park was in news for the Baghichi monument, a late Mughal period mosque and a Lodi period mosque which have been so refurbished that they have lost their original look. These monuments were whitewashed and renovated with green plaster paint so much so that the inscriptions got damaged. Not everything in the park is hunky dory. Many monuments have ownership issues, with the Waqf Board claiming control over some of them. Since some are not ‘protected’ monuments, they have even fallen to encroachers. Some people have even installed electricity meters and put up tin sheds on the walls of these old structures.

The park’s entry is camouflaged by trees and shrubs and can easily go unnoticed. Gardeners can be seen pruning the grass and clipping other overgrowth. Youngsters and schoolboys playing truant have made it a playground. This does not portend well for the park, as in some places it is quite littered. When the park was refurbished, the ASI put up signages to direct the visitors to different monuments. Unfortunately, many of these are now broken and illegible.

The park also offers a glimpse into a relatively short period in the history of the Sultanate — namely that of Ghiyas-ud-din Balban, for it’s here that the tomb of this ruler lies. Balban was a Turkish slave in the court of the Mamluk dynasty ruler Iltutmish. He entered the course of the Sultanate when Turks wielded significant clout in the affairs of the state.When Raziya Sultana moved to abolish the jizya tax imposed on Hindus, Balban emerged as one of the strongest dissidents to the proposed policy. He is deemed as the last influential ruler of the Mamluk dynasty.

Balban’s grave is built in red sandstone, with many of the stones and slabs broken now. At first glance, it appears that the slabs have been heaped upon a forlorn grave. A sole line in Arabic adorns the eastern side of the grave. The tomb is enclosed in a structure made of rough hewn boulders. A small pavilion on the eastern side precedes the main chamber containing the grave. This tomb is considered the first structure to have a true dome and an arch. Nothing much remains of that now. The whole enclosure is very much in ruins and tall grass surrounds,each and every wall. There might have been a mud pathway from the Jamali Kamali Mosque to the tomb, but tall grass covers signs of the pathway, rendering it invisible. The tomb is built at a much lower level than other monuments and a steep narrow staircase leads us to the mausoleum. ASI’s plague at the tomb lay dismantled in the grass. Many other monuments have been built in the area centuries apart, offering glimpses into different times. The tomb of Balban’s son is not far away. Rajon ki Baoli and Quli Khan’s tomb are also splendid monuments one should look out for at the park.

Though compared to other lesser known archaeological sites, the park is remarkably well visited by the locals and even witnesses groups of heritage walkers on weekends. But unlike its tall cousin a few blocks away, it is not on a passing tourist’s itinerary. This seems to have a clear disadvantage: lack of upkeep. Stray animals have made it a haven. With no restrictions on the entry of vehicles, locals can be seen speeding up the pathways on their motorcycles and cars.

The Hindu, 7th September 2013

Visitors to Red Fort - the newest entrant on the list of World Heritage Sites in Delhi - are witness to police barricades, corrugated metal sheets, garbage, which mar the beauty of the magnificent monument

There are over 1200 listed monuments in Delhi. The figure was more than 1300 when Maulvi Zafar Hasan compiled the first comprehensive list for the Archaeological Survey of India in 1920. More than a 100 structures have disappeared in less than 100 years, and if newspaper articles on CAG’s report on the working of ASI are to be believed, the latter is unable to explain how 180 odd monuments that it has been given responsibility to protect have disappeared into thin air.

Delhi has been a capital for centuries and has seen the rise and fall of seven major cities and yet we only have three world heritage sites – the Qutub, the tomb of Humayun and Red Fort. If you wonder why don’t we have more, go and visit the three sites and you will perhaps get an idea.

Take Red Fort as an illustration of how not to manage a historic site. Red Fort is the newest entrant on the list of world heritage sites in Delhi; it is perhaps the most visited historic monument in India after the Taj Mahal and attracts practically thousands of visitors every day, on Sundays and other public holidays the number multiplies many folds.

Take a walk around and you will see how inadequately staffed and planned are the facilities provided. The large ticket counter has only two or at best three ticket windows, one of these is for foreign visitors. The queues that form run into hundreds in the afternoon and there is no shade, so people sweat it out in the sweltering heat that is Delhi for eight months a year. Aside from the tickets for entry into the fort, there are separate tickets for the museums located within the fort premises. Those manning the window rarely tell you that these tickets are needed if you want to visit the museums. Hundreds are turned back by the gate keepers of the museums when they turn up there without these tickets. The only saving grace is for the foreign visitors; their tickets are valid for the museums as well.

Why can’t we set up ticket vending machines or create a facility for on-line purchase of tickets escapes me. If these systems can’t be put in place, why can’t we have more ticket windows and why can’t we have extra staff working on days when there are more visitors.

There are no facilities for drinking water near the ticket counter and in the row of five taps inside the Meena Bazaar, two of them are non-working, so scores of people go around hawking all kinds of bottled water. There is no canteen either inside or outside and the thousands who spend at least a couple of hours including the wait for buying the entry tickets, either bring eatables from home or buy them from the scores of stalls crowding the barricaded passage that leads to the ticket counter and the main entry of the fort. Leftovers, empty plastic bags, water bottles and used tickets thrown by those on the way out from the fort litters the entire place and by the afternoon it begins to resemble a large trash-can. The sight at sunrise, the official opening time, after a public holiday is to be seen to be believed because the cleaning staff only reports for duty after 9 am.

For the thousands that visit the site, there is only one block of pay toilets. It is clearly inadequate and the fact that you have to pay to use it ensures that a large number is kept out. So from the hideous and intimidating police barricades, the poles and corrugated metal sheets brought in for the Independence Day programme held more than a fortnight ago, to the non-functioning water closets installed near the police barricades at the time of the Common Wealth Games to the crowds milling about at ticket windows and the absence of facilities like water, a tea shop, a restaurant and adequate toilet and trash disposal facilities, the entire operation is designed to discourage visitors.

Is it any wonder then that no one is seriously working towards acquiring World Heritage Site status for the scores of other monuments that should be on that list from Delhi.

The Hindu, 7th September 2013

The botched conservation work on the 18th-century Tripolia Gateways has started a blame game between the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the contractor, AIC Building Solutions Ltd.

AIC, Indian subsidiary of UK-based Cintec which is known for its patented anchoring system, was given the contract for structural conservation of the gateways more than two years ago. The monument had been extensively damaged by heavy vehicles scraping its arched openings.

"ASI approached us because we have the technical expertise for handling this kind of project and had done similar work on the Mangey Bridge. At the time the project was given to us, there were massive cracks in the facade and stones were dislodged at various points. Only traces of the ornamentation remained in a few arched openings,'' said the firm's CMD Anirudh Singha.

Singha added they had recreated the ornamentation in some of the arches based on research. "But we could not complete the work as the building had developed new cracks. We have written to ASI to erect height barriers or divert traffic movement from the damaged gateway and strengthen the structure again. It has been eight months and we are yet to receive a response.''

A senior ASI official, however, said the work order issued to AIC included structural conservation and the ornamentation work by them was "just about acceptable". He said, "The consolidation done by them was obviously weak, that's why new cracks surfaced. The traffic police have not allowed us to erect height barriers so we have to work around that. The work order specified consolidation and ornamentation work. They recreated the decorative work in the arches where traces could be found and made the rest plain''.

ASI officials said they have issued letters to AIC to complete the work. "The contractor has shifted from the site completely and we are firm that they need to complete the ornamentation work,'' added the official. AIC has worked with ASI on several projects but the latter is now re-thinking the policy to rope in contractors for structural conservation. Delhi circle chief Vasant Kumar Swarnkar said structural conservation work would be done in-house now. "Only things like fencing, maintenance of grounds, building toilet blocks and drinking water facilities will be outsourced,'' he said.

Experts, however, pointed out that the gateway's "ornamentation is in incised plasterwork, not an additional layer that can simply be slapped on or glued at a later date. The historic architectural character has been defaced".

The Times of India, 7th September 2013

Gargi College shares a wall with Siri Fort, one of the seven cities of Delhi. Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) is within walking distance of the Rajpur Cemetery, the final resting place of soldiers who died in the revolt of 1857.

These are just two of several colleges under Delhi University (DU) located close to historical structures. But these colleges, instead of feeling proud, say the past is coming in the way of the future.

From a few hundred students they used to accommodate when they were built, these colleges today give admission to thousands of students. Unfortunately, despite the need to add capacity, the infrastructure of these institutions has not kept pace with students' intake.

Many colleges were built before Independence. The buildings remain the same even today, more or less.

The primary reason why these colleges are not being able to expand is because the institutions fall within the regulated zone of heritage sites. It means they are governed by the provisions of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act 2010, the Delhi Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 2004 and the by-laws of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

The first Act prohibits any alteration to buildings within 100 m (prohibited area) of the heritage structure and only alteration for which permission has been obtained in the next 200 m (regulated area).

Similarly, the second Act Act prohibits any alteration to buildings within 50 m (prohibited area) of the heritage structure and only alteration for which permission has been obtained in the next 100 m (regulated area).

Even after obtaining approval, clearance is required from a host of agencies like the MCD, Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Delhi Urban Art Commission (DUAC), Pollution Control Board (PCB), Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI), among others, before construction can begin.

The Indian Express, 8th September 2013

Mounds of garbage, stench and flies are what a sightseer will be welcomed with on visiting some historical monuments preserved by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in the National Capital.

This negligence on the part of civic bodies has brought them under the scanner, yet again. The Ministry of Culture had set up a Special Task Force (STF) comprising eminent officials of the bodies, but they are yet to take any measure regarding removal of unwanted structures in the vicinity of heritage structures.

According to ASI, at least eight such monuments, including Humayun’s Tomb, Masjid Moth, Khirki Mosque and Lal Gumbad among others, are lying in a state of abject neglect. The monuments are under grave threat from garbage dumps emitting noxious gases.

Apart from the unpleasant view and foul smell, the filth surrounding the heritage buildings is as harmful to their edifice as it is for humans.Biran Ka Gumbad monument in South Delhi’s Green Park area is not even visible due to encroachment by taxi drivers and garbage vats.

“This dumpyard has been here since time immemorial. It is unfortunate that it is placed near a monument and degrades its heritage. It is the only junkyard in Green Park,” said Parvesh, a garbage collector, who has been working here since 15 years.

Other disregarded monuments include Khirki Mosque, Lal Gumbad (Malviya Nagar), Masjid Moth, Satpula, Bade Khan’s tomb (South Extension-I).

Public toilets, wasteyards and overhead wires have ruined the appearance of the Daryaganj City Wall, which is one of the oldest establishments of the British and a major commercial hub in the Old Delhi area.

In a meeting, held in the month of July, Chandresh Kumari Katoch, Union Culture Minister, had discussed at length about the persistent problem of dumpyards ruining the approach to these monuments and constituted a Special Task Force committee to look into the matter and report within two months.

The committee chaired by Additional  Secretary of Urban Development Ministry comprises the Commissioners of all three Municipal Corporations (North, South, East), Chairman of DDA and NDMC and were asked to take steps and file a report on the situation by September end.

As per the meeting, on the issue of relocation of wasteyards and electrical transformers located close to monuments, the NDMC had assured of an immediate action to protect the monuments. However, there has been no action so far on the condition even a month and a half later after the constitution of the committee.
The ASI feels that the civic bodies in the Capital (Corporations, NDMC, and DDA) are equally responsible for the plight of monuments as far as garbage dumps and electricity installations are concerned. “One Government body is protecting, the other is destroying. It is a collective responsibility of the civic bodies and the ASI to preserve monuments. We have liaised with MCD officials and other civic bodies regarding the dumpyards but nothing is being done as of now,” said Vasant Swarnkar, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI (Delhi circle).

Huge mounds of garbage, electricity installations and overhead wires right outside the monuments are blotting not just the cultural heritage, but also the beautiful ambience and legacy that once used to be. - The Pioneer, 9th September 2013

Janmashtami graduated from being a mere ritual to an established tradition. R.V.SMITH traces its journey right from the time of the Mughals to now when temples and communities vie to celebrate the festival

It’s interesting to note how festivals graduate from mere ritual to established tradition. In the 19th Century Janmashtami was not the popular festival it has now become. During the earlier Mughal days Akbar used to participate in it because of his Rajput wives. Jahangir, though born of a Rajput mother was ambivalent, and later under the influence of Noor Jahan became partial to the Shia sect, except when he got annoyed with Qazi Shustri for replying to a question on Sheikh Salim Chisti with the remark, “Een mardan Chist” (who is this man Chisti?) The great Qazi had to pay with his life, as his tongue was pulled out from the back of his neck (guddiphut) for his comment on the saint through whose prayers Jahangir was born and named Salim, the heir apparent. Shah Jahan was orthodox in his beliefs, despite the refuge given to him by a Rajput raja when he rebelled against his father. Aurangzeb was too puritanical to tolerate Hindu customs, though he gave land for the building of quite a few temples in Banaras. His successors were inclined to be guided by the maulvis. But Mohammad Shah was an exception who celebrated Hindu festivals like Holi, Basant and Diwali (something that Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan did in a modest way). But not Janmashtami, though Krishan hindolas (rocking cradles) were allowed to be put up in Chandni Chowk and the dandy emperor gave money to the Brahmins proceeding to Mathura and Vrindavan, something that Akbar, had also done. Shah Alam helped in the renovation of the Kalkaji mandir, Akbar Shah too helped in temple renovation in Mehrauli and Bahadur Shah Zafar was only too eager to patronize Hindu festivals. The British tried to keep order during them by trying to prevent communal clashes, though the riots of 1886 and again some years later unnerved them, especially the ones in 1919 and 1924 when the much respected Hakim Ajmal Khan failed to restore peace. However, there are no reports of rioting during Janmashtami.

At that time E.M. Forster was the Dewan of Dewas State and much impressed by the Janmashtami celebrations, when Dr Godbole, almost as fair as a European, danced before the child Krishna idol in the main temple, a fact recorded by him in his magnum opus, “A Passage to India”. In Delhi the main Janmashtami celebrations used to take place at Jhandewalan and at Kalkaji besides, of course, the temples of Chandni Chowk as Laxminarain Temple had not yet come up. Even now Jhandewalan attracts the maximum crowd, with its Vaishnodevi and Radha-Krishan temples. One feature of the celebrations in Chandni Chowk used to be the ritual cutting of a cucumber at midnight, when the Lord was born. This gave currency to the expression “Krishna Kanhaiya kheere main se paida hue”. The next day when it rained, as it usually does at Janmashtami time, old women and young ones used to spread little pieces of cloth on clothesline with haldi (turmeric) marking. The ritual was regarded as the washing of the napkins of the new-born god (Kishanji ke langote dhul rahe hain). The villages of Todapur and Dasghara, which now border Pusa Institute, have always had a rich tradition of celebrating Janmashtami and serving of the dahi (curd) handi to children in the absence of butter, of which Kishanji was so fond in his childhood that he began to be referred to by the gopis as maakhan chor (butter thief).

It is pertinent to mention that Janmashtami acquired great popularity after Partition, though it was much later that it was declared a public holiday. The new colonies that came up in Delhi with the influx of refugees from Punjab and Sindh have now started vying in celebrating the festival. An example is the rivalry between the temples of Subhash Nagar and Hari Nagar in West Delhi which seems to have been encouraged by the neo-rich. The jhankis or Krishna cribs displayed are especially popular. Seeing them children are encouraged to set up replicas near their homes and prizes are awarded to them by both individuals and cultural societies. Like Christmas, the main celebrations start late in the evening and end at midnight with the blowing of conch-shells and bursting of crackers. The cacophony is to be heard to be believed. Meanwhile crowds mill around the mandirs in an excess overflow of emotion. Thus Janmashtami, which was observed publicly only in certain pockets of the Capital, now sees widespread celebration, thanks to the emergence of the affluent class because of which even smaller festivals like Karva Chauth (that triggers a virtual fancy dress parade) and Raksha Bandhan evoke more interest. Incidentally, the latter used to be known as “Sanoono” and one became aware of it only on seeing people wearing yellow threads around their wrists, which with fanciful rachis around, are hardly visible. Thus does ritual grow from humble beginnings into popular tradition. Diwali, Easter and Dussehra are other examples. Had Forster been alive he would have found many Godboles, fair and not so fair, dancing up the Hill of Devi to greet Nand Lala.

- The Hindu, 9th September 2013

Begum Samru’s haveli in Chandni Chowk is being used as a shopping complex and godown

The Old Delhi palace of an 18th century nautch girl, who later became the ruler of Sardhana in Meerut, is now lying in a dilapidated state as businesses are using it as a shopping complex and godown.

Labyrinthine lanes lead to Begum Samru’s haveli in Chandni Chowk’s Bhagirath Palace area. Hawkers and tempos block the footpath for pedestrians; and the loading and unloading of electrical appliances and heavy goods make the area a mess. 

Amazingly, the building’s facade still has “Lloyd’s Bank Ltd.” inscribed in faint letters and one of the rooms still has its original interior. That it is a heritage building is known only to old shopkeepers and bank employees.

Begum Samru’s palace is one of the earliest colonial buildings with Greek pillars, which grace its front porch.

Begum Samru’s name will always be inscribed in the history books as she played a significant role in saving Delhiites from being attacked by a 30,000-strong Sikh force.
These days, the Central Bank of India occupies a portion of the palace, while parts of the yellowish white edifice have been completely altered by numerous shops of fancy lights and surgical equipment.

According to a bank employee, the palace is in such a bad state that a portion of the building can come crumbling down any day.

