Eulogy for radios of yore

http://bagchblog.blogspot.in/10/2012/eulogy for radios of yore 

The other day while listening to a noisy programme on the fm of Radio Mirchi my mind travelled back long years to 1948 when we got the first radio in our house. My late second brother got a first division in his intermediate examination. The examinations were held then by the Ajmer Board of Secondary education to which a number colleges in Rajputana, United Provinces, Central India, etc were affiliated. With thousands of candidates competing, getting a first division in those days in any board or university examination was no ordinary matter.  Elated by the distinction achieved by him, my father went and bought a radio as a gift for him – a small one, of five valves made by Phillips of Holland. Its price was Rs. 350/-, an amount that was more than my father’s monthly salary. 

A radio of early 1940s

Radios were a, sort of, rarity those days, more so in a small town like Gwalior where we grew up. Not many people owned one. I remember our entire family walked quite a distance to a Bengali family’s house to listen to the broadcast of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose from Singapore. This must have been around 1942 when I was a small kid. Amid a lot of disturbing noises like those of lightning and thunder I just heard somebody speaking out. But I remember the radio which was a boxy type, something like the one that Tom tunes in to in Walt Disney’s “Tom & Jerry” cartoons.

One could easily make out who all had radios in the town. The tell-tale sign was a pair of bamboo poles sticking up into the skies from the terrace, joined by a wire that came down to a lower floor and entered the house through an available inlet. These were the antennas that one had to have to receive broadcasts and were also indicative of the family’s financial wellbeing. Radios being uncommon, one would find them, maybe, on top of one or two houses in a locality. Consumerism was far, far away. While salaries were low, the prices were constantly rising. Even in those early post-independence days Nehru would frequently harangue people about tackling the “monster of rising prices”. Were he to re-appear today and check out the prices, he wouldn’t know where to hide.

Although there were only very few broadcasting stations in the country – mostly in metro and other bigger towns – one could roam all over the world with the receiving set. The air waves were free and, unlike the TV or fm transmissions, one could tap them to tune in to the fare offered by any station in the world that one fancied. It all depended on the power and capability of the set one possessed. 

Our five-valve, three-band radio, one medium and two short-wave bands (many of the current generation may not have heard of these bands, fed on fm as they are), had limited capabilities. Yet we could tune in to, apart from Indian stations, distant broadcasts from, say, Radio Australia, on 16 or 19 metre bands to listen to the running commentaries on cricket test matches played there. Likewise, when cricket was on in England we would tune in to BBC, again, on the 19 metre band. I clearly remember the disastrous second Indian innings at Headingley, Leeds in the summer of 1952. India lost four wickets for no runs on the board, the new young speedster Freddie Truman knocking off three of his four wickets in the innings in the first two or three overs. The din that the Indian debacle raised at distant Headingley was carried over the air-waves to us through the radio. 

Even the news bulletins broadcast at night were worth listening to. Among the English newscasters was the legendary Melville De Mello with his impeccable English delivered in his deep baritone. He was the one who gave non-stop running commentary from a moving van for around hours while accompanying the funeral cortege of Mahatma Gandhi. He was also handpicked by the British Government for broadcasting running commentary on Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1952.  It’s such a pity that his 95-year old widow has had to fight for her measly pension. 

Radiogram

The medium wave-band broadcasting those days was of low power hence the weak signals of distant stations like Cuttack or Patna would only be faintly audible. The short wave broadcasts, capable as they are of reaching any part of the earth, were clearer and largely devoid of atmospheric disturbances. Good for receiving musical programmes, we would tune in on short-wave to the Delhi station for various musical programmes. Most of the ustaads (maestros) of Indian classical vocal or instrumental music were given breaks by the government-owned All India Radio (AIR).

For us the most attractive programmes used to be of Hindi (non-film) songs of Pankaj Mullick, Talat Mahmood, Jagmohan, Hemant Kumar as also the weekly programme of film songs “Aapki farmaish”. We would even tune in to Radio Pakistan, Dhaka to listen to Firoza Begum sing Tagore songs, a favourite of my father those days. Around the early 1950s Radio Ceylon literally gate-crashed into the Hindi film-music listening audience. The broadcasts available right through the day, they remained a great favourite for a very large section of the people who were light music enthusiasts until AIR’s Vividh Bharati, a film-songs based programme commercialised on the pattern of Radio Ceylon, gave it a run for its money. By then, of course, Radio Ceylon’s disc jockeys (DJs) Amin Sayani and, later, Sheila Tiwari had become household names in India.

