SPAN: May 1979

IN MEMORIAM A new American stamp honors Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968), the eleventh anniversary of whose death falls next month.

Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother and confidante ofPresident John F. Kennedy, served as the U.S. Attorney General from 1961-64 and as Senator from New York from 1965-68. A strong candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the American Presi-

dency, he was assassinated while campaigning on June 5, 1968. The young-Senator was very popular with American minorities, whose rights he championed.

The stamp, a tribute to his contribution to the American civil rights movement, evokes memories of his dream for America. "Some men," Robert F. Kennedy used to say, "see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

SPAN

ALmER FROM THE PUBliSHER

May

1979

VOLUME XX NUMBER 5

How do concerned groups of private Citizens in the United States intervene in court cases and legislative hearings on questions of civil rights? What are these groups, and how do they function?

These questions are the subject of an interview in this issue of SPAN to which we particularly caB attention. David Carliner, the general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), recently visited India to exchange American experiences with Indian counterparts. Among other people, he talked with Ram Jethmalani, a distinguished Indian advocate of civil rights.

They talked of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that The New York Times had the right to publish secret Government documents during the Vietnamese war (the famous Pentagon papers). How far does the public's right to know reach- and how far Government's right to determine national security?

What limits are there, or should there be, to the constitutional freedoms of speech, press and assembly, guaranteed in both the American and the Indian constitutions? And what of the rights and privileges of judges and legislators?

How can their integrity be preserved from the pressures exerted by contending private groups? These are among the seminar questions discussed by these thoughtful men.

Also cited in this issue is a specific instance of the influence of public opinion. It appears parenthetically in a discussion of the question, "What's Holding Up Nuclear Nonproliferation?" Alton Frye, an American expert on this sensitive issue, is outlining the history of U.S. attitudes and legislation.

He notes "quite frankly" that it was American public reaction to the unanticipated Indian Pokharan explosion of 1974 that triggered U.S. Congressional legislation-taking the form of the Nonproliferation Act of 1978 with its provisions for the inspection of nuclear facilities under suitable international safeguard arrangements.

K.P. Misra, of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, ably presents India's arguments on the safeguard issue in what he describes as "a very fruitful discussion," and ends the exchange with the hope that "the world community is able to evolve a set of safeguards which are acceptable'' to all countries.

Indeed, experience bas shown that even the sharpest differences between nations that seem for a long time to be irreconcilable can, with good will and patience on both sides, be bridged. " D oubts are the stuff of great decisions, but so are dreams," said President Jimmy Carter in an eloquent address to Israel's parliament on March 12, 1979. When President Carter spoke those words, the outlook for his Middle East peace mission seemed dim. But a ··no" to peace was not an answer President Carter could accept. As he told the Knesset, "Millions of men, women and children in Israel, and beyond, in this generation and in generations to come, are relying on our skill and relying on our faith."

A peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was eventually signed. It was signed despite many misgivings on both sides, and amid clear indications of continued differences and tensions. But whatever was to happen in the future, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher's summary would certainly hold true for history : If you step back ... and look at the treaties. I think they will be seen to be a remarkable achievement. Here you have two countries which have been enemies for 30 years es tablishing communications between [them]. normal trade and communications .... So I think that when these treaties are seen not for the final negotiating points that caused difficulties at the end, but for their broad sweep, 1 think they will be seen as quite extraordinary documents on, ifl may say so, a quite extraordinary achievement.

-J.W.G.

2 Human Rights and American Foreign Policy

by Roberr F. Goheen

·

5 Water: The Basic Resource 9 More Water for a Thirsty World

1 1 Water Technology in India 12 A 'Superbug' to Clean the Seas

by s .R. Madhu

by Dilip M . Salwi

Private Groups Defend Civil Rights 14 How A Dialogue Between Ram Jezhmalani and David Carliner 18 Traveling Exhibits Galore by Benjamin Forgey

22 Cleaning Up Pittsburgh 26 Putting Waste to Use

by John F. Coppola

by Krishan Gabrani

30 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

A Reconsideration by Priadevi

35 On the Lighter Side 36 The Training of Wrestlers

38 What's Holding Up Nuclear Nonproliferation?

K.P. Mi.>Ta Talks With Alton Frre

41

Digging Out an American Indian Village

45 Toward a Law of the Sea Treaty 49 Grand Design: The Earth From Above

by Elliot L. Richardwm

Front cover : Once as famous for its smoke as its steel: Pittsburgh today has a remarkably clean atmosphere for an industrial city. America's first privately funded urban poll ution control effort has paid off handsomely. See story on page 22.

Back cover : A playground acquires the sweep of a vast geometrical design in Georg Gerster's photograph-typical work of this artist who specializes in views from way above. See story on page 49.

JACOB SLOAN, Editor; JAY W. GILDNER, Publisher.

Managing Editor: Chidananda Das Gupta. Assistant Managing Editor : S.R. Madhu.

Editorial Staff: Krishan Gabrani, Anma Dasgupta, Nirmal Sharma, Murari Saba, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gajwani, B. Roy Choudhury, Kanti Roy. Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaha. Photo Editor: Avinash Pasricha. Photographic Services: ICA Photo Lab. Poblisbed by the International Communication Agency, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 , on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed

by H.K. Mehta at Thomson Press (lndia) Limited, Faridabad, H aryana.

Ph<>t<>graphs: Front co,·er-Norman Schumm. 8- Avina.sh Pasricha. 10-S.K. D utt. courtesy UNlCEF. 11-cour· tesy Water Technology Centre. 12-courtesy General Electnc Research & Development Center. 17 - R.N. Khanna.

IS-courtesy Tho Exploratorium. San Francisco. 19-courtesy Smithsonian ln.stitution Traveling Exhibition Service.

21- copyrighr © Smithsontan Institution. except top left Avinash Pasricha. 23- CJide Hare. 24-oourlesy Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. 2.5-John Alexandrowicz, except top right Bob Oelberg_ Photo Researchers. 26-28-Avina.h Pasricha. 30.32-Walker Evans. 36-37-Tom Koeniges. 40 Jeft - R.N. Khanna. 41-44-Cltristopher Springmann.

49-ba.ck oover- Oeorg Gerster_

Use of SPAN articles m other publications rs enCQuraged, except when copyrighted. For permission. write to the Editor. Price of maga~ine: one year'ssubserrption (12tssue$). IS rupees; srngle copy. 2 rupees 50 paise. For change of addr-seud an old ad~sfroma recent SPA N envelopealongwith new addresstoA.K. Mitra. Circulation Manager.

SPAN Magazioe.24 Kasturba G<1ndhi Marg, New Oelhi t 10001 (Scechangeofaddressformon page 48.)

Iaman B11hts and lmeriean Forei1n PolieJ

by ROBERT F. GOHEEN

In a recent address at Institute Menezes Braganza, Goa, Robert F. Goheen, the U.S. Ambassador to India, said that the U.S. concern for human rights springs directly from values embodied in the American historical experience- just as it does in the case of India and its Independence Movement.

Actually, the Ambassador added, 'human rights have increasingly been accepted by the community of nations as a valid subject of international concern.'

T he last General Assembly of the United Nations marked the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. India played a role in the formulation of that Declaration, and over the subsequent years she has been consistently active in the Human Rights Commission of the U .N. in seeking to uphold the principles of the Declaration and advance their realization among the nations of the world.

In the Urlited States. heightened prominence has been brought to human rights concerns. both domestically and in the relations of the U nited States with other nations. by the Administration of President Jimmy Carter. The basic reasons were expressed succinctly in a recent speech to the Weizmann Institute of Chicago by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs: State~. like men, do not hve by bread alone The: vu lgar tnterpreters of Marx or Adam Smith to the contrary notwithstanding, political action ~~ not dictated wholly by material selfishness. It is founded ultimately on concepts of the good, the just. and the holy, and on theories of the future that embod} these ideas. This i~ as true today as it has ever been possibly more so. Accordmgly, the national ~ecurit)i policy of the United State;, ~eeks to enhance a ~cn'e of community with those who share our values II seeks to encourage respect for the transcendental human aspi rations for liberty and for self-definitton.

That is the mea ning of our position on human right~.

H is within the context of international relations that I shall be focusing on human rights. Increasingly the relationship of the two has become the center not only of attention, but also of debate, some of it acrimonious.

We can begin by asking from where this new emphasis in American foreign policy has come. Is it some clever and cynically contrived weapon in the international power struggle? Is it perhaps 2

SPAN MAY 1979

an em ironment where tolerance and understanding can nou rish.

Beyond the traditional ideas of statecraft, Indians and Americans recognize an ob1igation to themselves and to others that ends can never justify evil means.

Nations, like individuals, are morally responsible for their actions.

Mora rji

Desa~

Prime M inister of India

J immy Carte r P resident of the United States of Amenca

This excerpt from the Delhi Declaration, signed on January 3, 1978, by Prime Minister Morarji Desai and President Jimmy Carter, attests to the two nations' abidingfaith in human rights.

merely an expedient political posture meant to mask realpolitik motives? Any who know something of America's history wi ll have perceived that it is neither of those things. The American concern for human rights springs directly from values embedded in our historical experience as a people and a nation. Its application to foreign policy derives from principles that have from the beginning constituted the permanent core of our national being and identity.

