Image of the Day: August 6

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Live Video of News Conference About Sikh Shooting

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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A press conference is scheduled for 11 a.m. E. T. from Oak Creek, Wisc., where law enforcement officials are expected to provide more details on the shooting rampage at a sprawling Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee that left six people dead and three people wounded.

Splitsville for Team Anna?

By HARI KUMAR and JIM YARDLEY

Anna Hazare, the anti-corruption crusader, may be organizing a political party, but he has no plans to join it. Nor to be a candidate for office. Nor to continue the work of Team Anna.

Mr. Hazare on Monday announced the dissolution of Team Anna, the committee of advisers, civil society activists, lawyers and others who helped lead his anti-corruption movement.

“Today, we have stopped the work of Team Anna,” Mr. Hazare wrote in Hindi on his blog.

The move, which surprised some of his supporters, may be part of a process for Mr. Hazare to form a political party, though no specifics were mentioned in his blog post. Three days ago, Mr. Hazare and other supporters ended an indefinite fast by declaring their intention to transform his anti-corruption protest movement into a formalized political party that would field candidates across India.

Mr. Hazare ha s become a major figure in Indian politics since his anti-corruption campaign first caught the public's imagination in April 2011. The campaign was centered on his demand for a law creating an ombudsman agency to monitor government corruption, known as the Jan Lokpal. Mr. Hazare held different hunger strikes and brought the country to a standstill in August 2011, as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for roughly two weeks to support his movement.

Parliament responded by passing a resolution pledging to support a Lokpal agency, but so far legislation has only been passed in the lower house, the Lok Sabha. Legislation is still pending in the upper house, and Mr. Hazare's movement has suffered self-inflicted wounds in recent months, as public support has weakened. Crowds for his recent fast were far smaller than for his campaigns in 2011.

Political analysts have greeted Mr. Hazare's decision to form a political party with a mixed reaction. Some hope that he can galvanize electoral politics; others have warned that engaging in electoral politics will diminish his stature and that of his movement in the eyes of the Indian public.

In his blog, Mr. Hazare suggested he would campaign on behalf of a new party, which he hoped would elect members to Parliament committed to passing the Jan Lokpal legislation. But Mr. Hazare himself would not be a member, or a candidate himself.

“I have given an alternative of sending good people to Parliament,” he wrote. “But I am not going to be part of any party nor will I contest elections. After getting Jan Lokpal, I will go back to Maharashtra and indulge in my activities.”

“I have told this to those who are for forming a party,” he continued.

Reached by telephone, several members of Team Anna expressed surprise that the anti-corruption agitation campaign coordinated by the group was coming to an end.

“I was not consulted about today's decision,â € said N. Santosh Hegde, a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and a Team Anna member. “I wish they would have continued the anti-corruption agitation.”

Medha Patkar, a social activist who works for rehabilitation of dam evacuees in Madhya Pradesh, said, “ I do not know about this development so I cannot comment at this stage.” Ms. Patkar, a core committee member of Team Anna, is not in favor of converting the movement into a political party.

Akhil Gogoi, a Right to Information activist in Assam, also was not informed of the dissolution of Team Anna. “No, I am not aware of this decision,” Mr. Gogoi said. “I am against converting the anti-corruption agitation in to a political party.”

Mr. Gogoi said he has written a letter to Mr. Hazare cautioning him that, “This will be a major and serious breach of trust.”

Kiran Bedi, a retired police officer and a member of Team Anna, wrote on her blog, “Read Anna's blog. Do not know what all it means? For we all had very useful preparatory meeting with Annaji wherein he gave useful guidance!”

In his blog, Mr. Hazare signaled that the hunger strike tactics used in the past have now lost some effectiveness in stirring public support.

“The government is not willing to make the Jan Llokpal law,” he wrote. “How long we can keep on going on hunger strikes again and again? Now we stop our hunger strike and give an alternative to people.”

For Many Sikhs, Wisconsin Attack Has Troubling Echoes

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

For Sikhs in the United States, India and elsewhere, the killing of six people at a gurudwara, or Sikh temple, in Wisconsin on Sunday afternoon has brought grief and sorrow but also concern that the rampage might be the latest example of a hate crime against Sikhs on American soil in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.

The police have not yet offered a motive for Sunday's attack, which they characterized as “a domestic terrorist-type incident.” Officers shot and killed the suspect, who was identified only as a 40-year-old white male. The attack seems likely to renew attention on the issue of gun control in America, especially coming not long after the recent shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.