“Pieces from Begum Samru ki haveli can fall down any day and can be fatal if they fall on someone’s head. Therefore, we have erected poles in one of the rooms. Nobody enters this room and it is used only for keeping files.”

The bank is a tenant as the haveli was purchased by Seth Bhagirath in 1940. This has been corroborated by an old plaque.

“Some tourists from India and abroad visit, though no official from the Archaeological Survey of India comes here. We get curious students of archaeology and they take a look around. Some take pictures of the building. The locals believe that there is a tunnel which leads up to the Red Fort.”

According to historian and journalist R. V. Smith, Begum Samru was an influential person in the court of Mughal emperor Shah Alam.

“In fact, he considered Begum Samru as his daughter. She belonged to a good family. Her father was Nawab Latif Ali Khan, who had a relationship with a courtesan. Begam Samru was a dancing girl till the age of 14. Later, she became a powerful chieftain and had a fiefdom in Sardhana. A great leader on the battlefield, her enemies thought that she was a witch who would cast a spell on them.”

The garden of the palace had beautiful fountains where the begum entertained her guests. But it will require a lot of work to recreate that splendour.

- The Hindu, 9th September 2013

It is time to enjoy you, but remember to protect the environment.

Ganapathi Bappa Moriya!

It's the time when these chants fill the air, as Ganesha is paraded around the city and finally immersed in a water body.

Ganesh Chaturthi or Vinayaka Chaturthi is one of the more popular festivals celebrated across the country. The reason for its popularity is not just the universal appeal of the deity, but the celebrations that go with it too!

As is tradition, people bring home the idol of Ganesha, either a day before or on the day of Chaturthi. The idol is then decorated and worshipped for one, five, seven or 10 days depending on one's practices and patience.

The festival takes on a different scale in Maharshtra where pandals are erected across the cities housing huge, decorated Ganesha statues and compete with one another to see who attracts the most visitors. The pandal culture is popular, especially in Mumbai, where celebrities turn up to participate. The idols at some pandals even get offerings in gold and large sums of money as donations.

Celebrating nature

Traditionally, Ganesha idols were made of clay. Over the years, clay has been replaced by plaster of Paris and artificial colours have been used to make the idol attractive. However, the artificial colour and the plaster of Paris, turn our water bodies toxic and when immersed aquatic life is affected.

This is quite contradictory to the purpose of Ganesh Chaturthi itself. Lolita Gupta, partner, eCoexist, an initiative that sells eco-sensitive products, explains the festival's origins. "It began as a thanksgiving by farmers to the environment. They would take home the fertile clay from the river beds, worship it and then return it back to the river. In time, the lump of clay was given a form."

Birth of Ganesha

The festival marks the birth, or rebirth, of the elephant-faced God. Legend has it that Goddess Parvathi created a boy out of sandalwood paste and entrusted him to guard the door while she bathed. Lord Shiva, Parvathi's husband, tried to enter and the boy refused to let him, unaware of his identity.

A bitter battle ensued and Shiva severed the boy's head. This angered Parvathi and she vowed to destroy the universe. To appease her, Shiva promised to bring her son back to life. A search was launched to look for a suitable head. They came across a mother elephant crying for her dead son. The baby elephant's head was affixed to the body of the boy and brought back to life. He was named Ganesha.

In recent history

After the decline of Chatrapathi Shivaji's empire in Maharasthra, the festival was a family affair. Interestingly, it was freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak who brought back the pomp and show of the celebration in the late 1800s. Tilak saw the celebrations as a way to unite the people against the British.

For the environment

Go for clay idols. Or even better make clay Ganesha.

Opt for idols with natural colours like turmeric's yellow and red earth.

Go for smaller idols as they can be immersed at home. You can immerse the idol in a bucket of water and it to water the plants in your garden.

Do not use decorations that are made of non-biodegradable material like plastic, thermocol and synthetic cloth. Use natural material like flowers, or the shoal decorations used extensively in West Bengal.

The daily offerings like flowers can be put into a compost pit, rather than merely thrown into the garbage. If you do not have one, contribute to someone else's compost pit or get your neighbours together to create a community compost pit.

-The Hindu, 10th September 2013

The Department of Forests, Kerala, wants to burn 8,000 kilograms of ivory stocked in its various depots to comply with the Central instructions, but the Government seems to be facing difficulty in clearing the plan as traditionalists in the State, where anything related to the elephant is an emotional affair, are opposing it strongly.

Sources said it would be extremely difficult for the Government to neglect the objections raised to the department's plan as these had come from influential people like a former Forest Minister and ruling party legislators. But the Government would have no option but to sanction the plan eventually as "ivory is a useless material in the new world", according to the department.

The department came to this decision after keeping such a huge collection of tusks, which could fetch over `80 crore in the black market, in its vaults with round-the-clock security arrangements was becoming increasingly difficult. Presently, it wants to burn at least the 3,500 kilos of ivory kept in the strong room at the department headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram.

The State's Chief Wildlife Warden has written a letter to the Government seeking permission to burn the ivory as the department was unable to provide security to the stock at hand. Though trading or auctioning in ivory was banned by law, peddling of the item in the black market was rampant and it was difficult to keep the stocks safely, the department said.

The material used to be auctioned once upon a time by the department but this cannot be done anymore in the new global and national legal scenario. "You may even say that our men are providing round-the-clock security for worthless things stuffed into the strong-rooms at various depots," said a senior official of the department.

"The stocks are getting bigger as more elephant deaths occur in the jungle as well as outside," he added. The eight tonnes of ivory stocked in the Department depots at Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kottayam, Thrissur, Kannur, Parambikkulam and Palakkad include tusks seized from poachers, collected from the jungles and acquired after death of captive elephants.

The Forest Department argues that burning the entire ivory stock in phases in the presence of noted environmentalists, green activists and the general public can serve as an awareness programme also as it would send out a message to the poachers that they would be indulging in a pointless activity if they choose to kill the pachyderms.

But none of these explanations seems to be enough to satisfy the traditionalists advocating safekeeping of the tusks at a museum or elephant camp for the posterity to marvel are concerned. "Elephant tusks are part of our heritage. It should not be simply burned," says TN Prathapan MLA belonging to the so-called Green Brigade of the Congress party.

One of the first persons to object to the Forest Department's move to burn ivory was KB Ganesh Kumar, who resigned as Forest Minister just five months ago. Ganesh Kumar, himself an elephant-owner, has already written a letter to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy requesting to shift the ivory stock into some museum.

"It seems that these great men do not understand the truth about ivory," says Parameswaran Nair, an elephant-lover from Thrissur. "Every tusk kept anywhere is an invitation to planned jumbo-killing. These people want to keep their fond elephant memories alive by keeping the tusks but we don't keep body parts of humans to keep their memories alive," he said.

The Forest Department is also worried about the practical difficulties in burning the huge stock of ivory in the context of reports from Philippines and Mozambique where the authorities were unable to confirm whether the entire piles they had put to flames had burned out or parts of it had reached the black market as it usually took a long time for the large piles of ivory turn into ash.

-The Pioneer, 10th September 2013

The seasonal wetland which once used to attract a large number of birds from Europe, Siberia and Central Asia has seen a decline, says a study

Rapid urbanisation, impetuous management and extensive land-use changes in its catchment area over the past two decades seem to have taken a serious toll on the Sultanpur National Park.

The seasonal wetland attracts around 200 species of migratory birds from as far as Europe, Siberia and Central Asia besides being an important refuge for several insects, amphibians, reptiles and mammals.

Satellite images of the park from 1989, 2001 and 2010 show that the lake area has shrunk by over 37 per cent, from 67.59 hectares to 42.57 hectares, over the past two decades. A joint study by the School of Human Ecology, Ambedkar University, and WWF-India, found that the lake shrunk mainly in the south direction. Other water bodies outside the park boundary have also shown a sharp decline of 78.31 per cent in terms of area during 1989-2010.

"It was such a pleasure going to Sultanpur in the early 1990s and watching the large number of birds, both migratory and resident, in the park. But things have changed drastically. The water level and the water spread have gone down visibly. It could be attributed to both natural and man-made reasons. A wetland is affected most by the activities happening in its catchment area. The land use has changed rapidly within a 5-km radius of the park boundary with a 35.62 per cent increase in the road transport network, thus reducing the area available for groundwater recharge and hindering the water flow to the lake. Though the built-up area has increased only marginally, more than 70 per cent of the fallow area outside the park has either been converted into farmland or put to other use," said Ghazala Shahabuddin, one of the authors of the study.

Besides, the park seems to have become a victim of reckless management by the Forest Department. Dr. Shahabuddin, along with author Ranjit Lal and bird-watcher Pratibha Pande, has penned a book on the park, Small and Beautiful: Sultanpur National Park . Dr. Shahabuddin argued that a walkway constructed around the lake for visitors and the brick wall around the park significantly obstructed the flow of natural surface water from the surrounding agricultural areas.

The department replenished it with tube-wells for the first few years and then linked a canal to it. The canal water created other problems such as invasion of the lake by water hyacinth and African catfish, which prey on the native fish. The trees planted to increase the green cover and nesting sites for birds also did more harm than good. A keen naturalist and butterfly-watcher, Dr. Shahabuddin lamented how the Forest Department in its bid to create a protected system played around with the lake bed and its surroundings, damaging all its elements of natural hydrology and water cycle.

"What was a natural wetland earlier, now seems more like a reservoir dug up to increase its water-holding capacity," said Dr. Shahabuddin, adding that the steep incline created on the natural, gentle slopes had damaged the diversity of microhabitats as well as the seasonal diversity and made it more homogenous, both spatially and temporally.

"Surrounded by a brick wall, it now seems more like a zoo. Earlier grazing by livestock and fodder harvesting by the locals kept a check on proliferation of grasses," said Dr. Shahabuddin.

But all is not lost and the damage can still be reversed. If the original water flow is restored, like it has been done in the United States that has some excellent wetlands inside urban areas, the original glory of the park can be restored.

"There is a well-established field of restoration ecology, which involves recreating the natural hydrology, plant and animal diversity. The surrounding five to six villages should be involved in the restoration process by enhancing their emotional attachment to the park. There should be a system of grass collection at low cost or for free for the villagers. The farmers can be compensated for allowing free water flow to the park. Definitely no more civil works, such as construction of bunds and walls, should be allowed," said Dr. Shahabuddin.

When contacted, the Haryana Forest Department maintained that all was well and the number of migratory birds and species visiting the park has actually gone up over the years.

"Though no formal study has ever been done on the spread of the lake, it does not seem to have shrunk visibly. The number and species of birds coming to the park has also increased as per our estimates," said District Forest Officer (Wildlife) K.S. Khatkar.

(The study referred to in the article was carried out by Kaushani Mondal, M.A. Environment & Development at the School of Human Ecology of Ambedkar University, under the supervision of Dr. Shahabuddin and Dr. G. Areendran)



-The Hindu, 10th September 2013

An orchid breeder-led research teams have discovered the World's newest ginger species besides two new orchids in Manipur recently. But it was made public only after they were published in international scientific journals.

The new ginger species Zingiber Kangleipakense which was endemic to Manipur was discovered by orchid breeder RK Kishor when he was working in Institute of Bioresources and Sustainable Development in association with researcher Jana Leong Skornickova of The Herbarium, Singapore Botanic Gardens.

In Manipur, the new ginger species known as 'Namra' and its young rhizome along with the pseudostem are sold in local vegetable markets and are used as a minor vegetable bycooking with fermented fish, potato and other items in making the local delicacy – 'iromba'.

"We never think of identifying such kind of species though we consumed it everyday", said Kishor, presently working as a Senior Research Associate of Council of Scientific andIndustrial Research, New Delhi. He was speaking to media persons at his Imphal residence here this afternoon.

"The exploration activities should be hastened in places like Manipur which is one of the most threatened biodiversity hot spots to prevent extinction of species before discovery,"he pleaded.

The two new orchids – Dendrobium Tamenglongense and Ione Kipgenii – were also discovered by Kishor-led research team of Centre for Orchid Gene Conservation of the Eastern Himalayan Region during a survey in the forests of Manipur where around 286orchid species grow.

The rose size new orchid – Dendrobium Tamenglongense having white flowers closely resembles Dendrobium Jayantianum of Meghalaya and Dendrobium Longicormu of Ukhrul (Manipur), was discovered from the Kahulong and Longku area in Tamenglong district bordering Assam and Nagaland while Ione Kipgenii which was smaller than a one rupee coin from Kwatha area in Chandel district bordering Myanmar.

Ione Kipgenii resembles I cirrhata which occurs in Bhutan, China (Yunnan), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Darjeeling) and Myanmar.

The specific epithet Kipgenii is given in honour of Haokholet Kipgen, Chief of Hengbung village and an orchid enthusiast while the specific epithet of Dendrobium Tamenglongense is derived from Tamenglong district of Manipur, from where the new species was collected.

-The Assam Tribune, 11th September 2013

A book on the work of Mahapurush Srimanta Sankardev , Guru Pranati written by Ramen Das and similar to Gunamala Bhatima, containing 1650 words in one sentence was released on September 3 by the former Governor of Meghalaya, Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary at the Guwahati Press Club, a press release stated.

In a short speech, Mooshahary claimed that the endeavour by Das was a precious contribution to Assamese literature. "The book written by Das is unique as it contains 1650 words in one sentence", he said.

"The reason behind writing such a book was to attract the readers towards Assamese books", the author of the book said.

A former president of the Asam Sahitya Sabha, Kanaksen Deka in his speech as the chief guest said that this was a unique endeavour of the writer who is also a demonstrator-cum-communicator with Assamese local instruments. Das has worked quite a lot on Assamese culture and performing arts besides being a social worker, Deka said adding that Guru Pranati is not only an asset to Assamese society, but will also blaze a new trail in the realm of language and literature.

The function was attended by a sizeable gathering of litterateurs and cultural exponentslike Ratna Ojah, Bhaban Prasad Adhikary etc.

-The Assam Tribune, 11th September 2013

Having served as a podium for a controversial musical concert of Zubin Mehta, Shalimar Garden was thrown open for general masses here on Sunday.

Officials disclosed that lighting, stage, seating and other arrangements have been cleared from the Mughal Garden.

"It was a temporary arrangement and the dismantling of the same was started last night itself. We have thrown open the garden for public and everything shall be cleared today," Sunil Mishra, director floriculture told Kashmir Times.

He denied the reports of vandalization of the Dewaan-e-Khaas and other parts of the garden.

According to the reports, a major part of the garden was vandalized with seating arrangements made over the heritage fronts. Iron and concrete planks covered the fountains dotting the central stream to pave way for the seating. A large portion of the heritage garden was white washed as well.

The defacing of the garden for a musical concern met criticism from large sections of society with economist Hasseb Drabu starting an online petition to UNESCO World Heritage Committee.

Convener INTACH, Srinagar, Mohammad Saleem Beig said he has no information whether the garden has been restored to its original form or not.

He said, "They will do it in two-three days. But I do not have exact information about it."

Officials at the concerned police station said though the garden has been thrown open, some part of the arrangements put up for the concert have not been removed as yet.

Locals were seen visiting the garden, though in small numbers in view of the shutdown.

"I wanted to see what they had done to the garden. I had heard they had destroyed some part of it. I do see some changes there," said Mohammad Isaq, who lives near Shalimar Garden.

He said many people from his neighbourhood visited the garden Sunday to look at the 'remains' of the concert that created so much controversy.

"Since we could not attend the concert, we were curious to see where they performed and how they had put up the stage. Some part has been removed but the arrangement is still there," Parvez Ahmad, another local added.

On September 7, world famous conductor Zubin Mehta performed amid the elite audiences which included a handful of Kashmiris. Reportedly, an amount of Rs 100 crore was spent on the event.

-The Hindustan Times, 11th September 2013

The eerie and almost haunting silence of Kedarnath was broken by peals of bells and chanting of hymns on Wednesday. Puja was performed at the eighth-century temple in the early hours on Wednesday, almost three months since raging floods and devastating landslides had ravaged this small yet bustling temple town nestling in the Himalayas.

Kedarnath, one of the holiest Hindu shrines and part of the 'char dham', had fallen silent after the catastrophe that struck on the night of June 16, and in the early hours of June 17. Hundreds were killed in and around the town.

Everything changed that fateful night. Tons of rubble, large boulders and several feet of sand remain to be cleared from the entire shrine area. The market in front of the temple, which used to house scores of shops selling religious items, is in ruins even today. So are small and big guesthouses and other buildings surrounding the temple complex.

In its efforts to look ahead, the state government covered the devastated area under several hundred sq metres of pandals. The smell of chlorine was all-pervasive as the area had been sprinkled with disinfectants. It is feared that dozens of bodies are still buried in the rubble.

Despite the destruction, the temple area carried a look of hope. Several priests conducted a 'havan' outside and chants of 'om namah shivaya' could be heard from loudspeakers. Flowers adorned the temple facade. The religious ceremonies, the first since June 16, began early in the morning as the main priest, Rawal Bhima Shankar Ling Shivacharya, unlocked the portals of the temple at 7am. He stepped into the sanctum-sanctorum with other priests amid singing of hymns and blowing of conch shells.

The ceremonies began with the 'shuddhikaran' (cleansing) puja, after which the deity at the sanctum sanctorum was bathed in milk and Gangajal. Then the 'rudrabhishek' of Lord Shivatook place. A ceremony of 'prayashchitikaran' (atonement for prolonged suspension of prayers at the shrine) was also conducted. The calamity had led to suspension of prayers at the temple.

Inside the 'garbha griha', prayers were offered at the holy Shivalinga, and other deities, all of whom were covered with flowers and other religious offerings.