T he United States is a founded society, created by a political act. Its national identity has, from the first. been defined in terms of those political values that are set forth so eloquently in the American Declaration of Independence. Because our concern for human rights reflects an imperative so central to our national experience. we Americans cannot but feel less than true to ourselves when we fail to embrace the cause of human nghts in our dealing with others. President Carter made this point forcefully in his Inaugural

Address when he said: "Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere."

T.o be sure, the historical roots of the American concern for human rights have not always resulted in that concern occupying a notable place in American foreign policy. In our acts we may at times have even seemed rootless; for the prominence that American leaders have attached to the advancement of human rights has waxed and waned over the years, under varied domestic and international circumstances.

Yet 1 would submit that the basic concern has always been there, part of the conscience of the country, even when it has been less than perfectly acted upon.

And today, unquestionably. the renewal of the concern for human rights as a component in America's foreign policy reflects the strong desire of the American people to reassert these values as guides for our national and international behaviOr in the wake of our traumatic Vietnam and Watergate experiences. The

recognition of bow far we bad strayed in both these instances from a sound attention to basic human rights has manifestly reinforced our desire and determination to give them due consideration henceforth.

The United States, of course, has no monopoly on the concern for human rights. The people of India have their own commitment based on their own national history and values. The struggle for human rights has surely had no greater embodiment in this century than in India's Independence Movement and its eventual achievement of self-determination, democratic government, and the rule of disinterested law for India.

The ¡intrinsic quest was beautifully revealed in Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali: Where the mind is withowfear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless strMng stretches its arms toward perfection: Where the clear stre(lm of reason has nor lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into el'er-widening thought and actionInto that hea1â&#x20AC;˘en ofji-eedom. m.r Father. let my country awake.

March 1977 elections. Among other things, that event has meant that America and India not only have shared the experience of successful struggle to throw off the yoke of external domination in pursuit of similar values; but also, both have very recently experienced severe threats to these values and have secured their telling reaffirmation.

The Delhi Declaration signed by Prime Minister Morarji Desai and President Jimmy Carter on January 3, 1978, clearly and strongly states the common commitment of the two societies to human dignity and fundamental human rights:

as a vital force in international affairs only a matter of documents and law. It has been instrumental in what has perhaps been the dominant political dynamic of the postwar world-namely, the achievement of political independence by over 100 new nations. Not only the successful lifting of the yoke of colonial rule, but also the subsequent, continuing efforts of the new nations to achieve economic growth and justice for their peoples can be seen to be part of a global struggle for expanded human rights.

As man cannot live by bread alone, so neither is it sufficient to open vistas to the spirit only. Man has economic and

India and the United States of America, despite differences of history and culture, are one in the recognition that the ultimate sanction of power and of public policy rests in the respect for the dignity and well-being of the individual. Regardless of race, sex, religion or social status, every human being is entiiled to life and liberty, to freedom from want and, without threat or coercion, to freedom of expression and worship.

Within this common commitment to the preservation and enhancement of human rights, both political and economic, the two nations may not always agree on appropriate means. Far more important than any such differences, however, is social rights alongside the political ones. that we see eye-to-eye on the ultimate With respect to these, America and the objectives and know that, for their attain- Western world are no longer, if they ever ment, government IDl;lSt be the servant were, caught in sole veneration of 18th century ideas, wherein the assertion of Although Tagore's and Mahatma of the people, not vice versa.

Gandhi's approaches to the acruevement We should not underestimate the im- civil and political liberties sometimes of freedom clashed in some respects, portance of these shared values. Students seemed all that mattered. The principles Gandhiji's swaraj and the means he of international relations can debate the we seek to espouse are not parochial. relative weights to be assigned to interests They correspond to the universal needs of as against values, or to pragmatism as mankind. Our definition of human rights against morality in foreign policy, but encompasses the same wide range of there is no questioning the fact that rights internationally recognized in the nations are brought closer together Universal Declaration of Human Rights through shared values. Current relations of the United Nations . between our two great democracies are a The fact was highlighted on the day of his inauguration as President of the good example of this truth.

The concern for human rights in in- United States, when in an unprecedented ternational relations is not, of course, Statement to the World, Jimmy Carter confined to a few nations or to very said: recent times. Since World War II, human The United States alone cannot guarantee the basic rights have increasingly been accepted by the community of nations as a valid right of every human bemg to be free of poverty and hunger and disease and political repression. advanced for attammg it contained no subject of international concern. They We can and will cooperate with others in combatting less profound a commitment to human are clearly recognized in Article I of the these enemies of mankind. fhe United States alone cannot assure an equitable rights than that expressed by Tagore. United Nations Charter, in the Universal Gandhiji allowed no divergence between Declaration of Human Rights approved development of the world's resources or the proper safeguarding of the world's environment. But we means and ends, and the means he chose, by the U.N. in 1948, and, more recently, can and will join with others in this work. satyagraha. was based on his belief in in the Final Act of the 1975 Helsinki the right and the ability of individuals to Conference on Security and Cooperation In other words, President Carter laid at in Europe signed by 35 heads of state. least equal, if not greater, stress on basic control their own minds and actions.

The commitment of the Indian people Furthermore, since 1945, international economic and social rights as on political to essential human rights- and particu- practice has confirmed that a nation's rights.

To put the matter more systematically, larly to freedom from the coercion of obligation to respect human rights is a essential human rights can be classed in matter of concern in international law. arbitrary, unaccountable governmentwas again revealed dramatically in India's Nor is the emergence of human rights three categories :

....

SPAN MAY 1979

3

AMBASSADOR GOHEEN ON HUMAN RIGHTS nmtmuetl

and self-perpetuating. And. the suppression of one set of rights for another over any length oft1mc runs against the deepest aspirationsofhuman beings and ultimately corrupts the social order which is its goal.

This insight-the inseparability of means and ends-was, of course. one of Mahatma Gandhi's great contributions to modern soc1al change No one should forget it.

There is no basic inconsistency between economic growth and social JUstice. on the one hand, and the mamtenance of civil and political rights, on the other hand. Indeed, one of the great challenges of our times is to show that liberty and bread are not mcompatible goals.

The accomplishment of these goals entails keeping both ends m view and seeking ways to advance complementary relationships between economic and political rights.

The ideological debate over priorit1es shelter, health care and education. (The among human rights often obscures the (ulfillment of this right will depend, Ill historical evidence that the expansion of part, up~>n the stage of a nation's econo- socioeconomic rights and the expansion mic development. But we also know that of civil-political rights can be mutually this right can be violated by a govern- reinforcing. Witness, for example. the ment's action or inaction- for example. tremendous social change which has taken through institutior1s and processes de- place in the Amcncan South since World signed to hold down certain elements of a War II. As Andrew Young, among others, society for the benefit of others.) has pointed out. expanded econonlic • Third, there is the right to enJOY opportunities available to black veterans civil and political liberties-freedom of after the war helped to create a Southern thought, of reJigiop, of assembly, of black middle class more inclined and better speech, and of the press; freed om of able to challenge existing racial barriers movement both within and outside one's to civil and political liberties. The disown country; and the freedom to take mantling of those racial barners achieved part in government. by the Civil Rights movement of the There is disagreement, among men and 1960s created. in turn. the conditiOns for among nations, on the pnoribes to be the further economic transformation of accorded these several rights. There arc the American South from a region of those, for example, who argue that in- poverty and conflict mto a reg10n where dividual liberties must be suppressed 10 progress and prosperity are now widely order to achieve economic growth and justice. Sometimes, as Walter Laquer Robert F. Goheen wrote recently, giving priority to econo- has been the C S. mic and social rights is an "alibi for Ambassador w India states that practice oppression at home, since 1977. He ll'us and whose record even in the economic born in the port to11n and social field is anything but bnlliant. .. of Vengurla. l\.1ahaThe proposition, however, has also seemed rashrra, and spent attracuve to some societies trying to the first 15 years of hurry along the process of modernization. his life m India. An Even as we can understand and seek to f!minent educator who deal sympathetically with the circum- has been called "a man of l'ision" cmd praised stances that give rise to tlus latter tempta}c1r his •·brilliant record tion, we need also recognize the pitfalls as a scholar and teadrer." Dr. Goheen became of this approach. in /957. at the age of 37, the I'Oungest presidem The concentration of power in the of Princeton Unhersity in 200 year.1. As ~· S state necessary to this strategy tends to Ambassador. he has tran·led £'.\ temil·ely throu[!.h become self-justifying. self-aggrandizing. India, interprl'ling Am£'rican foreign policy.

• First, there is the right to mtcgrity of the person, free from arbitrary and gross coercion. (Violations of th1s right include, but are not limited to, torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and arbitrary arrest or imprisonment.)

• Second, there is the right to the fulfillment of such vital needs as food.

4

SPAN MAY 1979

shared. Unquestionably. recent Indian history can provide comparable examples Human rights. then. cannot properly be ISolated from each other. or traded ofT against each other. All the elements require simultaneous respect and nurture.

