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Monday, December 27, 2010

Silent processions mark tsunami 6th anniversary

Dec. 26: Silent processions and tearful homage marked the sixth anniversary of tsunami strike in Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Villupuram coastal districts, and Puducherry on Sunday. In Nagapattinam, the tearful family members of the victims remembered those swallowed by the deadly tsunami six years ago that left over 6,000 dead.
Candlelight processions and ceremonies to offer prayers to the deceased were held in all the fishermen hamlets. Minister for dairy development U. Mathivanan and Rajya Sabha members A.K.S. Vijayan and E.G. Sugavanam placed wreaths at the memorial pillar erected at the collectorate.
On behalf of the district administration, district revenue officer Rajendran paid homage. DMK workers took out a silent procession led by Mr Mathivanan from old bus stand to Nagapattinam port. The AIADMK procession was led by Ma

Saturday, December 25, 2010

CBI questions Raja for over eight hours

NEW DELHI: As part of its investigations into the 2G spectrum allocation scam, the CBI on Friday questioned the former Communications Minister, A. Raja, for over eight hours.




Mr. Raja appeared at the CBI headquarters here at 10.30 a.m. after he was summoned under Section 160 of the Criminal Procedure Code. He had flown in from Chennai on Wednesday.

He was “questioned in relation to the case registered into the allocation of unified access service licences,'' CBI DIG and spokesperson Bineeta Thakur told reporters.

Mr. Raja was questioned on the circumstances leading to spectrum allocation that has been criticised by the Central Vigilance Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor- General of India (CAG).

The CBI also quizzed him on the tapped conversation he had with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia about allegedly favouring certain telecom companies, informed sources said.

Mr. Raja was forced to resign on November 14 in the wake of the CAG report, which held that the spectrum allocation at undervalued prices resulted in a notional loss of Rs.1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer.

Several other crucial aspects such as the issue of advancing the dates for allocation of spectrum and on the role of his relatives in some of the companies that allegedly acted as a front for certain telecom firms which got spectrum between September 2007 and January 2008 also formed part of the grilling, the sources added.

“I gave full cooperation to the investigating agencies. I cannot say anything further because investigations are on,'' Mr. Raja told reporters.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

1,000 students crammed into 52 rooms

CHENNAI: Several students of the MC Raja Adi Dravidar Hostel at Todhunter Nagar in Saidapet, some of whom held up traffic on a part of the arterial Anna Salai for nearly five hours on Tuesday, say frustration led to the protest.

Talking to TOI at the hostel on Wednesday, some of them said: "We tried to speak to every official, including the collector, about the state of affairs here but nothing was done. We tried protesting earlier on the road but were chased away. This time we just could not bear it anymore."

"At least now, let us see if the authorities will listen to us," some said.

The hostel, which has ground plus two floors, has 52 rooms to accommodate 400 students but over a thousand are crammed in them.

Some of the residents who did not wish to be identified said two groups of students, numbering 22 and hailing from Tindivanam and Villupuram, were creating trouble there. "The student leader of the hostel and a few vested interests, including functionaries of a particular party, are making life miserable by coming in here and drinking and creating problems,'' they said.

They said though the government had allocated funds for food the quality of the fare and the quantity served was so bad that some thought the Puzhal jail served better food.

This reporter was shown the food served. "We manage with the rice and buy curry from roadside shops since the one served here is not fit for consumption,'' one student said.

The toilets were stinking and so were the rooms that contained only the bare necessities. "There is no entertainment for us excepting our mobile phones on which we listen to music. The state government has given away thousands of TV sets to many people. Can it not give us a couple of them?'' wondered another.

The students, all from poor backgrounds and hailing from all parts of the state, said "our parents are farm workers and involved in other menial jobs. It was their dream that we become graduates and do well in life. But when you are treated like this you don't become a graduate. You will end up as a criminal."


Read more: 1,000 students crammed into 52 rooms - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/1000-students-crammed-into-52-rooms/articleshow/7147814.cms#ixzz193g2lwMZ

Monday, December 20, 2010

Karunanidhi urges Centre to set apart sufficient funds for railway projects

Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi on Monday expressed his regret that a number of railway projects in the State, announced in the Railway Budget, have not been taken up.