Prayers were also offered to the 'nandi' idol facing the shivaling which had escaped the flood fury. A new legend was added to the religious activities at Kedarnath as priests worshipped the 'divya shila' -- or the huge boulder that stood firmly behind the temple on June 16 and June 17 and saved it from the onslaught of rocks, boulders and the flood. The divya shila was covered with garlands and prayers and puja will be performed there on a daily basis, priests said. Many visitors could be seen paying obeisance to the rock that everyone credited with "protecting" the temple. "It is like a 'gann' (devotee) of Lord Shiva," said chief priest Vageesh Ling.

For the first time the 'bhog' (food) kitchen was opened as 'puri' and 'chana' were served to all visitors.

But apart from the Kedarnath temple complex, the areas around the shrine were deserted. The weather was also inclement. The 200-odd visitors, including many journalists, faced a tough time as helicopter service to the region remained disturbed. The road link to Kedarnath still remains suspended as a big portion of it was washed away in the floods and landslides.

Barindarjit Singh, SP of Rudraprayag district, said no decision has been taken on resuming the pilgrimage. "Today's ceremonies marks the start of the puja, and not start of yatra. Entry for the public remains restricted and a final decision on this will be taken only on September 30," he said.

-The Times of India, 12th September 2013

The Public Works Department (PWD) is going to construct three bridges over the River Yamuna. The department is in the process of appointing a feasibility consultant, which will decide the exact alignment of the bridges.

Estimated to cost about Rs 1,496 crore, the bridges will improve connectivity between the north and the north eastern parts of the city. The proposed bridges by providing alternate routes for the traffic coming to Delhi from Punjab and Karnal, will also help in decongesting the Ring Road significantly.

Presently, only one of the bridges at Wazirabad connects northeast Delhi with the rest of the city. The high-profile project, mooted by the Member of the Parliament of the area, Jai Prakash Aggarwal, is expected to be funded by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

The proposed bridges will address the urgent need to provide connectivity between the two sides of the river. "The three bridges will connect Pushta number 3 to Changdi Ram Akhara, Sonia Vihar to Jagatpur and Sabhapur to Sant Nagar, Burari. The terms of reference for these bridges have been approved by united traffic and transportation infrastructure (planning and engineering) centre (UTTIPEC). The Public Works Department (PWD) is in the process of appointing a feasibility consultant for the projects, who will decide the exact alignment of the bridges," said PWD chief engineer (flyovers), Sarvagya Srivastava.

Two of the three proposed bridges — Sonia Vihar to Jagatpur and Sabhapur to Sant Nagar — will be constructed upstream of the under-construction Signature Bridge at Wazirabad.

"The bridges, once constructed, will take away significant load from the Ring Road by providing alternate connectivity to the traffic coming from National Highway number 1. PWD will also be taking up the matter with the Union Ministry of Surface Transport for funding the project under the Central Road Fund (CRF). The estimated cost of the projects is around Rs 1,496 crore," he added.

The consultant will carry out the traffic survey for the proposed bridges and also decide the alignment and geometry of the bridges. According to Srivastava, at present there are just eight bridges over Yamuna and as per the requirement; Delhi needs over 20 bridges over it.

The under-construction 'Signature Bridge' will provide an alternate to the existing narrow bridge at Wazirabad.

The existing bridges include the ones at Wazriabad, Shastri Park, Old Bridge, Geeta Colony, ITO, Nizamuddin, DND and Kalindi Kunj. Two more bridges — one parallel to the Okhla Barrage and another as extension to the Barapullah elevated road — are in the planning stage.



-The Pioneer, 12th September 2013

It took five years or less to build Connaught Place (CP). This was in the 1930s, when construction methods and machinery were not as advanced as today's. Fast-forward to the present. It is taking longer to renovate the colonnaded structure as hundreds of workers, engineers, mighty cranes and other modern machinery prove unequal to the task to restore the colonial structure to its former glory. From being a showpiece in the heart of Lutyens's Delhi, as its architect had designed it, present-day CP is an eyesore. Construction machinery all over the place, the earth dug up, the air and the corridors filled with dust and underground utility cables exposed by renovation work.

CWG 2010

The project — named 'CP Redevelopment Plan' — deadline has been revised several times since 2010. The renovation was to have been completed before October 2010, when the city hosted the Commonwealth Games (CWG). The makeover was part of plans to beautify the city preparing to welcome thousands of visitors from all over the world for the sporting spectacle. The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), which was supervising the renovation then and even now, missed the deadline. CP looked like a huge construction site or an open mine during the Commonwealth Games. The giant machinery too couldn't be shifted out of the place before the event's inauguration and had to be blocked out of the view of passing motorists with huge CWG promotion posters. Head hung in shame, the government pushed the deadline to 2011, further pushed to March 2012 and then to December 2012. This year, NDMC's former Chairperson Archana Arora promised the work will be over by March. Then, separate deadlines were set for various tasks after Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Chief Secretary P K Tripathi's visit to Connaught Place on April 9 this year. These deadlines too have lapsed as work progresses at a snail's pace. The new NDMC Chairperson, without setting an official deadline, is holding regular meetings and claims the work will be completed by September.

-The Indian Express, 13th September 2013

The Centre had eight years ago acknowledged encroachment on a large portion of land by Asaram's men in the central ridge near Shanker Road and even pasted an eviction notice at the ashram. But the eviction has not happened to date despite "a number of actions taken". The Delhi forest department wants the land to be vacated and transferred to it for ridge conservation. The department again wrote to the Centre this week with the same request.

In reply to Right to Information applications, the land and development office (L&DO) of the urban development ministry said: "Sant Shri Asha Ramji Bapu Trust (Ashram) is an encroacher of government land measuring 38,808 sqft."

The L&DO admitted it had on July 6, 2005 pasted the notice ordering the trust to move out in 30 days or face action. The L&DO admitted that it could not ensure eviction despite the fact that there is "no case pending in any court of law".

In the RTI replies sent to Ramesh Kumar Mumukshu, a resident of Dakshinpuri in Delhi, the department admitted that "no fresh notice was issued to the trust immediately after the expiry of the 30-day deadline". The trust had responded in a letter dated July 26, 2005.

The replies (HT has copies) said there were no reasons available to explain why a fresh notice was not sent. They stated the government had taken a number of actions since then depending upon the "circumstances and subsequent developments", but did not give specifics.

The RTI response also admitted that no disciplinary action had been taken against any L&DO staff for non-execution of the eviction order.

HT had on September 8 reported about the "illegal" ashram and highlighted that the forest department was verifying the existence of another of Asaram's ashram in the Rajokari forests in the southern ridge.

A day before, HT reported that the Central Ridge's ashram had not paid property tax in the past 10 years.

A petition had sought demolition of the ashram in 1985 but in 1996 the Supreme Court allowed the ashram to run. Forest officials said the relief was subject to adherence to legal procedures. A forest settlement officer rejected the plea to regularise the ashram in 2009.

The ashram should have then approached an appellate authority, which it never did, rendering itself illegal, said a forest department official.

-The Himachal Pradesh, 13th September 2013

With a majority of the elephant corridors becoming virtually defunct in Uttarakhand, the State Forest department is going to redraft its elephant corridor revival plan by way of conducting physical verification of the movements of the elephants on the said corridors in the mountain State.

"We have received a letter to conduct physical verification of the elephant corridors to know whether there is any movement of wildlife including elephants on these corridors," said Haldwani divisional forest officer Pankaj Kumar.

"This physical verification will help us identify which elephant corridors are used by pachyderms in this region. Hopefully, work will start soon," he added.

The Haldwani forest division assumes huge significance both from flora and fauna point of view. It is home to a variety of animal species including elephants. The old Gola elephant corridor, the Ratighat elephant corridor and the Boom elephant corridor among others are part of this forest division.

The Gola elephant corridor that goes up to Tanakpuar-Nepal border from Haldwani, has been blocked due to certain commercial activities and coming of major establishments along the corridor. Besides, unauthorised colonies along the Gola elephant corridor have only made the elephants' movements tougher.

-The Pioneer, 13th September 2013

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General underscoring the blatant violation of conservation laws and Supreme Court orders in the diversion of forests for destructive non-forestry use confirms what former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said about the system: it's a bit of a joke. The compensatory afforestation mechanism instituted to balance the devastating loss of natural forests has failed abysmally. The CAG's report is proof that India's environmental health has been in free fall since the dawn of economic reforms. The Union government as well as the States have played an active role in this decline. The Supreme Court's Central Empowered Committee (CEC) stepped in where governments failed and set up a framework for monetisation of forests. But what was meant to ration the use of forest land has only served to justify its usurpation. With the possible exception of designated protected areas, judicial scrutiny and oversight did not result in an effective regime to either reduce deforestation or to green alternative lands.

Among the major findings of the CAG are the non-receipt of nearly 73 per cent of lands earmarked for reforestation, poor work outcomes, and failure to assess and levy stiff penalties on defaulting companies to whom forest wealth was handed over. The funds collected for transfer of forest land, totalling around Rs 30,000 crore, have been misused, not accounted for or badly managed. The CAG has recorded the arbitrariness in the deployment of funds by the Union government, the States and the CEC. Environment and Forests is in the concurrent list of the Constitution. This was meant to make the States and the Centre co-trustees of natural resources. Instead, it has become an excuse to shun responsibility. As a consequence, monitoring of forests and projects that use forest land has all but collapsed. In more than 1,000 cases that the CAG test-checked, it found projects continued to use forests in violation of regulations and conditions laid down while securing clearances. Today, market forces, and the government, are jointly usurping the forest commons, aided by experts and officers sitting behind closed doors at the Centre, in the States, and in the judiciary. Their private decision-making should not decide the fate of India's forests and the millions who depend on it for survival. Given the scale of the CAG's findings, it would be reasonable to call for a moratorium on projects involving diversion of forests. A comprehensive reform of the monitoring mechanism is needed to ensure democracy and transparency.

-The Hindu, 13th September 2013

For nature lovers, there is good news flying about these days: wildlife experts say that butterflies, seen most in the Capital during and after the rainy season, are increasing not just in numbers, but also in variety. Wildlife scientist Dr Faiyaz A Khudsar says, "There has been a definite increase in butterfly species in Delhi in the last few years.

Last year itself we saw an increase at the conservatories at the Yamuna Biodiversity Park and the Aravali Biodiversity Park. About 95 species are recorded at Aravali and about 70 species at the Yamuna Biodiversity park."

Butterfly spotting is a complicated science and documenting it is a long and labourious process. The last recorded substantial study on Delhi's butterflies was in 2002, when author and researcher Torben B Larsen reported 86 species in the Capital. Says Delhi-based lepidopterist Dr Surya Prakash, "We still mainly follow the British nomenclature, but we are aiming at coming with our own. We need more awareness measures like nature drills and conservation programmes to protect one of nature's most beautiful creations."

The last Delhi-based documentation of butterflies before 2002 was way back in 1970 — and even since 2002, there have been more sightings, though there is no official documentation as no report has been published since. "Of late, more attention is being given to butterfly research than it has got so far from government and media," says Dr Prakash.

Butterflies are markers of environmental health. "Butterflies play a crucial role in pollination of a large portion of economically important crops and flowering plants, second only to the honeybee. The silk industry is also dependent on the butterfly. If the butterfly diversity declines, it will directly affect the country's agriculture," says Dr Prakash.

With its Ridge forests, green areas and biodiversity parks, Delhi serves as an active host to these coloured winged residents. While beauties like the Plain Tiger and the Yellow Orange Tip have always roamed our ridges, some new species of butterflies have been found in the capital, and Prakash's report, with the new names, to be out soon is expected to be the next record after the 2002 Torben B Larsen report.

One of the new entries will be the Common Jay, very recently spotted. Others to make a debut on the list of Delhi's butterflies post 2002 are the Rounded Pierrot, Common Banded Awl and the Common Blue Bottle, the last from the swallowtail family. In the 2002 list, new entries were the Red Pierrot, Crimson Tip, Indian Cabbage White, Tawny Coasters, Painted Lady, and Common Crow.

Also known as the 'umbrella species', butterflies are good bio-indicators and pointers of a healthy ecosystem and they protect the existence of other species too. With South, Western Ghats and North-East having the majority of butterfly species in India, Delhi isn't much behind. Adds Prakash, "These areas have the maximum number of butterflies but poaching is also most prevalent in these areas.

Other than that, habitat degradation and use of banned insecticides, use of exotic species of plants, smuggling, lack of attention, use of synthetic manure is also destroying micro habitat."

There are 17000 species of butterflies on the planet, and India is host to about 1600 species and in Delhi, with upcoming new published reports, the number will officially be more than 90.

Government bodies such as NDMC are also taking up the cause of protecting the species.

Says Jitender Kaushik, assistant director, Horticulture, NDMC, "In 2009, we took an initiative at Lodhi Garden to create a conservatory area just for butterflies.

During March-April and September-October, we see a good number.

We saw 22 species this year among which about 7 were new ones." Says Field Biologist Dr. Aisha Sultana, "We have seen a good number of increase in some species like the Glassy Tiger, Danaid Eggfly, Common Mormon. The numbers of the existing ones are also increasing."As Delhi continues to be home for butterflies, the future doesn't seem to be devoid of flying colours.

-The Hindustan Times, 14th September 2013

Exhibition 'Global India: Kerala, Israel, Berkeley' showcases artefacts from their life

For the Jewish people of Kochi and Ernakulam, the word 'home' evokes images of different lands. They came to Kerala's shores from Jerusalem, Baghdad, Spain, Portugal, and other countries in search of a land where they would not be persecuted. Since the 16th century, they established themselves as an integral part of the commerce and culture of Kochi. But Kochi was only a temporary home. In the 1950s, many of Kochi's Jews made the aliyah (emigration to Israel) to a land they always called their final home.

Today, only 32 members of the community remain in Kochi. Though most of them have left the country, their presence has left a mark on its history and culture. Scholars and historians from all over the world still arrive at the doors of synagogues of the city to learn more about the community.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley, is hosting an exhibition of over 100 items that document the history of the Jews of Kerala. The exhibition, 'Global India: Kerala, Israel, Berkeley', opened on Tuesday, showcasing artefacts from Jewish life in Kerala. Oil lamps, photographs, decorated marriage contracts (ketubbah) made in Kochi, and wedding costumes form part of the collection.

The pride of the exhibition, however, is the restored Torah Ark of the Thekkumbhagom synagogue of Mattancherry. The Ark, "designed to contain several biblical scrolls and cases, is a 13 foot-high and eight foot-wide wooden structure, made of multiple individual elements," says the catalogue of the exhibition.

The Thekkumbhagom synagogue, situated a few metres from the famous Paradesi Synagogue of Mattancherry, was built in 1687. The synagogue was demolished when most of its congregation left for Israel in the 1950s. When the Jews of Jew Street left the country, they sold most of their property to fund their new lives in Israel. Many of these relics have made their way to museums and private collections in Israel and elsewhere.

The Magnes Collection managed to save some of these relics and obtain a few important documents due to the efforts of the late Seymour Fromer, of the former Judah L. Magnes Museum, anthropologist David G. Mandelbaum, and others. Professor Mandelbaum's lantern prints of Jewish life in Kerala in 1937 are a part of the exhibition.

The Jewish life that Professor Mandelbaum saw in Kochi then, however, was much different from what can be seen today. His work shows a vibrant, prosperous Jewish community that celebrated its culture in grand style. Festivals were a jolly affair when men got together to joke and drink and women sang and played games. Life at Jew Street today is much quieter. Like the Paradesi Synagogue, the Jews living here too have become a tourist attraction. Visitors walk up and down Jew Street every day, peek into their homes, and trouble them with questions that constantly remind them of their community's decline. "There used to be three synagogues on this street," says nonagenarian Sarah Cohen, eldest of the eight remaining members of the Paradesi Jews in Kochi. "Ours is the Paradesi synagogue. Other people went to the two other synagogues," she says.

The synagogues — 'ours' and 'theirs' as Cohen calls them — are a reflection of the divide between the 'White' and 'Black' Jews of Kerala, one that may have eventually led to their downfall. "The 'White' Jews arrived in Kerala from Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th century," says historian M.G.S. Narayanan. The Paradesi Synagogue was built by them in 1568. They had the patronage of the then ruler of Cochin, who gave the 'White Jews' land close to his temple at the Mattancherry Palace. "They were very rich and powerful and operated many businesses here," says Professor Narayanan.

The 'White' Jews looked down upon their darker-skinned brethren who were present in Kerala when they arrived. They called them 'Black' Jews or 'Malabari' Jews to denote that they were the other. Until recently, the two groups prayed in separate synagogues and were not allowed to eat meat slaughtered by the other or to marry from the other community.

Today, the groups have been forced to come together so they have enough members to hold prayers on festivals and special occasions. Their union, however, has come too late to save the community.

The glorious days of the Jews of Kerala will now be seen only through exhibitions like the one at The Magnes Collection, which will be on till December 13.

-The Hindu, 14th September 2013

Over six years, 2,00,000 man-days of work and efforts of 1,500 conservationists and craftsmen later, Humayun's Tomb is once again set to receive visitors. Built in the 1560s—on a far grander scale than any of its predecessors—it was the model for the Taj, according to historians.

During these six long years, each stone on the facade of the mausoleum was individually inspected to ensure minimum intervention; millions of kilos of concrete and plaster inappropriately applied in the 20th century removed; dozens of wooden doors, arched recesses and canopies repaired.