TI11S IS today the aim of the American people and the commitment of 1ts government. ...

I would be remiss. however. if I left you with the Impression that the formulation and implementation of a reasonably consistent and effective human rights pohcy in foreign affairs is a simple matter. Given the complexity of the modern world. the ambiguity of most human situations. and the multiplicity of interests which a nauon's foreign policy must serve. the effort to promote human rights on a global basis runs a gauntlet of problems. some of which I would like now to touch on briefly.

F1rst. there IS the problem of reconciling principle with realism. How do we avoid unworkable policies on the one hand and loss of credibility for our principles on the other hand? There can only be a general answer to this question. Goals in the abstract mean little. If we are to do them JUStice in facl, we must seek to ach1eve for them embodiment in real-life, and therefore highly imperfect. situations.

Excessive ngidity in the pursuit of principle, especially in foreign policy. often produces only countering rigidity. Therefore we musr serve our principles with an abiding realism-which is to say, that compromise does not always Signify surrender. Compromise may often be the only way to achieve at least some foothold for the realization of principle wllhm specific human situations.

Standards are needed as a pomt of reference but, as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has said: "In the end, a decision whether and how to act in the cause of human rights is a matter for informed and careful judgment. No mechanistic formula produces an automatic answer." Thus, when the U.S. Government seeks to take the measure of a human rights situation 10 another country, it is more concerned with whether such rights are being taken senously there. and with whether progress is being made, than with whether some absolute standard has been met.

In foreign affairs, human rights concerns inevitably have to be balanced against other national interests, such as those of n\ltional security, or the availability of essential resources. Th1s, too, Text C0/111/IIted on pagt• 48 ,

E

centuries, water has inspired joyous verse in many languages. But water management today taxes all the ingenuity of the world's experts. They study snow Qeft), and use complex techniques such as desalination, iceberg-melting and recycling (see pages 9-10) to add to the supply of drinking water. Since pollution is aU-pervasive- some 250 million new cases of water-borne diseases are discovered every year- large-scale water-treatment plants abound. In Chicago, a boat collects water samples daily and passes them on to a helicopter to facilitate quick laboratory analysis. Agencies such as the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization help supply potable water to the world's poor. Every day dams are being built to impound water, irrigate crops and generate electricity. Multimillion-dollar plans are being conceived to combat drought, control floods, improve navigation.

Experts believe that ultimately the key to sound water management lies in conservation and pollution control.

In the U nited States, water-saving methods are in use both in agriculture and industry.

Left: Snow supplies most of the usable 1\"0ter in the western United Sta/es, and experts study the snow to forecast when it will melt and ho~r much water it will yield. Picture shows a hydrologist u~ing a snow rube to measure the depth and density of a snowfield in Idaho Swre. Top : This is pure, ~parkling water it has come out of a sewage treatment plant in Colorado. It is cleaner than the IVOter found in nearby streams. Above: Cracked and wrinkled earth is grim ne ws - for plant , beast or man.

SPAN MAY 1979

7

WATER continued

Bending low, this farmer carefully diverts water from a rivulet to his field. Irrigation has been practiced in India from the earliest times. American engineer Herbert Wilson, who visited India in 1890, said there were many similarities between Indian rivers and those of the American west, and that irrigation systems in India "may furnish useful lessons when we commence the construction

of similar works." In 1911 the United States built the Roosevelt dam (similar to early Indian dams) across the Salt River in Arizona. It was then the world's largest concrete masonry dam. India's many multipurpose river vaUey projects, some of which have been built with American cooperation, have helped the country's remarkable agricultural revolution.

MORE WATER FOR A THIRSTY WORLD

by S. R. MADH U

How can man get more water that's fit to drink? The world's experts are mastering complex conversion technologies-melting icebergs, desalting sea water, recycling sewage.

Water is at once man's greatest friend and foe. While it sustains life, it is also a killcrftood s a nd storms take a heavy toll of life every year. Water can be beautiful (you never sec the Taj Mahal without the accompanying pools); it can also be a carrier of dread diseases like cholera.

Water has shaped history-the world's greatest civilizations have developed on the banks of rivers. It has saved nations from conquest; it has also brought nations closer by stimulating trade and commerce. Man has begun to probe distant planets, but the earth 's oceans- a vast treasure-trove of fish, minerals a nd petroleum-are still a challenge to his courage and ingenuity.

Water is abundant. covering nearly three quarters of the earth; yet, it is a scarce resource. More than 97 per cent of the earth's water is fou nd in the seas-hence salty, unfit for drinking or for irrigation. Another 2 per cent is ice, locked up in the polar regions.

Of the remaining I per cent. a good deal is trapped in u nderground reservoirs. What remains man's main source of water supply for all his needs is the surface water of lakes, streams a nd rivers. This is heavily polluted. For every I ,000 gallons of water on earth, only three are drinkable.

The world's supply of water is fixed and finite: there is essentially no more water today than there was when civilization began.

And it is the same water. The dribble from a leaky faucet in our homes may be the liquid that slaked the thirst of a dinosaur or washed the gardens of Chandra Gupta Maurya a few thousand years ago. The water that lashes the earth today as rain is the same water that evaporated yesterday from the seas.

If man is to increase the supply of potable and usable water, he will have to tap the known sources with greater skill. He has to harness the seas (desalination), or the icebergs of the Antarctica, or underground resources- or purify polluted surface water.

Here a re some glimpses into the latest research on all these fronts.

Desalination: The salt content of sea water is 3.5 per cent, while the human body tolerates only 0.2 per cent. The idea of making sea

water fit to drink by reducing its salt content is not new ; in the fourth century B.C., Aristotle described how to boil salt water, condense the steam and obtain fresh water. But while the principle of desa lination is simple, the technology for la rge-sca le application is complex and expensive.

Most desalination plants now in use apply one of five techniques- distillation. freezing, hydrating, electrodialysis, reverse osmosis.

The first three processes are based on temperature changes: they produce pure water by evaporating and solidifying ocean water. eliminating the salts. The other two techniques-electrodialysis and reverse osmosis - employ membranes to separate the salt from the water. (Since the salt content of sea water is only 3.5 per cent, it is considered more logical to remove the salts than to treat the entire water.) In recent years, experts have favored nuclear-powered desalination.

The United States began a formal desalting program in 1952. but it was not until the next decade, during President Lyndon B. Johnson's time, that the program made major advances. With the acti ve cooperation of the U .S. Congres~. Presiden t Johnson introduced the Saline Wa ter Conversion Act.

expressing the hope that its success would â&#x20AC;˘Âˇfree mankind from nature's tyranny." In 1965, the United States hosted a n internationa l symposiu m on water desalination. It was held in Washington, D .C., a nd experts from 65 nations including India attended.

Stewart Udall , then America's Secretary of the Interior, told the delegates: "'We hope to master the technology of big [desalination] plants. to serve major population centers; we will also pursue the refinement of small equipment: and we will give equal attention to processes fo r improving the usefulness of underground brackish waters that represent a major source in many pa rts of the world." " I challenge the delegates to this conference to think in terms of a worldwide cooperative effort to solve the problems of desalting in the shortest possible time," said Udall.

He offered scientists of all nation~ a complete set of American research and engineering studies published by the Office of Saline Water, suggested international exchange programs fo r experts on desalination, a nd offered to support training programs for research in other countries.

T oday there are some I ,500 desali na tion plants all over the world. (ln India, desali-

------'- - -- -.:._ ¡-- --.

SPAN MAY 1979

9

WATER continued

nation is being researched at the Soil Salinity How can water be produced from iceResearch Institute at Kamal and the Central bergs? The plan of action that emerged from Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Insti- the high-level First International Conference tute at Bhavnagar.) In the United States, on Iceberg Utilization at Ames, Iowa, in many cities on Florida's east coast depend on July 1977, went as follows: Using Landsat desalination for their fresh water supply. or some other satellite, photograph areas of A giant 100-million-gallon-a-day plant will the Antarctica that produce a good supply come up soon at Yuma, Arizona, to convert of icebergs ; select one of them; lasso the iceberg with steel cables from nuclearthe salt water of the Colorado River.

American expertise is supporting desali- powered tugboats; use a navigation satellite nation programs abroad, particularly in to determine the proper navigational course; Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The Universal then tow the iceberg northward. At a speed Oil Products Company of California is of two to four kilometers per hour, the tug helping Saudi Arabia build a 3.2-million- will take six to eight months to reach the gallon-a-day plant at Jidda. Saudi Arabia coast of some arid land; melt the ice down to and the United States have also signed an provide sweet water. agreement to set up a training center for The biggest problem in the entire operation desalination technologies. may be when the iceberg finally reaches its America's first academic program in de- destination. Most ports are too shallow for salination is likely to be set up shortly- at a giant iceberg. One suggestion is that the Fairleigh Dickinson University in Ruther- berg should be towed into a small harbor, ford, New Jersey. Students will be trained a drydock built around it, the saltish sea in the installation, use and maintenance water pumped out, and the berg allowed to of desalination equipment, and will be melt naturally. awarded bachelor of science degrees in ls all this futuristic star-gazing? Far from environmental science. it. Saudi Arabia- which spends $3.5 billion Water Fom icebergs: The idea of producing a year on desalination projects- has already fresh water from icebergs is an extraordinary gone ahead with an iceberg-melting project. one. What's the potential of this method? It will pay Cicero, a French firm, $90 million Staggering. Experts say that if one particular to tow a 100-million-ton ice monster from iceberg standing today at the tip of the the Antarctica to the Red Sea port of Jidda.