 Western music has virtually disappeared from the Indian airwaves. In our times we could tune in to Delhi to listen to chamber and dance music, a programme of Western orchestras, and “A date with you” anchored by Ms Preminda Premchand every Friday night. She played on demand popular Western light vocal and instrumental music. Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford, Patty Page, Nat King Cole, Perry Como etc., the trumpet of Eddie Calvert and the numbers of Billy Vaughn and his orchestra were favourites of most of us. Radio Ceylon, too, used to broadcast Western light music and its DJ, Greg, was very popular in India.

Because of the growing clutter of broadcasting stations on short waves at 16, 25, 31 and 41 metre bands radios with band-spreads for accurate tuning of closely spaced frequencies became available. We acquired in mid-fifties an 8-band radio with a more powerful speaker. The music flowing out of it was sheer pleasure. Much later, the tuner-amplifiers with fm band made their appearance with a bank of 10 press-button tuning knobs, detached speakers and stereophonic sound system. I was sold one by Philips in Chandigarh in 1975 in beautiful rosewood-finish with the assurance that stereo broadcasts were to commence soon. AIR, with the monopoly that it had, however, took around 10 years to bring fm broadcasts on stream and, that too, for very limited hours. Nonetheless, even in mono state the big powerful speakers produced delectable sound of music.

In the meantime, advances in technology radically changed the scene and democratised the radio, taking them even to the villages. Invention of transistors made it cheap and portable – shorn of the heavy and fragile valves and powered by dry battery cells. In the early sixties the Mall of Mussourie lost its quietude, with tourists walking around with battery-powered transistor radios slung from their shoulders, film music blaring out of them. These also became powerful means of dissemination of information to the remotest corners of the country where electricity had not reached.

Samsung Smartphone

Though millions are still in use, their popularity waned with miniaturisation and advent of portable cassette players. Nonetheless, in the later avatar of bulky radiograms that combined a valve radio and a gramophone, radios used to feature in much smaller early two-in-ones or three-in-ones which even had a cassette deck. Then, in the ‘80s radio lost out to the TV that combined audio and video broadcasts. Admittedly, a mere audio receiver could have had no chance of survival in front of a medium that could also receive live and vibrant pictures.

Fm broadcasts came along in the early nineties and soon the government broke its monopoly over the radio waves. Privatisation of fm broadcasts enabled controlled increase in the number of broadcasters. Arrival of cheap radio-enabled cell phones has kept fm broadcasters busy but today what one gets is mostly a mix of loud music and gibberish. Doing even better, smart phones have gone ahead and put in the pockets of people not only a radio but also a television and a computer with internet connectivity.

No wonder radios of yore in beautiful shiny wooden cabinets with their illuminated dials capable of tuning on to any station in the world have had to make a quiet, unobtrusive exit from Indian homes. Young India hasn’t seen them; those who are curious can find them only in museums.

Bhopal- with tigers in its peripheries

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/9/2012/bhopal-with tigers in its peripheries 

Regardless of the tons of toxic wastes littered in the Union Carbide factory site, the Madhya Pradesh government has been pursuing with the Centre a proposal for awarding the status of Global Environment City on Bhopal. The city already has a few of its components, such as some lakes – one of them even a Ramsar Site – hills and, of course, a lot of greenery which, though, of late has appreciably diminished at a rapid pace. Nonetheless, the government continues to pursue the ambition of having the city declared as an Environment City. What should strengthen the government’s claims in this regard is occurrence of a recent phenomenon – that of the big cats trying to convert the city into their haunt. With the wildest of wildlife in the city none would ever think of denying the sobriquet that the government so earnestly seeks, more so after the state lost its “Tiger State” sobriquet.