But for many Sikhs in the United States, a population estimated at more than 300,000 people, the crime bears troubling echoes to other attacks on the Sikh community, in some cases where the assailants mistook turban-wearing Sikhs as Islamic extremists, reflecting a lack of understanding among many Americans about their religious identity.

“Most people are so ignorant they don't know the difference between religions,” Ravi Chawla, 65, a businesswoman who moved to Wisconsin from Pakistan in the 1970s, told The New York Times. “Just because they see the turban they think you're Taliban.”

In India, several Sikh leaders expressed sorrow and outrage over the attack and called on the authorities in the United States to thoroughly investigate the case to determine the suspect's motive. Jaswinder Singh, a lawyer and president of Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj, a Sikh organization in Amritsar, called on the American government to do more to prevent hate crimes.

“The situation is naturally very grim here in India,” he said. “We're very concerned with what happened. We're very shocked.”

Here's an account of some of the assaults on Si khs across the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, reported by The New York Times:

Laurie Goodstein and Tamar Lewin wrote of the attacks on a Sikh gas station owner, a Lebanese clerk and Afghan family in Arizona, barely a week after Sept. 11. They wrote:

Frightened by a wave of violence and harassment, Sikhs across the country are struggling to explain to an uncomprehending public that despite their turbans and beards, they are not followers of the Taliban and not in any way responsible for last week's terror attacks.

In August 2003, Patrick Healy in New York wrote an article headlined “3 Indians Attacked on Street and the Police Call it Bias”:

Three men attacked a family of Indian immigrants outside the family's Queens home on Sunday night, the police said. The victims said they were punched, spit on and told ”bin Laden family, go back to your country.”

The police said bias may have m otivated the attackers, who were described by the victims as white men. One of the victims, 32-year-old Lakhvir Singh Gill, said yesterday that he was sure prejudice and alcohol were behind the attack.

After another attack on Sikh men in Queens, by three young men in July, 2004, Thomas J. Lueck of The New York Times wrote:

The young men ridiculed both Sikh men by referring to their turbans as dirty curtains and telling them to take them off, Mr. Gurcharan said by telephone last night.

”He cussed at me, and I told him that this is not a curtain, this is my turban and it is a religious symbol,” said Mr. Gurcharan, the owner of a nearby restaurant, Tandoori Express, where he and Mr. Khalsa Ji intended to have tea when they left their car on the street and walked past the catering hall.

The sidewalk confrontation reflected a vulnerability of Sikhs in New York City and elsewhere, particularly since the 9/11 attacks, to being si ngled out for discrimination or attacks because they appear to be Muslims.

”I tried to explain to them that we are not Muslims, and that we cover our heads out of respect for God,” said Mr. Khalsa Ji, who is an honorary priest among Queens Sikhs and who frequently speaks in Sikh temples on the importance of the Sikh traditions and culture.

School children from the Sikh community have also faced harassment, with reports of taunting by other classmates. Sunday's attack in Wisconsin brought statements from President Obama, his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.

“Michelle and I were deeply saddened to learn of the shooting that tragically took so many lives in Wisconsin,” the president said. “At this difficult time, the people of Oak Creek must know that the American people have them in our thoughts and prayers, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who were killed and wounde d.”

Mr. Romney called the shootings “a senseless act of violence and a tragedy” that he said should never befall any house of worship.

Mr. Singh in a statement called it a “senseless act of violence,” and offered condolences to the families of the aggrieved.

Farmers Fight Nuclear Plant in Bid to Save Land

By BETWA SHARMA

Badlu Ram tugged against the tattered strips of the white gauze that bound his hands and legs to the hospital bed in the town of Fatehabad. “Please free me,” he pleaded. On July 13, Mr. Ram had attempted suicide by consuming pesticide. “It was my duty … it was my duty,” he repeated.

Mr. Ram, 60, said he had failed to protect his family's 26 acres of land, which the government plans to acquire for building a nuclear power plant near Gorakhpur village in Fatehabad district of Haryana state.

Back in the village, Mr. Ram's wife, 58-year-old Bhuri Devi, recalled that two land recording officers had come to survey their property. The villagers attacked them, and a police case was filed against Mr. Ram. “We live with the fear of losing our land, but this shattered him,” she said.

The family also believed that the fear of being evicted killed Ishwar Singh, Badlu Ram's elderly unc le, who had rallied against the nuclear plant and died of a heart attack. “We saw him get sick with worry,” said Ms. Bhuri.