For the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which took on the project in 2007 to fulfil a request by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the painstaking endeavour will culminate on September 18. Presiding over the event will be the Aga Khan and the PM. The dais will be shared by Union culture minister Chandresh Kumari Katoch and Ratan Tata, whose Sir Dorabji Tata Trust cofunded the conservation.

Humayun's Tomb, along with Qutub Minar, was among the first monuments in Delhi to be named a Unesco world heritage site in 1993. "At that time, its gardens were worn, its masonry cracked and the stonework broken or incomplete . More disconcertingly, it had few visitors," said a ministry of culture official.

AKTC began by restoring the gardens of Humayun's Tomb, in partnership with theArchaeological Survey of India, as the Aga Khan's gift to India on the 50th anniversary of India's independence. An urban renewal project comprising areas of Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti, Sundar Nursery and the Humayun's Tomb complex was signed in 2007. An archival research programme was initiated. It revealed architectural details that were severely compromised.

To execute the project, the skills of traditional masons, plasterers, stone-carvers and tile-makers were used. "Many prominent architectural elements were no longer in the shape the Mughal builders intended them to be. Conservation works, unlike construction, always commence from the top and the white marble dome was allowing water to percolate into the double-dome chamber. The stone joints were carefully filled with lime mortar prepared by mixing lime with marble dust. On four occasions in the 20th century, a layer of concrete was laid on the flat roof surrounding the dome. Using hand tools, stone-carvers removed a million kilos of concrete to restore the original water disposal system.

"A prominent intervention was the removal of cement plaster and the restoration of the decorative star-shaped patterns on the facade of the 68 mini-mausoleums on the ground level, where 160 members of the Mughal dynasty, including Dara Shikoh, lie buried," said AKTC project director Ratish Nanda.

For the Mughal builders, the tiles on roof canopies were a reminder of their Persian ancestry . It took four years of experimentation to restore these tiles, so that they match the original five colours. With large portions of the arcaded enclosure collapsing in the 20th century, masons had to reconstruct 42 6m tall arches.

Herculean Task

Wooden doors of the 68 mini mausoleums restored—they were burnt in 1947 when the tomb and gardens were used as a refugee camp 2,25,000 sq ft of lime plaster restored at the tomb, attached gateways and pavilions after removing cement plaster applied in 20th century 40,000 sq ft of boulders, most in excess of 3,000kg, lifted and reset on the plinth after removing cement layer applied in 1960s 42 of the arched recesses of the garden enclosure reconstructed after they collapsed in the 19th/20th centuries. The 18ft tall finial on the dome repaired and fitted with a lightning conductor to replace 13 conductors 200 conservation professionals and over 1,000 craftsmen trained.

-The Economic Times, 15th September 2013

Tucked away in the niches of the Chelmsford Road towards New Delhi railway station are places with interesting past. One of them is a last century creation named and used on the lines of Mughal era sarais.

As your enter a lane besides the Sri Lanka Buddhist Pilgrims' Rest, set amidst a sprawling open area is an old weathered building housing Maulana Azad Education Foundation. This was originally the 'Lady Hardinge Serai' (tourist inn) complete with resting place for both humans and animals.

"The governor in British times used to rest here before boarding his train at the New Delhi railway station. But not much details are available," says MW Ansari, Foundation's secretary/ADG. The 1939 vintage building - designed by AG Shoesmith, who was part of Lutyen's team - has three-layered arched entrance and is set around several courts. It continued to be used as a transit hostel before left neglected post-Independence.

Then in the 1970s, it was converted into a women's hostel. "Begum Abida Ahmed, wife of then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, was the patron of the hostel for Muslim girls in the name of Balika Chaman," informs AP Jain, a resident of neighbouring Basant Road.

It was in 2002, that the government of India turned it into a building for the 'Maulana Azad Education Foundation' under the ministry of minority affairs. The building also houses offices of the Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India and the National Backward Classes Finances & Development Corporation.

-The Hindustan Times, 15th September 2013

Nestled amidst the rapidly urbanising metropolis of Noida is a green paradise that has, in recent years, emerged as an important breeding ground for endangered birds. With the nesting season for the endangered Sarus Crane having already begun, the Gautam Buddh Nagar forest department is taking all measures to ensure the breeding bird population faces no threat at the Surajpur wetland and biodiversity park.

Forest department officials said they were erecting a barbed wire fence around the sanctuary spread over 350 hectares.

"We have already completed nearly four kilometres of fencing, another four-kilometre stretch of the perimeter remains," Ashok Kumar, a forest department official, said.

Kumar said the fencing work will be completed in the coming weeks, well before eggs start hatching. "The greatest threat to these birds is encroachment and, for this reason, the barbed wire fence is necessary," he said.

Officials of the Greater Noida Authority said they plan to develop the biodiversity park along the lines of wildlife sanctuaries abroad.

The past year has seen 4,000 more bird sightings than the previous year, with a record 180 species visiting the park.

That's good news considering that in 2009, the wetland was nothing more than a polluted pond. But in 2012, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (GNIDA) and the forest department chalked out a makeover plan for the bird sanctuary, investing Rs 60 crore on the project. "The Sarus Crane has been breeding in the forest for two years now. We have also spotted a number of Black-necked Stork, many in pairs," a forest department official said.

Only 108 hectares in the reserve is wetland. The remaining area consists of marshy land, elephant grass, phoenix trees and wooded patches, all of which provide ideal nesting conditions for birds, the official said.

According to a study by K S Gopi Sundar, director of the SarusScape programme, the bird is a slow breeder and is, therefore, susceptible to rapid population declines.

-The Indian Express, 16the September 2013

The temple town's perceived instability has stagnated its progress

A vendor taking a siesta at her shop in Ayodhya.— File photo: AP

For residents of Ayodhya, the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar stands as a grim reminder of the time when the Babri Masjid was demolished.

"The rumour machinery is nearly identical — tales of scores of bodies being thrown into the Saryu [during the demolition] have been mirrored in Muzaffarnagar, where authorities actually had to drain out the canal at Nagla Mandaur to disprove the rumour," says Scharada Dubey, author of Portraits from Ayodhya — Living India's Contradictions , a collection of profiles from the temple town.

The pall of fear seems to have installed a state of stagnation in the town today. A walk around the heavily-guarded precincts of Ram Janmabhoomi introduces you to the uneasy calm that prevails in the area. You are likely to hear the locals rue, " Sab tham sa gaya hai [Everything seems to have come to a standstill]."

Despite a rich cultural heritage, the twin towns fare miserably in comparison to other holy cities such as Varanasi and Allahabad, which thrive on tourism all year round. Even neighbouring districts with lower profiles are generally more dynamic. In fact, in the last two decades, Ayodhya has barely grown. Like many times in the past 20 years, all media cameras zoomed in on the town for the VHP's controversial 84 Kosi Yatra recently. But they zoomed out just as quickly.

Tourism in a bad way

At two separate functions last year, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav promised that Ayodhya-Faizabad will be upgraded to a municipal corporation and developed as a tourist hub. Tez Narayan Pandey, currently a Samajwadi Party MLA from Ayodhya, had campaigned on the promise that he would get the status of "tourist city" conferred on Ayodhya. Neither of these promises has materialised. The highly-anticipated 2013-14 State budget has not done much by way of regenerating hope. It paid little attention to improving the dismal state of medical facilities in the town or repairing its crumbling infrastructure. The disenchantment with political parties has only seemed to have grown.

"I have sent several proposals to the CM. There are plans to develop Shulabh toilets, improve the ghats, make changing rooms for pilgrims, and repair the dwars and guesthouses," Mr. Pandey explains.

The MLA blames the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad for regularly conducting programmes that disrupt trade and normal life. "They create controversies and hurdles in development and try to disrupt harmony. Just recently, traders in large numbers met me and complained about them."

Notably, there are sections in Ayodhya who are on course to suing the VHP for all the financial losses suffered by the town over the last two decades.

There seems to be nothing substantial on the cards for locals, besides religion-based tourism. However, Mr. Pandey's solution for improving livelihoods may well come as a disappointment for locals. "Building more guesthouses will directly benefit traders as pilgrims will flock here and the sale of ritual items will increase," he says.

Locals recall how the Dastkari Haat [handicraft exhibition] held on the banks of the Saryu would bring them rich dividend. Faizabad's footwear industry is also a shadow of its thriving past. Traders recall a time prior to 1992, when the industry was comparable to those in Agra and Kanpur. Traders from Bengal, Bihar and Nepal would come here for business and raw material. But today, entrepreneurs stay out due to the absence of a stable environment.

Education has suffered too. Each time the Ram Mandir issue surfaces, schools and colleges turn into rest-houses for security personnel. Locals do not present a favourable opinion of the various Sanskrit degree colleges in the region.

Buddhist Culture

Vineet Maurya (41) — the first person to be profiled in Ms. Dubey's book — has campaigned, for many years, in favour of revamping Ayodhya's Buddhist culture. He believes that restoring such spots is the only way to attract a large number of tourists as well as grants from foreign countries.

"Only the Mutts benefit due to pilgrims. What about the residents? And why only talk of Hindu-Muslims? Will a place with such a polarised atmosphere ever become a tourist hub?" he says.

He has written letters to the archaeological department, the Chief Minister and the Home Ministry to carry out carbon-dating and declare historical locations such as Mani Parbhat and Sugriva Tila as Buddhist tourist spots.

Mr. Maurya's idea is not that far-fetched for all the outrage it may seem to generate. In 2001, the Mayor of South Korean city Kim-Hae invited Ayodhya to sign a Sister City Bond. According to Korean folklore, Queen Heo Hwang-Ock — daughter of an Ayodhya king and who is said to have later become Queen of the ancient Kaya kingdom of Korea — travelled there from Ayodhya around 2,000 years ago. Buoyed by this, researchers have, over the past decade, been busy substantiating the link between Ayodhya and Korea. Ayodhya even came close to receiving the Rs.200-crore grant from Korea as a mark of friendship.

Land disputes

However, for all that hype, Ayodhya had to settle for a memorial on the banks of the Saryu to commemorate the birthplace of Queen Hwang-Ock. It does not even find a mention in any tourism brochures or websites.

Meanwhile, there is an emerging controversy that right-wing groups are allegedly not allowing any sort of repair work on old religious places belonging to minority communities. An RTI was filed in this matter and locals are mulling over filing a PIL in the Allahabad High Court, says Anil Singh, a Faizabad-based professor and social activist.

"These mosques are being converted into khandar s [ruins] and not even the smallest repair work is being allowed by right-wing elements," Mr. Singh said.

A land dispute concerning the site is already in court. According to Mr. Maurya, who is the petitioner, 43 out 67 acres of acquired land for the Ram Janmabhoomi is disputed. "It was farming land. Compensation for the land in 1989 was Rs.15 per sq. foot but we got only Rs.2.40. We are demanding for Rs.20."

The court is also hearing a case seeking that VHP account for all the money it has collected for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.

Ayodhya has barely grown in the last two decades; any hype is short-lived: Scharada Dubey

While religious tourism is touted by administrators, locals stress preference for industry, handicrafts

-The Hindu, 16th September 2013

Its popularity has withstood the currents of time, from the days of the Sultanate and Mughals to today's eateries and 'factories'.

Talk about kababs invariably leads to Peshawar, land of Kipling's water-carrier Gunga Din and known for its chapli variety. But one has to go further north to trace the kabab's history in Afganistan, Iran and Turkey. The first kababs were popularised by the last named country and came to India with the Turkish invaders, though the writer Kingslake tasted them only after crossing into Istanbul of the Pashas in the 19th Century, where he was fascinated by the unveiled faces of pretty women and the exotic food available. In Delhi one supposes during the Sultanate days kababs began to be grilled in Mehrauli and later Nizamuddin Basti. They probably came to Kali (Kalan) Masjid, now famous in the Walled City for its nahari, at the time of Ferozeshah Tughlaq. Prince Juna ate them with the rotis distributed by Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia at his khankah (hospice). Hasan Gangoo or Kangu, who later founded the Bahmani Kindom (1347) in the Deccan, also ate the same rotis when he was a half-famished boy in Delhi, caring for his mother and sister, and nearly died of grief when the latter succumbed to pneumonia.

It is not far-fetched to imagine that the kababs then were cruder compared to the succulent ones that became popular during the Mughal period. Akbar, who preferred to eat alone, had a small appetite, but not his son Jahangir who enjoyed the Persian kababs made by Asmat Begum, mother of his wife, Nur Jahan. The begum is credited with the discovery of attar-e-gul (rose scent). This perfume wafted in the royal dining room when Jahangir ate kababs aplenty and drank to his satisfaction. It was on one such evening that he came out with his famous exclamation, "Ek lukum kabab ho, ek pyala sharab ho/Sulanate Nur-e-Jehani/Abad ho barbad ho'. By that time the reins of the empire were virtually in the hands of his shrewd queen, with Jahangir exercising only nominal control.

Came Shah Jahan and Nur Jahan's influence ended, with her niece Mumtaz Mahal's ascendancy as the new empress. Shah Jahan was not frugal in his eating habits either, but drink he gave up eventually as he became pious. But the Persian kababs prepared by Mumtaz Mahal from the time he was a prince, and at times a fugitive because of the machinations of Nur Jahan, he never could give up even after her death. The old guide Ismail Khan used to tell visitors to the Agra Fort that in his last years kababs were sometimes served to Shah Jahan when, ill and old, he sat contemplating the Taj Mahal across the Yamuna from the Mussaman Burj. He still liked to drink Ganga water, like his father and grandfather.

Aurangzeb, for all his piety, also enjoyed kababs, for which he had developed a fondness from the time of his mother. Even while making merry with the love of his youth, Hirabai Zainabadi (who nearly tempted him to drink before relenting) he washed down Shammi kababs with only plain water – or so say popular tales from that time. The story that he had dog meat served surreptitiously to the saint Bhure Mian in order to test his sagacity is however suspect. So also the comment by the saint (whose dargah is below the walls of the Red Fort): "Halal hai ya haram hai, tu hi jane" (whether it is permitted or forbidden meat, thou alone knowest).

In decadent Mughal times Mohammad Shah was a great gourmand of the 18th Century; Shah Alam and Akbar Shah Sani were also relishers of good food, but Bahadur Shah Zafar surpassed them with his "dastarkhwan" always having venison kababs (from the meat of the deer he hunted across the Yamuna) and moong-ki-dal (Badshah Prasand) of which he was extremely fond. Mirza Ghalib's liking for Maseeta's kababs is well known, though he found it extremely difficult to get them after the Uprising of 1857, when Maseeta's shop was closed and dogs howled in it. Tunda of Lucknow is famous for his kababs but in the Jama Masjid area it was the Meerut kababias who held sway later. Zulfiquar was one of them and it was to him that women who had not prepared the food of their husbands' choice sent the half-wit Mohammad Ali to bring seekh kababs (colloquially kawabs) before their spouses' arrival.

It was much later that New Delhi began to be the rendezvous for kabab (now kabob or kabab) lovers, with the opening of the Karim joints. In Chanakyapuri Al-Kauser of Zeenat Kauser, wife of erstwhile Shama magazine owner Yunus Dehlvi, was a popular place. It is so even now though other branches have been opened after she handed over charge to her khansamas. The kakori kabab that Nabbu Mian started making in 1896 is now popularized by his great-grandson Ashfaq Ahmed, who has created Alkakori with 52 exotic spices and a secret recipe. However "Aap ki Khatir" restaurant in Nizamuddin, a craze at one time, has ceased to function. Kale Baba of Suiwalan is dead but in Ballimaran the son of another gola kabab maker still sits near the late Bhai Siddique's paan shop to maintain the kabab tradition, along with so many others in Matia Mahal and Bara Hindu Rao. But where, oh where will you find a connoisseur like Jahangir who was content to barter his kingdom for a kabab!

-The Hindu, 16th September 2013

With the help of 200 conservationists, over a 1,000 craftsmen and 2, 00,000 man-days of work, Delhi’s legendary Humayun’s Tomb is ready to throw open its refurbished doors. By Karan Bhardwaj

If you think new-age craftsmen are not as skilled as their predecessors were centuries ago, you better pay a visit to the Humayun’s Tomb. The exemplary monument that was built in 1560s by Mughal emperor Humayun’s first wife Bega Begum in his memory is one-its-kind of architectural design. However, five centuries later, like many of India’s historic buildings, it too was in a miserable condition. But before it was about to be written off by visitors and historians, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) took up the arduous task of its restoration in 2007 on the request of PM Manmohan Singh. With the help of 200 conservation professionals, over 1,000 craftsmen and 2,00,000 man-days of work, the legendary tomb is ready to throw open its refurbished doors. The grand launch will take place tomorrow at the lawns amidst an august gathering.

The process began when the Trust took up the garden restoration of Humayun’s Tomb on the 50th anniversary of Independence, in partnership with the Archaeological Survey of India. In 2007, they signed an Urban Renewal Project to work on the areas of Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti, Sunder Nursery and the Humayun’s Tomb complex. “AKTC reviewed various sites in India but chose to return to the Humayun’s Tomb. The reasons were — the garden restoration work in the Tomb was already done by us and the restoration work in the Nizamuddin area would result in the socio-economic development of the Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti,” says Ratish Nanda, Project Director.

Before starting the restoration process of the Humayun’s Tomb, there was an exhaustive documentation by architects using sophisticated equipment such as 3D laser scanning technology — originally invented to detect leaks in nuclear plants. “This combined with a major research programme aimed at investigating past repairs. It revealed that the architectural integrity of the structure had been compromised in the 20th century by repairs carried out without a proper understanding of historic structures. Some 20th century alterations, such as the removal of tilework and gilding from the Tomb chamber could not be undone as there was no evidence of original designs but the project aimed to enhance the historical significance wherever this was possible with the intention of ensuring long-term preservation,” he observes.