Antarctic peninsula- 90 kilometers long, 35 The iceberg is to be delivered around the kilometers wide, 400 meters thick-were year 1982. towed to the eastern coast of the United Saudi Arabia's Prince Muhammad aiStates, it could supply all the fresh water Faisal, whom some refer to as the Prince of needs ofWashington, D.C., for 1,000 years.

Water, believes that iceberg water could A strong handpump provides clean drinking water to residents in a remote drought-prone village l~[ India .

eventually be delivered at 20.6 cents per cubic meter- a cost far lower than that of desalinated water.

Recycling of waste water: Drinking water from sewage? The idea may be anathema to some. But Water Factory 21 in a residential area of Orange county, south of Los Angeles in California, is already in business : it can convert 57 million liters of waste into clean water every day. The waste gets even cleaner than river water.

Before the sewage reaches Water Factory 21 , it has already been filtered , aerated and chlorinated to remove most solid wastes and bacteria. The water, still cloudy and soapy from dissolved minerals and laundry detergent, is now mixed with lime in large concrete troughs at Water Factory 21. The lime combines with suspended impurities in the water and settles at the bottom. The best water rises to the surface.

After this process, called flocculation, the water is pumped to a seven-story-high white building that houses six ammonia-stripping towers. These remove ammonia from the water. More processes follow: recarbonation, a technique to neutralize the alkaline content of the water by adding some acid; filtration (through filter beds of anthracite coal, silica gravel, silica and garnet sand); carbon adsorption (to remove detergents and other organic residues), and finally, reverse osmosis (to demineralize the water, removing 90 per cent of the dissolved solids).

Reclaimed waste water from Water Factory 21 is now blended with an equal volume of fresh water from another source (usually piped from some other place), then injected into the ground to augment the county's underground reservoir. The water available on tap for Orange county residents contains only a fraction of reclaimed waste water.

Water Factory 21 offers one solution to water supply problems. It is likely that the 21st century may see a proliferation of such factories in many countries of the world.

The U .N. Water Conference at Mar del Plata in Argentina, held in March 1977, was perhaps the first multidisciplinary effort to develop a wide international consensus on water management. The conference designated 1981-90 as the International Water Supply and Sanitation Decade and made 22 recommendations urging larger investment in water and regional cooperation.

Perhaps the first step toward the goal of clean water for all humanity by 1990 is educational- people all over the world should cherish water as a resource too dear to waste. Clean water can, as Barbara Ward says, " bring a profound release of creative D energy" to every person.

WATER TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA India has more than one-fifth of the world's irrigated land : 47 million hectares out of210 million. This is a blessing, since irrigated land produces more stable yields than rain-fed land. But irrigated land requires at least four applications of water in a single crop season of 150 days; most irrigated land in India gets only two.

"Since water is scarce," says Dr. A.M. Michael, a leading Indian water management expert, "it should be used wisely.

If high-yielding grain varieties made possible the first big adv·tnce in Indian agriculture, efficient soil and water management will generate the second."

This second big advance is one of the goals of the Water Technology Centre (WTC), of which Dr. Michael is director.

A division of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, Delhi, it was set up in 1969 with assistance from the Ford Foundation and technical collaboration with the University of California at Davis.

WTC is India's top research and training center on water management. It trains Indian personnel assigned to it by agricultural universities and state governments; conducts basic and applied research on water vis-a-vis crop production; and upgrades research elsewhere in India.

Dr. Michael is an irrigation engineer.

WTC has on its staff some 40 other experts from many disciplines. There are agronomists, agricultural and civil engineers, economists, plant scientists, soil scientists. They conduct workshops, seminars and short-term courses, and direct research.

The extension wing of WTC uses the Centre's expertise to solve specific problems that farmers and farm institutions in India face. Some examples: • Three years ago, WTC surveyed 14 "sick" tubewells in Ambala district, Haryana, using a sophisticated stereo-camera system. A camera enclosed in a watertight case was lowered into each well, and three-dimensional photographs taken at specified depths. These photographs helped identify the causes of well failures, such as lodging of foreign material and faults in construction.

The camera system was acquired from the Underground Surveys Corporation, Fresno, California, through a Ford Foundation grant ; an American expert, Richard Bowie, assisted a three-member WTC

team.

• In 1975, WTC experts made a system-

Experts ji·om Water Technology Centre recently 1 helped Harijan families of Holumbi Kalan village ro fabricate concrete irrigation channels and set up a water distribution system.

atic survey of irrigation water resources in Delhi, and prepared a "water quality map" for the Union Territory. The map also contained data on the extent of soil salinity and alkalinity caused by Delhi 's water sources, and their effect on crop growth. The expet1s recommended a package of soil and water management practices, fertilizer use and crop husbandry for different areas of the territory.

• The Centre introduced drip irrigation to India. This system, first used in Israel 15 years ago, waters only the plants in a field, not the area in between.

Drip irrigation saves nearly half of the irrigation water. The system is spreading in the world's semiarid regions, and is used for a few hundred acres in India.

Drip irrigation costs Rs. 4,000 per acre for an orchard, and Rs. 10,000 per acre for a vegetable garden, says Dr. Michael ; it is not suitable for close-growing crops.

• ln I 976, the Delhi Administration donated 10 acres of land to 10 Harijan families in the Holumbi Kalan village of Alipur taluka. WTC helped them level the land, fabricate concrete irrigation channels, and set up a water distribution system.

• WTC experts are assessing the magnitude of the country's water resources and their utilization so far. They have estimated that 102 million hectares of land in India are capable of irrigation; so far only 47 million hectares have been put to use. They have suggested how additional water sources can be tapped to bring more land under irrigation. They have also shown how existing systems for the passage and drainage of water can be made more efficient.

A resources inventory cell formed in 1975 at WTC is preparing detailed atlases for India and for individual states. They contain data on soils, surface and groundwater resources, and crop yields. The cell has prepared integrated resources surveys of 20 selected districts (such as Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh, Chandrapur in Maharashtra, Garo Hills in Meghalaya) to support the Government of India's project on integrated rural development.

Talking about WTC's studies on irrigation, Dr. S.K. Sinha, plant physiologist, dispels the general impression of the "poor yield" of pulses and oil seeds in India. He says that only 8 per cent of the pulses get the benefit of irrigation. Chickpea plants could yield as many as 35 quintals per hectare (against the normal six quintals) with two doses of irrigation.

Talking about another pulse, the pigeonpea, Dr. Sinha says that many varieties of pigeonpea dry up as soon as they flower, but a dose of irrigation gives them new life and increases their grain weight by 40 per cent. Some new types of pigeonpea have recently been developed: these are derivatives of the "Prabhat" variety found in Uttar Pradesh. They retain their greenery even without irrigation, perhaps because their roots go deep into the soil. The Centre is carrying out research on these varieties.

Experts like Dr. Sinha- who has been a consultant to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and is now a " Professor of Eminence" at WTC- have helped train more than 600 farm professionals

from all over India on various aspects of D

water management.

4 'SUPIIBUG' TO CLIAI TBI Oil spills blacken the oceans, endangering marine and human life. An India-born scientist working in the United States has devised a microbe that 'eats up' the oil and converts it into food for marine life.

I

very year, millions of gallons of petroleum escape into the world's waters- through oil tanker accidents, tankercleaning operations, leakage from the earth's 190 main natural ''seeps." The petroleum is lost; the water gets polluted, endangering both human and marine life.

This pollution of the world's oceans and waterways is a great environmental menace. The United Nations has focused on the problem for years. So have several governments and research institutions. But an India-born scientist working in the United States has come up with a promising solution.

On September 12, 1975, Dr. Ananda M. Chakrabarty-on behalf of his company. General Electric-an nounced the creation of a man-made organism or "superbug" that would attack oil spills, "digest" the petroleum and convert it into food for marine life.

How will the superbug work? When an oil spill occurs, it will be covered with straw. The superbug in the form of powder will be sprayed on the floating straw by an aircraft.

The bug will decompose the oil, forming large droplets that can be recovered by mechanical means. The superbug may take between one and two weeks to clean up a major spill.

When will the superbug be active on the seas? It has still to undergo field tests in the open sea. These tests need approval from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which have for the present banned the release of such man-made organisms into the environment- a ban resulting from the heated " Recombinant DNA " debate that raged for nearly two years during the mid-seventies. During this debate fears were expressed that man-made organisms posed ecological hazards.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health will soon come up with revised guidelines on the field testing of man-made organisms. Dr. Chakrabarty hopes that within three to four years tests will be over; the superbug can then begin to attack oil spiJls. The scientific world has hailed D r. Chakrabarty's superbug and the many exciting possibilities it has opened up. The Wall Street Journal has described the creation of the superbug as "one of the first possible industrial uses of the burgeoning field of the genetic engineering of microbes." "This microbe promises to be only the first in a growing family of useful man-made organisms," said Dr. Arthur M. Bueche, General Electric's vice-president for research and development. He added that similar microbes could eventually be developed to convert petroleum into food for animals and human beings, to enhance the flow of petroleum in aging oil fie lds, to concentrate gold, uranium and other valuable metals from their ores, to recycle wastes, and to manufacture phannaceutical products.

