Press Round up July 19

1. 49 dead, 89 injured as trains collide in West Bengal
By Jayanta Gupta in the Times of India, Jul 19
SAINTHIA (BIRBHUM): As many as 49 people were killed and 89 serious injured when Uttarbanga Express rammed into stationary Vananchal Express at Sainthia station near Bolpur, Santiniketan, in the wee hours of Monday.
The impact of the crash sent a coach flying on to a 25-feet high road overbridge and left two other compartments badly mangled. Till 8.30am, 49 bodies had been pulled out of the Vananchal Express coaches. The death toll is likely to mount further as rescue operation is still underway.
Prima facie, the accident occurred due to human error. Preliminary investigation indicated that the driver of Uttarbanga Express had overshot a red signal before the station. While the Vananchal Express from Bhagalpur to Ranchi was running several hours late, what has baffled railwaymen is why the Cooch Behar-Sealdah Uttarbanga Express that had a scheduled halt at the station arrived at such high speed.
An Eastern Railway spokesman said the Vananchal Express was standing at platform 4 when the speeding Uttarbanga Express hit it from the rear around 2 am on Monday. Three rear coaches of the Vananchal Express bore the brunt of the collision and were badly mangled.
Rescue workers are using gas-cutters to cut open the coaches and bring out the dead and rescue the injured. The injured passengers are being sent to hospitals in Sainthia and Birbhum district headquarters Suri. An accident relief train and a medical relief train have also reached Sainthia. Rescue operation teams have reached Sainthia from Rampurhat, Asansol and Burdwan.
Train movement on the down line has been suspended in the Bolpur-Rampurhat section. The down Malda-Howrah Intercity Express has been cancelled and several trains are stranded on the down line.
Railway minister Mamata Banerjee, railway board chairman Vivek Sahay, railway board member (electrical) Sudesh Kumar and director general of railway health service B K Ramteke, Eastern Railway general manager V N Tripathy and other senior officials have left for Sainthia. The minister has ordered an inquiry into the mishap. Eastern Railway safety commissioner Arti Yadav will lead the probe.
Only a couple of months ago, Maoists had engineered a train crash in West Midnapore district that killed 160 passengers. While the attempt had been to derail trains on both up and down tracks, a goods train moving at express speed rammed into the derailed Howrah-Mumbai Jnaneswari Express from the opposite side, leading to one of the worst train disasters in recent times.  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6185725.cms?prtpage=1

2. Pak military ruined talks to spite Zardari: The Hindustan Times, Jul 19
By Imtiaz Ahmad, Pramit Pal Chaudhuri and Jayanth Jacob
Islamabad / New Delhi: When the prime ministers of India and Pakistan met in Thimpu in early May, Yousuf Raza Gilani indicated he had the full support of Pakistan’s military to resume the dialogue with India. But by the time the foreign ministers of the two countries met in mid-July, the men in khaki had become opposed to any dialogue.
Three developments, say sources in both countries, led them to change their minds. The first was the political resurgence of President Asif Ali Zardari. The Pakistan military has sought to marginalise him at the expense of Gilani and their favourite politician, ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
But Zardari’s recent successes in working out long-standing disputes between the Centre and the provinces over water and finance, and the holding of genuine elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, have resurrected his standing at the popular level.
Second was David Coleman Headley’s testimony. The transcript handed over by Home Minister P Chidambaram in late June was damning in how much it showed the military’s Inter-Services Intelligence’s direct link to the Mumbai 26/11 attack. This infuriated the Pakistani military, not least because it potentially put them at a disadvantage in their own struggle with Zardari.
Third was the attack by the Punjabi Taliban on the Data Durbar shrine in Lahore on July 1. Among the holiest of Barelvi Muslim shrines in Pakistan, it put the military in a dilemma. The militant groups behind the blast were also political allies of Sharif.
But the outcry among the Barelvis has been so strong that it is reported in Pakistan that the military has ordered action to be taken against lower level Punjabi Taliban cadre.
By the time Foreign Minister SM Krishna arrived in Islamabad, the military’s view about the dialogue with India had shifted from support to strong reservations.
One reason, say sources in Pakistan, was their feeling that a successful dialogue with India would only add another feather to Zardari’s cap. India’s forceful play of the Headley card tipped the scales decisively against dialogue. The ISI link was bad enough, but India’s insistence on some sort of action against the Lashkar e Tayyeba over 26/11 was a red flag.
At a time when the military was moving to take action against the Punjabi Taliban, it was impossible for it to concede even rhetorical moves against Lashkar, the largest Punjabi militant group. The Pakistani army and broader establishment is not interested in making headway with India at this point, say sources in Pakistan.
Foreign Minister SM Qureshi’s comment on Sunday that he would visit India only for “meaningful, result-oriented talks” and not for a “leisure trip” — knowing well that progress in India-Pakistan dialogue can only be slow and incremental — further endorses this view.
The military’s position is that it would prefer to wait until Sharif rules in Islamabad before taking up India again.
The Indian Foreign Ministry’s expectations had been based on Gilani’s Thimpu statements and his seeming consolidation of power following the passage of the 18th constitutional amendment.
The impact of Zardari’s political resurrection and the shrine attack may have been missed.
New Delhi now has a clearer understanding that the military remains directly and forcefully involved in running the show in Islamabad, admit officials, especially when it comes to relations with India.
The military’s political games at home, however, mean dialogue will not be high on its priority list and make medium-term prospects for the Indo-Pakistan peace process  bleak. www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/574317.aspx