The larger Urban Renewal Project includes conservation of over 30 monuments, some dating from the 14th century. “This week we will be celebrating the completion of conservation work at the Humayun’s Tomb. Here, we were fortunate to receive co-funding from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. To restore the building to how the Mughal builders intended it to appear, we required to undo 20th century inappropriate repairs,” says the project director.

The scale of restoration work is evident from the numbers — one million kilos of concrete was manually removed from the roof and 2,25,000 sq ft of lime plaster was applied to the mausoleum and attached structures. Also, 40,000 sq ft of stone paving from the plinth was lifted and reset. It was a huge challenge as the stone blocks weighed more than 2,500 kilos.

“A multi-disciplinary team comprising conservation architects, archaeological engineers, landscape architects, historians, urban planners and designers supervised the craftsmen. Stone carvers, masons, plasterers, tile markers and carpenters clocked over 200,000 man-days of work thereby demonstrating that conservation can create employment opportunities in India,” comments Nanda.
There were challenges galore. Some craft skills such as tile making and plastering had disappeared in India and considerable effort was required to revive these skills. “However, it was understood from the onset that the usual ‘preserve as found’ approach would not work here. The ASI set up a committee to review works on a monthly basis and we had several independent peer reviews. The project now marks a significant return to Indian traditions. We adopted a craft-based approach to conservation with the paramount concern being to respect the intention of the original builders,” he tells us. Humayun’s Tomb is a grand building, not a ruin that it had been reduced to. Though the mausoleum was structurally stable to begin with, the difference lied in the details. Tilework has been restored to the canopies; the state-of-art lightening conductor replaced 13 conductors installed here in 2004. Thick wooden doors to the 68 mini mausoleums on the ground floor have been restored, so has been the star shaped ornamentation in plasterwork.

Large portions of the enclosure walls had collapsed. These have been reconstructed using traditional materials and building techniques.

A lot of efforts are now being made to attract more visitors to the monument. The AKTC is undertaking many initiatives to make it more visitor-friendly. “A site exhibit was installed at the onset of the project both to inform visitors of the historic significance of the site as well as on the proposed conservation works. A full colour, beautifully illustrated children’s guidebook is available on site at a nominal price of Rs 50, for the 3,00,000 children who visit the monument each year. Furthermore, AKTC is providing design and building assistance for a proposed Interpretation Centre that will significantly enhance the visitor experience and will be the first such facility in India,” says Nanda.

The Pioneer, 17th September 2013

The rainforest is a hub of activity with life-supporting systems that make it a biodiversity hotspot. The unique geographical locations of these rainforests truly make it one-of-a-kind.

The world’s rainforests are home to half of the planet’s living animal and plant species, yet these biodiversity hotspots cover only six per cent of the earth’s surface. What is truly amazing, however, is that these forests still hide millions of undiscovered plants, small animals, insects and micro organisms inside it.

Dense jungles with a thick cloud cover that keeps the forest wet, warm and humid all year round, and tall trees reaching for the sky while plants down below grow close together — the rainforest is a magical place. But what makes these amazing forests an indispensable resource to mankind? The rainforest is a hub of activity with life-supporting systems that make it a biodiversity hotspot. Also, the unique geographical locations of these rainforests truly make it one-of-a-kind.

Lungs of the earth
The rainforests are essential to the survival of man on this planet. They have been called as the lungs of the planet for the role they play in absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Rainforests act as huge carbon sinks, taking in a major portion of carbon dioxide and storing it in their roots, stems, leaves and branches. As a result, rainforests help stabilise the earth’s climate and even fight pollution.

The rainforest is nearly self-watering. The plants in this delicate ecosystem release water into the atmosphere through a process called transpiration. In tropical rainforests, the canopy trees — the largest trees of the rainforest — release about 760 litres of water each year. Consequently, rainforests play a vital role in regulating rainfall and keeping the water balance. Destruction of the rainforest will lead to an increase in global warming and affect the climate of the world.

Biodiversity hotspots
Rainforests are the earth’s oldest living ecosystem. Today, they contain the most concentrated areas of biodiversity. More than two-thirds of the world’s plant species live in tropical rainforests. An area of the rainforest, the size of two football fields may have more than 400 species of trees. What makes tropical rainforests such hotspots for biodiversity? The canopy structure of the forest provides abundant space for plants to grow and animals to live. The canopy offers sources of food, shelter, hiding places and interaction between different species for the plants and animals to thrive. Moreover, tropical rainforests receive a lot of sunlight because of their geographical location. The process of photosynthesis helps plants convert the sunlight into energy that supports life in the rainforest. A number of unique plant and animal species will become extinct if the rainforests are destroyed.

Also, did you know tropical rainforests thrive with medicinal properties? Less than one per cent of the world’s tropical plants have been tested for pharmaceutical properties, yet at least 25 per cent of all modern drugs come originally from rainforests. The plants of the rainforest are used in medicines that fight illnesses like cancer, leukaemia and heart disease. Since the plants in the rainforest grow close together and have to deal with the constant threat of insects, they have adapted by producing chemicals that researchers have found useful as medicines. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the anti-cancer plants identified so far are present only in rainforests. Many plants and trees, such as orchids, have been removed from the rainforest in an effort to cultivate them elsewhere. However, some like the Brazil nut tree of the Amazon refuse to grow anywhere but in their homes.

Tropical and temperate
The world’s rainforests are divided into two types: tropical and temperate. Tropical rainforests are found between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Hot and moist, these include the Amazon in South America, Congo rainforest in Central Africa and the Western Ghats in India. In South Asia, tropical rainforests stretch from India and Burma in the West to Malaysia and the islands of Java and Borneo in the East.

Shelly Jyoti is inspired by Gandhian philosophy and practices. She explores traditional Indian embroidery like azrakh and Sanskrit calligraphy in her works. By Divya Kaushik

She studied fashion, textiles and clothing technology at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Delhi. She created garments and supplied them across India under her label for over 10 years and then Shelly Jyoti moved to Baroda. The move from Delhi to Baroda proved to be the turning point in her life. She was inspired by the visual art scene in Baroda and moved on to art from fashion. “It was in 1999 and as an artist I touched upon all the media. Then I was invited to showcase by a gallery in Chicago and since I was going to do an international show I thought I should be working on a theme that strongly represents Indian heritage. So I decided to do Beyond Mithila, which explored the patterns of folk art from India. I looked at the traditional embroidery and embellishment from India. Mithila art was done by women and ‘women’ are associated with femininity of needle work, knitting, knotting, weaving. As a contemporary woman artist, I explored the ornamentation of painted and hand blocked canvas with elements of traditional embellishments and embroidery like kantha from Kolkata andzardozi which is specific to Persian embroidery from the Mughal period,” explained Jyoti, giving an introduction to her works.

Jyoti displayed her series Indigo Narratives in azrakh techniques at the United Art Fair. Sharing details on the same she said, “Indigo Narratives features sculpture, installation and paintings that incorporate hand-embroidered textiles, azrakh printing on khadi and Sanskrit calligraphy. My narratives are inspired by the accounts of the tyranny of British colonial indigo planters on native farmers of Champaran and Mahatma Gandhi’s subsequent intervention in Bihar 1917-18, through the firstSatyagraha led by Gandhi on the Indian soil after his fight against racialism in South Africa. The works use textile references of coastal Gujarat, literary texts such as Neel Darpan. The use of azrakh printing on khadi utilises indigo techniques, which are used by Khatris, the immigrants from Sindh and Baluchistan during 1600 CE. Through this process I examine the implications of personal, political and cross-cultural choices of these communities.” The artist was working with the artists in Bhuj, Gujarat, “because I wanted to involve them in the art. The ideas are mine but I closely work with the artists to allow them do what they are best at.”

She will be showcasing her other series of work, Salt: The Great March, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts from September 28. She says that she has always been influenced by the Gandhian philosophy and that is why she most of the times end up picking up inspirations and themes for her artwork from the early days when Gandhi introduced a revolution in the country. In this series she has explored contemporary quilt-making traditions in azrakh textiles. It features a large khadi fabric site specific installation, sculptural installation of khadi yarn (aatis), 25 contemporary artworks usingazrakh traditions of printing and dyeing on khadi fabric and multi-media spoken poetry presentation.

“These works draw upon the history of India’s colonial past and Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 Dandi March, which began the Salt March and became an important part of the Indian Independence movement. According to Gandhi, modern societies could become genuine, moral communities, only if the duty of citizenship was duly adhered to. I explore the possibilities of establishing alternative societies where Gandhian ideals of swadharma and sarvodya could be established and implemented. I feel reintroducing Gandhian ideals with critical changes, as per contemporary times, can lead to major positive change,” she said.

While the 25 khadi artworks with quilting technique will be displayed as hanging tapestries, Jyoti’s self-written poetry on the relevance of Dandi march will play in the background.

The showstopper of the exhibition will be a large scale installation titled Integrating Khadi which has been made using 30 metres of khadi and has prints of Sanskrit calligraphy. This installation represents the Gandhian thought of developing khadi across the villages for the economic independence of then predominantly agrarian society.

A replica of Labna’s Arch, a symbol of expression of friendship and links between Mexico and India, was inaugurated by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at the Garden of Five Senses on Monday.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Dikshit said the initiative by the State Government will bring both the countries together in heritage, culture and political tie-ups. She said her Government will take steps to beautify the historic Arch by illuminating it during the evening hours.

Describing the collaboration between India and Mexico as a people’s project, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Delhi Chapter convenor A.G.K. Menon said private Mexican and Indian enterprises donated money for this project.
Conceived about a decade ago by former Ambassador of Mexico to India Julio Faesler, the project has been executed with the support of the Delhi Government, INTACH and Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation.

Labna’s Arch is one of the largest and most ornate architectural structures known to have been built by the Mayans. The Arch will stand as a testimony to years of artistic, political and economic exchanges between India and Mexico. The Arch is part of a passage way connecting two plazas or courtyards, separating the living quarters of priests, soldiers and nobles. Its facade is decorated with mouldings, pillars; the niches and corners display masques representing Chaac, the God of Rain.

The Hindu, 17th September 2013

The science of engineering is not the sole preserve of humankind. Animal are adept at it too. The animal world holds a vast and available reservoir of building technology that is not only perfect in design but also in complete sync with the natural world

Heading down the Sekonye river in Kalimantan, in Indonesia, over its black mirror-like waters coloured by the decaying leaves of the rainforest, we turned a bend and saw a big male orangutan climbing up a tree. As he reached the highest branches he sat in the fork, and with an expression of disdain on his face, which only an orangutan can carry off, he proceeded to make his nest for the night. Essentially a messy bed for the night, its looks are deceiving. As we watched, we saw there was a method and technique to nest-making: Carefully breaking the smaller branches which were in the way and folding them over the stronger ones to make the base.

A study conducted over the years by scientists from the University of Manchester showed that orangutans, in fact, use complex engineering skills for constructing their nests which have to be sturdy enough to hold their weight — in the case of an adult male orangutan, it can be as much as 80kg. The best branches are picked, folded, bent and woven together to create an outside base of sturdy and thick green branches. The inside of the nest is then filled with slim branches which give it a springy and comfortable centre. All this is constructed in about five minutes. It began raining as the male was halfway throughhis project, and to keep himself from getting wet he improvised. He left one straight branch standing in the middle of the nest and basically made himself an umbrella.

We’ve built bridges, dug many metres into the ground, under and over the sea, through and on top of mountains, and constructed buildings that are so tall that they sway in the wind. We’ve constantly modified and changed the environment physically to suit our needs and created structures and spaces. While there is no comparison to the scale and extent of this, it is not an entirely new concept.

All animals and insects create some form of a ‘home’. Sometimes it’s just a little nook in the fold of a branch, but there are many animal engineers out there who are burrowing and building and designing complex elaborate structures. Of course, when we do think of ‘builders’ in nature, the first on the list are birds. Birds are incredibly evolved and adaptable, which is even more impressive when we consider that for a species that lacks opposable thumbs and multiple limbs they can build sophisticated and carefully-designed nests, like that of the weaver bird, in a matter of days. While some birds are quite happy with a pile of twigs or sometimes even just a potted plant, there are others who take nest building quite seriously.

Bower birds at first sight seem to have a simple and a rather unruly nest. They build what is called an ‘avenue bower’ — two walls of twigs woven together with a passage way in the middle which leads to a ‘display’ court which has been decorated by the males with carefully collected and placed bright colourful objects like flowers, shells, and even bits of plastic.

What researchers in Australia have now found is that the placement of the objects is all part of a plan. They noticed the objects lining the display court got progressively smaller as they neared the entrance of the bower. It seems the males were creating a forced perspective, an optical illusion where they would appear larger than they are to the waiting female. Moreover, the location of the nest is also carefully picked to ensure the best lighting.

In open canopy forests the nests were almost always facing north-west and in dense closed canopy forests the males build only where gaps in the canopy had lit the forest floor. To test their theory, the researchers rearranged the objects and reversed the size order of the objects in 15 nests. Within three days the males ‘fixed’ it and restored their original design.

If bower birds are the psychologists of the forest, then the beavers are certainly the architects. Well known for their ability to create artificial dams beavers are also classified as ‘ecosystem engineers’ because of the effects of their dams on streams. Altering the biological diversity, water chemistry and even affecting the population of trees and plants along the stream, beavers literally create their own habitat. Essentially building a micro-dam and flooding an area, beavers encourage the growth of plants that they like to eat, and that too in places which are easily accessible to them.

With underwater entrances to their lodges beavers are also safe from all the top predators. The dam affects the local environment profoundly where an entire of community of insects that thrive in running water is replaced by pond dwelling creatures like dragonflies and worms. Interestingly, with this change in the ecosystem the total biomass of organisms in the water increases by two to five times, aquifers are recharged, pollutants are filtered and a buffer against both flood and drought is created.

Right up there with the beavers is the humble cheenti. Ants are prolific builders, continuously improving, repairing and expanding their underground empire grain by grain. How they manage to construct such well-planned and complex structures, without a leader and in complete darkness is still a mystery. There seems to be some unwritten plan or a blueprint genetically embedded into their memory which they follow in complete order and silence.

By studying the structure of an ant colony, it becomes clear that ants are not only creating multiple chambers for different purposes but they are constructing in relation to distance from the surface as well. What ants do underground, termites do above, creating skyscrapers of the insect world, which can reach up to 16 feet in height. And, what are the construction materials? Chewed up remains of woody trees, mud, feaces and, probably, copious amounts of termite spit. Termite mounds in spite of their less-than-appealing materials of choice are fully automatic climate-controlled, air-conditioned buildings that come with a water harvesting and fungi garden system installed within. It’s a masterful combination of engineering and self-sustenance.

Recently, an underwater mystery was solved. In 1995, a geometric circular structure measuring approximately two metre in diameter was found on the seabed off the coast of Japan. No one could decipher or explain the source of this symmetrical and geometric circular design with lines and valleys emanating from the exact centre. They ended up calling it the ‘mystery circle’ until it was discovered that the artist behind the structure is a tiny male puffer fish. Once a female is suitably impressed with a male’s creative efforts, she lays her eggs in the middle of his nest which he then guards till they hatch. The purpose of all design might not be immediately clear to us.

The secrets they hold may only be revealed when we look beyond the obvious, for the animal world holds a vast and available reservoir of engineering technology that is not only perfect in design but also in complete sync with the natural world.

(The author is a wildlife film-maker)

The Pioneer, 18th September 2013

The Roads Ministry has completed the restoration work on the pedestrian route to Kedarnath but the yatra is expected to start only next year.

The Ministry claims to have repaired the 14-km trek route connecting Gaurikund to Rambara to Kedarnath which suffered the worst damage in the flash floods that hit the region on June 16 to 17, leading to widespread devastation.

“The prayers have resumed in the temple, but the yatra will take at least another season to start. Our primary aim was to open up the pedestrian channels so as to resume connectivity and now we are working on our second and third phase of motorable road development simultaneously,” said a senior official from Ministry of Roads Transport and Highways (MoRTH).

“In the first phase, we want vehicular movement to resume and simultaneously we are also in talks with ministry of environment, Geological Survey of India (GSI) and some other research bodies to build long term solutions for building robust road connectivity to the higher reaches of Uttarakhand,” said the official.

To expedite work on motorable roads, the ministry enhanced funding for both Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and Public Works Department (PWD) — the two main agencies carrying out restoration work on higher reaches. While the ministry has approved an annual plan size of Rs 555 crore for 2013-14 for BRO, up from Rs 283 crore last fiscal, it enhanced the PWD budget from the Rs 130 crore to Rs 640 crore this year.

“The stretch between Mana and Gangotri is also very bad and will take a lot of planning and time to re-build. In some places, the existing terrain is so bad that alternate routes may have to be carved out,” said an official.

“Construction of motorable roads may take anywhere between two to three years. The recent calamity has taught us several lessons, so this time, when building the roads several other factors like terrain, slopes and other risk elements have to be factored in,” said the official.

The Pioneer, 18th September 2013

A unique ‘mangrove zoo’ that will display the ecosystem of the Sunderbans will come up at Jharkhali in West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district, senior officials of the West Bengal Zoo Authority said on Tuesday.

“We will try to create a typical mangrove ecosystem at the zoo. About 100 acres of land that we are getting already has mangrove vegetation. We have to create enclosures where we can keep the animals,” B.R. Sharma, member secretary, West Bengal Zoo Authority, told The Hindu.

