Many dead, including Police SP in Gurdaspur Terror attack

[Prem]

Past Historical Impact of El Nino on Rainfall levels in India
In the 20th and 21st century there were 26 occurrences of El Nino – 1902-1903, 1905-1906, 1911-1912, 1914-1915, 1918-1919, 1923-1924, 1925-1926, 1930-1931, 1932-1933, 1939-1940, 1941-1942, 1951-1952, 1953-1954, 1957-1958, 1965-1966, 1969-1970, 1972-1973, 1976-1977, 1982-1983, 1986-1987, 1991-1992, 1994-1995, 1997-1998, 2002-2003, 2004-2005 and 2009-2010.
Historical data from the “Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology” shows the following:
From 1870 to 2009, there have been 23 El Nino years when rainfall in India has been below the average. During this period, there have been only 5 El Nino years when rainfall has been above the average.From 1870 to 2009, there have been 20 La Nina years when rainfall in India has been above the average. During this period, there have been only 2 La Niña years when rainfall has been below the average.From 1870 to 2010 India had 24 major drought years – 1873, 1877, 1899, 1901, 1904, 1905, 1911, 1918, 1920, 1941, 1951, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 2002, 2004, 2009.Of these 24 drought years, 13 occurred during years that coincided with El Nino (1877, 1899, 1905, 1918, 1951, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1982, 1987, 2002 and 2009). Over half the times that India has experienced drought since 1870 have been in El Nino years.

El Nino and Nini

[shiv]

Not to mention that the Red color wheat under PL480 was of such low quality that it was not fit for human consumption.Early morning long lines were common with rumor of Wheat, Pulse, Ghee delivered at PDS shops.

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer145/public- ... ter-bomber

In the late 1950s, Senator Hubert Humphrey pushed PL 480 as an explicit foreign policy instrument. He submitted a report to the Senate Agriculture Committee, entitled “Food and Fibre as a Force for Freedom,” calling for multiyear appropriations, rapid expansion of shipments to strategic Third World countries, and appointment of a full-time “Food for Peace” administrator to coordinate the activities of the Agriculture and State Departments. President Dwight Eisenhower preempted Humphrey’s legislative move in the spring of 1959 by renaming PL 480 the “Food for Peace” program and appointing a Food for Peace Director.

PL 480 exports increased by roughly 40 percent during the Kennedy administration. George McGovern, then director of the Food for Peace program, believed that food aid was “a far better weapon than a bomber in our competition with the Communists for influence in the developing world.” But despite many attempts to manipulate food aid to secure foreign policy gains, there is little evidence that US food aid policy successfully served US diplomatic interests.

The effort to use food as a weapon became more pronounced after 1969, as “food aid programs were conspicuously recast to serve US military and security objectives, first in Southeast Asia and then in the Middle East.”

No such thing as a free meal.

[Prem]

PL 480 exports increased by roughly 40 percent during the Kennedy administration. George McGovern, then director of the Food for Peace program, believed that food aid was “a far better weapon than a bomber in our competition with the Communists for influence in the developing world.” But despite many attempts to manipulate food aid to secure foreign policy gains, there is little evidence that US food aid policy successfully served US diplomatic interests.The effort to use food as a weapon became more pronounced after 1969, as “food aid programs were conspicuously recast to serve US military and security objectives, first in Southeast Asia and then in the Middle East.”
No such thing as a free meal.

There was famous incident of Late Babu Jagjivan Ram walking out of meeting after he was told about the conditions to get foodgrain . He said India might as well gladly starve than bearing such humiliation.

[Baikul]

Spinster's email was amazing in the perspective it gave and got me thinking. A few sentences bought to life those times better than any book I have read on the subject.

It would be fantastic to have oral and/ or or written records of people's memories in one place, so that we can get beneath the formulaic opaqueness of 'professional' historical writing, and understand better our common past. So much of India's history is lost in rote education and han-handed history writing.

I'm not too happy doing an = = with an western example, but BBC and IIRC PBS in the US do that on a regular basis, i.e. keep online audio and written records of people's memories of their times. I believe the US Library of Congress also has massive records doing the same.

[Paul]

Ramana, I thought it was Brits who brought Congress weed to India. Can you expand more on this?

[member_23365]

Meanwhile in Punjab 2 akali leaders caught with detonators

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation ... 20112.html

The police are baffled over the recovery of 10 “detonators” from an accident-hit car that belongs to two Akali leaders from Lambi (Muktsar), the home constituency of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.
Though Additional Director General of Police (Law & Order) Rohit Chaudhary described the “detonators” as firecrackers, investigators said the recovery was mystifying.
Colonel Sukhcharan Singh (retd), Chief Security Officer of Guru Hargobind Thermal Plant at Lehra Mohabbat town of Bathinda where the accident took place late on Thursday night, however, refuted the ADGP’s claim saying he saw “detonators” in the car. Colonel Singh had informed the police about the presence of “detonators” in the car of the two Akali leaders who were reportedly returning from Chandigarh after meeting the CM. “Around 5.30am, I noticed two bundles of 10 wires — five in each bundle — attached with batteries lying in the car. A security guard also noticed it. Sensing trouble, I called up Superintendent of Police (city) Des Raj,” he said.
Though senior policemen tried to “brush the incident under the carpet”, it turned into a major case after the entire police force along with ADGP (Law and Order) Rohit Chaudhary from Chandigarh, Bathinda Range IG Balvir Kumar Bawa, DIG Mohnish Chawla, SSP Indermohan Bhatti and two Army teams arrived at the CIA police station.
A case has been registered at the Nathana police station.

