Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 August 2013

‘No immediate threat to India from Ug99 wheat rust’

• India does not face any immediate threat from the Ug99 wheat rust disease that hits the stem of a wheat plant. Nevertheless it has to be prepared.
• With wheat production steadily on the rise, the country is poised to enhance its output to a record level of 100 million tonnes in 2015,
• India is the second largest wheat producer and consumer in the world. In 2012-13, the country produced 92.46 million tonnes of wheat. This is 13.2 per cent of the world’s production.
• India had three varieties — Super 152, Super 172 and Baj — that were resistant to stem rust. Besides, 37 more varieties were in the pipeline.
• These preparations were under way to thwart any threat from the Ug99 wheat —a devastating strain of black wheat stem rust disease — that reached the borders of Iran in 2009.
• So far the Indian sub-continent had been safe.
• If the disease were to hit Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, it would hurt wheat availability around the globe. The spread of the wind-blown disease would depend on the west-east air flow pattern, Professor Coffman said.
• The silver lining was that India was one of the biggest sources of providing plant material for developing rust resistant varieties for the world,
• One of the methods to control the disease is to replace the susceptible varieties with resistant ones.
• After the disease hit wheat crop in North America and travelled to Canada in 1953, huge tracts of wheat were replaced with corn. In 1999, a new race of the causative agent of stem rust, the Ug99, was detected in Uganda followed by Kenya in 2003 and Yemen in 2007.
• The virulent race, if not contained, may migrate to the Middle-East and Central Asia, it is feared.
• Norman E. Borlaug’s introduction of high-yielding wheat in India, President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate a global technical workshop on progress and challenging in protecting world’s wheat supply. It will be jointly organised by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) and the Indian Council of Agriculture Research.

Leaving no stone unturned

• For the purpose of public discussion, in May 2013, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) released the draft of a new “National Conservation Policy” (NCP).
• It pertains to monuments, archaeological sites and remains protected by the ASI.
• Although the ASI has periodically amended its conservation policies to broadly adhere to international charters, the draft represents the first serious relook of conservation guidelines that it has followed since 1923.
• This new 2013 draft has lofty aims.
• All edifices at the approximately 3,600 ASI sites are to be preserved in a strategic and sensitive manner. For instance, eroded or defaced, figural, relief carvings and wall paintings are not to be reconstructed and chemical cleaners are to be used sparingly.
• While conducting renovations, newly quarried and dressed stones are at once to be harmoniously fitted into a building’s original fabric and to be discernible from it.
• All conservation efforts are to be documented. Furthermore, in recognition of our country’s vast and varied population, the draft policy permits diverse uses of monuments.
• It also acknowledges the importance of making monuments more accessible to visitors including those with disabilities.
• However, despite its scope and content, the NCP draft leaves much to be desired. First, it barely acknowledges the existence of thousands of sophisticated monuments that are not protected by the ASI.
• Standing in every part of the country in various states of completion and preservation, some of these monuments are today under the jurisdiction of State archaeology and culture departments.
• Trusts, committees and even private individuals control others. Shared architectural typologies, pilgrimage circuits, patronage structures and the circulation of processional images are some ways in which these sites are connected to those that are today recipients of ASI protection.
• A comparison with some programmes pertaining to the conservation of our nation’s biodiversity is helpful in appreciating why the ASI’s disengagement with non-ASI monuments is a serious lacuna of the draft policy.
• The draft policy’s attempt to conserve only ASI monuments may be likened to a scheme that envisions the conservation of a charismatic species such as the tiger, without adequately making provisions for understanding or protecting co-predators, prey-species and habitat variables.
• Continuing a comparison of the protection of our monumental heritage with biodiversity conservation, it is worth contrasting the NCP’s relatively insular outlook with the attitude of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and State Forest Departments.
• In recent years, in many parts of our country, they have established working relationships with non-governmental organisations to monitor endangered species populations, lead multiyear scientific studies and work with villagers living in and around forests.
• The ASI could conserve many high-medieval and early modern step-wells, tanks,kundas , naulas and other water structures that are currently threatened by forces of man and nature by initiating partnerships with organisations such as the Peoples’ Science Institute and the Centre for Science and Environment that have expertise in water management.
• Furthermore, as the case of the exquisitely sculpted stone door jambs of temples at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Pavagadh in Gujarat attests — they are currently lying amid heaps of non-biodegradable waste — the ASI could actively partner with civic groups to promote the use of natural materials and construct incinerators. Meanwhile, initiating collaborations with groups involved in wildlife conservation work holds forth the possibility of receiving up-to-date reports on the state of little known antiquities and bringing new finds to the ASI’s notice.
• For instance, in recent months, a team of ecologists working in the Terai forests has encountered remains of a sandstone surround dateable to the First-Third century CE and several monolithic, votive shrines dateable to the 10th-12th century CE.
• Finally, instead of confining public-private partnerships at ASI sites to the construction of restrooms and drinking water fountains, the ASI could meaningfully engage interested institutions, non-governmental organisations, corporations and individuals to develop and maintain interpretation centres.
• In seeking to protect monuments, the proposed NCP policy advocates the utilisation of the skills of hereditary craftspeople, by arguing that they are living repositories of ancient architectural formulae and construction techniques.
• Giving livelihood to accomplished masons, stone carvers, and stucco-workers is undoubtedly a worthy endeavour.
• However, one is unsure how many master craftspeople working today are knowledgeable of techniques used to excavate the Fifth century caves at Ajanta or to adapt the Vastupurushamandala to generate aspects of the plan and elevation of the 11th century temples at Khajuraho.
• In those few instances, where master craftspeople are knowledgeable of traditional forms and construction techniques, it is of rather late typologies such as the Nayaka period architecture of Tamil Nadu or the revivalist Maru-Gurjaraesque tradition of western India.
• Therefore, the careful conservation of monuments cannot be left to a few modern practitioners with limited abilities.
• The NCP draft wisely and repeatedly cautions against the completion of fragmentary inscriptions.

Sources: Various News Papers & PIB