Industrial Research magazine honored Dr. C hakrabarty's achievement by selecting him as the 1975 ''Scientist of the Year."

The magazine said: "The entire area of genetic engineering has stirred emotions of excitement and fear. The editors of Industrial Research believe that Dr. Chakrabarty is outstanding among those responsible researchers who are using these tech-

no logics for the benefit of mankind.¡¡ Dr. Chakrabarty was in I ndia recently to address an international symposi um in Calcutta on ¡'Life. Matter and the Universe, .. as part of the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Bose Institute. In an interview later in New Delhi, Dr. Chakrabarty gave details of his superbug discovery and also of his current research.

Dr. Chakrabarty was born in the town of Sainthia near Calcutta. He did his early education at the Ramakrishna Mission Vidya Mandir at Belur Math and his college education in Calcutta.

He received his B.Sc. in chemistry and M.Sc. in microbiology while studyi ng at St. Xavier's College, Calcutta, and secured a Ph.D . in biochemistry from the University of Calcutta. He joined lhe University oflllinois in 1965 as a research associate, following an invitation from Dr. Irving Gunsalus, chairman oft he department of biochemistry. ln Dr. Gunsalus' laboratory, Dr. Chakrabarty worked on gene transfer and recombination in the Pseudomonas bacteria (a group of microbes occurring in nature that digest various hydrocarbon compounds). In 1971, he joined the staff of the

IBIS

by DILIP M. SALWI

General Electric (GE) Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York. " I was given scope to solve practical problems involving genetic manipulation," he said. The problem he took up first was that of producing a n oil-<hgesting microbe.

Petroleum is a mixture of many types of hydrocarbons; an individual strain of oil-digesting bacteria can digest only a few of them. What Dr. Chakrabarty did was to combine genes from four different strains of oil-digesting bacteria into a single "superstrain."

How is this possible? Within a bacterial cell, most genes Right: This diagram of bacterial cells shows flow the superbug was developed. In each cell. the genetic information is located in two sites: the large double-stranded ring called the chromosome, the smaller ring called the plasmid. By use of a technique similar to sexual conjugation, plasmids A, B. C and D jiwnfour d!ff'erent strains ofoildigesting bacteria were combined into a single supers/rain ABCD. Below: Discoverer o,/the superbug Dr. Ananda M. Chakrabarty at trork in his laboratory 111 the General Electric Research and Development Center in Schenectady. Nell' York:

(the chemical units of heredity) are strung together in a chromosome, a relatively large double-stranded ring of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). But the cell may also contain a separate, smaller double-stranded ring of DNA called a "plasmid" (see sketch).

At GE ("some of us like to think that it stands for genetic engineering!" says Dr. Chakrabarty), the Indian scientist discovered that hydrocarbon plasmids could be transmitted between related organisms, in a process resembling sexual conjugation. He also found that with the right combination of time, temperature and nutrients, he could transmit more than one foreign" plasmid into an organism. Thus a single organism was developed with four plasmids. This organism initially turned out to be unstable, incapable of reproduction. After a series of experiments. Dr. Chakrabarty decided to expose the microbe to ultraviolet light. The trick worked: Genes on the four plasmids broke and combined to form a new supermicrobe. This could survive and reproduce like all natural microbes; more important, it could digest most petroleum hydrocarbons.

Dr. Chakrabarty was awarded a patent for the production of the supermicrobe. He was also given a grant by the U.S. National Science Foundation to improve his creation .

The creator of the superbug seems more excited about his current research-on devising new microbes that will nullify a number of environmental pollutants. Their chemical names are jaw-twisting: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and chlorinated hydrocarbons. These pollutants are present in many commonly used pesticides, propellants, refrigerants and insulation material. Since they have pervaded the environment for the last 30 years, the pollutants have entered the complex food web that affects the body. Studies have shown that PCBs cause fetus deformation, nervous disorders. and cancer in animals.

Dr. Chakrabarty has almost completerl work on the invention of a PCB-digesting microbe. He is optimistic about the results.

He believes ~hat microbes are the only feasible device-from the standpoint of both cost and ecological sa fety - to control environmental pollutants. Scientists like D r. Gunsalus believe that eventually Dr. Chakrabarty's work may help develop microbial devices to tackle all kinds of environmental pollution.

Dr. Chakrabarty has been in the United States for more than a decade and is now an American citizen. He commends the ¡¡flexibility'' of the American professional system, and cites his own example. '' I have no teaching experience, yet I may soon join the University of Illinois Medical Center as a professor of microbiology and immunology."

0 About the Author: Dilip M. Salwi is on the swjj¡ of Science Reporter, a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi, publication.

PRNATE GROUPS DEFEND CML .RIGHfS

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN RAM JETHMALANl AND DAVID CARL!NER

A distinguished American lawyer, weU known for his defense of human rights, is interviewed by an Indian of similar standing about organizations in the U.S. that fight for the rights of individuals or groups in the law courts and other forums.

JETHMALANI: David, would you mind giving us a brief survey ()[human rights action groups in the United States, what kind ()[ causes they normally espouse, and how is it that they manage to secure a legal standing before your courts ?

CARLINER: On the question of legal standing, the answer is that persons who bring litigation have a basic interest in the cause of action. The judiciary determination of this question varies from time to time, but in most cases a person who has a grievance can establish a standing. Probably the most significant decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent history was the celebrated case in which segregated school systems for white persons and black persons in the United States were held to be unconstitutional.

That law suit was brought on behalf of black schoolchildren and their parents by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and its legal counterpart. There is no question whatever that they had legal standing, because these black children were affected by the segregated school system.

A few years later, a major legal decision was rendered by the Supreme Court in a case brought by parents of children in the New York school system challenging the practice of reading the Protestant denominational prayer, the Lord's Prayer, at the beginning of the school day in each school in the city of New York.

As you know, of course, we have a multireligious society in which there are Catholics, Protestants of many denominations, Jews, an increasing number of Muslims. Sikhs, Hindus, Confucians, Shintoists and many other denominations from all over the world. The fundamental Ia w provides that there shall be no establishment of any particular church or religion in the United States. So the schoolchildren who are forced to listen to

a Protestant prayer had standing to challenge this type of action. We also have much litigation involving the rights of aliens in the United States. If an alien is able to establish that any governmental policy has an effect upon his rights, the courts will recognize his standing.

We in India follow the British rule; the person in whom the cause of action is vested must himse(f approach the courts for relief Nongovernmental organizations and voluntary bodies might finance the litigation or even prosecute it. But the formal party to the litigation is the person who is primarily affected by a legal grievance. Do you think that that rule has any particular advantages as compared to yours?

We have the same rule as you. But we also have something known as a class action. Obviously, if a Jaw suit is brought on behalf of a child in a public school to complain about particular conduct by the government, by the time the court would hear and decide the matter, the child may have graduated from school and the court will presumably no longer have the power to decide his case. But if it's a class action, it's brought on behalf of all persons similarly situated , and even if the individual may no longer be in the class, the class of persons can still maintain the suit through other individuals.

Besides the National Association for the Advancement of the Rights of Colored People, are there other such organizations with whose working you are familiar?

Yes, there are many. For instance, there is an organization called NOW (the National Organization of Women), a really militant organization which asserts the equality of women. There is an organization known as the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund , which has brought litigation on behalf of Americans of Mexican origin, people called Chicanos.

The American Civil Liberties Union deals with issues in many different areas affecting civil liberties and not involving any particular group. T his organization, of which I am general counsel, brings litigation on behalf of a variety of different issues. Freedom of speech is a very important issue, of course. Although our constitution provides for freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, we have many violations of it by judges who behave in an arbitrary way.

In the .field of freedom of speech, for

example, could you tell us what contribution the American Civil Liberties Union has made?

We have had many cases in our history involving freedom of speech. One of the historic cases which the American Civil Liberties Union was involved in was the right of freedom of speech for professors and teachers. In the state of Tennessee in the early 1920s, the law forbade the teaching of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. [n the school system the teachers were required to teach the Biblical story of creation rather than the scientific history of the development of mankind and life on earth. A man by the name of Scopes was prosecuted for violating the state law of Tennessee on this. This was a historic trial in the United States. There were two nationally famous lawyers who handled those cases. One was Clarence Darrow, who was a celebrated defense lawyer. The other one, Williams Jennings Bryan , had been a candidate for the Presidency in the United States. Well, this was a case supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Another historic case was over the Pentagon Papers, in which government documents describing the involvement of the United States in the Vietnamese war were released to The New York Times and to the Washington Post. The action was brought by the U.S. Government to gain an injunction prohibiting the two newspapers from printing this information. The cases were defended by the newspapers. However, the Ameri can Civil Liberties Union and other organizations interested in freedom of press developed legal materials and legal arguments in support of these rights.

