Archive for September 8th, 2009
Many misguided activists of Orissa and India have tooth and nail opposed any and all operations of Vedanta in Orissa. Their vendetta against Vedanta is so much that they even oppose Vedanta University, regardless of its benefit to people of Orissa.
At a drop of a hat they will mention that Vedanta is blacklisted by the Norway government pension fund; also referred to as the oil fund. But what the activists fail to mention is that the Norway government pension fund also blacklists Boeing, Wal-mart, General Dynamics, Honeywell, etc. All of these are well respected multi-nationals. See the whole list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway#Excluded_companies.
Many activists also often question the credibility of Vedanta and its subsidiary Sterlite. For them here is a quote from an Arizona newspaper.
Arizona joined several other states in supporting an Indian company’s bid for Tucson-based copper producer Asarco LLC, during closing arguments of a bankruptcy hearing in Texas Tuesday.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Richard S. Schmidt heard the final oral arguments about who should get the local copper producer: Sterlite Industries, the Indian company that has been actively working with Asarco management and workers …
The U.S. government supported Sterlite’s bid, as did the states of Washington, Montana, Texas and Arizona, among others. The United Steelworkers, which represents many of Asarco’s workers, also has supported Sterlite’s bid and threatened to strike if Grupo Mexico gets the company back.
… Grupo Mexico and Sterlite have each offered to fully repay all of Asarco’s creditors, who claim to be owed $3.62 billion. A majority of those creditors, which include several state and federal environmental agencies, say they would prefer Sterlite, according to court records.
Unfortunately, the judge did not recommend Sterlite and it goes to the District Court of Texas for a decision in 4-6 weeks. The main reason behind the judge’s recommendation was that Sterlite was offering less upfront cash. However the fact to note is that Sterlite was backed by the US government and various states as well as the workers of the company and state and federal environment agencies. In fact the workers union support it so much that they are threatening to go on strike if the judge does not favor Sterlite. See http://www.vccircle.com/500/news/sterlite-suffers-setback-on-asarco-bid-but-has-workers-support for more details.
Yet the activists in Orissa and India are misleading the common people there with all kinds of propaganda against Vedanta and Sterlite. So much so that their plans in Lanjigarh, Jharsuguda and Puri have all been delayed. I hope the people of Orissa see and understand what the US and the states of Washinton, Montana, Texas and Arizona are seeing and support Vedanta University. I also hope that they negotate with Sterlite/Vedanta in Lanjigarh and Jharsuguda so that the company establishes branches of Vedanta University and its medical college in or near Lanjigarh as well as Jharsuguda.
Moreover, I hope the people of Lanjigarh learn about this and directly negotiate with Sterlite regarding their concerns and work with them, as the workers of ASARCO in Arizona are doing, rather than getting swayed by the propaganda of the activists who are blinded by their (perceived) supreme court loss and care less about the people and more about their vendetta against Vedanta.
September 8th, 2009
If and when IIT Bhubaneswar wants, it can have its own programs in Design. One of the best design programs in India is at the IIT Bombay Industrial Design Center. IIT Guwahati’s Department of Design also has a good program in design. So there is no need for Bhubaneswar to have an NID.
However, my guess is that there is a tough debate going on in the central government about the NID location in the east. So far among the new 4 NIDs only one location is announced. That is Bhopal. My guess is that among the other three, one will be in the southern states, one in the northern states and one in the eastern states.
I think for Orissa to get an NID it will help if a proper plan in terms of what the focus of this NID will be and why it is appropriate to be in Orissa is presented. People campaigning for an NID in their area of Orissa should prepare a document to that effect. Such a document will help the Orissa CM to make the case better.
Mostly I have seen campaigns for the NID to be in Berhampur. Some people have quipped, why not Sambalpur. I think both groups should focus on making the case in terms of what the focus of an NID in that area should be and tie it in to some special attributes of that area.
Note that a big part of the history behind getting NID to Orissa can be found through this site. The earliest articles that I could locate were about June 25, 2007. There were two conflicting reports on that day.
So in my opinion, the proper argument for having NID at some place other than Bhubaneswar is to focus on why that place is appropriate for an NID and then point out that good design programs can be at IIT Bhubaneswar and thus NID need not be at Bhubaneswar.
September 8th, 2009
In light of some comments in Orissalinks and several efforts that are going around in the Cyberspace, I would like to give a bit of history of Orissalinks that would make our stand clear in terms of promoting all around development of HRD infrastructure in Orissa.