A tiger had been roaming the jungles near the town for a couple of years. It strayed from the nearby Ratapani Sanctuary and came close to the town near the dam known as Kerwa. It had on occasions been seen wandering around in the massive complex of the local Judicial Academy. It would, however, retrace its steps and get back to the jungles close to Chandanpura near Kerwa and make meals of a few livestock in the forest villages. Sighted with two cubs in April last, the state Forest Department made all possible arrangements to ensure that they did not come to harm. Yet the tigress met its inevitable fate last June at the hands of poachers who cruelly electrocuted it. One was, however, expecting such a denouement, given the efficiency and commitment of our foresters. It seems, the poor creature was raising a family but was ruthlessly eliminated.

That, however, was not the end of the story. A few days ago a badly wounded tiger cub, presumably one of the two that were sighted in April, was found in the jungles close to Kerwa near Kathotia. Kathotia, incidentally, also has caves and rock-shelters with primitive rock-paintings like those in Bhimbetka, a World Heritage Site, around 30 kilometres away from Bhopal. The poachers seemed to have attempted trapping it and in trying to free itself the cub got severely wounded; its hind legs even got paralysed. It was rescued and brought for treatment to Van Vihar, an open zoo in the middle of the town that has somehow been given the status of a National Park. The vets there couldn’t save it and it died the other day.

The forest department has confessed that it failed in monitoring the movement of the tiger family. In fact, it did not even get whiff of them. No wonder the tigress and one of her cubs were lost to poachers. This is despite that there is an intense campaign to save tigers. Recall the NDTV “Save our tiger” campaign only a few weeks ago! The department is investigating the killing of the tigress but there has been very tardy progress. Even the National Tiger Conservation Authority has asked for a report in this regard. Clearly, because of ineptitude of the forest department precious wildlife outside the protected areas continue to remain unsafe.

To add to the discomfort of the Forest Department recent unconfirmed reports indicate that there are as many as three tigers – a male, a female and a cub (apparently the one that somehow escaped the poachers’ attention) –roaming around in these forests. The cub seems to be old enough but is unable to make a proper killing. The forest department is not yet clear about their numbers and are, therefore, collecting pug marks. One wonders whether all these tigers are heading for the same fate as the ones earlier.

The department has a stock argument of inadequacy of staff. It says that proper protection could be provided to the straying tigers only when the Kerwa and adjoining areas are converted into a “conservation area” which would ensure funding for appointment of the required personnel. Can one buy such an argument? After all, the strength of foresters is determined according to the spread of forests and there must be personnel for guarding these very forests. Why can’t they take care of the wildlife as well? If their strength is inadequate why more forest guards cannot be recruited? There is enough money and countless unemployed men and women available for appointment. It’s a pity that despite the Prime Minister’s directions about a year ago the Tiger Protection Force has not been created so far in the state.

According to the foresters Ratapani Sanctuary has become a little crowded for tigers on account of increase in their numbers and hence they are straying into the Kerwa area. That could be so. But that could also not be so. Maybe, the prey base has shrunk in the sanctuary with not enough ungulates to go round, forcing tigers to wander out of the Sanctuary for greener pastures. Not that Kerwa has a big enough prey base but at least cattle of the villagers, easy preys, are available. Whatever the reason, the tigers seem to be here to stay, having been here for well over two years now.

It is not tigers alone that seem to like Bhopal. Leopards, too, make frequent forays into it. They have been sighted in the Indian Institute of Forest Management Complex, the National Judicial Academy, in the vast grounds of the Indira Gandhi National Museum of Man and, of course, in Kerwa.

It seems like the old times when, growing up in Gwalior in the midst of tiger-county in 1940s, we would hear frequent reports of tiger-sightings in the outskirts of the town. My eldest brother even claims to have seen one along with his friends around the mid-forties on the hillock near the Medical College that has a Scindia deity and another in the Tigra Dam area that is now being intensely colonised.

With tigers and leopards in its periphery, Bhopal is acquiring a certain uniqueness. Whether the status of Global Environment City is awarded or not, one wishes to God that these creatures and their new habitat in Kerwa are protected with all the resources that the government can muster.   