3. J&K's dependency on Centre alarming
By Subodh Varm in the Times of India, Jul 19
While Jammu & Kashmir continues through an endless cycle of calm-confrontation-curfew, it is facing a disastrous financial situation. Recently released Reserve Bank of India data on state finances shows how highly dependent J&K is on the central government's support.
In 2009-10, J&K received Rs 13,252 crore as grants from the Centre, which constitutes nearly 60% of the state's total expenditure. In fact, for the past two decades since the separatist movement spread in the Kashmir valley, the centre has been propping up the state through similar doles. In all, J&K has received grants amounting to Rs 94,409 crore between 1989-90 and 2009-10.
For over a decade, from 1994-95 to 2005-06, the state received 10-12% of all grants disbursed by the central government to the states. In 2009-10, this proportion had dipped slightly to about 8%. This is way above J&K's share of India's population, which is a mere 1%.
Is the Centre providing similar support to the other hotspot of insurgency in India — the northeast? Not quite. According to the RBI report, in 2009-10, the eight northeastern states received grants and loans worth Rs 29,084 crore from the Centre, which was 44% of their combined total expenditure, which is significantly lower than in J&K. These figures raise two questions about J&K: one, how is this money being spent, and two, why is it not helping in soothing the discontent that is obviously so widespread?
Spending on the social sector — schools, health, rural development, etc — in J&K is surprisingly low at about 30% of aggregate expenditure. That is the fourth lowest proportion among all states. The all-state average is 40% and states like Chhattisgarh (54%), Maharashtra (50%) and Rajasthan (46%) do much better. What is even more surprising in the case of J&K is that it has been stagnating at this level for nearly thirty years.
As can be expected for a mountainous region wracked by insurgency, administrative expenditure is high in J&K, working out to about 12% of all expenditure. But Himachal and Sikkim, other Himalayan states, spend only about 6% on administration. So, perhaps J&K's high administrative costs are largely due to the disturbed situation. But Tripura with 16% and Mizoram with 14% of funds spent on administration have managed to attain stability and peace. Obviously, the high expenditure on administration in J&K is not really working.
A clue to this conundrum can be found in the per capita spending by state governments. Three mountainous border states, Sikkim, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, which have had militancy problems, but have been relatively stable for a long period, spent Rs 59 lakh, Rs 35 lakh and Rs 38 lakh per capita in 2009-10.
In J&K, the annual per capita spending by the state is far short of this, at about Rs 20 lakh. Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland — all states wracked by insurgency to varying degrees — have similar spending levels ranging between Rs 18 to 21 lakh per capita per annum. So, part of the answer to the question as to why pouring money into J&K is not solving the problem lies in the fact that not enough money is being spent, because the state itself is not generating enough revenue. The other part, of course, is whether money shown as spent is really reaching the people. What's your guess? http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6185219.cms?prtpage=1