We had several blogs that are precursor to Orissalinks.com. The first two were:
- http://iiser.blogspot.com/ started October 2005: This was about getting NIS to Bhubaneswar which was earlier announced in 2003 by the President of India and HRD minister of India but was omitted when IISERs were proposed.
- http://kbkcentral.blogspot.com/ started October 2005: This was about getting a central university to KBK.
Couple of the blogs after that were:
- http://newiits.blogspot.com/ started December 2005: At that time there were plans to upgrade some existing institutions to an IIT or existing IITs opening branches in other locations. We pursued both.
- http://iits-11thplan.blogspot.com/ started January 2007: After the first three new IITs were announced and Orissa was left out this was to push for an IIT in Orissa.
With the help of Prashant Sahoo, we started this consolidated blog orissalinks.com in Novermber 2006. The first postings of this blog was about KBK Central University. See https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/date/2006/11.
We have been fortunate that the goals of our initial efforts were achieved and we now have NISER, an IIT and a Central University in Orissa.
There were other achievements including helping the UCE Burla students and alumni in their efforts to make UCE Burla an unitary university. The idea was mooted in this blog in October 2007 (see https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/693) and later support was provided by email. See their acknowledgement in their souvenir.
While a lot of our initial focus had been about getting Orissa its fair share, dealing with inequality within Orissa was also a concern from the very beginning. Although we did not frame it in the terms of "inequity within Orissa" our initial postings on KBK University and the kbkcentral blog were about addressing the lack of opportunities in the KBK districts.We continue with several other efforts such as making VSSUT, Burla an IIEST, having a branch of IGNTU in Kandhamal and getting an ESIC medical college to Rourkela.
We also wrote specifically about inequality within Orissa. One of our early post was in April 2007. See https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/100. Since then we have raised this several times and will continue to do so.
But we would like it to be done, at least in this forum, in a respectful way and avoiding divisiveness. I also think that is the most effective way.
Following are some of my suggestions:
- We should not show any hatred towards any region of Orissa. (Sometimes one may not mean that, but the words imply that.) While it is ok to point out that some area, say the Bhubaneswar area, has too many of something as compared to the rest of the state, it is really not helpful to say something like since X will be in the Bhubaneswar area, I would rather not have it in Orissa at all.
- We should not use divisive terminologies.
- Personally I think it is usually better to argue for certain amenities and infrastructure elements in particular metropolitan areas rather than whole regions especially when there are divisive stereotypes about those regional distinctions.
- As described in http://orissa2020.org (in particular http://www.orissa2020.org/home/area-wise-plan ) I think we can initially focus on five tier 2 regions (Rourkela area, Berhampur area, Baragarh-Sambalpur-Jharsuguda area, Balasore-Baripada area and Koraput-Jeypore-Sunabeda area) and five trier 3 A regions (Bhawanipatna, Balangir, Phulbani, Angul and Keonjhar). See the above links for the reasoning behind why these ten are our first choice. Specific mailing lists or yahoo groups on each of them would be useful in interfacing cybercitizens with people phyiscally located in those areas. This will allow organization of some ground level teams and actions when needed.
- While looking out for our own backyard is important, it is more effective if one does not only focus on their own backyard or one is not too obsessed on their own backyard.
- It is more effective to argue for a location of an institute, when another location for it has not been announced. It creates divisiveness when one suggests or campaigns that institute X announced for location L should be moved to location M. A better alternative in that case is to say that a branch of X or something like X should also be in M. That is what we used when campaigning for NIS in Bhubaneswar. We never said that the IISER in Kolkata should be moved to Bhubaneswar. We said that we are happy that Kolkata gets an IISER but we would like Bhubaneswar to have an NIS or an IISER. That way the campaign does not pit people in favor of L against the people in favor of M. The more unified an effort is the better its chances of success. Especially, if one makes enemies or treats others as enemies then it works against their goals. The intelligent and effective approach is to convert others to support or even pursue your goals and not make enemies.
- On the other hand if X is announced for location L and someone from L says that I am from L but I think for these reasons the institute X should be in M, then that is the right spirit. That is what is happening in the ESIC medical college in Rourkela effort.
- There will be cases when several areas are under consideration for a single exclusive institute. At that time we should keep the debate about the location civil and logic based. In such debates people arguing for their own backyard is expected and reasonable, but one must keep in mind that it automatically decreases their credibility in the eyes of the others.
In summary, if we work unitedly for all of Orissa and respect some ground rules (such as the ones above), the chances of success are much higher.
September 8th, 2009