UPDATE

Divide with Dhaka

IF the Indo-Bangladesh talks that took place in New Delhi in June were a step forward (Frontline, July 20) the second round, held in Dhaka, amounted to two steps backward. In the matter of resolving the border issue, the two countries now stand exactly where they stood at the start of the present diplomatic parleys in April.

What was missing at the three-day Joint Working Group meeting was an accommodative attitude and a sense of urgency to resolve the dispute. A day before the meet, the situation changed, with the transfer of the controversial Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) chief Major-General Fazlur Rahman, who was active in the Boraibari-Pyrdwah skirmish this April. The timing of the transfer raised many eyebrows, and anti-India feelings grew in government circles and among the public as the transfer was linked to the talks.

The agenda of the talks had two sections. While Joint Border Working Group I (JBWG-I) dealt with the 6.5-km stretch of undemarcated border land, JBWG-II addressed the issue of enclaves, adverse possession and construction of border pillars. While the JBWG-I talks went smoothly, problems cropped up on the second day's session of JBWG-II. Dhaka rejected New Delhi's demand for joint surveys to demarcate enclaves and adverse possession and a census in the territories earmarked for transfer. It described the demands as being "extraneous to the 1974 India-Bangladesh agreement". The Indian side, yet again, explained the agreement's constitutional constraints, which made it mandatory for the two sides first to settle "the matters under dispute". That these matters were not resolved was obvious at the end of the meeting when a joint press release stated that "the two sides had clarified their respective positions in order to address the issues in a pragmatic and time-bound manner".

Concern over the bloody clashes between the Border Security Force (BSF) and the BDR affected the talks in a significant way. While India tends to downplay the incidents and characterise them as routine border problems, they are noted with concern in Bangladesh. A week before the meet four Bangladeshi nationals were shot dead by the BSF in Chuadanga, Lalmonirhat, Mymensingh and Sherpur sectors. According to Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organisation, around 51 Bangladeshis were killed and 300 injured by the BSF in the last six months. While these figures are yet to be verified, it is clear that the situation is far from cordial at the ground level. The Indian delegation was bombarded with questions on these skirmishes, and its reply that the "border security forces of the two countries should show restraint" made headlines in Bangladeshi newspapers. At the end of the meet, both sides reiterated their commitment to maintain peace and tranquility on the border. It remains to be seen whether this promise will be kept.

Naunidhi Kaur

Olympics 2008 for Beijing

IT was poetic justice. Beijing, which had been the hot favourite to host the 2000 Olympics, was pipped at the post by Sydney. Issues unrelated to sports had cropped up at that time. Sensational revelations a few years ago showed that financial and other inducements have played a big part in deciding the venues of both Winter and Summer Olympics. China lost the bid for the 2000 Olympics by just two votes. Australian sports officials later admitted that delegates from Kenya and Uganda were offered $35,000 each the night before the voting.

This time too there was hectic lobbying, but apparently money did not change hands owing to the intense media scrutiny. Interested parties had launched a propaganda blitz in a belated attempt to deny Beijing the honour of holding the prestigious event in 2008. In the forefront of the campaign were Tibetan exile groups, and other Chinese dissident groups and religious cults such as the Falun Gong.

The bogey of human rights violations was highlighted in Western media reports and in advertisements in leading newspapers and magazines. There was considerable pressure on the Bush administration to come out openly against Beijing's Olympic bid, especially after the spy plane imbroglio involving the United States and China. After mulling over the issue for some time, the Bush administration opted for a conciliatory stance. American big business does not want to anger China. Anyway, the U.S. administration realised that Beijing was the overwhelming favourite and there was precious little it could do to change the odds. Officially the Bush administration was neutral. However, there were many U.S. Olympic officials who openly supported Beijing's bid. Mike Romney, chief organiser of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, said that China deserved to hold the Olympics at this "very unique time in history" when the superpowers were at peace. "The Olympics are about building bridges, not walls," he said.

Beijing's victory was announced by the outgoing President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch in Moscow on July 13. Beijing won the bid to hold the Games in the second round itself. Among the other cities vying for the Games were Toronto, Paris, Osaka and Istanbul. One hundred and nineteen delegates from all over the world had exercised their votes. Toronto and Paris had expended a lot of energy and resources to turn the tide. Chinese Olympic officials had dealt honestly with questions relating to human rights and related issues in their country. Beijing has been preparing for the Olympics for a decade and a half.