Inaugurating a broad gauge line between Nagapattinam and Velankanni through videoconferencing at the Secretariat here, Mr. Karunanidhi said the projects such as Athipattu-Puthur, Erode-Palani and Chennai-Cuddalore through Mamallapuram, the conversion of Madurai-Bodinayackanur meter gauge into broad gauge, third line for Chennai Beach-Korrukkupet, fourth line between the Beach and Athipattu, another such line for Tiruvallur-Arakkonam and Villupuram-Dindigul double line were announced in the budget earlier. He also referred to the slow progress of projects such as Tindivanam-Gingee-Tiruvannamalai and Tindivanam-Nagari new lines and the conversion of meter gauge lines into broad gauge lines in the stretches of Manamadurai-Virudhunagar, Dindigul-Pollachi-Palakkad-Coimbatore and Mayiladuthurai-Tiruvarur-Karaikudi-Thiruthuraipoondi besides doubling of Chengalpattu-Villupuram line.

He urged the Union government to set apart sufficient funds for all these projects and ensure expeditious implementation.

At the same time, the Chief Minister gave an account of the execution of several railway projects that had been taken up since 2006. The projects included the conversion of meter gauge lines into broad gauge lines for Virudhunagar-Rajapalayam-Tenkasi and Tiruchi-Pudukottai.

Recalling that the Union government gave its approval in 2002 for laying new broad gauge lines for Nagapattinam-Velankanni and Nagapattinam-Karaikal, he said that the present government, after its formation in May 2006, had speeded up the process of land acquisition that was proceeding at a slow pace till then.

After the completion of land acquisition, the work on laying the lines began in 2008. The 10.3 km Nagapattinam-Velankanni line was laid at a cost of Rs. 58 crore that included the cost of the Velankanni railway station. The Velankanni Church had contributed Rs.1 crore. The 10-km Nagore-Karaikal rail line would be completed within one or two months, and the works on the Rs.90-crore project was progressing satisfactorily.

In response to the State government's request for Nagapattinam-Thiruthuraipoondi via Thirukuvalai, the Minister of State for Railways had written to the government, informing its approval of the proposal, the Chief Minister added.

Union Minister of State for Finance S.S. Palanimanickam, State Dairy Development Minister U. Mathivanan, A.K.S Vijayan, Member of Parliament, and Rector Michael of Velankanni shrine participated in the function held at Velankanni railway station.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Rahul’s TN visit next week to boost cadres

Chennai, Dec. 18: All India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi will be visiting Tamil Nadu next week on a two-day trip.

He will be interacting with Youth Congress cadres at Madurai, Villupuram, Chennai and Tirupur. All senior Congress leaders are already in Delhi for the party’s two-day plenary session beginning Sunday, and would be back before the arrival of the AICC leader on December 21.

According to party sources, the visit of the Congress party’s poster boy was postponed to this month because of the 2G spectrum scam expose. Mr Gandhi’s visit gains significance since this would be his first trip to Tamil Nadu after the party’s debacle in the Assembly polls in Bihar, winning merely four out of the 243 seats it contested alone.

As the campaigning in Bihar by party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi did not bear fruit, the party’s belligerence has toned down and the popular idea of the Congress contesting alone in states like Tamil Nadu has been pushed to the backburner for now.

Though Mr Gandhi has been trying to inject cohesion and a sense of direction among the Youth Congress cadres, the youth wing has not been behaving very differently from the faction-ridden Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, posing a major challenge to the Nehru-Gandhi scion. Party sources said Mr Gandhi was expected to skip meeting chief minister M. Karunandhi this time too and leave for Kerala on December 23.

Six highways projects likely to be dropped

CHENNAI: In a rare move, the state highways department is planning to drop six flyover and subways projects for various reasons, including lack of funds for acquisition of land. Among the six projects are the ones in Wimco Nagar, Tiruvottiyur and Meenambakkam.

At a high-level coordination meeeting on Thursday, Southern Railway reportedly told the highways department to get the concurrence of the collectors concerned for permanent closure of gates if it wanted to drop the six projects. While poor traffic was cited for dropping the proposed flyover/subway project at LC 87 in Tiruchi, proposals for similar projects at neighbouring level crossings were the reason for deciding to scrap a project at Tindivanam.

All these projects, joint ventures of the highways and railways, were sanctioned by the DMK-led government in 2007-2008. "They were conceived by Southern Railway as part of its bid to remove manual level crossings and the state government gave its nod," said a senior official.

According to official sources, only these six projects have been found to be non-feasible. The rest of the 148 projects taken up across the state since 1999 have no problems.

At the level crossing near Wimco Nagar station off Tiruvottiyur High Road one of the six that have been decided to be dropped a road-over-bridge or flyover, it has been felt, is not feasible. A subway, involving acquisition of a huge quantity of private land, is not feasible either, it was found. More than a lakh of people in Ramanathapuram, Shanmugapuram, Jyothi Nagar, Murugappa Nagar and Jai Hind Nagar rely on this level crossing to move to the other end of the city.