Photos: 1. Lush jungles near Kerwa; 2. Tigers, photo taken from the net; 3. Kerwa dam 

(Photos of Kerwa taken by Bandana Bagchi)

Taj Mahal of Bhopal – a proposal for its “adaptive re-use”

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/9/2012/taj mahal of bhopal - a proposal for its adaptive use 

Many would not know that Bhopal too has a Taj Mahal. Although, now neglected and dilapidated, yet it stands dominating a large pond overlooking what is reputed to be the largest mosque in Asia – Tajul Masajid. It was built by Nawab Shahjehan Begum who, like her namesake Mogul Emperor Shahjehan, was a great builder. Constructed over a period of 13 years from 1871 to 1884 it was considered one of the largest palaces in the world. It was so magnificent that the resident representative in Bhopal of the Viceroy was highly impressed and suggested to the Begum to change its name from its original Raj Mahal to Taj Mahal. There are recorded reports of the unqualified praise that was showered on the Bhopal monarch by the visiting Viceroys for the excellence that the palace displayed in its architecture and intricate interior decorations.

After independence the palace was unfortunately given away rather thoughtlessly by Nawab Hamidullah Khan for relocating the Sindhi refugees who flocked to Bhopal after the partition of the country. Not a very wise decision, it induced unmitigated damage to the palace and, what’s more, after the refugees vacated it, it has been subject of abject apathy and neglect. Progressively going to seed, the state government woke up as late as in 2005 to list it as a heritage property so that the Department of Archaeology could try and restore it to a semblance of its original glory.

 Nothing much, however, happened except some partial restoration – nonavailability of adequate funds being the biggest drag. In 2011 because of the interest shown by the local tourism corporation for reusing it as a hotel the palace was de-notified to get over the obstructive rules and regulations governing a heritage structure. This too, however, did not yield desired results as no corporate house seems to have evinced any interest.

In the meantime, a few committed conservationists have been working overtime to prepare proposals for the palace’s revival. The Bhopal Citizens’ Forum has also been pursuing the matter with the Commissioner Archaeology. Last Sunday, Ms. Sheuli Mitra, Associate Professor in the local School of Planning & Architecture made a presentation for “adaptive reuse of Taj Mahal, Bhopal” to the Citizens’ Forum. A very well conceived plan, it not only proposes to re-use a very valuable property of immense proportions right in the middle of the town with excellent connectivity to the city’s outlets it also attempts to expose the unique mix of Hindu, Islamic and Western architectural designs of the palace to the outside world. Branding its architecture as Indian baroque, Ms. Mitra highlighted the building’s environmental responsiveness by way architectural designing and the much-ahead-of-time water harvesting system using the surrounding landscape and ingenious civil engineering.

The proposal contains use of some suitable portions for the hospitality sector and others for restaurants overlooking the fairly decent-sized water body specifically for offering delectable Bhopali cuisine. It proposes exposure of Bhopal’s traditional arts and crafts by way of exhibition and marketing them in the manner that was prevalent during the Nawabi era. It also proposes to use the adjoining Benazir Palace for a convention centre and market to the outside world its ready-to-use hamams.

The proposal was submitted to the state government about a year and a half back and is, apparently, gathering dust in some musty office. The Citizens’ Forum is going to pursue it with the government.

Despite new-found environmentalism Dow denies succour to Bhopal

http://bagchblog.blogspot.in/8/2012/despite new-found environmentalism dow denies succour to bhopal

Before the commencement of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the gas-affected people of Union Carbide, Bhopal and their several organisations mounted a protracted campaign against the Dow’s sponsorship of it. The Dow funded the £7 million wrap around the Olympic Stadium and also has negotiated a 10-year £100 million sponsorship with the International Olympic Committee. The Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is now a subsidiary of The Dow Chemicals, the latter having bought it in the late ‘90s.

It is well-known that in December 1984 a lethal gas, methyl isocyanate, leaked out of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and killed thousands and maimed many more for life. The protesters’ contention was that while the company poured millions in the Olympics it did not sufficiently compensate the victims of the gas leak. It has also refused to clean up the factory site on which its subsidiary had dumped toxic material which polluted the soil, the environment and the ground-water in the area inflicting misery on the people.

