Letter from Delhi: Tracing roots on the other side of border

Past brings nostalgia to everyone. But it haunts the displaced. Recently when I visited Pakistan, I met Islamabad billionaire Md Alvi. Now in his seventies, Alvi left Karol Bagh when he was just 14. He remembers every detail of the Delhi neighbourhood that constituted his adolescent world. He insisted that the Indian delegation must come for dinner with him and invited a host of important Pakistanis including general Aiyub Khan's son.

We could not say no to the old man and Alvi was almost in tears when he learnt that I was from Delhi and regretted that he could never visit India after the partition. "My days are numbered. I wish I can visit Karol Bagh before I die," and remained his plea to the establishment.

Similarly, Taimur Bande, a young intellectual from Lahore, wanted me to visit his home as his bedridden grandmother, a Parsi from Mumbai, was very keen to meet someone from the Indian delegation. When I visited her, she told the family members to leave the room. Left alone, she came up with a heart-wrenching request: "When you come next time, please bring me a handful of earth from Mumbai. I was born and brought up there. I want to touch that soil before I die."

EU standards

The controversy over CSE report on soft drinks should have come to a conclusive end long back. Sushma Swaraj has made her statement in Parliament and a Joint Parliamentary Committee has been constituted and now this proposal about EU norms has been floated for opinions. But how practical is the idea of extending EU norms to everything – ranging from water to vegetables? Our farmers can't match those strict standards and our exporters will be in a fix if we insist on such norms. Even EU farmers fail to meet standards 40 per cent of the time but the Union demands 100 per cent certification of compliance for imports.

And in certain cases, they differentiate between fruits – less stringent about homegrown ones but highly fussy about imported ones like mango. These technical standards often work as trade barriers and we need to find out if there is any vested interest in play in promoting erratic EU standards in India.

Consensus choice

Not only this, EU standards are biased towards other countries. For example beat suger grown in Europe is allowed to have five per cent pesticide in it while sugercane grown by other countries is only allowed to have 0.75 per cent pesticide. EU standards are definitely going to hamper Indian interest.

Chandan Mitra made it to the Rajya Sabha through the Presidential nomination. Eight top journalists of the country were trying for the coveted post. None of them had imagined Mitra could be a consensus choice. Several names from media were discussed and rejected by a group comprising Vajpayee, Advani, Venkaiah Naidu, Jaswant and Arun Jaitley.

Mitra was in London and Naidu spoke to him and broke the good news. Though one seat is still left but no industrialist will be nominated. It will probably go to a Muslim recommended by RSS.