S Govindaraj, a long-time resident of Ramanathapuram, says: "We have been asking the local MLA, who is also a minister, to consider our plea to build a subway. The delay in executing the project could mean losing many lives on the tracks." While some residents claimed that only those projects within the city limits were executed in record time, others were mulling a protest programme to seek the government's attention.

Building a pedestrian subway on defence land in Meenambakkam was, it was found, difficult in terms of funds. Also, the defence ministry reportedlywanted a flyover to replace the level crossing and not a pedestrian subway. "The defence ministry has not accepted the move for a permanent closure of the gate either," official sources said. Hence, the decision to shelve the project.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Cabinet approves two laning of Tindivanam - Krishnagiri section of NH-66

The Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure on Friday approved the implementation of a project for the two-laning with/without paved shoulders of the 178.060 km long Tindivanam - Krishnagiri Section of NH-66 from Km 38.150 to Km 216.210 under NHDP-III in the state of Tamil Nadu on Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) basis in BOT (Annuity) mode of delivery.

The estimated total project cost of the sub project is Rs.610.21 crore under DBFOT pattern on BOT (Annuity) mode of delivery.

The concession period is for 15 years including a construction period of two years, thus allowing 26 semi-annual annuities to be paid to the concessionaire from the date of commissioning of operations.

The project road passes through Villupuram, Tiruvannamalai and Krishnagiri districts of Tamil Nadu.

The main objective of the project is improvement of infrastructure in the state of Tamil Nadu and to increase the capacity of the sections of the National Highways.

The temple at Tiruvannamalai is a famous pilgrimage centre, which falls on this stretch. It will also increase the employment potential to the local labourers for the project activities.


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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Villupuram kids lose childhood in Chennai kitchens

Nov. 27: Preethi (all names changed) got the beating of her life, which is all of six years now, for breaking an egg while fetching the packet from the grocer for her employer in Chennai. She went back to the store sobbing, pleading for a replacement. The kind shopkeeper gave her an egg and dialed 1098 to alert the childline.


“That little girl was brought from Uttar Pradesh to work at the house of a Chennai businessman on a measly salary. She was made to take care of the boss’ baby, clean the house and help the wife in the kitchen,” recalled Dr P. Manorama, chairperson, child welfare committee. After being rescued by the childline, the girl refused to go back to UP and stopped her wailing only after she was assured that she would be brought up in a government home in Chennai and educated.

“She was one among the eight children and was certain that her parents would pack her off to some other distant employer. Now she is attending school here and is happy. We are rescuing at least 50 such kids from various households in Chennai in a month. Most of the employers were educated and well-employed, yet resorted to these cruel practices,” added Dr Manorama.

A childline volunteer recalled the case of Kavitha, 10, who was rescued from a posh house in T’Nagar very recently after neighbours reported that the girl was scavenging the roadside garbage bin for food. “She had jumped the wall to get out to search for food in the garbage. She was hungry and the employers were away on a vacation, leaving the girl and an older servant at home,” the volunteer recalled. “Kavitha’s legs bore bad burn marks as she was made to clean the toilets using acid.”

Childline recently rescued a 12-year-old ‘slave’ from an affluent home in Villivakkam after the girl was badly beaten up for not cooking the rice properly. “She had severe injuries. We found out that she was supplied by an agent who collected a hefty advance from the employer and paid a small portion to the girl’s family in Salem,” said Dr Manorama.

The child trafficking is superbly networked as agents from different parts of the country liaise for fixing the kids in homes and business places after collecting advance sums, from which they pick up handsome cuts. “Villupuram appears to be a hub as many kids have come from there. We rescue the children and send them back to their families but they are sent out again on work, to some other faraway place,” said Dr Manorama, adding that many kids from Tamil Nadu are sent to work in households in Kerala and north India while children from the north are brought to south to slog.

The state does little to help the child slave. “I am not aware of any agent being punished till now, though the Villupuram police are well aware of this trafficking for many years,” said Virgl D Sami, director of the Arunodhaya NGO.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Movie - Better late than never!

So it’s finally hitting the screens next week. Jabbar Patel’s much-awaited movie, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, for which Mammootty bagged the best actor award, last year, is being released at long last...

“THE film’s making, right from conception to creation has, for me, been an experience in itself. Recreating the life of one of the greatest visionaries in Indian history has been an experience of a lifetime,” says Jabbar Patel.

