Scrap Padmas for sportspersons

The recent controversy stirred by national badminton star Saina Nehwal regarding her non-inclusion in the list of recommendations for the Padma Awards sent by the Ministry of Sports to the Union Home Ministry calls for some serious introspection.

From time to time, the Sports Ministry gets embroiled in some controversy or the other, which sends out a clear message to our countrymen that all is not well with sports. The malady of favouritism, corruption and unfair practices seems to have penetrated deep into the sports arena, which is proving to be malefic to the overall development of sports.

Sportspersons have started knocking on the doors of the courts to seek justice, as was done by Commonwealth gold medallist and pugilist Manoj Kumar who got the Arjuna Award ultimately through the court's intervention. When undeserving sportspersons are recommended and ultimately bag the Arjuna Award, it sends out wrong signals to other sportspersons that not fair play and impartiality, but corruption and favouritism, reign supreme in the Ministry of Sports. The Arjuna Award to little-known squash player Anaka Alankamony for her not-very-significant achievements is a case in point. Despite her not being a national champion in the senior’s league, she was recommended and got the award largely due to the fact that her case was backed by the head of the selection committee. The message sent out to the sports fraternity was loud and clear. Right connections in the selection committee and the Sports Ministry can do wonders.

Saina's grievance that She had been overlooked in the recommendations sent by the Ministry of Sports for the Padma Bhushan to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to be announced on the occasion of Republic Day this year. Instead, twin Olympics medallist  Sushil Kumar was recommended, though he had not completed the mandatory five years hiatus after the award of Padma Shri. He had been awarded the Padma Shri in 2012 and would have been eligible next year whereas Saina, having been awarded the Padma Shri in 2010, was eligible for the award this year.

The fact that the Union Sports Minister chose to concede her demand by announcing that he will recommend her case for the award of Padma Bhushan, even though the letter recommending her case from the Badminton Association of India (BAI) was received by him as late as on 3 January, reflects poorly on the Ministry, which showed itself to be weak-kneed and easily swayed. The damage inflicted to the prestige of the Padma awards by bowing to the wishes of the sportspersons needs to be fathomed by the powers that be.

What is intriguing is the fact that while on the one hand the Sports Minister claims that the letter recommending Saina's name for the award was received by him at his residence on 3 January, the BAI emphatically states that her case for the award was recommended as far back as August last year ~ well before the last date of 20 August set by the Ministry. The BAI had also received confirmation from the Sports Ministry regarding the receipt of the letter recommending her case. If, as claimed by the Sports Minister, the letter was not received earlier, how is it that Saina was told by some official in the Ministry that she had not been recommended, instead of clarifying that her case had not been received in the Ministry till the time the recommendation of Sushil Kumar was sent to the MHA? It is quite evident that either the Sports Minister had been misled or misinformed or a deliberate attempt was made to keep Saina out of reckoning for the award of the Padma Bhushan. The matter calls for an internal probe as to why the Sports Minister was misled and responsibility fixed for taking action against the official concerned for such misdemeanour.

If, as he contends, the recommendation for the award of the Padma Bhushan was received as late as 3 January, the Sports Minister Mr.Sarbananda Sonowal would have been well within the rules to reject the claim of Saina or pass on the letter to the concerned officials of the Ministry for further processing the case and sending a suitable reply to BAI. But he preferred to straightaway recommend her case and throw the ball in the court of the MHA to take a final decision.  The last date for receipt of nominations in the MHA was 15 September 2014. His contention that he was led by his sole motive of encouraging sportspersons in his final decision does not hold much water. Would the heavens have fallen if she was awarded the medal next year and not this year?  By his magnanimous gesture of sending her case to the MHA, Mr Sonowal has opened a Pandora's Box for other sportspersons too to stake their claims for the award. A step in that direction has already been initiated by ace boxer and 2008 Olympic bronze medallist Vijender Singh who has staked his claim for the award of Padma Bhushan as he feels that his achievements are at par with that of Saina. Will the Sports Minister make an exception this time too and send his case to the MHA for consideration?

It is sad indeed that our sportspersons demand honours for their efforts in the sports arena.  Though Saina avers that she did not demand the Padma Bhushan but merely sought clarification, the fact remains that she publicly aired her grievance. Such demands tend to belittle the awards and even the other deserving recipients as the message sent out to the people of the country is that these awards are there for the asking and all that one need is right connections and influence in the corridors of powers where the recommendations and conferment of these awards are decided.