Permission from the Central Zoo Authority to set up the zoo had been obtained and the government recently passed an order to transfer the 100 acres of land, he said.
“This will be the first mangrove zoo in the whole world,” Mr. Sharma claimed.

“The zoo will also serve as a temporary centre for rescue and rehabilitation of animals found in the Sunderbans,” he said.

Animals found in the mangrove ecosystem such as the Royal Bengal tiger, spotted deer and wild boar, salt-water crocodiles, fishing cats, Batagur baska a species of riverine turtles and otters – a living species of semi-aquatic mammals, would be kept at the zoo, which was being developed on the lines of the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Gardens located in the Darjeeling district that deals with conservation of animals found in the high altitude areas of the eastern Himalayas, he noted.

It was first stolen from a ramshackle temple in a UP village and then fell into the hands of an art collector in Paris. This exquisite 10th-century stone sculpture of the yogini, the female emblem of India's mystical cult, has been acquired by the National Museumand will be on public display for the first time during an 18-day-long exhibition, which will be inaugurated by culture minister Chandresh Kumari Katoch and external affairs ministerSalman Khurshid at the museum at 3pm on Thursday.

Officials said the museum will celebrate the homecoming of the 4.5-foot-tall Vrishanana Yogini, the sculpture of a female deity with a buffalo-shaped head, weighing nearly 400kg, by holding a unique exhibition from September 19 to October 6. "The museum has organized exhibitions on certain themes but this is the first one to focus on an artefact," said Dr Venu V, the museum's director-general. Multiple themes, however, underpin the exhibition,
he added.

Dr Venu said the exhibition aims to inform people about the fascinating history of yoginis and the elaborate rituals of worship. More importantly, it highlights the continued smuggling priceless Indian artefacts. Museum officials said the majestic sculpture was pilfered from the temple at Lokhari village (Banda district) in the Bundelkhand, UP. It was then trafficked to France, where a private art collector, Robert Schrimpf, procured it. In 2008, his widow, Martine Schrimpf, donated it to the Indian embassy in Paris. The Indian embassy brought the matter before the culture minister during her visit to Paris early this year. She directed the National Museum to bring the sculpture back. The efforts of the Indian embassy and of National Museum in Delhi came to fruition.


The exhibition has been jointly curated by J E Dawson, curator (archaeology), National Museum, and Anupa Pande, dean, National Museum Institute. Numerous panels of texts, illustrations and photographs will elaborate on the history of yoginis. "The return of Vrishanana Yogini marks a triumph of the country's sustained efforts to get back its stolen antiquities. By holding the exhibition, we want to send an ethical message to the international community that would prompt a return of Indian antiquities," said Pande. Officials said the real problem was in convincing the French authorities about the Indian origin of the stolen sculpture and establishing its authenticity. "Three factors were in our favour: we established the artefact's authenticity on the basis of a book, Yogini: Cult and Temples-A Tantric Tradition, brought out by the museum in 1986, which carried its picture; the widow of the French art collector couldn't tell the source of its acquisition, and the art collector's donation letter executed through an attorney," said Dawson, who had to go to Paris to make a foolproof case.

Vrishanana Yogini, with a buffalo head and a female, sits against an unornamented stone slab in lalitasana. She holds a club in her left hand and a bilva fruit in her right. Her vahana is a swan that pecks on the fruit. She has a chiselled body with full breasts, slim waist and rounded abdomen. Her eyes are half-closed in contemplation. The animal face has a serene and meditative expression.

The Times of India, 18th September 2013

The failure of the amended Wildlife Bill's penal provisions to distinguish between scientific research and illegal trade does not bode well for conservation biology

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,/In the forests of the night”; for generations, William Blake’s passionate paean has nurtured collective reverence for the tiger. India started Project Tiger in 1973-1974, after it instituted its landmark Wildlife Protection Act (WPA) in 1972. Offering strict protection to plants and animals under various “Schedules,” the WPA has been the bedrock for conserving wild biodiversity, including setting the tone for Project Tiger.

Now, new amendments have been proposed to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and placed in the Rajya Sabha. With unerring and increasing wildlife poaching in India, one of the key features of the amendments is increasing penalties for violations of its provisions. In the same protectionist spirit, the WPA has a new provision proposed for wildlife research. Scientists can carry out their work under permits, but violating these provisions will mean punishment on a par with other crimes like poaching and killing wild animals. While it is in itself debatable whether increasing penalties is an effective deterrent against crime, this provision in effect collapses the distinction between commercial and science-based activity. This sits ill with an Act which has conservation at its heart, and is set to be an irrevocable deterrent to the science of conservation biology. Currently, the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Bill has now been referred to the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment & Forests.

Evolution with conservation
The WPA started as a state-run, purely protectionist approach, but with the changing needs of conservation, co-evolved slowly. For instance, the WPA was amended in 2002, and new categories for protected areas — community and conservation reserves — were introduced. In 2006, the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau was instituted through another amendment. The 2013 Amendment has a stricter stand against the wildlife trade. It calls for increased penalties for poaching, so a person caught with the meat of an animal classified under Schedule I or II, its articles or trophies et cetera, is “punishable with imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than five years but which may extend to seven years and also with fine which shall not be less than one lakh rupees but which may extend to twenty-five lakh rupees.” This is clearly a means of tackling a canny, lucrative and bloody poaching trade, which decimates Schedule I animals like tigers and rhinos in India each month. But the same Amendment also states that any other offence under the Act — such as violating or “breaching” the rules of permits for scientific research — would earn the offender up to three years in jail and a fine of up to 25,000 rupees.

Conservation science in law
Is such punishment justified? In India, conservation biology is an exciting living laboratory, and one which practical conservation has benefited from. The most outstanding example is that of the tiger. Traditionally understood as an animal “burning bright in dark forests” (as William Blake’s poem illustrates), modern conservation research, camera-trap images and satellite-collaring on tigers have demonstrated that tigers inhabit and use a wide landscape matrix, over roads, railway lines, and sugarcane fields, to find areas beyond just their natal forest. Thus, conservation policy, in conjunction with the WPA, now seeks to protect forest corridors and increase connectivity between protected areas. This year, Mukundara Hills Tiger Reserve was created in Rajasthan. While Mukundura does not actually have resident tigers, it is specifically meant to provide connectivity to the tigers of Ranthambhore towards new habitat. This evolution of tiger conservation — from an approach that was focused on sequestered protected areas already containing tigers, now moving towards larger landscape conservation — could not have been possible without the inputs of conservation science and researchers. This research has always been done in conjunction with forest departments, and has also been contingent on procuring permits to work in natural areas or with wild animals. There is thus nothing objectionable about the WPA 2013 Amendment referring to the same permit system. It is the suggested penalties for breaching the norms of the permit which has wildlife scientists up in arms. While some suggest this is a means of the state territorialising wildlife research, this may also curtail the very evolution of conservation.

Bio-wealth
Conservation biology as a field in science was conceived as a “crisis discipline,” a response to rising extinction rates of species and the accelerating loss and degradation of natural ecosystems. Taking the study of wildlife outside of the “biology,” “zoology” or “botany” box it was in, conservation biology sought to synergise the study and application of governance, human sociology, and traditional ecological knowledge with ecology and animal biology. Apart from being a crisis discipline then, conservation biology at its very heart is also a value-laden discipline.

The Haryana archives department has decided to digitise the records pertaining to the freedom movement in the state. 

Stating that the department has preserved public records dating back from 1822 AD to 1990s and major bulk of them pertain to the freedom movement in the state, a spokesperson said, adding that the condition of the records, which are in tape-recorded format, is continuously deteriorating. 

"To save the priceless records, the Department of Archives has started to convert the audio cassettes into the DVD format by using new technology," he said. 

He said there are 168 audio cassettes in the department containing voices of 542 freedom fighters and INA volunteers like Sri Ram Sharma, ex-Chief Minister of Haryana BD Gupta, Captain Kanwal, who was ADC to Subhash Chander Bose and Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda's father Ranbir Singh. 

These transcripts serve the purpose of bridging the gap between the records and actual happenings on one hand, and become a good source for writing history on the other hand. So far the department has tape-recorded the memoirs of 542 freedom fighters and INA volunteers, he added.

The Business Standard, 19th September 20

A 1000-year-old sculpture of a yogini with a buffalo head was donated by a French woman called Martine Schrimpf in 2008 to the Indian embassy in Paris. Her husband Robert Schrimpf was an art collector and had acquired the scultpture from an unnamed source.

Carbon dating
and other tests conducted on the 400 kg, 4.5ft-high sculpture at the Indian embassy in Paris confirmed that the sculpture is from the 10th century.
In the tantric tradition, yoginis are anti-brahmanical figures who punish those who make caste distinctions and are appointed by Shiva as protecters of the tantric kula tradition.

Records in historical publications note that a yogini statue was reportedly stolen from a Yogini temple at a small village Lokhari in Mau sub-division of Banda district of Uttar Pradesh between 1983 and 1992. It is believed to have landed up in an antique shop in Mumbai in 1992.

But the National Museum experts say that the yogini from Paris is originally from Ranipur-Jharial in Orissa and is an exact match of the photo in a publication called “Yogini: Cult and Temples- A Tantric Tradition” by Vidya Dahejia. Dahejia also states in the publication, that the remains of the yogini temples are scattered over north India in remote sites that are difficult to access.

Dahejia adds, “People generally refer to the yoginis in hushed tones, if at all they mention them.”

The Indian embassy played a key role in getting the statue back to India. The Indian ambassador to Paris, Arun K. Singh, told HT that establishing the genuineness of the statue was a very important step.

Singh said, “The French authorities were very cooperative and we are very happy that the statue is sent back to India and will be now housed in the National Museum”.

India has stringent domestic laws under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 to regulate the export of objects that are more than 100 years old. India is also a signatory to the 1970 Unesco Convention, that aims at curb illicit trafficking of cultural property.

Renowned ghazal singersBhupinder and Mitali Singh, Sufi singer Zila Khan, and actor Tom Alter will be among the performers at the five-day Urdu Heritage Festival starting from September 20. Other eminent artists to grace the festival include qawwals Aslam and Nasir Sabri and Urdu poets Wasim Bareilvi and Anwar Jalalpuri. 

Organized by Urdu Academy and department of art, culture and languages, Delhi government, the festival will be held on the grounds of Red Fort in Old Delhi. Entry is free. "Urdu is as much a representative of Delhi as the Red Fort. We desire to highlight this link through the festival which will resonate from the bylanes of Chandni Chowk to the rest of the city," says Anis Azmi, secretary, Urdu Academy. 

The festival will begin with Urdu tarana sung by Swar Trishna and followed by ghazals from Bhupinder and Mitali Singh. A presentation of Chaar Bait, the dying form of Urdu poetry in its traditional form, ensues next. An all-India mushaira is slated for September 23, where participating poets include Wasim Bareilvi, Agha Sarosh, Ahmar Jalesri, Naeem Rashid, Shakeel Azmi, Tabish Mehdi, Anwar Jalalpuri and others. 

A play on the life and times of Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib will be staged on September 22. Titled Ghalib, the play brought by Pierrot's Troupe, will see renowned actor Tom Alter essay the role of the legendary 19th century poet. September 24—the last day of the festival—will witness a special tribute to renowned singer Begum Akhtar. The evening titled, Akhtari, as she was popularly called, will pay tribute to her in the form of daastan goi by Vidya Shah (singer) and Danish Hussain (narrator). 

Replete with cultural events, food delights, book exhibition, calligraphic displays and magic shows, the festival will also feature ghazals by Anwar Hussain and sufiana kalam by Anita Singhvi. 

The festival will also showcase cultural performances by students from Delhi's schools and colleges.

The Times of India, 20th September 2013

Did Bibi Juliana become Joga Bai? R.V. SMITH tries to find out as he comes across a letter from a descendant of the enigmatic lady

Bibi Juliana-ki-Sarai is now a DDA Colony in Okhla. Near it is Masihgarh, with its Church of Our Lady of Good Health. All this was once part of the estate of Dona Juliana Dias Da Costa, a Portuguese lady who came to be known as Bibi Juliana in the time of Aurangzeb. It is interesting to note that in Akbar’s reign the physician in charge of his seraglio was also a Portuguese lady by the name of Juliana, whose niece was Bibi Amiana. The story goes that Juliana and her sister Maria came to Agra after being rescued from pirates, who had captured a Portuguese ship, and brought to Hooghly, which became a Portuguese stronghold in the reign of Jahangir. The Portuguese gave affront to Shah Jahan when as Prince Khurram he had rebelled against his father and moved towards Bengal, along with his wife, Arjumand Bano, whom history knows as Mumtaz Mahal. The Portuguese had kidnapped two maids of Mumtaz Mahal and refused to return them. When Khurram came to the throne he ordered the sack of Hooghly, after which 4,000 prisoners were brought to Agra. To get back to Juliana the first, Akbar liked her so much that failing to win her hand he had her married to Jeane Philippe Bourbon of Navarre, a cousin of Henry IV of France, who had escaped from there after killing a kinsman in a duel. Phillippe Bourbon, after many adventures, landed up at Akbar’s 16th century court and was received with honour. He became a Mughal nobleman and, along with wife Juliana, exercised great influence. It was from this union that the Indian Bourbons claim descent.

Now for the second Bibi Juliana. As a Portuguese lady of note she was patronised by Aurangzeb, who gave her lands in Delhi on which she built a magnificent sarai or inn. The residents of the many villages she owned, in course of time, are believed to have corrupted the name Juliana, which was alien to them, to Joga Bai, as though she was a Maratha lady (or was she one with a distinct identity?) who practiced great austerity and was a patroness of the poor and needy. While going through some old papers, I came across this letter sent to me on 21 May, 2007 by Beverly Hallam of Ealing, London, which throws more light on the historically coincidental Bibi Juliana.
“I have been researching my family history for some time and, in the course of this, have become acquainted with Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, chairman of BACSA. Rosie suggested I contact you as she is aware of your interest in the sarais of the Delhi area and I have, of course, read your article concerning this in The Hindu online.

I have been thrilled to discover that I am a descendant of Juliana Dias Da Costa. This discovery came about through an examination of the will of a Mahratta Officer by the name of Captain Manuel D’Eremao (c1744-1829). “lands conferred as a royal gift by the Maharajah Buhadur Shah in the name of Bebee Juliana, my paternal grandmother.” These lands are those that once belonged to Dona Juliana Dias Da Costa and there is no doubt that this is the lady to whom he refers.

“This will also mentions a sarai “built by Madame Juliana” that is left by Manuel D’Eremao to his nephew, Antoine Manuel – later known as Anthony D’Eremao. A later reference in the same will refers to “land near Bibi Juliana Sarai consisting of 97 bigha more or less and housing five wells”.

“As a further background to the story, I should tell you that Anthony D’Eremao had no children and after his death his wife, Dominga D’Eremao left most of her land to the Catholic Church. I understand that a plaque denoting this gift still exists in the Catholic church of St Mary’s in Delhi. Manuel D’Eremao had one son, Domingo D’Eremao – from who I descend. The D’Eremaos are buried in an old cemetery at Kishanganj outside Delhi. This cemetery is the oldest Christian cemetery in the Punjab area (of which Delhi was once a part). Transcribed records date it from 1781 but there is a distinct possibility that it lies on the site of an even older burial ground. The cemetery has been very badly encroached following the riots of 1947 and I am told that all that remains are a few scattered graves without inscriptions and a large domed building built in Mughal style but displaying Christian crosses. From my research, I believe this building to be the mausoleum of Manuel D’Eremao – the hybrid style displaying the religious tolerance of the period and the link between this Catholic family and the Mughal court which stemmed from the time of Dona Juliana herself. The ASI, who consider the cemetery to be a monument of historical interest, have now won a court case declaring the encroachment illegal but the decision has gone to appeal – I await the outcome.”

Supreme Court ban on mining in Goa has had a domino effect on multiple trading activities, and the economic crisis gripping the state could turn for the worse, say Govind Kamat Maad and Murari Shetye

PANAJI: While the mining ban in Goa has helped change the red-belt into a green-belt, its impact on the socio-economic structure of the state has left a deep scar. Worst hit economically by the no-go is eastern Goa region. All the mines are concentrated in the hills of Sahyadri in Bicholim, Satari, Quepem, Sanguem and Dharbandora.

One year down the line, people living in this iron ore rich mining belt are bearing the brunt of closure of the mining leases. This despite the state government, facing an economic crisis of its own, introducing financial packages to reduce their economic hardships. The state earned about Rs 900 crore annually as royalty from the mining industry at its peak, but this has dried up. The state has had to let go of this revenue although it has affected some of its plans for development.

Areas like Velguem and Pale in Bicholim taluka, Usgao in Ponda taluka and several villages in Sanguem and Quepem talukas are in throes of an economic crisis, perhaps the worst since 1950s when mining began in Goa.

Many have lost jobs and have no alternative to waiting in the hope that there will be a turnaround. The worst-hit are truck owners who are unable to repay bank loans to buy the vehicles. Said Gajendra Usgaonkar, who owns two trucks and looks after a family of eight, "I'll have to kill myself if mining does not resume as I am sitting over a loan liability of Rs 20 lakh to a bank."

All Goa Truck Owners Association president Nilkant Gawas said, "If mining remains halted, the truck owners will have to look out for alternative livelihoods." Some truck owners did get respite after the government announced a relief scheme for them. But it wasn't enough.

Goa also had 350 barges transporting ore that remained anchored after the ban began. These had around 3,500 people employed who too lost their jobs once the ban came into effect. Estimates of outstanding loans from the mining industry were pegged at Rs 1,700 crore, a figure that led the government to ask banks to go easy on the mining industry stakeholders in loan repayments.

