You may soon find India’s first genetically modified vegetable, Bt brinjal, making its way to your vegetable market.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, which is responsible for approval of proposals relating to release of genetically engineered products, on Wednesday approved the environmental release of the vegetable but it still has to get a nod from the central government.

Many in India are concerned over the harmful effects of the vegetable and question the need for a genetically modified vegetable.

“Bt brinjal should not be launched in the country as the Bt toxin gene produces poison and when it can harm pests, where’s the proof that it won’t be harmful to humans?” says Suman Sahia, Convener of Gene Campaign.

A report by Debi Barker, Executive Director of the International Forum on Globalization, says that genetically modified crops can spread in the environment and contaminate other crops and plants.

Concerns over their effect on wildlife and human health have been expressed all over the globe.

Food policy analyst Devinder Sharma raises a few important questions — “First of all, do we even need Bt brinjal? Why take a risk? Where is the crisis in brinjal production that necessitates it?”

Bollywood filmmakers Mahesh Bhatt and Ajay Kanchan released a documentary in March 2009 called “Poison on Platter” to create awareness about genetically modified products in the public.

“We want to highlight the fact that you cannot tamper with Mother Nature without sensitising the nation first,” Bhatt said.

Do you think genetically modified vegetables are a good idea? 

Will Bt brinjal set a trend and we’ll have other genetically modified vegetable as well?

As a consumer, would you prefer a genetically modified vegetable over a naturally grown one?

The war of words between the billionaire Ambani brothers took an unexpected turn when younger sibling Anil offered an olive branch to elder brother Mukesh in a bid to resolve a feud over the split of the Reliance business empire in 2005.

The widespread coverage the Indian media has given to the squabble between the brothers has led to a debate on social networking sites such as Twitter, with some accusing news organisations of playing host to a reality show or soap opera that stars the Ambani family to boost ratings.

Prominent columnist Vir Sanghvi wrote through his Twitter account virsanghvi: “Do you think some network should plan a reality show on the Ambani battle? Or are they doing it already on the news?”

But the battle between the billionaire Ambani brothers is not a manufactured product for mass entertainment, as it involves two of the world’s wealthiest men and could pose a stumbling block to India’s goal of achieving energy security.

The siblings have been involved in several disputes since the family business was split in 2005 following the death of their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, a legendary Indian business tycoon who built Reliance from scratch.

The latest of these disputes is over a deal for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries to sell gas to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources at below-market rates as agreed in the 2005 family settlement, brokered by their mother Kokilaben.

The dispute has drawn in the government, which claims it is the rightful owner of the gas. The government can also decide who can buy gas and at what price, but it has been accused by Anil Ambani of supporting Reliance Industries.

India’s highest court has not excluded the government from the dispute between the Ambanis’ firms, and will hear the case on Oct. 20.

India, Asia’s third-largest oil consumer and which imports two-thirds of its crude oil, is hoping to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and become a new frontier for oil and gas exploration.

The Indian exploration and production sector will need $40 billion in investments by 2012, the Investment Commission of India estimates, while consultancy KPMG expects the Indian energy sector will require between $120 and $150 billion over 2007 to 2011 as Asia’s third-largest economy expands.

However, India’s latest auction of oil and gas exploration blocks evoked a tepid response, with the government indicating the Ambani dispute may have put off investors.

Now, with the stakes being so high, surely the media cannot be blamed for helping its audience navigate through the twists and turns of the maze that is the Ambani tussle?

If Law Minister Veerappa Moily has his way, horror stories of years, even decades, spent waiting for a court verdict may soon be a thing of the past.

In an interview to a national daily this week, Moily said his ministry is planning to set up 5,000 new courts in the next three years, each working in three shifts to clear a backlog of  27.4 million cases pending in trial courts.

The Moily ministry’s roadmap for judicial reforms sees court cases resolved in just a year. At present, some cases drag on for 15 years or more.

Also in the pipeline are time limits for delivering verdicts, laptops for trial court judges and retired judges pitching in with their time.

Some say these measures are necessary in a country which suffers from what the Chief Justice of India called a “chronic shortage of judicial officers“.

K.G. Balakrishnan is in favour of appointing more judges and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for quickly filling up High Court vacancies.