What is interesting is the fact that those aspiring for these Padma awards are already recipients of the prestigious Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award and the Arjuna Award, apart from Padma Shri and cash awards of lakhs of rupees. Not that we begrudge them the money, but some of them are lakhpatis and crorepatis considering the amount of cash they get with every medal won in the international events.  Gujarat government has a policy of paying cash award of Rs 5 crore, 3 crore and 2 crore for those who bag gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively, in the Olympics. For the Asian Games medal winners, it is Rs 2 crore, 1 crore and 50 lakh for those who secure the first three positions. Gold, silver and bronze medallists in the Commonwealth Games get Rs 1 crore, 50 lakh and 25 lakh respectively.  In the Nationals, those who clinch the gold, silver and bronze become entitled to Rs 3 lakh, 2 lakh and 1 lakh, respectively.

The Haryana government's sops are more alluring. An Olympics gold medallist gets Rs 6 crore, a silver medallist Rs 4 crore and a bronze medallist becomes entitled to Rs 2.5 crore. These cash rewards are apart from the handsome amounts given by the Sports Ministry to all medal winners of various international events. Consequent to her raising the issue of non-payment of incentive amounts by the Telangana government on Tweeter, Saina was paid the amount along with others by the government last year.

Since the sportspersons of our country have a separate set of awards, that is, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award and the Arjuna Award apart from the other awards doled out by the States, the Ministry of Home Affairs could seriously consider keeping out sportspersons from the list of awardees of Padma Awards. Some of the more prominent sportspersons may in the years ahead go on to receive the Dhyan Chand Award for life time achievements and/or even the prestigious Dhronacharya Awards for training other sportspersons who bag medals in the international arena.

If it is still felt that prominent sportspersons need to be given due recognition by conferment of the Padma Awards, it should be done in very exceptional cases, rather than as a rule, and that too after due consideration to their contribution to the sports and to the country as a whole over a period of decades, rather than for a few years. Now that the portals to the award of Bharat Ratna have been opened to sportspersons too, this most prestigious award should be awarded to legends like Dhyan Chand as has been done in the case of Sachin Tendulkar. Had better sense prevailed among the powers that ruled the country after Independence, Dhyan Chand could have been honoured with the highest civilian award during his life time and the nation thus expressed its gratitude to him for his incredible and peerless contribution to the nation and the game. Better late than never, not just the sportspersons but the whole nation will laud the government if the hockey legend is honoured at the earliest.    

2014 Earth's hottest year on record, say U.S. scientists

2014 was Earth's hottest on record in new evidence that people are disrupting the climate by burning fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases into the air, two U.S. government agencies said on Friday.

The White House said the studies, by the U.S. space agency NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), showed climate change was happening now and that action was needed to cut rising world greenhouse gas emissions.

The 10 warmest years since records began in the 19th century have all been since 1997, the data showed. Last year was the warmest, ahead of 2010, undermining claims by some skeptics that global warming has stopped in recent years.

Record temperatures in 2014 were spread around the globe, including most of Europe stretching into northern Africa, the western United States, far eastern Russia into western Alaska, parts of interior South America, parts of eastern and western coastal Australia and elsewhere, NASA and NOAA said.

"While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York.

"The data shows quite clearly that it's the greenhouse gas trends that are responsible for the majority of the trends," he told reporters. Emissions were still rising "so we may anticipate further record highs in the years to come."

U.N. studies show there already are more extremes of heat and rainfall and project ever more disruptions to food and water supplies. Sea levels are rising, threatening millions of people living near coasts, as ice melts from Greenland to Antarctica.

Paris meeting in December

Next December, about 200 governments will meet in Paris to try to reach a deal to limit global warming, shifting to renewable energies. China and the United States, the top emitters of greenhouse gases, say they are cooperating more to achieve a U.N. accord.

The new data "is another reminder that climate change is not a problem for the future — it's happening here and now and we can't wait to take action," a White House official said in a statement.

Opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would transport Canadian crude oil across the United States said the new data made it all the more pressing to prevent the construction of the pipeline.

But U.S. Senator James Inhofe, a Republican who is the Senate's leading climate change skeptic, said the temperature difference between 2014 and 2010 was so insignificant as to prove there was no need for more stringent regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Human activity is clearly not the driving cause for global warming, and is not leading our planet to the brink of devastation that many alarmists want us to believe," he said.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says it is at least 95 per cent probable that human activities, rather than natural variations in the climate caused by factors such as sunspots, are to blame for rising temperatures.

Still, a Paris deal will be hard to achieve since curbs on fossil fuel use are unpopular in many nations. Low oil prices may also discourage a shift to cleaner wind and solar power.