John Cherian

Closure of Grasim Industries

GRASIM Industries Ltd. at Mavoor near Kozhikode, the biggest private sector industrial unit in Kerala known for its poor environmental and industrial relations record, has closed down. The agreement in this regard was signed on July 7 by the management and the trade unions under the mediation of the State government.

For the Aditya Birla Group, owners of the unit which produced rayon-grade wood pulp and viscose staple fibre (VSF), it was the end of an increasingly embarrassing burden on its Rs.20,000 crore business empire. It meant victory for environmentalists who have for years protested against the severe pollution caused by the industry, which is located on the banks of the Chaliyar river. It may also mean relief from serious health for the people of the nine densely populated panchayats along the Chaliyar, mainly Mavoor, Vazhakkad, Peruvayal, Vazhayoor and Olavanna, caused by the toxic waste discharged from the factory.

The section that will suffer is the nearly 3,000 workers and their family members, who number over 10,000. Many of them had spent major parts of their productive lives serving the Grasim management.

As per the agreement, signed in the presence of State Labour Minister Babu Divakaran, the employees are to be paid an amount equivalent to 40 days' salary for every year of completed service and also for the remaining years of service. In addition, a "special pay" of Rs.27,500 each is to be paid. The management has also agreed to pay some fringe benefits, bonus for the current year and the eligible provident fund and gratuity.

For many workers who joined the factory after 1979, this meant a compensation of Rs.2 lakhs or less. Employees with longer service, who are fewer, are expected to get around Rs.5 lakhs. In the long interval since May 1999, when the unit stopped production and the company announced a lay-off (with salary), most of the employees had reached a state of hopelessness and were willing to accept whatever compensation was finally offered.

At the time of its establishment in 1957 the Mavoor unit, known then as Gwalior Rayons Silk Marketing Company Ltd., was regarded as a boon for industrially backward Kerala with a high level of unemployment. Successive governments pampered the unit with water and power supplied at heavily subsidised rates and access to the State's forests to gather raw materials at extremely low prices. But the initial goodwill, which was earned mainly on the promise of employment, soon gave way to anger and resentment against its gross violation of pollution control norms to the detriment of people living in the surrounding areas (Frontline, December 24, 1999). The unit also showed an insatiable appetite for raw materials, a major reason for the denudation of tracts of forests.

From the late 1970s, agitations and court cases had plagued the company. In 1985, when public pressure against pollution by the factory was at its peak, the management closed down the factory for nearly three years citing "labour trouble" as the reason. The hardship that it caused to the employees and their families (many workers were driven to penury; 14 of them committed suicide) brought the government to its knees. Grasim eventually succeeded in wresting more concessions from the government on the supply of raw materials and on following pollution control norms.

Meanwhile, the fall in the international price of wood pulp made its import a cheaper option for the Grasim conglomerate, which has a strong presence in the textile market in India and abroad. Also, Grasim, with its five other VSF units, was already the world's largest producer of VSF (which is blended with polyester and cotton in the manufacture of fabrics). With the establishment of a plant at Harihar in its Karnataka in 1972, Grasim also became the largest producer of rayon grade wood pulp in the country. In 1998, the group acquired a joint venture pulp mill in Canada, whose entire output was meant for captive consumption in Grasim's VSF units in India, Thailand and Indonesia.

The Mavoor unit was the first in the world to manufacture rayon-grade pulp from bamboo and later from heterogeneous species of pulp wood, including eucalyptus and certain wild plants, when bamboo was in short supply. The use of heterogeneous wood was stated to have affected the quality of pulp from Mavoor. The unions alleged that this was a result of large-scale corruption by local managers of the unit who bought heterogeneous wood of inferior quality. The local managers also allegedly conveyed to the Grasim management a wrong impression about the intensity of the public ire against pollution and exaggerated figures of the cost of pollution control measures.

But the allegations were raised too late in the day. In the Grasim's scheme of things, the Mavoor plant, which had thrived on the inability of the State government to act, was going down in importance. And, as the demand for more investment in pollution control measures became intense, it became a liability.

The company served a closure notice to the State government on August 23, 1999 under Section 25(o) of the Industrial Disputes Act, and it was rejected. A review petition was also rejected, and the government referred the issue for adjudication by the Industrial Disputes Tribunal in Kozhikode. Simultaneously, the Grasim management submitted a petition in the Indore High Court requesting sanction for the sale of the Mavoor units (estimated to be worth over Rs.750 crores) to a benami company at a low price of Rs.22.5 crores. The trade unions had since impleaded as a party in the case.

As per the July 7 agreement, the company would be deemed to have been closed down with effect from June 30, 2001. The cases are to be withdrawn.

R. Krishnakumar