While there was muted support for the Bhopal protesters from the Indian politicians those in Britain went after the matter more seriously. Senior Labour Party leaders demanded an audit of Dow’s sponsorship of the Olympics and the Chief of its Ethics Committee, Meredith Alexander, resigned over Dow’s sponsorship. Five different protest groups presented London Olympic Games communications director Jackie Brock Doyle with five boxes of signatures – a 28,000-strong petition on Change.org and a 30,000-strong petition on SumOfUs – calling for a public apology from Games organisers. They also demanded from Dow a financial contribution of £7 million to help remediate the contaminated land and water supply.

The Dow, however, steadfastly denied its responsibility in the tragedy as, it contended, it bought the UCC 15 years after the tragedy and that by then all legal claims were resolved. UCC had paid $470 million as compensation to the Indian Government and that the matter was settled at the highest court of the land which after the settlement had exempted the Indian arm of the Corporation from any further litigation in the matter. It went on to say that the responsibility for the clean-up of the site now lay with the Indian Government. Paul Deighton, Chief Executive of the Games and Sabastian Coe, Chairman of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) found no substance in the protests and the Games went on with the Dow connection.

One cannot really fault the Gas Affected for their persistent campaign against the Dow as they, numbering thousands, continue to suffer the consequences of the lapses of the UCC and its erstwhile Indian subsidiary. Its system of waste disposal has proved to be lethal. Not only it left barrels of wastes in the complex, it dumped toxic wastes around it. These have leached into the soil not only contaminating it, these have also contaminated the sub-soil water which the inhabitants of the nearby settlements use, inter alia, for drinking purposes. A recent test report of the ground water has revealed excessive amounts of dichloro and hexachloro benzene, mercury and lead in the drinking water used by the residents of the adjoining colonies. The complications these could cause in human systems on regular ingestion need hardly be mentioned.

The entire row of the sponsorship of the Games by the Dow brought forth its uncompassionate, uncompromising and indifferent attitude to human misery. It has also displayed its callous indifference to the environment which its subsidiary happened to have fouled up harming the people and their habitat. That would truly be a justifiable conclusion. However, the truth now is different. Of late, Dow has turned a new leaf. Bryan Walsh, a senior writer with the Time magazine, recently reported that the CEO of Dow Chemicals negotiated with the head of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the biggest green groups based in Washington, a collaborative effort to maximise the environmental value of the Corporation’s operations with a view to enabling it to go green. It has announced “a five-year, $10 million collaboration with TNC to eventually tally up the ecosystem costs and benefits of every business decision” and to make environmental factors part of its profit-and-loss statements. The Dow chief Andrew Liveris is reported to have stated “Our planet’s natural resources are more and more under threat” and “protecting nature can be a profitable corporate priority and a smart global business strategy”, a statement , though hardly could ever be  expected from him at least in India, should be music to the ears of environmentalists.

The change of heart has not come just like that. It has a lot to do, as Walsh said, with the threat of government action on emissions on which a price has now been fixed, insistent share-holder pressures on green issues and a growing concern over the limits of available natural resources. In a well- researched piece entitled “Three faces of Dow” in Garbage Magazine, supposedly a ground-breaking environmental publication, Art Kleiner, a journalist and author of note, has described three past and present identities of The Dow. “First, there is the ‘traditional’ Dow: the frugal, small-town chemical company founded a century ago... close-knit and egalitarian, where chemistry PhDs stay from college until retirement... and where the toxicology labs date back to the 1930s.” There is also the "antagonistic" Dow – “the Dow of napalm and Agent Orange... the Dow that bitterly fought Oregon housewives and Vietnam veterans over herbicide sprays”. The third is the "learning" Dow, the company with a change of heart about environmentalism. That is where the collaboration with TNC comes in. TNC’s scientists, Walsh says, will advise Dow on how the company’s business decisions impact the environment—and in turn, how the environment affects Dow’s business. The ecosystem will become a new and major component for Dow’s bottom line, putting environmental sustainability on par with business sustainability.