Is there another side of the coin? For example, do you know of any organization which espouse causes that , in your personal opinion, would not be in consonance with public good and which you would oppose?

We in the American Civil Liberties Union do not favor prohibiting anyone or even discouraging anyone from challenging another person's view of public good.

One of the most controversial issues to have emerged in the United States in the last year or two rose in the city called Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. It happens that many persons of Jewish religion who had been victims of the Nazi holocaust and persecution of the Jews have settled there. These people had come to the United States as refugees.

The American Nazi Party- a su pporter SPAN MAY 1979

:IVIL RIGHTS co111inued

The battle of human rights is never won. It has to be fought over and over again. Each generation must make its own fight, and it's only by making a continuous fight with dedication to the fundamental principles that we can be sure that human liberty will prevail. of Hitler- is allowed to function in the United States. They don't run for office, but they hold public meetings, publish newspapers and so on. They decided to have a parade in Skokie carrying signs like " D eath to the Jews," "Hitler was right." "They should have killed all the Jews." This was very provocative and very ofTensive. Not only Jewish people but everybody with a sense of decency was opposed to it. An attempt was made by various organizations to deny the Nazis the right to have a march. Now. the American Civil Liberties Union believes in free speech, even speech that we disagree with. It 's easy enough to have free speech if you agree with the person. because you like to hear people agree with you. The American Civil Liberties Union believes that even the most despicable speech should have the right to be heard.

Are you one of those 1rho believe that the rig/us created by the First Amendment are 110t subject to any comrol whatsoe1•er?

I'm asking you this question because it's of tremendou:> relevance to us in this country. Under the Indian Constitution all freedoms are subject to "reasonable restrictions." and the reasonableness of the restrictions, of course, has to be decided by the courts and not by the legislature itself That would render the fundamental right of no use whatsoever. But do you concede that in theory the First Amendment rights must be subject to some limitations?

Well, in theory I would say no, they shou ld not be subject to li mi tations.

There should be no preventive action to deny a person a right to speak, in advance.

The illustration used frequently is the famous quotation from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell H olmes: People have a right of free speech, but they don't have the right to shout "fire" in a theater.

I think that phrase has been quoted too often, too glibly, without analysis. l do not think that a theater owner can deny a person the right of admission to a theater because he thinks this man is going to shout "fire" in his theater. I think if a person shouts "fire" in a theater, he may

16

SPAN MAY 1979

be punished afterward if his speech ha s had the effect of causing some sort of harm to the people. But if he shouts "fire·· in a theater and it happens that there is a fire in the theater, then he is to be commended for saving people's lives. If he shouts " fire " in a theater and there is no fire and people laugh at him, then it 's a harmless prank. It may not be a good thing to do, but I do not know that he should be punished for conduct which in itself was harmless.

Let me give an illustration of an episode that took place in Washington, D .C., during the Vietnamese war. We had hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in Washington against the U.S. Government in opposition to an unpopular war and one that became unpopular because we had the right of free speech to criticize it. In one of the demonstrations a young man said that he would refuse to serve in the Army in event he was drafted. But if he was compelled to serve in the Army, the first thing he was going to do was to take his gun and shoot the President. Well, that's a very provocative statement to make.

T he man was arrested for inciting to violence, for making threats against the President of the United States. But at the trial, the court held that he had simply used a rhetorical form of speech. that he was not in the Army and did not have a gun. It was some future conduct that he was talking about. ln this context, he wc1s not a real threat against the President of the United States nor was his act an incitement to the people in the audience to go and do damage to the President.

States there has developed an institution known as the foundation.

One of the most famous world foundations is the Rockefeller Foundation, which was established by John D. Rockefeller many years ago. It has helped to finance such things as medical a nd educational research. Then there is the Ford Foundation set up by the Henry Ford family.

Foundations frequently give large sums of money to organizations that have a public interest.

For example, one of the major issues in the United States is the right of people in mental institutions to have adequate treatment. Sadly and rather tragically, when a person becomes mentally ill he is often put into a hospital and neglected. There arc not enough psychiatrists to take care of all the mental patients, and they often just stay there and vegetate.

Sometime ago, the American Civil Liberties Union, jointly with the American Psychiatrists Society, and others brought litigation to assert the right of a person in a hospital to be treated as well as to be housed there. This type of litigation is often financed by a foundation.

Tell me, does the Government of the United States or any of the state govemmenrs finance any of these organi-::arions which occasionally get into a stare of legal judicial conflict with the government itself?

Not as a general rule. This became a rather controversial issue in the 1960s.

As part of the antipoverty program.

President John F. Kennedy, and later President Lyndon B. Johnson, developed organizations that poor people could participate in: where they could make Now tell me, how are organizations plans and decisions on such things as like the American Civil Liberties Union housing and food. financed? They must need money to pursue One of the agencies set up at this time these causes. w.1s an Office of Legal Opportunity, Basically, their money comes from which funded neighborhood legal organiindividual members. The American Civil zations in different cities of the United Liberties Union has a membership fee. States that would provide legal assistance Among the members there are people of to the poor. T hese neighborhood organimodest means who give a limited amount zations would challenge laws that disof money; but frequently there are people criminated on behalf of landlords- such of substantial means who give more, and as, for example, laws permitting people help to carry on the activities. Besides. to be evicted easily from their houses for because of the tax laws of the United nonpayment of rent. They would challenge

the administration of welfare programs by the government. Now these organiZLltions became rather controversial, because some members of Congress did not like to see the laws they were adopting being challenged by lawyers who were paid for by the U.S. Govemment.

I wanted to ask you something more which is of really great interest in this country. Does the First Amendment right To lobby include the right to have a Congressman or a Senator on your payroll?

This has to do with the integrity of the Congressman. No, people would not have that right. Of course, you have the right to speak to the Congressman; but the right to hire him is in a sense the right to have him not as a public servant but as a private servant as well. So no Congressman, no Senator, would do anything so gross as to be employed by a private employer. However, the situation becomes complicated when persons with private economic interests give substantial contributions to persons who are running for office.

There bas been an attempt to limit the amount of money that persons can give in an election campaign to candidates for office. It's a very mixed and confused situation. There are those who believe that the right to freedom of speech includes also the right to give whatever money you want to a candidate for office. The right to run for office means very little in the United States if you cannot buy time on radio and television broadcasting networks that are privately owned and which give a limjted amount of free time.

If you have the righT to buy space on a cinema screen or television time, I suppose it should extend logically to buying a speaker at the Congress.

This is a difficult area. It's muddy, because obviously if an organization employs, gives a substantial contribution to a person running for office, it is assumed that that person will not support anything that does not endorse the contributor's point of view.

But there is a requirement that any contribution made to a political candidate must be publicly disclosed. The idea is that if someone is running for office and is getting all of his financial contributions from a particular group of people, the voters will realize t hat he is being sponsored by them.

Apart Fom any political disapprobation that it might invite or provoke, are there any other civil or criminal remedies available against a member ofthe legislature, who,for example, rakes money to do something in his character ofa legislator?

There is a prohibition against that in law- otherwise the integrity of the legislature would be violated. In the last Congress two Congressmen were indicted.

Tell me, these pressure groups, do they occa:sionally have to approach some of the judicial and political organs created by the United Nations for redress a./the l'ery same grieFGI/Ces 1rhich they normally ventilate before domestic tribunals?

They do frequently. There is, as you know, a body of nongovernmental organizations that has access to the United Nations. These groups do appear before the United Nations agencies to make representations. Sometimes they do it on subjects of American domestic concern.

But more usually they intervene on intemational human rights issues. For example, the territory of Puerto Rico is an island which the United States acquired as a result of a treaty between the United States and Spain and not between the United States and the people of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States. There are people in Puerto Rico who believe that it should be an independent state and not a part of the United States. In the United Stales there have been commissions established to determine whether Puerto Rico should become independent. or have commonwealth status, or be a state in the United States. Those who demand independence for Puerto Rico believe these processes are too slow, and they have chosen logo before the United Nations agencies to criticize the United States for what they regard as its imperialistic role.

I personally have participated in hearings before the U.S. Congress. As you may know, the support for making human rights a tenet of American foreign policy did not originate with President Carter.

He has espoused it and he has made it a cardinal thesis of American foreign policy now, but even before President Carter there were members of the United States Congress, like Congressmen Donald Frazier of Minnesota, who sought to use the legislative power of the U.S. Congress to deny economic and military assistance to any foreign government that denied

human rights to its people. And so lawyers and other people have appeared before Congressional committees to urge that no aid be given to a certain foreign government. During the Emergency in India, persons from India appeared before the U.S. Congress to urge that no assistance be given to India at this period.

I was one of them. Finally David, is there anything you would like to suggest to lovers of democracy in India who do not wish to see the recurrence of what happened to us a couple o.l years ago? Have you any suggest ion or a word ofadvice?

Well, I think that the people of India don't need any advice from me on this, because they have established a constitution which provides the same basic rights that we in the United States have provided.