South Goa's mining belt of Quepem and Sanguem was perhaps the worst affected. "As it was largely a mining-driven economy, the blanket ban has led to a situation where the flow of money has got curtailed. This has had a cascading effect on all trading activities," said Curchorem-based chartered accountant Pradeep Kakodkar.

People directly or indirectly dependent on mining include truck owners, earthmoving machinery owners, mechanics, workshop operators, welders, shops dealing in spare parts, truck tyres, petrol pump dealers.

Audhoot Timblo, a leading mine owner, said, "Just for the sake of correction of minor pollution, they have virtually killed the mining sector. In the name of environment, NGOs have killed livelihood of people. They are not from the mining belt. They are sitting in AC towers in Mapusa and Panaji. Goa is in deep crisis economically."

Goa also saw its VAT collection dip by Rs 250 crore in 2012-13. Goa chief secretary B Vijayan said VAT collection, projected at Rs 2,250 crore for the last financial year, had reduced to Rs 2,000 crore. The government also highlighted this in a representation to the Prime Minister seeking a special financial package of Rs 3,000 crore to help Goa contain loss of revenue due to the ban on mining.

Prices of real estate that saw an unusual rise in the last few years in Curchorem, in south Goa's mining belt, largely owing to high levels of prosperity generated through the mining trade, fell following the closure of the mines and the resultant crisis. Prices of apartments also reduced drastically.

A 100 sq m 2BHK flat which cost Rs 34 lakh two years ago is now going for less than Rs 26 lakh. Analysts say reduced demand for housing has led to reduction in prices by at least 20-25%. Moreover, close to 200 flats are lying vacant in Curchorem alone, awaiting buyers, said sources in the construction industry.

"The mine owners have accumulated sufficient wealth from mining and some of them have invested in other countries in mining. They should willingly accept the responsibility of taking care of the affected people until the mining activities resume," said associate professor Sanjay Dessai.

The Times of India, 23rd September 2013

With the 30{+t}{+h}rhino to be killed this year in India falling to the bullets of poachers at Kaziranga National Park, Assam, on September 17, WWF-India has on the occasion of World Rhino Day urged the Union Environment and Forest Ministry to urgently adopt a National Rhino Conservation Plan. It also pointed to the increasing use of automatic weapons in poaching.

In a statement on Saturday, WWF-India said that “as India and rest of the world celebrate rhinos and their conservation successes on World Rhino Day today, this latest killing is a grim reminder of the challenges facing protection of rhinos in India. The increasing use of lethal weapons such as the AK-47s used in Tuesday’s poaching incident point to a growing sophistication and easy access to such deadly weapons among poaching syndicates active in the recent killing”.

Referring to how the recent increase in poaching threatened to undo all the good that had come by way of decades of conservation efforts, which resulted in the population of rhinos in Assam rising to around 2,500 currently, WWF-India said: “The spike in poaching over the last couple of years seems to indicate that poaching syndicates are strengthening.”

Calling for urgent action, it said: “To avoid loss of these hard-fought gains, there is an urgent need for the adoption of a National Rhino Conservation Plan for India.” The organisation has, therefore, urged Environment and Forest Minister Jayanthi Natarajan to take the lead on this and bring together the four rhino-bearing States of India -- Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

“The adoption of such a plan will increase coordination among the four rhino-bearing States and enable sharing of the best practices and information on poaching syndicates, enabling better protection of India’s rhinos,” said Dr. Dipankar Ghose, director of Species and Landscapes, WWF-India.

WWF-India also organised a number of events across the country to increase awareness about rhinos among the wider public. In Delhi, along with Oxford Bookstore, a special awareness event was organised for children where apart from a film screening, an engaging and fun workshop was conducted by renowned artist and sculptor Anant Misra. The organisation said it remains committed to the conservation of India’s rhinos and will continue to engage with the government and forest departments to ensure a secure future for these magnificent animals.

Decades of conservation efforts has resulted in the population of rhinos in Assam rising to around 2,500 currently, but incessant poaching is threatening to undo all this effort

The Hindu, 21st September 2013

The narrow alleys of Hauz Khas Village are usually teeming with visitors, especially foreign tourists, over the weekend. But on Sunday their favourite hangout was deserted. While restaurants remained closed, cafes and boutiques hardly had any customers. Shopkeepers said that the impact of restaurants closing down was also being felt by other businesses. Some restaurant owners said they were worried about permanent closure and trying their best to get all the clearances.

Since there were few visitors, some stores were seen being renovated and reconstructed. "There has been a huge impact on business. We are going to meet tomorrow and decide how effluent treatment plants (ETPs) can be installed. For instance, some restaurants can install a treatment plant together if they are close by. We are discussing the possibilities," said Shailender Singh (Monty), area councillor. He said it would be easier if Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) specifies the treatment plant needed. "Restaurants are incurring losses as food items are perishable," he added.

Though there were few visitors, they said they wanted Hauz Khas Village to manage its waste water properly and improve its image. "We never thought that the posh restaurants here are so unsustainable. Their menus are expensive and they should act responsibly. I will visit the restaurants here only after they instal ETPs," said Mishka Singh, a photographer.

Boutiques, jewellery stores, art galleries and smaller cafes were also affected by the closure order. "People shop here usually when they are visiting the restaurants. Not many come here only for shopping so our business is very badly affected," said Anand who owns a shoe store. A patisserie and a restaurant were open but they said that they were not issued notices by DPCC.

DPCC is organizing a workshop next month with the National Restaurant Association of India to discuss how all hotels can be made to comply with environmental regulations. National Green Tribunal on Friday had ordered all restaurants running without environmental permission to be closed till the next hearing on Tuesday. Most of them don't have clearance from Delhi Pollution Control Committee and were found to be discharging untreated waste water into the sewers and also drawing groundwater.

The Times of India, 21st September 2013

British Gardens in India: Eugenia W. Herbert; Allen Lane/ Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 799.

If your idea of the perfect garden is a neat little lawn trimmed with borders full of seasonal flowers, you have more of a colonial hangover than you imagined. This is the kind of garden that hundreds of sahebs and their wives longed for as they pined for England during those sweltering, disease filled summers in the hot Gangetic plains, and sought to create with mixed success in a land that was green but not in the way they wanted it.

Much has been written about colonial architecture in India; Flora's Empire – British Gardens in India by Eugenia W. Herbert, focuses on the little documented but fascinating aspect integral to the 'residences', homes, cities, towns, and hill-stations that the British went about building in the two centuries and more that they established themselves in this country.

Herbert is Professor Emeritus of History at Mount Holyoke College in the U.S., and her book is a view of British imperialism from a unique and engaging perspective. As she observes: "And everywhere [the British] created gardens, large and small, private and public, that embodies not only aesthetic ideals but also philosophical understandings of the good life, of civilization, and the social and political order."

In this way, the British rulers of India had more in common than they cared to acknowledge with their Mughal predecessors, who had very definite views about landscaping and left their own green stamp on India, from the terraced gardens of Kashmir and Lahore to the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal.

Suburbs

When Edward Clive became governor of Madras in 1798, he and his wife, both enthusiastic botanists, set about improving Government House and its gardens set in 75 acres in what was then known as Triplicane (where now stands the abandoned secretariat built by the previous DMK government). Clive was recalled by the Company for his extravagance, just about the same time as Lord Wellesley, whose spending on building a palatial Government House in Calcutta similarly found few sympathisers back at the head office. But both were only reflecting the growing fortunes of the East India Company by projecting power and opulence on a grand scale. In Calcutta, as in Madras, the British found their initial settlements too suffocating, and expanded out into the suburbs that they segregated exclusively for their use.

In Calcutta, Garden Reach rose like "a fairy isle" on the banks of the Hooghly, with its mansions surrounded by gardens that extended up to the water. In Madras, gentlemen of means broke out of Fort St. George to build "garden houses" farther afield, with trees lining the avenues from the fort to the new settlements. In addition to Government House, an official country retreat in Guindy Forest (now Raj Bhavan) came up.

Though some like Clive, Wellesley and much later Lord Curzon were personally involved in planning the open spaces around their official residences, gardening was in the main the domain of the memsahibs, who found in it a way of expressing themselves, and spending the time that hung heavy on their hands, with hordes of servants doing all the chores, the husbands away and the children left behind at schools in England.

Gardens were also a way for rulers to separate themselves from the ruled. "Manicured gardens with neat lawns and flowerbeds were a means of distancing oneself from the smells and dirt of India," Herbert notes.

The many differences of a British garden from a typical Indian bageecha underlined the separateness, which too grew with the passage of time. During Company rule, the gardens were a more relaxed mix of East and West than in the post-1857 period, but too much Indianness in a garden was always seen as an early warning of "going native".

On the whole, British gardens tended to reflect the nostalgia for English annuals — sweet peas, dahlias, chrysanthemums, geraniums, hollyhocks, and the like. Flowers such as jasmine, whose fragrance was too overwhelming for delicate British noses, did not find place in most of these gardens.

Reams of manuals were printed on how to grow a garden, with detailed instructions about soils, temperatures, watering, seeds, manure, insects and designs. The lawn, that enduring symbol of an English garden, remained the main challenge.

Though Herbert does not quite accept a theory that the social class of individuals back home in England was reflected in their gardens in India – the lower you were on the ladder, the more open you were to Indian influences in your garden – she argues that this nevertheless showed that the garden was something more than met the eye; "[a] synecdoche, the part standing for the whole of one's response to an alien culture and the life that exile imposed, especially on women".

Proving that the grass is ever greener on the other side, those who returned took back with them exotic Indian plants, to create a little corner of India in their English gardens, not always successfully.

Simla

Written with all the enthusiasm of an avid gardener and botanist as much as a historian, the book has a richly detailed portion on the creation of Simla as the summer capital of the Raj, where rhododendrons grew wild, as "forest trees, not shrubs as you have them in England", covering the hills with a deep red in April. Growing English flowers in Simla was a walk in the park, the only problem being the non-availability of enough level ground. Only the Viceregal Lodge built by Henry Irwin in the late 19 century boasted sprawling huge lawns, improved upon by later Viceroys and Vicerines. Lord Curzon was to remark that the grounds were the only thing that made the Lodge bearable.

The combination of British architecture and gardens was perhaps nowhere better demonstrated than in the creation of New Delhi. Lutyens had little regard for Mughal architecture, but took more readily to their gardens, sharing as he did the same fondness for symmetry, order and geometry. Urged by Lady Hardinge, he took from the Mughal gardens in Kashmir as he planned the 15-acre space around the new house of the Viceroy on top of Raisina Hill. The plan, he wrote to his wife was all "too Alice in Wonderlandish for worlds. However, it will come in time".

But as Herbert observes, the Mughal Garden at what is now Rashtrapati Bhavan was all too English: instead of a zenana, Lutyens put in tennis courts; and, instead of the central chabutra at the intersection of the water channels, a lawn. Herbert quotes Jane Brown — she wrote on the long professional partnership between Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, the English designer with whom he worked on many projects back in England — as describing that lawn as "a symbolic triumph of the English way of gardening".

Written with wit, humour and style, this exhaustively researched book — the references at the end run to nearly 50 pages — hooks the reader with both its details and its sweep, not to speak of the little surprises that spring up now and then. The one that threw me was that the marigold, regarded as the quintessential Indian flower, came from Europe.

(Nirupama Subramanian is an Associate Editor with The Hindu)

-The Hindu, 24th September 2013

ASI should imbibe the innovative spirit of the Humayun's Tomb restoration project.

The inauguration of the restored Humayun's Tomb, on September 18, attracted well-deserved media attention. Most of the facts about the unique collaboration between the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and other stakeholders, which resulted in this extraordinary conservation project, are widely known. But there are some less celebrated issues which were addressed by the project. It is important to view the project in the broader context of conservation in India and the competence of the ASI.

The Humayun's Tomb restoration project generates two views of the ASI's capabilities. One is the agency's perception of itself. The other consists of critical opinions from outside. The ASI protects about 3,678 monuments declared to be of national importance, of which Humayun's Tomb is one of the major sites. This is only a fraction of the country's extant architectural heritage, but the protected monuments are located across a wide and diverse geographic region and consist of equally diverse typologies. So the ASI faces a more complex task than similar agencies in other countries. Nonetheless, it has come in for much criticism in recent years, for example, in a recent CAG report. There is also a rising chorus of informed complaints from the nascent, but robust, non-governmental conservation movement. This has challenged not only the competence of the ASI but also its intellectual and professional hegemony. Friends of the ASI (and there are many) point out that it is an underfunded and understaffed organisation, but how long will that be used to justify status quo? Partly as a response to the criticism, the ASI started drafting a new National Conservation Policy (NCP) to improve its operational practices. A draft of the new policy was unveiled recently and discussed with experts at a meeting last week.

-The Indian Express, 24th September 2013

The Governments of India and Bangladesh plan to jointly set up a coal-based power plant within four kilometres of the eco-sensitive forest. It's a certain recipe for disaster

Thousands of people, young and old, men and women, are now preparing for a 400km march from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, to Digraj, a place in Rampal, in the Sundarbans, in the south-west of Bangladesh. The main demand for this 'long march' that begins on September 24 is to stop a proposed coal-fired power plant in Rampal and stop all activities that would destroy the Sundarbans.

Besides being the world's single largest mangrove forests, Sundarbans is the only home to the critically-endangered Royal Bengal tigers. Now the mere existence of the Sundarbans — a Unesco World Heritage Site — has been threatened by an attempt to build a 1,320 MW coal-fired power plant at Rampal in Bagerhat district near the forest. This proposed plant is a joint-venture project by India's state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation and Bangladesh's Power Development Board. The NTPC and the PDB signed three major deals under Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company, recently formed to deal with power trading between the two countries.

The proposed power plant now has no obstacle as the environment department of Bangladesh has approved its environment impact assessment report. But the country's environmentalists and civil society members have expressed their resentment over the approval, saying that it would destroy the Sundarbans as the project lies only four kilometres away from the environmentally-critical area.

The Bangladesh Environment Lawyers' Association earlier this year put forward a set of its concerns to its Government which included, among others, selection of Rampal as the project site and the poor environmental track-record of NTPC. Against this backdrop, how an eco-sensitive site was otherwise selected remains a big question.

According to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, locations of thermal power plants are not allowed within 25km of the outer periphery of any ecologically-sensitive area, forests or prime agriculture lands. Additionally, the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, of India, directs that any ecologically-sensitive areas like national parks, wildlife sanctuaries or reserve forests should not be possessed within 15km of a thermal power plant.

However, Bangladesh presently has no law or guideline which specifies minimum distance for a coal-based thermal power plant from reserve forests. Thus, the NTPC is flouting the rule of its own country. Once the power plant is set up, Rampal will be crowded by many industries and that would have an adverse impact on the sensitive ecology.

Bangladesh's EIA report has tactically shown the region as 'residential and rural areas' instead of 'ecologically-critical area', to show that the emission is well under the allowable limit of Environment Conservation Rule, 1997, of Bangladesh. The emission standards set for ecologically-sensitive area is 30 µg/m3 both for sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which is much below the resultant concentration due to a coal power plant — 53.4 µg/m3, according to the EIA. The permissible limit for a residential and rural area is 80 µg/m3. So, if this standard of ecologically-sensitive area had been chosen in the EIA, the viability of a coal power plant would automatically be proved negative. That's why the EIA chose a safer and higher emission standard of 'residential and rural area' to justify the power plant!

The experts point out that if the project works out, around 50,000 people would need to be evacuated from villages in the adjoining areas of Rampal. Environment and ecology experts have predicted that the power plant will release various harmful gaseous substances like carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, aldehydes, hydrocarbons and huge amount of fly-ash to the entire environment, seriously polluting water-bodies of the entire area. The impact will be start from the very beginning with the coal transport. According to the EIA report, 13,000 tonnes of coal will be required for this plant on daily basis. And this coal is planned to be imported through Passur river in Sundarbans. So pollution from the coal-loaded vessel, high beam of light and sound emission will be the cause of the initial severe impact on dolphin sanctuary, birds and aquatic diversity. As the Passur river is the main water source of the Sundarbans, therefore, adverse effect will spread throughout the whole forest through it. If oil spillages, noise and waste disposal rules are not properly maintained they will impact the ecosystem.

If, for example, the leaves of kewra trees are affected due to SO2, the effect will not remain confined just to kewra trees. Spotted deer of the Sundarbans eat kewra leaves, so the impact on kewra trees would spill over to the deer population via the food chain, which in turn would have resultant effect on the Royal Bengal tigers as well.

Generating adequate electricity through a large joint-venture project is certainly a priority for an energy-strapped country like Bangladesh. But it must not be implemented at the cost of destroying an eco-diversity forest. President Pranab Mukherjee, while visiting Bangladesh in March this year, urged that both India and Bangladesh should take the responsibility to protect the Sundarbans. Both Dhaka and New Delhi must heed the sagacious advice. Let's not forget: There are many options on power generation, but there is no option to the Sundarbans.

-The Pioneer, 24th September 2013

For the first time, the Income Tax department has issued notice to Bodh Gaya's Mahabodhi temple, Buddhism's holiest shrine, over its collections, officials Tuesday said.

"The IT department has issued notice to the management committee of the Mahabodhi temple and demanded that they submit details of temple's income and expenses," said an official of the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee(BMTC), governing panel of the temple.

According to BMTC officials, the IT department has issued notice to the temple for the first time after Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949 was framed 64 years ago.