The film evolved from the documentary film he made on the life of Dr Ambedkar for Films Division in 1989. Shooting for this documentary was also done part in the US and the UK and mainly in India when Patel met people who were in actual contact with Dr Ambedkar. “The incidents related to me by these people, their fond memories of the learned visionary were so touching and exciting that I thought, the only true tribute to the great man would be a lifesize sketch of Dr Ambedkar on the silver screen.”

The recreation of the period in India and abroad as well, was a huge task. Institutes like the Columbia University New York and the London School of Economics where Dr Ambedkar studied, lent support and the shoots were done free of cost.

The ordeal of recreation did not limit itself to just the architecture or the period but it went as far as the actor who had to live the role of Ambedkar. The search for the actor did not limit itself to India but was also carried out on the other side of the Atlantic. But finally it was the face and the talent of the Southern superstar, Mammootty that presented itself.

The choice of Mammootty to play the role of Ambedkar was so appropriate that hundreds of untouchables or Dalits who would come to take part in shootings would be so emotionally moved that they would come to Mammootty with devotion in their hearts and tears in their eyes.

The technicians working for the film had an ambition. They wanted to achieve technical excellence, a film that was made on international standards and that would stand the test of an international audience. And so the style of production was lavish.

A select few have already seen the film in special screenings and have appreciated it to a great extent. These include people from the field of art, literature, law and politics. And their reactions have been favourable. Some representing the common stratum of society have also previewed the film and their reactions have been touching and overwhelming, especially those who were contemporaries of Dr Ambedkar.

The film is significant in that, though the ethos is Indian, it has an universal appeal. After all, political and social disparity is a feature of civilisations all over the world. The basic aim of the social revolution is to uphold the meaning of humanity in its true sense.

The film spans between the years 1901-1956, and takes us through 60 years, two world wars, and three countries — India, USA and Britain. Both a personal portrait, as well as a record of the times, it is above all one man’s fight against the tyranny of Hindu orthodoxy, against tradition, against Indian political heroes and saints such as Mahatma Gandhi, who were more interested in political reforms than social reforms. Dr Ambedkar walked a lonely path: he never once strayed from it, even though in the process he became the most hated man in Hindu India.

Born in an ‘untouchable’ family at a time when untouchables were forbidden education, Ambedkar bore many insults and humiliations at the hands of his fellow students and became the first graduate of his community. Later, while studying at Columbia University, New York, Ambedkar was able to rid himself of the stigma of untouchability and breathe the air of freedom. But at the same time living next to Harlem he could equate the fate of his people with that of the Afro-Americans.

Though they belonged to the same religion, untouchables were treated worse than the lowliest animals by the upper castes. Sanctified by religion and centuries of tradition, high caste Hindus considered themselves polluted if they came into contact with an untouchable. Though they worshiped the same God they could not enter the temples. All public services including the police and the military were closed to them. They were permitted only to follow their hereditary occupations of scavenging, street sweeping, skinning and tanning animal hides.

Gandhi appealed to Hindus for a change of heart. On the other hand Ambedkar wanted political rights. Gandhi saw untouchables as an indivisible part of Hindu society. Ambedkar, disgusted with Hinduism saw the depressed classes as separate. Gandhi thought once the British left, India would right itself.

Ambedkar was not willing to take the chance. “Don’t call Gandhi a saint. He is a seasoned politician. When everything else fails, Gandhi will resort to intrigue. Don’t fall under his spell, he’s not God... Mahatmas have come and Mahatmas have gone but untouchables have remained untouchables,” Ambedkar warned his people.

This confrontation with Gandhi, which made Ambedkar the most hated man in India, was resolved with Indian Independence when Gandhi insisted Ambedkar to be inducted into the first cabinet. Even though they had been on opposite side of the fence, Gandhi respected his former adversary. Thus Ambedkar became India’s first law minister under Prime Minister Nehru and it fell upon him to draft India’s Constitution.

Throughout his life Ambedkar’s endeavours to reform Hindu society had borne stubborn resistance and he had been on a life long search for a religion, a moral social order that would not sanctify the exploitation of man by man. His search led him to Buddhism, which he regarded as rational and egalitarian.
On 14th October 1956 Ambedkar renounced Hinduism and embraced Buddhism. Millions of untouchables followed him, threw away their Hindu idols, embraced en masses this new religion. This perhaps was the biggest social revolution witnessed by the subcontinent in a millennia.

Though this story is particular to India, it is also universal. While Dr Ambedkar was rooted in India, he also had an international outlook. There will always be people like him who struggle to better the lot of the exploited, the downtrodden, and the forgotten. His was the universal fight of the underdog, to gain his people a rightful place in the sun.
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