[nandakumar]

Ramana, I thought it was Brits who brought Congress weed to India. Can you expand more on this?

The Brits brought the political congress weed and the American PL 480 programme brought the botanical weed! Yes, the parthenum was the name of the weed that came mixed up with the grain. It grew wildly in the 70s and 80sin Maharashtra that I remember. Even Bangalore had its share. I think urbanisation did its bit to control its spread. For asthmatic patients and those with a sensitive skin there was allergic reaction. It is not such a serious problem in recent times.

[rohitvats]

An article by Lt General Hasnain in rediff on countering the new Pakistani proxy war offensive.

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-b ... 150814.htm

[Vayutuvan]

+1000

Can't even imagine these things, compared to that, us later generations grew up in privilege.

I remember those days myself. Dry milk powder (pAla poDi we used to call it in Telugu) used to come in big cartons to our village. Unfortunately the storage facilities were not good in villages. A good portion before it was distributed to children under midday meal program (along with makka upma, upma made from cornmeal) would rot away due to rats/mice tearing into the cartons. While there were people who wanted all the supplies to reach to the needy and poor, there were also pilferers - sarpanchs of small hamlets, some petty businessman in cahoots with petty politicians and local goondas - would siphon off the PL480 supplies, hoard them, and sell them in the black market - especially the milk powder. Several of these petty pilferers' children are in the US today paying top dollar to get some useless Masters from a third rate school and enter the American job market through an Indian IT consulting firm.

When children are fed milk made from contaminated milk powder (As I said rats used to tear in to the cartons and while eating the powder would also leave excreta) there used to be cholera and other outbreaks and poor school children who availed the midday meals used to die by the dozens. Sometimes pilferers open the cartons on one side, siphon just enough not to get noticed but not seal back the opening tightly. Rats used to get into the cartons through these openings or sometimes water from torrential rains. The powder used to dry into rock hard lumps.

Even today I get tears thinking of those days and the plight of the poor.

[Vayutuvan]

Not to mention that the Red color wheat under PL480 was of such low quality that it was not fit for human consumption.Early morning long lines were common with rumor of Wheat, Pulse, Ghee delivered at PDS shops.

I think it was India which developed a rice variety called IR8 which used to be sold in ration shops. That was extremely course rice but the yields were much better than what the landed gentry and rich used to eat - sAbrANi or sAmbrAlu.

[A_Gupta]

An article by Lt General Hasnain in rediff on countering the new Pakistani proxy war offensive.

http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-b ... 150814.htm

Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain is quite the opposite of Bector. These are going into my thought processes immediately:

Tackling the situation by limited objectives allows the flexibility of approach.

...there is no victory against the people you count as your own, it is only a question of restoration of or winning of their confidence; that is counted as success.

...there will be many dynamic ups and downs; it should not paralyse our thinking when we face stagnation

[RamSuresh]

It has taken about three weeks from Gurdaspur to the blowing up of Pakistani Punjab Home Minister. What will Pak military learn from this three week "response time" if it was a response. That the military should advice politicians to be careful after about three weeks of every terrorist event in India?

[krishna_krishna]

Excellent article, Thanks a_Guptaji for posting

[ramana]

X-post about US censuring TSP....

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/ ... -pakistan/

US to Nawaz Sharif: GPS ties Gurdaspur strike to Pakistan.

I guess that was the reason why Pakistan was rewarded with F16s?

’Pakistani diplomats initially insisted that the Gurdaspur strike had nothing to do with their country. But when the US insisted that the technical data was irrefutable, they argued that there was no official complicity in facilitating it,’ said a Washington-based diplomat.

The United States, however, is yet to respond to Indian requests for more details on the Garmin-made GPS sets, specifically related to where the equipment was sold and when, sources said.

India-US strategic partnership.

The United States’ intelligence community is worried that Indian strikes could escalate into a war, leading Pakistan to use its tactical nuclear weapons against advancing Indian armoured formations, and to counter-strikes. It’s a prospect that the United States has become increasingly concerned with amidst a diplomatic deadlock between New Delhi and Islamabad.

I wonder how Modi govt would have responded had that train been blown up in Gurdaspur.

[ramana]

Note US gives more F-16s and takes an opportunity to bring nooklcear flashpoint rhetoric.