"The political challenges of organizing countries to respond, particularly through the UN process, remain very high," Michael Levi, a fellow on energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, told Reuters.

Rowan Sutton, director of climate research at Britain's National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, said a single year did not mean much because it might be a freak hot year.

"But the fact that now 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since the turn of the century shows just how clear global warming has become," he said.

Even so, temperatures have not risen as fast as they did in the 1980s or 1990s, taking an unusually warm 1998 as a starting point. The IPCC has described it as a hiatus in warming.

No El Nino factor

Since 1880, Earth's average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius), NASA said. The NASA and NOAA analyses showed that the world's oceans all warmed last year, offsetting somewhat more moderate temperatures over land.

The average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.24 degrees F (0.69 degree C) above the 20th century average, NOAA said.

The scientists noted that the record was set in a year that did not have the weather pattern known as El Nino, which can heat up the atmosphere and has been a factor in many past record-setting years, including 1998.

The United Nations says it is already clear that promises for emissions curbs at the Paris summit will be too weak to get on track for a U.N. goal of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) above pre-industrial times.

Scientists without a scientific temper

India has not produced any Nobel Prize winner in science in the last 85 years — largely because of the lack of a scientific environment in the country

Jawaharlal Nehru coined the term ‘scientific temper’ in his book The Discovery of India, which was published in 1946. He was also the President of the Association of Scientific Workers of India (ASWI), which was registered as a Trade Union, and with which I was closely associated with in the 1940s and the early 1950s. (This may be the only example of a Prime Minister of a democracy being the President of a Trade Union.) One of the objectives of ASWI was to propagate scientific temper. It was very active in the beginning, but fizzled out by the 1960s as the bulk of scientists in the country, including many who were occupying high positions, were themselves not committed to scientific temper which calls for rationality, reason and lack of belief in any dogma, superstition or manifest falsehood.

The conclusion that our very own scientists — who would be expected to be leaders in the development of scientific temper — did not possess scientific temper themselves and were just as superstitious as any other group was supported by another incident in 1964. Following a statement by Satish Dhawan (who later became Secretary, Department of Space), Abdur Rahman (a distinguished historian of science) and I, set up an organisation called The Society for Scientific Temper, in January 1964, the founding members of which included distinguished scientists like Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize winner. For membership to the society, the following statement had to be signed: “I believe that knowledge can be acquired only through human endeavour and not through revelation, and that all problems can and must be faced in terms of man’s moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural powers.”

We were disillusioned when we approached scientist after scientist and all of them refused to sign the statement. Clearly they were devoid of scientific temper. Following this disillusionment, I persuaded Professor Nurul Hasan, then Education Minister, to have the following clause included in Article 51A in the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976: “It shall be the duty of every citizen of Indian “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform.”

This should have woken up our scientists and reminded them of their duty vis-à-vis scientific temper, but I do not believe that the situation in this respect is any better, even today, than what it was 50-60 years ago. Let me cite three examples.

Little improvement

During the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, then Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi asked the University Grants Commission to issue a circular to all universities stating that they should start a degree course in astrology. For this, he said, a special grant would be given. My colleague Chandana Chakrabarti and I filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging this dispensation. Our lawyer was Prashant Bhushan. The petition was admitted but was eventually dismissed (as could be expected), for belief in astrology — which is totally unscientific and irrational and has been repeatedly shown to be a myth — is widespread, with those who dispense justice also not being immune to it. Not one scientist came forward in support of us; nor did any of the six national science academies we have, on which a substantial amount of public funds are spent every year. Our supporters, who even sent us unsolicited funds to fight the case, were all non-scientists. In fact, recognising the above inadequacies of our science academies and their insensitivity to science-related social problems in general, I resigned from the fellowship of three of our science academies in 1993.

The second example would be the silence of our scientists and the six science academies when, last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a group of scientists in Mumbai, claimed that organ transplantation was known in ancient India — he gave Ganesha with his elephant head and human torso as an example.

The third example would be the much publicised symposium on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit” at the 102nd Indian Science Congress in Mumbai, which was held earlier this month. At this meeting, it was said that India had jumbo aircraft (60 x 60 feet; in some cases 200 feet long) that flew between continents and planets 9,000 years ago (some 4,500 years before Harappa and Mohenjo-daro). Not only that, it was also claimed that we had a radar system better than the present one, based on the principle that every animate or inanimate object emits energy all the time. And in the 21st century, “fusion of science and spirituality will happen because of the law of inter-penetration,” it was said. I doubt if any serious academic would have heard of this law which would not make any sense. These and many other absurd claims made at the symposium were an insult to the several real scientific accomplishments of ancient and medieval India.