Two other villagers have died from heart attacks while protesting against the 2,800-megawatt nuclear power plant, supported by the Congress-led state government, which is to be built on 1,313 acres of Gorakhpur village, 185 acres of Badopal village and four acres of Kajal Heri village. Haryana will receive 50 percent of the generated electricity.

This summer, Haryana residents have been rioting over the long power cuts. The state's daily power demand of 6,500 megawatts, which is not being met, is increasing 15 percent every year. Ajit M. Sharan, Haryana's power secretary, explained that the state was bearing the brunt of the national coal shortage. “Also, the coal mines are very far away so the transportation costs as much as the mining,” he said.

Presently, Gorakhpur gets about two hours of electricity a day. Mr. Sharan guaran teed that villages within a 10-kilometer (six-mile) radius of the nuclear power plant will get electricity.

“In my experience, poor villages nearby rarely benefit,” said Madhuresh Kumar, national organizer of the National Alliance of People's Movements. “But the people who come to run the facility live in a neighboring complex with the best facilities.”

Nuclear power contributes 2.4 percent, or 4,780 megawatts, of India's total installed capacity. The government has a target of generating 63,000 megawatts of nuclear energy by 2032. M.R. Srinivasan, the recently retired head of the government-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India, which is building the plant near Gorakhpur, asserted that the country had no choice but to harness nuclear power as a cleaner form of energy. “How else can we meet our energy needs?” he said. “There are very few options available.”

India is facing an energy shortage even if its economy grows less than previously expected. Solar energy and wind energy remain expensive. Mr. Srinivasan also pointed out that a fuel shortage would force India to buy expensive imported coal, which is polluting. “Look, even China is building 26 nuclear plants,” he said. “Are they mad to be doing so?”

M.V. Ramana, a physicist from Princeton University who specializes in nuclear safety, countered that the coal shortage argument had been made for the past 60 years but so far the government had failed to deliver nuclear power. “There is no reason to think it's different now,” he said. “The economic, social and political costs outweigh any benefits it may have.”

Anti-nuclear activists point to recurring accidents at nuclear power plants. Last month, two workers at the nuclear plant in Rawatbhata, Rajasthan, suffered exposure to radioactive tritium. In 2009, 50 workers at the nuclear power plant in Kaiga, Karnataka, were exposed to radiation after tritium made its way to the water coo ler, which the Nuclear Power Corporation said was deliberately contaminated in a possible “act of mischief.”

Mr. Ramana also argued that nuclear power plants in India have a history of mishaps. “The old nuclear reactors are badly designed,” he said. “The record of small accidents shows signs of a heart attack waiting to happen.”

The Haryana government is offering farmers a little over 3 million rupees ($54,000) per acre of acquired land. The total compensation increases to almost 4.6 million rupees per acre after adding 400,000 rupees if there is no legal challenge to the land acquisition cost and 21,000 rupees per acre as an annuity for 33 years. The annuity will increase every year by 750 rupees, which amounts to a little over 1 million rupees.

Farm holdings vary from 1 acre to 50 acres. Ram Singh Bishnoi, the district revenue officer, said that almost 1.65 billion rupees of compensation has already been distributed to 269 farmers of Gorakhpur from a total of 689 whose land needs to be acquired . But the majority of farmers don't want to move.

On July 17, a public hearing in Gorakhpur village to discuss the nuclear plant fizzled out. The farmers were furious about the high number of police officers deployed around the venue to crack down on any unrest. “First our colonizers were white, and now they look like us,” said Satveer Siyag, a 38-year-old farmer from a neighboring village, who is afraid of the danger posed by the plant to the environment and health of residents nearby.

At the hearing, Nalinish Nagaich, executive director of the Nuclear Power Corporation, assured farmers that the plant would have no detrimental effect on the environment. “The radiation that you get from eating a banana every day is the same as what you get from sitting on the periphery of a nuclear power plant,” he told them.

Previously, however, instances of poor health near nuclear plants have been recorded. In 1991, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, based in the United States, found that people who lived within 10 kilometers of the Rawatbhata nuclear plant in Rajasthan had a higher number of chronic illnesses, solid tumors, miscarriages, stillbirths and children with congenital deformities. These findings, also published in Hindi in 1994, led to the first protest to shut down the reactor later that year.

Mr. Siyag said farmers had learned about the problems of disposing nuclear waste. They also knew about the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the Three Mile Island radiation leak in the United States and the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan. “If Japan with all its technology can't keep people safe, then how can we?” he said.