The law minister is also looking at reducing the number of cases filed on behalf of the government while others say there is a need to screen the rising number of public interest litigations.

Some even advocate plea bargaining, saying it could play a part in reducing the backlog of cases.

Reforms in the judiciary could also make India a better investment destination. Separate commercial courts or specialized chambers in existing courts could reduce the time and cost of commercial contract enforcement, the World Bank said in a report in June.

Will the Moily roadmap help revamp the Indian judicial system?

India and Pakistan, with their competitive strategic interest in Afghanistan, are keenly watching the war-battered nation’s election this week, the second since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.

The front-runner of that vote is incumbent President Hamid Karzai who is facing a stiff challenge from his former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani. There are more than two dozen other candidates.

While a successful vote could mean a step toward achieving basic political and military stability in Afghanistan, its outcome holds crucial geopolitical significance for India and Pakistan.

Conventional wisdom is that a victory for Karzai will help India. Karzai has lived and studied in India, cultivated a strong relationship with New Delhi and spoken out angrily against Pakistan, especially during the years it was ruled by Pervez Musharraf.

Abdullah and Ghani too have India connections — while the former lived there, Ghani was once posted in New Delhi with the World Bank.

So in that sense, Pakistan should have no serious good option, and the various candidates who offer any potential to project its influence in Afghanistan, Islamabad should be more or less a supporter of them, says Daniel Markey, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Markey says Pakistan may tend to prefer Karzai simply because he is “known quantity” and his relations with the civilian government in Islamabad are better than before.

But former diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar argues Pakistani intelligence disfavours Karzai’s victory as it has scores to settle with almost all the warlords who rally behind Karzai — Mohammed Fahim, Karim Khalili, Mohammed Mohaqiq, Rashid Dostum, Ismail Khan — and they happen to be in the rogues’ gallery in the Western world, too.

But a Hamid Karzai victory may not be without complications for India.

New Delhi, which is seeding Afghanistan with projects spanning sanitation to roads and power, is worried at Karzai’s election promise to intensify peace talks with the Taliban and other insurgent groups such as Hezb-i-Islami.

Last month Karzai’s government announced it had reached a truce with local Taliban fighters in Badghis, a province in the north. Some Taliban leaders later denied there was such a truce.

Karzai’s government has enlisted the help of former Taliban officials in recent months to act as go-betweens in an effort to reach out to fighters. Saudi Arabia has also indicated its
willingness to help in mediation efforts.

Such moves have worried Indian officials who say they fear a U.S.-British-Saudi-Pakistani plan to co-opt the Taliban into the Afghan power structure as part of the NATO’s Afghan exit plan.

If that happens, Indians suspect, wouldn’t it then just be a matter of time before the Taliban start going after their enemies?

It may not, however, be as simplistic but India does seem to have a job of dissuading Karzai from pushing for a rapprochement with the Taliban.

Its striking beauty is not the only thing that hits you when you visit Kashmir valley.

Though it was the kind of paradise I had imagined, I didn’t know there would be so many shanty towns set in such picturesque locales.

As I travelled through Kashmir, the breathtaking views did make me breathless but so did the smoke and dust. 

An article by Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, Associate Professor with Kashmir University, says the valley has been experiencing erratic snowfall and hotter summers for the last decade or so.

A report on ‘Climate Change in Kashmir’ by ActionAid, an international anti-poverty agency, says the Pampore-Khrew belt, famous for its saffron production, has been witnessing an unusual phenomenon over the last two decades — receiving the least snowfall in Kashmir.

The report also said locals attributed this phenomenon to industrial units which have come up in the area since 1982.

Locals from the Valley say that it’s unusually hot this year.

Many believe it is the wrath of God for the evils in society. Special prayers are being offered in mosques to deal with the changing phenomena.

The ActionAid report says, “Temperature on an average in Kashmir region has shown a rise of 1.45 Celsius while in Jammu region the rise is 2.32 Celsius. The Indian Meteorological Department’s monitoring reveals that temperatures are increasing in both Jammu and Kashmir valley, with significant increase in maximum temperature of 0.05 degrees Celsius per year.”

Romshoo says there are a number of indicators of climate change discernible in the Kashmir valley.