BMTC member secretary N. Dorjee said the committee will discuss the IT notice at its meeting Tuesday.

"We will discuss it to submit our reply to the IT notice," he said.

The temple's income, mainly through donations of devotees across the world, was over Rs.6.29 crore in 2012-13.

The committee started an online donation facility to the temple in 2010.

The 1,500-year old Mahabodhi temple is a World Heritage Site where the Buddha, who was born at Lumbini in neighbouring Nepal, attained enlightenment around 2,500 years ago.

The Bodh Gaya temple is visited by millions of pilgrims annually from all over the world, especially from Sri Lanka, China, Japan and the Southeast Asian region.

The temple was rocked by a string of bombings in July this year. The National Investigation Agency is probing it.

In July this year, the Bihar government amended the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949, allowing for a non-Hindu to head the temple committee. The BJP vehemently opposed the move.

-The Indian Express, 25th September 2013

The National Green Tribunalmade it clear on Tuesday that the "idea was not to close down restaurants" but to strike a balance, making sure that the establishments follow regulations and do not discharge untreated waste water into sewers.

The courtroom was packed with restaurant owners who kept pleading with the bench to allow them to reopen their restaurants. The bench reserved its decision for Wednesday and assured restaurant owners that they will "speed up" the process via an "early hearing".

While many restaurant owners were emotional and said the crackdown had hurt their trade and the livelihoods of their employees, the bench asked them to formally submit applications required to include them as party respondents in the case.

The member secretary of Delhi Pollution Control Committee, Sandeep Mishra, who was summoned by the bench in the previous hearing, made a detailed submission on the status of enforcement of the policy for restaurants and hotels. He said approximately 20,000 restaurants were running in the city out of which only 122 had been given show cause notices and 32 served closure orders. Strangely, DPCC did not have data on how many restaurants had obtained its mandatory consent. DPCC's policy for restaurants and hotels was released in October 2012.

The bench said its interim order of closing all restaurants will remain in force and directed DPCC to inspect the eateries during the day to ascertain which of them have installed ETPs. "In some of these restaurants, meals cost up to Rs 5,000. For an ETP they have to pay barely Rs 1-2 lakh," Mishra observed. He also argued that the excuse that restaurants don't have space doesn't hold because ETPs can now be improvised and made to fit in a small space.

On Tuesday, all the restaurant owners who were present said they had either made purchase orders for ETPs or were planning on installing one. Two of them had already applied for DPCC's consent for operation on Monday.

The bench also directed that South Delhi Municipal Corporation, Commissioner of Police andDelhi Jal Board be made party respondents in the case.

-The Times of India, 25th September 2013

The National Green Tribunal on Wednesday allowed 25 of the 34 Hauz Khas restaurants to reopen, provided they install waste water treatment plants in four weeks.

Of the 25 restaurants, 14 have started installing these plants. Another 11 have placed orders but will have to pay a fine of `10,000 each as they have not started installation.

The tribunal ordered that the remaining (nine restaurants) or any other unit not covered in this order will remain shut. The restaurants will not draw groundwater and have to comply with air and water quality standards.

The tribunal had on Friday ordered the closure of all 34 restaurants till Tuesday for running without requisite approval and spewing untreated sewage. Later, the stay was extended till Wednesday.

The tribunal has formed a seven-member committee to suggest how all restaurants in the Capital can be made to adhere to pollution-control norms. The committee will have representatives from the municipal corporations, the central and state pollution control boards and other authorities and will submit its report in two months.

Most restaurants in Delhi run without required consent under laws formed to control air and water pollution. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) has called a meeting of the restaurant association to take up the matter.

The tribunal expressed its displeasure at the Delhi government for not providing adequate staff to the DPCC, which has only 26 environment scientists to inspect thousands of restaurants and asked it to take immediate steps to augment the agency's manpower. Pankaj Sharma, on whose petition the tribunal gave its order, said: "Environment sustainability and business activities should go hand-in-hand. The order would set precedence for not just Delhi, but entire India."

"We will review the situation at ground zero and will continue our efforts to preserve the eco-sensitive zones of the city," he added.

-The Hindustan times, 26th September 2013

The Centre on Wednesday put paid to hopes of early resumption of operations in 137 iron ore mines in Goa when it informed the Supreme Court that environment clearance to these mines were up for a comprehensive review as some of them were found to be "indefensible".

The ban on mining by the apex court in October last year was opposed by mine lease holders both inside the court through noted advocates and outside through advertisements in newspapers detailing the grim effect that the ban on iron ore mining was having on the economy.

Arguing for the environment ministry before a bench of Justices A K Patnaik, S S Nijjar and F M I Kalifulla, solicitor general Mohan Parasaran candidly said "some environment clearances to mines are indefensible". The indefensible ones related to mines which were operating bang in the middle of national parks and sanctuaries, a no-go zone for any kind of activity.

In what should worry operators of mines, many of which are located within 10 km of national parks and sanctuaries, the environment ministry is in the midst of a stringent scrutiny of environment clearances obtained by them earlier, allegedly in a surreptitious manner by not divulging crucial details.

"Pursuant to the Ecologically Sensitive Zone (ESZ) notifications, mines located within the national parks and sanctuaries will not be allowed to reopen. Mines located outside the ESZ will be evaluated on the basis of compliance to environment clearance and forest clearance," an environment ministry status note submitted by the SG said.

As many as 43 mines are located within one kilometre of protected areas, read sanctuaries and national parks, and apparently without mandatory approval from the National Board for Wildlife, Chief Conservator of Forests or Chief Wildlife Wardens.

Another 53 mines are located between one and 10 km from protected areas where mining conditions stipulate prior wildlife clearance. But 31 similarly situated mines strangely were not required to secure wildlife clearance. Only 10 mines in question were more than 10 km away from protected areas.

Parasaran said, "Each of the 137 cases will be reviewed on merit by the ministry and its report will be placed before the Supreme Court for appropriate consideration. The MoEF will be in a position to file an affidavit covering each of the 137 environment clearances granted for mining projects by the third week of October."

Just a week ago, the bench had referred to news items and editorials on the effect of mining ban on the economy and frowned at the concern expressed about economic growth but not constitutional principles.

Without elaborating on the settled legal principles which intrinsically link right to life with environment, the bench had asked, "What about right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution and the jurisprudence developed on this issue over the years." It felt that most pro-mining reports appearing in the media were inspired by lobbies working intensely for economic policies and development without co-relating it to rule of law and constitutionality of policies.

Meeting suggestions of Central Empowered Committee (EAC) put to the court through amicus curiae A D N Rao, the environment ministry said it had on March 21 constituted anEnvironment Appraisal Committee to specifically look into the issues relating to illegal mining in Goa and for the purpose of examining replies submitted by project proponents on their environment compliance.

The environment ministry expected the EAC to submit its final report on October 9. The ministry also said it has been pursuing the Goa government to submit proposals for notification of ESZs. Proposals for notification in respect of six wildlife sanctuaries/national parks were submitted by the state government on May 2.

"The said proposals were examined by an expert committee on eco-sensitive zones on May 24 and its report is to be approved by the ministry. The environment minister required the state to provide certain clarifications, including justification for the proposed extent and delineation of the boundaries of the ecologically sensitive zones in respect of the six proposals; possible impact on mangroves with respect of Dr Salim Ali Bird sanctuary through an inspection by a committee under the chairmanship of Dr Lalit Kapoor, director, MoEF," it said.

-The Times of India, 27th September 2013

A 16th century cemetery in Pulicat in neighbouring Tiruvallur district is in poor shape. The compound, overrun with thorny bushes, is now frequented by miscreants in the area, local residents say.

The cemetery, in Kottaikuppam village, is unused now and contains 22 tombstones, including that of a lone Raya (from the Vijayanagar empire), as well as those of a few Portuguese and several Dutch people.

"Members of the local Lady of Glory Church clean the place from time to time. Otherwise, it remains deserted but for local drunkards who climb over the wall and enter the compound. There is no lighting inside. The gate is kept locked and the keys are with the church," said Bhoopalan, a resident of Pulicat.

The cemetery was discovered in 2007, by the Art and Architecture Research, Development and Education (AARDE ) Foundation, a not-for-profit architecture and design service organisation when it was scanning the area on Google Maps.

"We had come to Pulicat much earlier but found this cemetery only after it showed up on Google Maps. We believe the cemetery was used before 1656 AD. One of the tombstones even has Tamil inscriptions on it. All the graves are in the east-west alignment," explained Xavier Benedict, founder of AARDE.

The Portuguese, who had come to India to trade in spices and cotton, were based in Pulicat from 1502 to 1579 under a contract with the then Vijayanagara King. "Since the Portuguese were not good administrators, trade dwindled and they had to leave. A Dutch businessman, who was imprisoned by the Portuguese heard the soldiers talk about Pulicat, came to Pazhakata as it was known then. It was he who was responsible for starting the Dutch East India Company," Mr. Benedict said.

Pulicat's other cemetery, called the new cemetery which is under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India, is three centuries old and has 77 graves. It is near the town's bus terminus.

On Saturday, AARDE is organising a Pulicat Lagoon Cleanup Day during which the old cemetery will also be cleaned. The cleanup will begin by 7.30 a.m. and go on till noon. Volunteers willing to participate in the effort can call 9940079444.

-The Hindu, 27th September 2013

An expert committee has been set up to expedite the smooth translocation of some Asiatic Lions from the Gir forest in Gujarat to the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh

The large carnivores of India seem to be caught in controversies all the time. Not a single day passes without news in the print or electronic media about leopards being bludgeoned to death, tigers being poached for body parts or snow leopards being hunted for their precious pelt. Two other issues that hit the headlines recently were the shifting of lions (Panthera Leo Persica) from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh and of cheetahs into the wild.

"It's like a life insurance policy; we do not take an insurance policy expecting to die but we do so to protect against unexpected events. Similarly, a second home will provide protection against extinction for the free-ranging Asiatic lions, which is an integral part of India's unique and diverse natural heritage," says Dr. Ravi Chellam, a senior wildlife ecologist who has studied the Asiatic lion from close range for many years in the Gir forest — the last remaining home of the big cat.

It has been nearly six months since the Supreme Court passed a verdict on April 15 to guarantee a safe and sound second home for the beleaguered Asiatic lion; however, not much appears to have happened on the ground. The idea is to translocate a selected pride of lions to ensure the long-time survival of the endangered species. To expedite this long-drawn project, that that has been lingering for decades and have seen huge expenditure, to create a second habitation in Madhya Pradesh, the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoEF) has constituted a 12-member committee.

Chaired by MoEF's Additional Director General (ADG), Wildlife, the committee will decide the final course of action to shift lions from Gir Forest National Park to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary spread over 1,269 sq km. This team consists of wildlife experts who will not only look into the systematic arrangements for transporting the lions, but will also study threat perceptions to these big cats in their new home. The committee members include Chief Wildlife Wardens (CWW) of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, Member Secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), Wildlife Institute of India (WII), and other flora and fauna experts like Dr. A.J.T. Johnsingh, Y.B. Jhala, Dr. Ravi Chellam, P.R. Sinha and N.K. Ranjeet Singh. This committee can also co-opt more specialists for the proceedings so that any loopholes in the plans can be plugged in the nascent stage.

One of the major doubts raised by many independent wildlife experts and activists is the availability of prey base, i.e. antelopes and deer in the new location. It has been estimated that the energy or prey requirements of a carnivore can be determined using body weight; consequently a female lion kills about 40 to 45 animals per year, consuming 2,000 kg of meat which is equivalent to 3,000 kg of live prey for mere maintenance. When raising two to three cubs, the mother lion would need 60 to 75 prey animals per year. Assuming that 50 wild animals can support one lion for one year, on average, then five lions (three females and two males) will require a total of 250 wild animals per year.

In this context, the favourite food of lions includes chital (spotted deer), sambhar, nilgai (blue bull), chinkara, wild boar and even langur that are available in ample numbers in the new location, according to field studies conducted over the years. One wildlife expert has recommended that the three female and two male lions should be initially introduced into Kuno only after ensuring that the prey base is greater than required.

While the subject of Asiatic lions' translocation is hanging fire, a seven-day photo exhibition titled 'Landscape of the Lions' is being organised in the Capital's India International Centre by ace lensman Ashok Dilwali.

The exhibition will coincide with the Wildlife Week celebrations in the first week of October and the show will culminate in a pictorial-talk titled 'Present and the Past Homeland' by Sharad Khanna and Faiyaz A. Khudsar, both wildlife enthusiasts, followed by a public debate on October 5.

-The Hindu, 28th September 2013

Lakhs of commuters have been zooming past the Mukerba chowk ever since a grade separator came up there in 2009.

However, hardly any of them ever bother to stop and take a look at a tall octagonal monument — that is ensconced in the southeastern clover leaf — that has almost been dwarfed by the concrete grade separator that surrounds it. This tall monument is known as the Tomb of Paik, a Lodi-era monument that has openings on its four sides.

The tomb boasts arched recesses and a decoration that adorns the neck of its dome. When the government began work around two years ago to spruce up the Capital for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the Delhi government's department of archaeology gave a facelift to the tomb and a new lease of life to the gardens surrounding it.

"Nothing is known about the Paik, whose maqbara (tomb) is believed to be 'Paik' that literally means a messenger," wrote Zafar Hasan in his 1919's compilation 'Monuments of Delhi'. Mukerba Chowk is a corruption of a maqbara.

"Earlier it was a two-lane road, so one could see the monument from anywhere. Now it's visual integrity is lost. The monument now can be seen only from the flyover and not from areas on the ground. Its architecture, its heritage value, everything has been lost," said Deepna Chauhan, a Rohini resident who has been travelling to Connaught Place via this junction for last two decades.

-The Hindustan Times, 29th September 2013

For those interested in qawwalis, the mazaar of the Naugaza Pir close to Majnu-ka-tila is a new attraction

About 1.5 km north of Majnu-ka-Tila is the giant grave of a Naugaza Pir. Nobody seems to know what his name was but some claim that it was Abdullah Nasir Shah Tilawaley. Of late qawwalis are held near the nine-foot-long tomb of the saint (believed to have been a disciple of Majnu) who rebelled against his mentor when the latter became a follower of Guru Nanak. That would mean early 16th Century. Another belief is that he was a disciple of Shah Alam, a venerated Pir of Firozshah Tughlak's time (1351-88).

As is the trend these days, anonymous mosques and tombs are being increasingly adopted by those who have started calling themselves Sajjada Nashins or hereditary caretakers. Offerings made amount to a lot every Jumairaat (Thursday) and fill up their coffers. In course of time boundary walls come up around hitherto neglected graves which are renovated and dubbed old miraculous Sufi mazaars. Such seems to be case with the grave of the Naugaza Pir. Dr. Khaliq Anjum, who has written a history of Delhi's monuments in Urdu, is also of the opinion that the said mazaar has begun to be venerated because of tall tales and gossip, exploited by opportunists. Naugaza Pirs, whose graves are found all over north India, right up to Kashmir, were not giants but their mazaars are large as they were buried along with the green flag-bearing staff they carried. As time went by their stature, as measured by their last resting place, began to draw awe and wonder. Undaunted by such talk, heritage activist Surekha Narain is going to lead an exploratory walk (the first of three planned) around Jagatpur and Wazirabad on Sunday, October 6.

Touted as "History meets culture", the intro sheet says: "We travel to the outskirts of North Delhi to Jagatpur village riverfront, to see the Yamuna in its pristine glory, free from pollution. Here, upstream of Wazirabad, the Yamuna looks like a real river and not a filthy drain, where you'll find a vast swathe of fertile alluvial soil with taller-than-human weeds. There's a ghat (stepped embankment) just north of Wazirabad village, which is actually a cluster of temples, old and new. In Wazirabad what you find is historical monuments from Firozshah Tughlaq's time! Even a Muslim saint's shrine-is it also from Tughlaq times?"

Well, it is definitely from that period and known after Shah Alam (not the Mughal king) who was regarded by his followers as a spiritual emperor. On November 10, the heritage group will walk to Majnu-ka-Tila. This Majnu, unlike the one who wasted away for his beloved and gave birth to Nizami's masterpiece, Alif-Laila, was not a disheartened lover but one lost in devotion to God. When Guru Nanak visited him, he is said to have realised that he had met his true guide. A historic gurdwara, which was visited by other Sikh gurus, now marks the site. Tibetans have started living around Majnu-ka-Tila, making it a virtual Tibetan colony, complete with eating houses that attract a lot of customers. Side by side have come up akharas (wrestling pits) where pehelwans grapple after rubbing mustard oil and akhara soil on their muscular bodies. It is a far cry from there to Nigambodh ghat, the place to which the third walk is scheduled on December 8. The ghat, where Brahma did penance to bring back to memory the Vedas whose knowledge had forsaken him, is named 'Nigambodh' because of that. It has a temple believed to date back to Mahabharat times, where the Kauravas and Pandavas worshipped. This is also supposed to be the place with the oldest burning ghats and from where one can look back towards the rear walls of the Red Fort, close to which the Yamuna flowed before changing its course.

However for those interested in qawwalis the mazaar of the Naugaza Pir is a new attraction. On Thursdays a big crowd collects, making communication that way difficult. But the zeal of those gathered is to be seen to be believed, with some going into a trance or "hal". And among them are women too. Remember that Queen Victoria almost reached that state when a group of qawwals performed in 19th Century England, courtesy her Urdu teacher, Munshi Abdul Karim. Others also who heard the singers at Buckingham Palace became ecstatic, without understanding a word of what was being sung. You may luckily see the same effect at the Pir's grave.

-The Hindu, 30th September 2013