R. Rajaraman, emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, argued that accidents cannot eliminate the option for nuclear energy. “By that logic, why didn't we shut down all the chemical plants afte r the Bhopal Gas Tragedy?” he said.

The real problem, according to Dr. Rajaraman, is dislocating people. “The government has always been insensitive about displacement,” he said. “It should be more participatory because doling out cash isn't enough.”

For many farmers, money cannot replace land. “I don't care if they offer a crore [10,000,000 rupees] for every acre,” said Balraj Sharma, a 38-year-old farmer with 25 acres. “This land has been with us for generations, and I intend to give it to my children.”

But the next generation has different aspirations. Several young people in Gorakhpur want to leave farming, which is causing family divisions about whether to accept the government's offer.

Hoshiyar Singh, 45, owns 50 acres of land, which will rake in a hefty amount of compensation. But Mr. Singh, who lives with an extended family of 50 members, is afraid that money will break up his household. “Farmers have no identity without la nd,” he said.

The Gorakhpur farmers also contend that good farming land is being taken away. They earn approximately 30,000 rupees per acre every six months. But the government has found large parts of the land to be waterlogged. Experts describe the Gorakhpur soil as average for Haryana and Punjab, which have highly fertile soil.

Farmers are growing wheat, rice and cotton in this soil. The Land Acquisition Bill 2012 provides that “irrigated multi-cropped land” should only be procured as a “last resort” - a provision that several states have opposed. Citing the need to safeguard food security, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the bill has recommended that this clause be expanded to “any land under agriculture cultivation.”

The Supreme Court of India ruled last year that private property of farmers should only be acquired if “absolutely necessary.” It blasted state governments for a “very casual approach” in the acquisition of ru ral land. “If land of such persons is acquired, not only the current but the future generations are ruined, and this is one of the reasons why the farmers who are deprived of their holdings commit suicide,” Justices G.S. Singhvi and S. J. Mukhopadhaya wrote in their judgment.

Mr. Ram, who is expected to recover from his suicide attempt, came home on Monday. “But the problem has not gone away,” said Ms. Bhuri, his wife, speaking over the phone. “I'm prepared to defend this land with my blood.”

Why the Indian Labor Force Feels Left Behind

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Last month, “autoworkers wielding iron rods went on a rampage” at the Maruti Suzuki factory in Haryana after labor negotiations broke down, “attacking senior managers and setting fires,” Hartosh Singh Bal wrote in the Latitude blog of The New York Times.

“The immediate response of many companies suggests they would try to cut back on contractual labor - but that is not a real solution to the larger problem,” Mr. Bal wrote.

In a market “teeming with a surplus of laborers, these workers have become desperate for jobs,” and “employers have been taking advantage of them by paying low wages and offering no benefits,” he wrote.

First Indian Woman in Olympic Discus Throw Finals

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“With the throw of a discus, Krishna Poonia of India made history on Saturday night,” Mary Pilon wrote in The New York Times.

“Poonia, 35, became the first woman from India to advance to the finals in discus, an event that has been in the Olympics since 1928,” but has not had strong representation from India, Ms. Pilon wrote.

“There wasn't really anyone before me,” Ms. Poonia said of female discus throwers in India.

India has produced medal winners in badminton and shooting at the London Games, but not yet in track and field. In addition to Poonia, Team India has competitors in distance running and race walking and a handful of women in different throwing and jumping events.

Poonia, who has a 10-year-old son, holds down a job at Indian Railways.

Read the full post.

Ending Blackouts, One Solar Lamp at a Time

By VIKAS BAJAJ

The blackouts in northern and eastern India last week helped highlight a basic fact of life in the country: many people here do not have access to reliable electricity. The humor newspaper, The Onion, perhaps summed it up best with this headline: “300 Million Without Electricity in India After Restoration of Power Grid.”

In lieu of power from the grid, many in India, including big businesses like the software outsourcing firms TCS and Infosys, rely heavily on the diesel generators for electricity, as my colleague Heather Timmons reported earlier in the week. But those generators are expensive to run even with government subsidies on diesel and are considered a major contributor to greenhouse gases.

For many Indians, diesel is not an affordable option, and the wait for a reliable connection to the grid seems like it will be a long one given the paralysis in policy making in New Delhi and slow pace of infrastructure de velopment around the country. As a result, many Indians have been left to improvise, often by burning driftwood or kerosene, an oil-based fuel similar to diesel.

But increasingly entrepreneurs and energy specialists are trying to find creative ways to meet India's electricity needs. While there are dozens of examples, I'll focus on two that I have learned about recently.