“Glaciers are receding, scanty and erratic snow fall, change of growing season, shifting of vegetation from lower to higher altitudes, shrinking/loss of wetlands, etc,” he said.

“Mountainous regions are generally more susceptible to the climate change impacts and climate change is going to affect every aspect of the environment, social and economics systems.”

Enviroment Minister Jairam Ramesh says there is no conclusive scientific evidence that climate change is causing glaciers to recede.

Ramesh says some glaciers like the Siachen are advancing and there needs to be more study done on this subject.

Though climate change is caused by natural influences as well, Romshoo attributes it to more use of fossil fuels, burning of forests, reckless industrialization and anti-environmental lifestyles.

The ActionAid report also mentions the movement of heavy military vehicles as one of the reasons for excess pollution in the Valley.

It says convoys and heavy military vehicles produce a high level of greenhouse gases and are out of the purview of the law enforcing agencies in pollution control.

Can the government do something about the reduction of greenhouse gases in the Valley? Will education and awareness among locals and tourists help slow climate change?

If the early comments on the Great Debate are anything to go by, it seems there is still a lot of goodwill towards Elattuvalapil Sreedharan.

The man behind the Delhi metro, seen as one of India’s most successful infrastructure projects, resigned on Sunday after part of a rail bridge in the capital collapsed and killed six people.

Sreedharan had enjoyed a towering profile as a civil engineer who got things done — and quickly. In the words of his spokesman, Sreedharan “can walk into the prime minister’s office. He has a reputation that he carries.”

Business students from as far away as Harvard have studied the metro’s success.

In contrast to the delays, cost-overruns and red tape that have plagued projects for decades, the subway’s first phase finished on budget and nearly three years ahead of schedule, with 99.5 percent of trains running on time.

All eyes were on the second phase, which is due for completion when the city hosts the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

But the deaths have raised questions whether the quick building came at the expense of human lives.

When he submitted his resignation, the 77-year-old Sreedharan won praise for accepting “moral responsibility” for the accident.

I interviewed Sreedharan recently, and his words now seem almost prophetic. His drive for speed was clear.

In his office, as in many others in his organisation, hangs a clock counting down the days to the next deadline.

“For us, time is money,” he told me. “We can’t allow one day to waste.”

But Sreedharan also outlined his well-known spiritual bent which he encourages his employees to follow. He fits yoga and meditation around his workday.

Behind his desk, reads a sign quoting Sanskrit scriptures: “Whatever to be done I do, but in reality, I do not do anything.”

He emphasised the importance of integrity, which he said made the government trust his organisation enough to let go of most of the decision-making.

“People should be prepared to take decisions and not pass on the buck,” he said. “We should be able to trust people in power, which means people in power should have a proven integrity.”

Delhi’s chief minister Sheila Dikshit has since persuaded Sreedharan to withdraw his resignation. Many want him to keep his job, saying the project is better off with him on board.

An editorial in the Indian Express said the resignation was “decidedly not what the Metro project needs.”

“This, in a sense, is a test case for infrastructure policy: will it continue to revolve around individuals and their differing degrees of commitment to these projects, or can we ensure that these crucial projects, which undergird our economic future, roll out successfully with stronger institutional checks and progress reviews?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has recruited Nandan Nilekani, the engineer-entrepreneur who co-founded Infosys Technologies and helped propel India’s rise as an IT giant, to head a government authority on national ID cards.

Singh said India needed experts like Nilekani from outside the political system. Singh may feel the same about Sreedharan.

As Dikshit said: “The metro and the country needs him, because he has done good work not only in Delhi, he has done it all over India.”

There was a television ad some time back where a village leader played by Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan cutely decrees that feuding villagers would be known by their mobile numbers rather than names denoting caste or community.

It’s an idea that no longer seems far-fetched.

This week, the finance minister allocated 1200 million rupees to  the Unique Identification Authority of India, headed by former Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani.

The project provides a unique identity number, something like the U.S. social security number, to India’s billion-plus citizens.

It involves setting up a database with the identification details of citizens.

“It also uses an advanced technology like biometrics on a scale which has not been used anywhere in the world,” said Nilekani.

The biometric details will make identification foolproof.