Human rights are not unique to the American experience; it is a concept that mankind all over the world espouses. The only statement that I can make- and it's not as an American with any particular experience, but as a fellow human beingwas made by one of our sage political and legal leaders: The battle for human rights is never won. 1t has to be fought over and over again . Each generation must make its own fight, and it's only by making a continuous fight with dedication to the fundamental principles that we can be sure that human liberty will prevail.

0

Ram Jethmalani (left ) is a member of Lok Sabha. A practicing lawyer. he was a membl!r of lmernational Bar Association (1966). and chairman o.f &1r Council oj India in 1970.

He has published two books: Conflict of Laws and Justice Soviet Style.

David Carliner ( right) is a Washington-based lawyer who has served as a consultant to 1he U.S. Civil Rights Commission. He is presen1ly a legal adviser 10 the United Na1ions Association with regard to immigration policy, refugees and human rights. He is a founding member of rile Washington Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is also a member p.f the nalional advisory council of the U.S. affiliale of Amnesty International.

SPAN MAY 1979

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TRAVELING EXHIBITS GALORE

by BENJAMIN FORGEY

The phenomenal increase in the number and variety of traveling exhibitions, on subjects ranging from the history of the ready-made clothing industry in the United States to the rich, colorful costumes of India, reflects American interest in the arts of their own country as well as those of other nations.

Indian art and culture was on display in different parts of America last ye.ar in three traveling exhibits. Some American cities were being treated to "Sringar," a kaleidoscopic display of Indian costumes. There were silk brocades from Varanasi, a Moghul choga embroidered in gold, bright peasant ghagras, bridal dresses, a Naga warrior's outfit, dance costumes, a variety of turbans, ceremonial dresses of the royal families .. . and much more.

At the same time some other American cities were showing "Visions of Courtly India," W.G. Archer's collection of Pahari miniatures, enchanting paintings of feudal India from the Punjab hills which Archer had first been fascinated by as a British civil servant in India.

Archer kept up his interest as a collector and Keeper of the

Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Elsewhere, Americans were viewing another aspect oflndian art-"Room for Wonder," 100 small watercolor or gouache paintings from late-18th to mid-19th century India, showing rulers (including one 1845 portrait of Queen Victoria) and holy men, market scenes and plant and animal life.

The simultaneous presentation of three diverse aspects of Indian art, society and history highlights the increasing importance of museum exhibitions as mediums of worldwide cultural exchange. The most spectacular example of this, and probably in terms of sheer drawing power the most popular exhibition ever to tour the United States, is "Treasures of Tutankhamen," a show of the art and artifacts buried with

The most inventive approach to the temporary exhibition is the Cookbook, a manual put out by The Exploratorium, a science and technology museum in San Francisco. The Explort;ztorium Cookbook contains doit-yourself instructions on how to build 82 of some 400 displays, like this " Distorted Room'' at left.

18

SPAN MAY 1979

the fabled " Boy Pharaoh" of Egypt some 3,000 years ago and uncovered by archaeologists only in this century.

These exhibitions, however, are but a tiny fraction of the total number of temporary, traveling shows on view at any one time in the United States.

There are other examples to describe the tremendous expansion of interest in aU the arts that has taken place in recent years in the United Statesjournalists do not exaggerate when they caJI it a "cultural explosion"- but the phenomenal increase in traveling exhibitions is one of the more telling indexes of this great shift in popular attention.

Complete statistics on the number of such shows are impossible to come by because of the number of organizations involved. The American Association of Museums lists more than 5,000 institutions in its directory. from vast agglomerations such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to county historical societies that operate in a corner of the local library. In the fall of 1977 at a conference of "National Travel ing Exhibition Organizations" in Washington, D.C., the conferees reported that they circulated a total of 496 exhibitions in one year, and that these shows were seen in a total of 1,983 places, ranging from the great museums to universities to municipal art centers to banks and corporate

-ll!f....................... . .

-¡--..

U6 _ _ _ _

,_.~

~-

offices to shopping centers to, in a singular instance, an amusement park. These figures do not include the large number of significant exhibitions organized independently by museums or by many regional exhibition organizations.

The phenomenon of the traveling exhibition dates almost entirely from the end of World War II, although its roots may be traced back to the early years of the 20th century. The first American art museums were established in cities along the eastern seaboard more than 100 years ago; by the first decade of tllis century most large American cities could boast of their own museums.

From the very beginning,

City and several research branches) signals the real beginning of the postwar boom in traveling exhibitions. It also signals a significant shift in the type and character of the exhibitions, because the Institution consists not only ofart museums, but also of museums devoted to the sciences and to history. The unofficial motto of the Smithsonian's exhibition service is "An Exhibition for Everyone."

Today there is a vast range of exhibitions in size, cost and subject matter. At the upper reaches in size and cost are shows such as "Pompeii- A.D. 79," an assortment of more than 300 objects from the unfottunate Roman town that was obliterated 1,900 years ago by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. " Pompeii," which opened last spring at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, cost the museum more than $500,000, with some financial help from the Federal Government and a private corporation. At the other end of the spectrum are shows such as "Suiting Every-

one/' a SITES show tracing

art was regarded as a force for good in a democratic society and as a tool for education and moral uplift. In the early decades, however, this was expressed somewhat passively; in mere contact with art, usually interpreted, at that time, as contact with the so-called " masterpieces" of the classical past and the European Renaissance-most American museums were then full of copies of Greek statues and similar exhibits.

The American Federation of Arts (AFA) was founded in 1909. The first organization devoted exclusively to the business of traveling exhibitions, its aim was to spread the message of art from the large urban

centers, "to bring art to the hinterland," in the words of Mrs. John Pope, a former AFA director. In a similar spirit, though with a different message, the young Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), founded in 1929, started its own traveling exhibition service in 1932. MOMA 's purpose was to spread the ideas of avant-garde 20th-century art, both European and American, outside the confines of New York City, the art capital.

In the postwar period the number of exhibitions circulated by the American Federation of Arts steadily grew, and gradually so did the number of groups organizing, financing, designing and shipping exhibits from place to place across the

An unusual traveling show is "Suiting Everyone" that traces the development of the ready-made clothing industry in America. Here, a panel detail from the exhibit conveys the flavor of the period.

United States. The Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), today the largest organization of its kind, was founded in 1952 in order to further utilize the vast collections and scholarly expertise of the Smithsonian, an unusual assembly of museums in Washington, D.C. The entry into the field of the giant Smithsonian (which now consists of 11 museums in Washington, one in New York

the development of the readymade clothing industry in the United States that costs each of, its clients a mere $175. An inventive new approach to the temporary exhibition is the Exploratorium Cookbook, a manual put out by the unusual participatory museum of science and technology in San Francisco, The Exploratorium. The Cookbook contains detailed do-it-yourself instructions on how to build 82 of the some 400 displays in the museum (see "Distorted Room" on page 18).

The three Indian shows mentioned earlier are interesting examples of the variety of sponsorship that can go into a traveling exhibition. ' 'Sringar'' was aided by Air-India (which commissioned designer Roshan Kalapesi to seek out the costumes), designed by the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. and circulated in the United States by SITES. "Visions of Courtly India," the Archer collection of Pahari

SPAN M~Y 1979

TRA YEUNG EXHIBITS continued

The philosophy behind temporary traveling exhibitions is to make art available everywhere-from the large urban centers to the hinterland. If people cannot visit museums, let museums visit them. mimatures, was supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and a private philanthropic foundation and circulated to 10 art museums from coast to coast by the International Exhibitions Foundation, a private organization headed by Mrs. Pope. "Room for Wonder," the survey show of 19th-century paintings, was conceived by a Harvard University fine arts lecturer. It was selected from various public and private collections and ci rculated by the AFA. The dramatic increase in number and change in character of exhibitions resulted About the Author: Benjamin Forgey is an art and architecture critic for

The Washington (D.C.) Star.

in a boom in the construction of a variety of museums and exhibition halls in the United States during the 1960s. At the same time, explains Dr. Joshua Taylor, the scholardirector of the Smithsonian's National Collection of Fine Arts, "the age of the great collections was coming to a close.''

There was a corresponding surge in museum attendance, based to some degree upon a change in popular attitudes toward museums.

Dennis Gould, director of SITES, observes, "It used to be, 'Oh, yes, I've been to the museumsix years ago.' Now people go to museums all the time, for all sorts of reasons. It's just become a much more accepted, regular thing." tvfuseums themselves

have both reacted to and stimulated this new demand with active education programs, film showings, lectures, demonstrations and, most of all, temporary exhibitions.

This new emphasis upon temporary exhibitions- which, as Dr. Taylor observes, "is a way of borrowing what you do not own''-is reflected even in the design of many new museums. Most of the older museums in the United States are neoclassical temples with a sequence of rooms devoted to the orderl y presentation of permanent collections with, perhaps, a room or two set aside for temporary shows ("loan shows," they used to be called). Many newer museums are just the opposite: large,

flexible spaces made specifically to encourage a constantly changing series of exhibitions. The most spectacular example of this is the new East Wing Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, with 6,975 square meters made available for temporary exhibits.