The Energy and Resources Institute, or T.E.R.I., along with others, has been working on a model to increase the use of solar lanterns in rural India. Though these devices are incredibly simple to understand â€" a solar panel charges them during the day so they can be used at night â€" they are still too expensive for many. (Basic lanterns cost as little $5, but hardy and more useful models can cost as much as $80.)

T.E.R.I., which is based in New Delhi, is trying to make these lanterns more affordable by making them available for rent for durations as short as one night. The institute's “Lighting a Billion Lives” campaign does this on a franchise model.

“You train one woman in the village,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the institute's director general. “She charges all the lanterns during the day, and she rents them out at night.”

So far, the campaign has reached 1,488 villages in 22 Indian states, according to its Web site. But Mr. Pachauri, who is also the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told me this week that this and other similar ideas have significant potential to bring electricity to many millions of people.

“A lot of the slack can be taken up by renewable energy technology,” he said. “There are several niche areas where renewable energy can be harnessed at a large scale.”

Another attempt to solve India's energy riddle comes from a small company based in Boston called Promethean Power, which is planning to move its research and development office to Mumbai .

The company has come up with technology that allows dairies to chill milk without using diesel generators. Its system does not rely on solar or other renewable power but instead tries to make the best of the infrequent electricity that many people in India get from the grid. It does that by capturing that power in a proprietary “thermal battery” it has designed that can store up to five hours of power, Sam White, one of the co-founders of the company, told me in a recent Skype conversation.

The battery is paired with the company's other invention, a device that looks like a Shiva lingam that, Mr. White says, chills the milk from room temperature to 4 degrees centigrade (39.2 Fahrenheit) in just a few seconds. That chilled milk is then kept cold using power from the battery until it is ready to be transported or sold.

The company has sold its systems to dairies like Hatsun in Chennai, Mother Dairy in Bangalore, Amul in West Bengal and Chitale in Mahara shtra. It has also applied its technology to cool freight containers used to transport fruits and vegetables.

“We have decided to move to India, both my business partner and I, to finally make this happen or go home,” Mr. White said. “We think there is a pretty big market draw for both the milk chiller itself as well as eliminating the need for a diesel generator. Our next big challenge is to ramp up.”

Of course, neither T.E.R.I.'s lighting campaign nor Promethean's chilling technology is going to solve all of India's energy problems. But they could have a significant impact in meeting certain specific needs faster than the government has been able to.

There are about 100,000 villages in India that are not connected to the grid, but many of them could get affordable power from solar panels and small power plants fed by biomass like crop waste, according to Vineet Mittal, managing director of Welspun Energy, a developer and operator of solar, wind an d conventional power plants.

“I think this is a huge opportunity,” he told me earlier this week. “Some entrepreneur has to start it.”

Gunman Kills 6 in Wisconsin Gurdwara

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sikh religious leaders had gathered in the lobby of the sprawling Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, and lunch was being prepared as congregants were arriving for Sunday services, Steven Yaccino, Michael Schwirtz and Marc Santora wrote in The New York Times. Instead of worshipers, though, an armed man stepped through the door and started firing, killing six people.

“In an attack that the police said they were treating as ‘a domestic terrorist-type incident,' the gunman stalked through the temple around 10:30 a.m.,” Mr. Yaccino, Mr. Schwirtz and Mr.Santora wrote. “Congregants ran for shelter and barricaded themselves in bathrooms and prayer halls, where they made desperate phone calls and sent anguished texts pleading for help as confusion and fear took hold.”

Witnesses described a scene of chaos and carnage.

Jatinder Mangat, 40, who was on his way to the te mple when he heard reports about the shooting, said he had tried to call his uncle, the temple's president, but reached the head priest, Gurmail Singh, instead. “He was crying. Everyone was screaming,” Mr. Mangat said. “He said that my uncle was shot and was lying on the floor and asked why you guys are not sending an ambulance and police.”

Mr. Singh, he said, had locked himself in a bathroom with four other people, including two children.

Six people were killed and three others were wounded on Sunday at the 17,000-square-foot Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, a city of about 35,000 just south of Milwaukee, officials said.

Read the full article.

Curiosity Is Set to Land on Mars

By KENNETH CHANG and JEREMY ZILAR

At 1:31 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover will complete its eight-and-a-half-month journey from Earth and try to land on the surface of Mars. The Times will report the news as it unfolds directly from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and cover events and reaction from people tuning in around the globe.

The team from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explain the final seven minutes in the rover's landing.