Multi-purpose National Identity Cards have already been issued to a million citizens under a test scheme in some districts.

These will be combined with the unique identification number scheme.

Once implemented, the project is expected to help the government identify beneficiaries of various welfare schemes and help security agencies.

It will also link the database to the election commission and the income tax department.

“The Unique ID number, the number, not the card, is going to be the unifying attribute of all these cards. In other words, you may have four to five cards from different sources but all of them will have the same unique ID of yours that will act as a unifier,” Nilekani said.

However, there are misgivings about the project.

Tavleen Singh, writing for the Indian Express says the project may just add “to the massive infrastructure of our bureaucracy.”

“The BPL (below poverty line) folks that I know in Mumbai and Delhi do not have birth certificates, identity cards or any proof of nationality. Even if they did, they have no means of knowing how to access the benefits that accrue to them. Will a national identity card make their lives less difficult?”

“And, besides how will the card work in villages that do not have adequate supplies of electricity leave alone computers?” she asks.

Columnist Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar writes — “If the implementers have no interest in service delivery, can a smart card outsmart them?”

It’s an appealing idea to be able to put down a number instead of filling details in a form on one’s father, mother, locality and surname and be immediately slotted.

But having practically lived as a stateless citizen in my own country for a while (no voter id, no ration card, no permanent address, a bank account but on the office address) I am all for letting the state know that I exist, occasionally outside my office in my unofficial capacity as well.

But will everyone trust the government or the bureaucracy with all their details available at the click of a button?

Misuse of voters list to target communities during riots has been alleged. Data can leak.

Who for instance will or can have access to someone’s fingerprints on a biometric database?

In a situation where the government in general has less information about people than more, this question seems a forced one.

But with the first set of numbers to be issued by late 2010, this issue would need to be resolved.

Is Nilekani by uniting “databases in disconnected silos“, going to be our Harold Bluetooth, the eponymous Viking warrior after whose unifying efforts the  wireless technology is named, or a Big Brother?

The attack in a  Sikh temple in Vienna and the subsequent clashes in Punjab have brought renewed focus on the internationalisation of what many Indians see as a domestic problem.

In August 2001, I heard Martin Macwan, a human rights activist, talk about raising the issue of caste at international forums, specifically in the context of the U.N. race summit in Durban that year. The move was however opposed by the government.

Macwan spoke movingly about how fellow activists had been killed while agitating for their rights.

Nearly a decade later, the debate on how to tackle caste still rages.

Those who want to highlight the issue on international forums, like at the Durban Review Conference at Geneva last month, see no problem in linking it to race since racial discrimination is a widely prevalent practice that helps people understand other kinds of discrimination as well.

Media reports say the Indian government remains opposed to this.

Some experts and newspaper columnists say caste and racial discrimination are similar.

They argue that the focus on race leaves out caste only because Europe’s experience has had more to do with race, and this should not be a reason for ignoring caste discrimination.

Both race and caste involve inequality and prejudice based on birth and descent.

Moreover, as the Vienna incident shows, with the Indian diaspora present in more than a hundred countries and numbering in millions, caste itself has been internationalised and is not a solely Indian concern.

Some say India’s commitment to international conventions and human rights is undermined if the plea of dissimilarity is used to put off raising the issue.

Others say race and caste cannot be equated.

They feel that different races cannot be identified in the diversity of the Indian population and therefore the issue of racial discrimination is irrelevant to India and cannot be likened to caste discrimination which is unique to Indian history and social experience.

In fact, anthropologist Andre Beteille argued that stating caste or any other kind of discrimination in terms of racial discrimination would be unscientific.

He said this may give a new lease of life to the concept of race.

Besides the Indian constitution bans discrimination based on caste, race, language or sex. After all, India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is ruled by a Dalit woman and many call this an example of India’s success at tackling the issue.

Should caste be treated as race? Is the Indian government’s stand justified?

With 8071 candidates contesting 543 seats – that’s an average of 15 candidates for each seat — the 400 million Indian voters who chose to vote sure looked spoilt for choice.

But were they?

Though democracy means choosing who our rulers are going to be, many say there is a crucial missing link in Indian democracy — the lack of inner-party democracy.