4. India has formula to zap oil from BP spill
By Sanjay Dutta in the Times of India, Jul 19
NEW DELHI: India may hold the answer to President Barack Obama's worries over what to do with piles of crude from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For several years now, oil companies in India have been using a homegrown cocktail of bacteria called Oilzapper to reclaim vast tracts of farmland contaminated by crude leaking from pipelines or oily sludge coming out of other installations.
Using bacteria to clean up an oil slick is called bioremediation and is practised in many parts of the world. But the Indian formulation is unique as it eats up all four layers of crude -- waxy element or saturated hydrocarbons, aromatic component or benzene compounds, NSO (compounds of nitrogen and sulphur) and asphaltene or tar. And unlike other formulations, Oilzapper can work in temperatures ranging from 8-40 degrees Celsius.
An estimated 184 million gallons of crude has spilled into the sea after an explosion in BP's offshore drilling rig in US's southeastern coast on April 20 this year, making it the worst accidental spillage in history.
Banwari Lal, a scientist at the energy and environment think-tank Teri said Oilzapper could help contain the environmental damage due to the spill. "Other bioremediation measures tackle only one or two contents so you may still be left with the task of, say, stowing tar. In Oilzapper we have succeeded in creating a cocktail of four bacteria that do not fight amongst themselves and each feeds on only one layer of crude content. It is also 40% cheaper than other options," he said. Lal holds the patent for Oilzapper and heads the joint venture between Teri and state-run ONGC that markets the formulation.
The formulation was developed by Teri under a central government initiative after the Gulf War-I. It is being used by major oil and power companies, including multinationals, operating in India besides the state-run oil firms of Abu Dhabi and Kuwait. Users in India include Reliance Industries, BG (formerly British Gas), Cairn and Tata Power besides all state-run oil firms. So far, Oilzapper has reclaimed over 20 lakh tonnes of soil in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Assam where these companies have refineries, storage facilities or pipelines.
Lal said Oilzapper is like powder and is sprayed on an oil pool or contaminated soil just like a fertilizer. It takes 3-4 months for the bacteria to eat up the oil. After that the soil is tested by an independent laboratory identified by the Central Pollution Control Board before it is declared safe.
Farmers in Gujarat and Assam contacted by TOI were full of praise for the product. "I have got back about 3-4 bighas of land. For so many years the oil just refused to go. Now I am ready to sow jowar," said Rameshbhai Desai of Jhalora village in Gujarat's Mehsana district.
Rameshbhai, another farmer from the district's Sobhasan village who got back a bigha of his land, said he was initially sceptical but recommends Oilzapper now. "Earlier, we would get monetary compensation from ONGC (which has its crude pipelines there). But what is the use of compensation if your land turns into a wasteland. I have my land back now, it is fit for farming. What more can one ask for?"
Farmer Jeherol Mohammad of Nazira in Assam went a step further and claimed he was getting better yields from his reclaimed land. "I have got back 1.5 bigha of my land. I am a rice and banana farmer. Farming has become easy as the treated soil turns soft with little watering. I am getting better crops from this tract of land than before." http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6185083.cms?prtpage=1

5. Dual citizenship a hit amongst PIOs
MUMBAI: In less than four years since the government gave Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) a second chance to reconnect with the country of their forefathers, more than half a million foreign nationals have acquired the coveted Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI).
Popularly known as 'dual citizenship', OCI was first mooted in December 2005 to woo the rich and influential Indian diaspora from across the world. Recently, the scheme was in news when Nobel laureate V S Naipaul, whose ancestors belonged to UP's Gorakhpur, was given a hard time by overzealous babus in London when he applied for the card. Naipaul was asked to provide documents to prove that his ancestors indeed lived in India.
The Naipaul case apart, figures sourced by TOI suggest that the scheme has been a success especially among PIOs living in the First World. By the end of March 2010, the government issued 5,73,324 dual citizenships in 91 countries.
Nearly half of these were American citizens followed by British, Canadians and Australians. A common factor was at least one of their ancestors had been an Indian.
The primary benefit of having an OCI status is that the holder gets a lifelong visa to visit India and stay as long as he wants. Second, unlike other foreign visitors, he does not need to register with local police on arrival.
But, it's also a misnomer to assume that OCI grants any real "citizenship". It does not give the PIO a right to vote or contest elections in India. He also cannot hold constitutional posts or buy agricultural land in the country.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6185207.cms?prtpage=1