Winding up academies

None of our so-called scientists of note and scientific academies has raised a voice against these claims. Surely, the distinguished scientists who organised the Science Congress knew what was likely to be said at the symposium, but, perhaps, they believed in it all or were pressurised politically. Therefore, there is a strong case for the annual Indian Science Congress to be banned (as I also argued in my article in The Hindu, “Why the Indian Science Congress meets should be stopped” (Open Page, September 30, 1997), or its name to be changed to Indian Anti-science Congress.

As regards the science academies, they can easily be wound up without any damage being caused to Indian science. India has not produced any Nobel Prize winner in science in the last 85 years – largely because of the lack of a scientific environment in the country, of which scientific temper would be an important component.

The year of Paris

During President Obama’s visit to India, India and the U.S. are expected to firm up agreements on renewable energy and new technologies.

As the world heads towards a new climate treaty by the end of the year, with Lima providing a bare-bones launching pad, many of the issues that have dogged negotiations will reach a flashpoint. Countries need to do more as was evident during the UN climate talks but there is not much ambition reflected either in terms of finance or technology transfer. The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has reached just over $10 billion, far short of what developing countries need to carry out urgent actions. The Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly laid a strong scientific basis, and adaptation alone will not save the earth from warming to levels which will have irreversible effects. The way the developed world is positioning itself, it is doubtful whether the issue of its historical responsibility will be the mainstay of the new treaty, post 2020. India maintains that developed countries have to pay for their pollution, and technology transfer cannot be entangled in intellectual property rights. Funding for mitigation and adaptation in the developing world becomes crucial but the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) has taken a hard hit in recent times. Countries like the United Kingdom have already ruled out a separate allocation of funds in addition to development aid for climate actions.

The developed world contends that emerging economies like China and India cannot be treated on a par with other developing nations and that they have an equal responsibility to curb emissions. The polluter pays principle is already wilting under pressure from the first world, and will be tested as erstwhile polluters develop cleaner technology and pass it on to their poorer cousins. A case in point is the investment Europe has made in solar energy with feed-in tariffs which has brought down the costs of photovoltaics. Renewable energy becomes the focus in countries like India and China, which has already reached a bilateral agreement with the U.S. on climate. During President Obama’s visit to India, India and the U.S. are expected to firm up agreements on renewable energy and new technologies. India has volunteered to reduce the energy intensity of its GDP by 20-25 per cent by 2020 as compared to the base year of 2005. The government has tightened norms for the cement industry and will introduce new norms for fuel emissions but its National Action Plan on Climate Change lacks a unified approach. The world will know by November if the aggregate national contributions are adequate to keep global average warming less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Alternatives to an unsustainable path are in plenty; only the commitment needs to be scaled up, and that’s why the year to Paris will be decisive.

Expansion and crisis

The move completes the accession of the three Baltic constituents of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — to the three main western institutions.

To see Lithuania’s euro adoption this month as an entry into a losers’ club is to miss the geopolitical picture wherein several of the ex-Warsaw Pact states have staked their future on forging a European identity — to the consternation of Russia. The admission of Vilnius into the single currency bloc represents a landmark of sorts. The move completes the accession of the three Baltic constituents of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — to the three main western institutions. These are the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU) and now the eurozone. The European ambitions of another erstwhile Soviet state, Ukraine, as demonstrated by its Parliament’s vote in December to join NATO, underpins in no small measure the ongoing separatist conflict in Kiev. Slovenia and Slovakia are the only other former Eastern bloc regions that have similarly acceded to all the three institutions. Against this backdrop, the flow of western investment, greater export potential and low borrowing cost resulting from integration into the eurozone would seem far more attractive to the Lithuanian population of a few million.

The country has long felt the lock-in effects of a fixed exchange rate as the litas, the national currency until 2014, was pegged to the euro some years ago. Lithuania’s entry was not without its share of controversy when some legislators expressed scepticism about the country’s preparedness to sacrifice the flexibility of a national currency. But the continuing crisis in the eurozone would have deterred Vilnius. With the exception of the United Kingdom and Denmark, accession to the EU implies a commitment to eventual adoption of the common currency by member-states once they have complied with the economic convergence criteria. Lithuania has so far been the lone euro aspirant whose 2006 bid was put on hold as Vilnius narrowly overshot the inflation limit for eligibility. But the expanded euro area comprising 19 countries is not expected to witness further enlargement in the foreseeable future. Except Romania, which has set itself a 2019 target, none of the other states has even given itself a euro-entry deadline. Realising the eurozone targets on fiscal deficits has been among the more ticklish issues within the bloc, with major economies and the architects of the rules themselves found to be in violation. Greater macroeconomic policy coherence is an admirable objective and an imperative for countries that use a common currency. But such an ideal must be balanced with political pragmatism as long as national capitals remain in charge of policy-formulation. That is the lesson from the euro’s 15-year history so far.