This results in the lack of people’s participation especially in choosing candidates, unlike the U.S. where primaries are held by political parties to elect candidates.

Rahul Gandhi says he is trying to make reforms.

At a recent press conference, commenting on his position within the ruling Congress party he said, “It is undemocratic and it is a reality.”

“The Indian political system tends to be related to who you know, who your brother is, who your sister is, and it’s in every single party, in the BJP it exists, in the Congress it exists, that’s a fact of life, that’s the reflection of a closed system.”

Policies are rarely formed after debates involving the party cadres and tested through their votes.

Guessing and second guessing why people booted out a candidate or rooted for another remains the default option for making sense of electoral verdicts.

Political scientist Ashutosh Varshney writes that the lack of internal party democracy leads to a fractured polity, as no leader of a new group can hope to capture an existing party in an open contest.

The weekly ‘Tehelka’ reported 10 billion dollars being secretly spent by politicians to woo voters.

In the absence of a culture of volunteerism, which cannot take off until people are involved in electoral campaigns as in the United States, some say the importance of money bags and black money can only go up.

Critics say all of these tendencies — fractured polity, unstable coalitions, promiscuous alliance hopping, muddy electoral verdict, horse trading of legislators — will most probably be on show in the next few days as the process of government formation gathers steam.

Voters generally get to choose from a field of candidates who are selected by the party bosses.

Pending this crucial democratic reform, did the election process represent a real choice by the voters? Or was it an expensive illusion?

Walking through the maze of narrow, crowded lanes of Kathmandu’s old city is, at the best of times, a harrowing experience.

Motorcycles, rickshaws and cars squeeze their way through the tiny, winding streets lined with dilapidated medieval buildings, Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas.

Mangled lines of power cables dangle dangerously above as you dodge the cows that mingle with traders, shoppers and tourists in the densely packed, bustling streets.

With a history and culture dating back 2,000 years, the Nepalese capital - and the Kathmandu Valley where it is situated - ranks among the oldest human settlements in the central Himalayas.

But the region also ranks as one of the world’s hotspots for earthquakes.

Nepal’s lack of disaster preparedness, the decrepit buildings packed cheek by jowl along the tiny lanes and the large families who live in these homes make the prospect of a major earthquake a serious concern.

But, unfortunately, this is a very real possibility.

According to experts, a quake occurs every 75 years in the Kathmandu Valley, with the last one in 1934 when an earthquake of magnitude 8.3 killed over 8,500 people.

There are more than 2 million people living in the valley — 9 percent of the country’s total population — and given the influx of economic migrants and people displaced by conflict, the area has one of the highest population densities in Nepal.

According Nepal Red Cross Society’s 2008 Earthquake Contingency Plan, the valley would suffer serious disruption in the event of an earthquake.

“Roads, bridges, water storage facilities, communications networks would be seriously damaged by warping or subsidence, and access routes blocked by landslides and the collapse of road-beds,” the plan says.

Experts predict that an earthquake in the range of 8 on the Richter scale is due anytime. They estimate it would kill at least 40,000 people, injure 90,000, destroy 60 percent of the buildings and leave almost 1 million homeless.

But the country is one of the poorest in the world, and not surprisingly, the government is ill-equipped to deal with such a major calamity.

Nepal is reeling from a 10-year civil conflict that ended in 2006. The Maoist insurgency killed more than 13,000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and devastated the economy.

The U.N. Development Programme’s 2007/8 Human Development Index ranks Nepal 142 out of 177 countries, where more than 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

With so many priorities, officials admit it is not easy to give disaster preparedness the attention it deserves.

As a result, public awareness of earthquakes and other natural disasters is very low.

Mass urbanization has led to unplanned construction of houses and buildings - most of which do not adhere to building regulations and are therefore not earthquake resistant.

Thousands continue to migrate to the capital, adding to the existing population pressures.

First responders in such an emergency - such as the army and police - do not have the necessary expertise and resources for search and rescue operations.

Observers say the government also needs to have a better operational procedure in place that involves coordination with international and national rescue teams.

But while aid agencies stress Nepal needs to push forward on better earthquake preparedness, most in the city can do nothing but wait for the next big one.

(Nita Bhalla covers South Asia for AlertNet. She is based in New Delhi)