Surprisingly, despite this change of heart The Dow did not budge from its rigid stand that it had nothing to do with the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. After all, whatever happened in Bhopal, terminating and disrupting the lives of thousands of locals, was the result of the callousness and indifference of its subsidiary, UCC, currently somewhat like a kid-brother to it. True, a final settlement was reached way back in the 1980s but, like everybody, both Dow and the UCC are aware how and why a shoddy settlement was arrived at with the Indian Government to the great disadvantage of the victims of the gas leak. Its new-found environmentalism has to have elements of Humanism embedded in it. If it had millions to pour into the Olympics The Dow could certainly use a few of them to mitigate the human misery authored by its subsidiary and to restore the destroyed human habitat in Bhopal. That would have been admirable and, perhaps, more ethical act and appropriate way of discharging its corporate social responsibility. That would, perhaps, also have endeared it to Indians who would have become more welcoming and offered it greater opportunities for industry and commerce. Sadly, this never seemed to have occurred to it!   

"http://www.zimbio.com/member/proloybagchi" 

Sign of the times - contempt for rule of law

http://bagchiblog.blogspot.in/8/2012/sign of the times-contempt for rule of law

It is an open secret in this country that food articles are adulterated, contaminated and frequently treated with toxic chemicals. This is done to sweeten fruits, quickly ripen and enlarge sizes of fruits and vegetables and to lend to them a farm-fresh sheen. This has been going on for quite some time and the press and some TV news channels have been pretty vocal about it. But the authorities concerned of the food and drug administrations of various states have seldom taken action. The result has been that this has been going on merrily and those indulging in the practise never bother about either the law or the consequences of their deceit on the consumers. We have reached a stage today that virtually every item of food, be it vegetarian or non-vegetarian, milk or edible oils, is consumed with trepidation. A reputed physician in the local cancer hospital, when asked about enormously large waiting crowds of patients, told me it is all a result of pollutants in the atmosphere and contaminants in what people ingest.

Over the years governance has been so lax that adulterating or contaminating food articles seems to have become par for the course for those who trade in them. That is why when the local district and food safety officials got active late last month after a lapse of a couple of years there was resentment and those who took samples of some food articles from a well-known restaurant in the business district of Maharana Pratap Nagar, Bhopal, came in for some rough treatment. Not only were they gheraoed (a kind of wrongful and forcible restraint), preventing them from leaving the premises and they were subjected to some hooting and slogan shouting. Unused as they are to being checked in their wrong-doing, the offenders promptly collected a crowd of sympathisers from nearby eateries.

The bone of contention was “mawa”, Indian name for thickened milk, which is an essential ingredient of most of the Indian sweets that are made by confectioners. Many tons of adulterated thickened milk and other milk products were seized all over north India a couple of years ago and our own state was not far behind. Despite intensive action the illegal trade has continued and this year in Bhopal alone many quintals of adulterated mawa have been detected and seized before and after the fracas at MP Nagar. The illegal business picks up during the festivals occurring between August and October. No wonder, therefore the local authorities thought of carrying out checks and came up against aggressive offenders. The adulterants and contaminants are very harmful for health and lacing the food stuff with them should be treated as a serious offence.

Breaking law, resistance to law-enforcement – contempt for rule of law is what seems to be driving people. Lax, in fact, absence of governance has made the offenders bold enough to challenge the authority of the government. Those who unauthorisedly occupy public lands go after the squads of government officials who have the mandate to free them of encroachments. The auto-rickshaw drivers do not charge commuters by their installed metres, do not wear uniforms and do not display their names despite repeated orders of the district administrations. Basements meant for parking of vehicles have been sold or let out for shops, leaving no alternatives for the vehicle-owners but to park on the roads constricting the road-space for smooth movement of traffic. These are only illustrative; the malaise has gone viral affecting most of the socio-economic facet of current times.

Things have been happening like this for years but the administration has never shown any spine. Laws are weak and, on top of it, these are also sparingly enforced. And then, there is inevitable interference from political bosses rendering the bureaucracy helpless. A spunky sub-divisional magistrate had stood up to a minister when he interfered in her operations to penalise an adulterator of food stuff. She was promptly moved out and put in an inconsequential post in the Academy of Administration. (Please see “A spunky bureaucrat and an intemperate politician” http://bagchiblog.blogspot.com). No wonder, an era of lawlessness has descended in the state. Regardless of the claimed rise in the state’s GDP people are generally consuming what should be trashed away as poison.