"Beagle 2"

Britain's missing spacecraft found on Mars

Britain's infamous "Beagle 2" spacecraft has been found on Mars -- 11 years after it went missing searching for extraterrestrial life.

Britain's infamous "Beagle 2" spacecraft, once dubbed "a heroic failure" by the nation's Astronomer Royal, has been found on Mars -- 11 years after it went missing searching for extraterrestrial life.

Beagle 2, part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission, had been due to land on Mars on Christmas Day 2003, but went missing on December 19, 2003. Until now, nothing had been heard from it since then.

But in an announcement made to a packed news conference at London's Royal Society scientific institution on Friday, space experts said the tiny Mars lander has been found on the surface of the red planet.

"Beagle 2 is no longer lost," said David Parker, chief executive of the UK Space Agency. He said scientists now had "good evidence" that the spacecraft successfully landed on Mars on the date it was due -- December 25, 2003 -- but had only partially deployed.

"This find shows that the entry, descent and landing sequence for Beagle 2 worked and the lander did successfully touch down on Mars on Christmas Day 2003," the UK space agency said in a statement.

Beagle 2 -- which measures less than 2 metres across -- was named after the ship Charles Darwin sailed when he formulated his theory of evolution. It was built by British scientists for about 50 million pounds ($85 million).

The plan was for it to report back from the Mars' surface using instruments designed to help search for signs of life, but nothing was heard after it was dropped off to make its landing.

"We were left with a mystery, a mystery that has continued to this day," Parker told Friday's news conference.

Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, last year praised Beagle 2 and its eccentric creator Colin Pillinge, who had died at the age of 70.

"This was a failure, but a heroic failure," Rees said.

Experts say part of Beagle 2's legacy is its miniaturised technology, some of which is being provided for the ExoMars 2018 rover and being proposed for other future space missions.

Right to information Government should not try and control the India story

There are some disturbing signs emanating from the Union government - indications of a desire to control the narrative about economic development. The fear is that this may get in the way of doing real work, and even of basic liberties and rights. It was reported, for example, that a Greenpeace activist was forced to leave a flight to London that she had boarded. She was scheduled to address British parliamentarians on the effect of coal mining in India. It has also been reported that the rules governing studies carried out by multilateral agencies like the World Bank have been changed; now, any surveys that gather primary data even on subjects like education and health will need state permission to start off with, with a concept note to be submitted to the Union government first.

Both the recent attempts appear to be part of a larger pattern, in which organs of the state act to stifle other voices that reveal information about any problematic effect of government policy. It is not just the National Democratic Alliance that has this attitude, either; it started under the last dispensation, when the home ministry cracked down on funding sources for several non-governmental organisations (NGOs), especially for church-run charities that it accused of being involved in the agitation against the Kudankulam nuclear plant. But the focus in such cases was on activists, not also on those merely disseminating or collecting information. In some cases, it appears even basic rights are being infringed on. Every Indian citizen has the right to freedom of movement, including across borders - unless they have been convicted of a crime, or their passport has been judicially confiscated. Priya Pillai was, like many activists, involved in legal proceedings - but there is no indication that she should have been debarred from leaving the country. If everyone accused of a crime had their movement restricted, many members of Parliament would not be able to travel overseas. Worse, there is no information as to exactly who forced Ms Pillai to deplane. Was it India's intelligence agencies? Under whose instructions? And what gives them the right to do so? The government needs to answer these questions. As for the multilateral agencies being prevented from collecting data freely - and being required to use government data if available - if they are indeed only allowed to publish reports subject to approval by New Delhi, then Indians among others will lose a valuable source of information. What is the point of reading a "doing business" ranking that will merely regurgitate government propaganda?

If the government tries to control information in this manner, then it is India's reputation that will suffer. India is not China. It is not even Russia - which owes its current negative reputation in the world community and among investors to, among other reasons, attempts to coerce civil society organisations. Some people believe that some NGOs work in the interests of the West. But the truth or otherwise of this claim is irrelevant. It is neither right nor wise to stop the free flow of information.