Section:GDN 1N PaGe:26 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 19:03 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 1 August 2019
(^26) World
Pioneer
of India’s
coff ee shop
culture is
found dead
Rebecca Ratcliff e
Residents in a district of the Indian
state of Punjab who want to buy a gun
face an unlikely new hurdle: to secure
a fi rearm licence, they must fi rst plant
at least 10 trees.
Applicants in Ferozepur district
are required to send photographs
of themselves with their saplings to
offi cials, as well as follow-up pictures
a month later to prove they are caring for
their trees. “The people of Punjab are
really crazy about the big cars, mobile
phones and guns – so let them be crazy
for the plants also,” said Chander Gaind,
the district’s deputy commissioner.
More than 100 applications have
been received since the rule was
introduced last month, with residents
planting kikar and neem trees across
the district.
The northern state of Punjab, which
was engulfed by a violent insurgency
throughout the 1980s and 1990s, has
a well-established tradition of gun
ownership. There are almost 360,000
active gun licences across the state,
among the highest in the country,
according to government fi gures.
Gaind hopes the new rules imposed
on licence applicants could lead to
12,000 saplings being planted each
year, boosting the district’s green
cover and helping replenish the dis-
trict’s water sources.
Depleting groundwater – driven by
poor water management, expansion
of cities and unpredictable monsoon
rains – is a concern across India. The
country is dependent on ground water,
but environmental experts say that
for decades government policies have
failed to replenish or protect supplies.
Depletion in some districts of
Punjab is occurring at an especially
rapid rate, according to a study by
researchers from the department of
civil engineering at the Indian Institute
of Technology Gandhinagar.
Trees have been felled in Ferozepur
to allow road widening, while
water-intensive rice fi elds have also
exacerbated depletion of water table,
Gaind said.
“[By planting] these saplings in
the monsoon weather especially, the
growth will be very fast,” he said.
The district is also considering
imposing the tree-planting rule on
people applying for the renewal of
licen ces. It receives 500 applications
each month for these.
Rebecca Ratcliff e
Delhi
One of India’s most prominent busi-
nessmen, who is credited with
bringing coff ee shop culture to the
country, has been found dead after
warning of fi nancial troubles.
VG Siddhartha, the founder of Cafe
Coff ee Day, went missing on Mon-
day. Police recovered his body from
the Nethravathi River near Mangal-
uru yesterday after a search. Indian
media outlets quoted from a let-
ter, apparently sent by Siddhartha
to shareholders, citing financial
problems and alleged pressure by
tax authorities. Opposition politi-
cians have called for an inquiry into
his death.
Siddhartha, from Karnataka state,
established Cafe Coff ee Day in 1996.
It off ered air-conditioned shops and
comfortable seat s and became India’s
biggest coffee chain – holding off
Starbucks thanks to cheaper prices.
“ We never had a culture of going out
and having a coff ee in the morning.
He created that ,” said AK Prabhakar ,
head of research at IDBI Capital Mar-
kets. The chain has more than 1,700
stores, mainly in India but also in
Egypt, Malaysia, the Czech Republic
and Austria. Siddhartha was report-
edly in talks with Coca-Cola about
selling a stake.
In a letter apparently written by
Siddhartha, he admitted making mis-
takes but said he had been pressured
by lenders and tax authorities. “I am
very sorry to let down all the people
that put their trust in me. I fought for
a long time but today I have given up
as I could not take any more pressure ,”
the letter said. Siddhartha said he had
faced harassment from the tax author-
ities. “My intention was never to cheat
or mislead anybody, I have failed as an
entrepreneur,” he said.
The son-in-law of SM Krishna , an
ex-foreign minister and chief minister
of Karnataka, Siddhartha came from a
well-connected family that has been
in the coff ee business for more than
a c e n t u r y.
Want a gun licence in Punjab?
First plant at least 10 trees
Reuters
Delhi
The Indian parliament has approved
a bill outlawing the ancient right of
a Muslim man to instantly divorce
his wife simply by saying the word
“talaq” (divorce in Arabic) three times
in her presence.
The move has triggered accusations
of government interference in a com-
munity matter.
Narendra Modi ’s Hindu national-
ist administration has been pushing
to criminalise the “triple talaq”. The
bill, which will make anyone practising
instant divorce liable to prosecution,
was backed in the lower house last
week.
After the vote in the upper house
on Tuesday, the measure now only
requires the signature of the pres-
ident – considered a formality – to
become law.
“This is a historic day, the injus-
tice that was going on with Muslim
women, India’s parliament has given
them justice,” the law minister, Ravi
Shankar Prasad , said in Delhi.
Some Indian Muslim groups
believe triple talaq is wrong, but that
it should be reviewed by community
leaders.
Parliament
backs ban on
Islamic ‘triple
talaq’ divorce
▲ A photograph supplied by a Punjabi
resident to support his application
▲ A Coff ee Day branch in Mumbai.
India’s growing coff ee culture was
attributed to Siddhartha (below)
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