The Federal Government has actively encouraged this trend. It ensured the survival of the huge international loan exhibitions, such as 'Tutankhamen" or " Pompeii," by agreeing to indemnify the objects in such exhibitions up to a limit of $50 million. More important, it has developed various programs to support traveling exhibitions directly. The National Endowment for the Arts, for instance, created a program of aid to exhibitions in 1971. and in fiscal year 1978 this program supported a total of 720 exhibitions with $2.8 million.

It is, indeed, almost bewildering to contemplate the number and variety of exhibitions on view at any one day somewhere in the United States-they range from roller coasters to Old Master 9rawings, from toys to mosaics to moon rocks to medieval wood carvings. It is exciting to know that the musty old museums have adapted to an age of technology and television and are still doing what museums do best: bringing people into direct contact with the thing itself, whatever that 0 thing may be.

Lefr: Preside11l Carter views "Treasures oj Turankhamen," one of the most popular exhibitions ever to travelrhe United States. The show is made up of 1he art and artifacts buried with the .fabled .. Boy Pharaoh" of Egypt 3,000 years ago. and excavated only in this century.

20

SPAN MAY 1979

One ofthe exhibits on India that recemly toured a number of cities in the United States was "Visions of Courtly India," an extraordinary show of Pahari miniatures,from the collection of W.G. Archer.

At/eft is "Sohini Crossing the River," an eJ«Jmple of Pahari pailllings, which are kno1m for their delicate line and subtle color.

Most colorful of the Indian shows,

"Sringar'' gave Americans ( bottom. left) a glimpse of the ric/mess of India's traditional costumes like this gold-embroidered derail from a dress ( bottom) . Below, left, is a ·'Sringar" poster. The exhibit was aided by Air•lndia,from whose collection the show was made. It included a few items besides costumes, like this exquisitely carved brass matka (below. right).

A Pageant of

Indian Costumes

... ..

An .., , ,.

Collection

SPAN MAY 1979

CLEANING UP

by JOHN F. COPPOLA

Steel gave Pittsburgh prosperity-and pollution.

But with the citizens' efforts, the Smoky City (above) has become Renaissance City (right).

Splendid new buildings and colorful neighborhoods attest to Pittsburgh's environmentoriented progress.

T

here is nothing along the drive from the airport to prepare a visitor for the sight ahead. After a 22-kilometer trip through undistinguished suburban sprawl, you plunge into the Fort Pitt Tunnel and emerge to see the city of Pittsburgh dazzlingly arrayed on the wedge formed where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers merge to create the Ohio River.

The eye moves quickly, darting from the Three Rivers Stadium, where the city's professional baseball and football teams play, to Fort Pitt itself, a Colonial-era fort built in 1759 on a site surveyed by George Washington. And finall y the eye settles on the conglomeration of new buildings sheathed in aluminum and steel

22

that make up the Golden Triangle of this northeastern U.S. city.

But the most impressive thing about Pittsburgh can't be seen at all. Gone is the heavy, dense smoke that gave Pittsburgh an undesirable- and not quite forgotten reputation as the "Smoky City." Instead, visibility now stretches for kilometers, and the eye can take in not only the downtown area, but distant neighborhoods of the city as well. " We still have some major problem areas, particularly where we have our heaviest concentration of steel industry," says Ronald J. Chlebosk:i , deputy director of Allegheny County's Bureau of Air Pollution Control, "but in terms of air quality, overall, there have been significant improvements.'' .

Now, if it seems unusual to cite something nonexistent as a city's most notable feature, it helps to remember what Pittsburgh used to be like.

During the 19th century, Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County became the focal point of the American steel industry. This city in the southwestern corner of the State of Pennsylvania produced half the steel and coke manufactured in the United States. But Pittsburgh paid heavily for its industrial success: Dark clouds of smoke hovered over the city, swathing it in blackness so that street lights often had to be turned on

at noon. Businessmen habitually brought a clean shirt to work to change at midday.

Pittsburgh was rapidly becoming a casualty of industrial development when civic leaders, with strong backing from the voters and the press. launched a smokecontrol campaign in the late 1940s. By 1946, industry was required to stop using the cheap but dirty soft coal in favor of cleaner fuel sources. A year later, homeowners had to make a similar conversion. lt was a large and expensive undertaking. Pittsburgh was a major industrial center; more boats plied its rivers than used the Panama Canal , and it was home to over half a million people. For industrial concerns like Jones & Laughlin, one of the nation 's largest steel companies, smoke control â&#x20AC;˘Âˇtook a substantial change in management thinking-that air quality control had to become a management objective," says David H . Miller, general manager for environmental control. ''And it took a lot of money."

But the result was startling. In a decade, over 90 per cent of the smoke had disappeared from Pittsburgh's skies. Without smoke control this modern metropolis, with its shining skyscrapers, wouldn't exist.

RiKIII : The Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pilfsburgh is symbolic ofthe new Pittsburgh. Today the university, not the steel mills, is the city's largest employer.

After many years during which there had been no new construction in downtown Pittsburgh. the smoke control program convinced the Equitable Life Assurance Society to finance the nation's first privately funded urban renewal project. Eventually carrying a S 150 million price tag, Equitable's Gateway Center an office-hotel-apartment complexsounded the starting gun in the renovation of downtown Pittsburgh. New buildings were thrust upward. including the 30-story Alcoa Building, the country's first aluminum-sheathed skyscraper, and the 64story U.S. Steel Building, the tallest between New York and Chicago. Older buildings were refurbished, among them a movie theater that became the stately Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Amidst all that activity. Pittsburghers began to talk of their "Renaissance City."'

The building boom eventually subsided. but not before the city had a downtown area that combined the old and new. historic Fort Pitt Park with the domed Civic Arena, in the heart of the city. Day and night. Pittsburgh ¡s Golden Triangle is thronged with residents and tourists sampling its restaurants, stores and parks.

But Pittsburgh is much more than just the Triangle. The heartbeat of the city is, in many ways, felt most strongly in neighborhoods with colorful names like Squirrel Hill. Many of these areas retain the ethnic flavor of the immigrant groups that settled them. And that's not surprising. Fully one quarter of Pittsburgh 's more than 500,000 residents are foreign born or the children of immigrants.

A not her 20 per cent are black.

Much has changed, however. in this "new" Pittsburgh. Steers pre-eminence has receded, and, in fact. the largest single employer in the city is now the University of Pittsburgh. The university's towering Cathedral of Learning dominates the Oakland neighborhood and may be the symbol of Pittsburgh today. as the steel mills once were. Nonetheless. even if steel no longer dominates, one worker in ten is employed in that industry.

And steel production still poses an air pollution problem for Pittsburgh .

"Pittsburgh is a steel center." says ex-mayor. Thomas Foerster, who as a county commjssioner and state representative was a leader in getting the pollution control laws enacted. ¡'Some of the di fficultics we've had in he! ping to clean up the pollutants coming from steel have national import. Steel has been the biggest single source of pollution that we have been grappling with. and some of the reasons for the delays in steel industry compliance have been because the commit-

CLEANING UP PITTSBURGH cominued

ments they make here, they have to carry through with all over the country."

Following the success of their smokecontrol program, P ittsburgh and Allegheny County began tackling other air-pollution problems. They began in the 1960s with a voluntary compliance program and followed it up a decade later with some of America 's toughest antipollution laws. Here again, the results have been notable. Most major air pollutants- particulates, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide.:_ have been cut by one-half.

For industry, compliance has meant devising new methods of cleaning up their operations. "In the period preceding 1970," according to J&L's Miller, "there was no proven technology for cleaning up the coke ovens [which constituted the biggest and most complex air-pollution problem in the region], and we've been required to develop it. That was a major undertaking, which. has been pretty successful. That stage was a big advance,

but more recently we've had to go further.

We' re just now starting up a phase of a plan to remove sulfu r from the coke-oven gas. It's a $12 million undertaking."

Pittsburgh still has air-pollution problems. In late 1975, a hot-air inversion trapped stagnant air over the city for a prolonged period and sent the air quality plummeting. But the county's response to that crisis showed just how seriously it took pollution control: An air-pollution emergency was declared, and as many as 50 large industrial plants were forced to curtail operations. U.S. Steel was ordered to switch from coal to cleaner natural gas.

If Pittsburgh doesn't have its air pollution totally controlled yet, it's not for lack of trying. A sophisticated monitoring system keeps check on air-pollution levels at 55 points throughout Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. Seven of these monitoring stations are linked to a computer that provides the Bureau of Air Pollution Control with an hourly updating of the air quality. This information is available

to the public via a special telephone number and is printed daily in the newspapers.

Despite some public concern that environmental control might be inhibiting a sluggish local economy, Chleboski n otes that " public support has been excellent. [ think that's probably one of the real keys to the success of air-pollution control here. " Pitts burghers remain vitally concerned about pollution control - and, considering the impact it has had on their city, that's no surprise.

This concern is one of Pittsburgh's most notable exports. Inevitably, Pittsburgh will be remembered as a producer of steel, but it may be more important that it has also produced an example of how an industrial city can clean up its environment with a minimum of economic disruption.

0 About the Author: Jolv1 F. Coppola is an artist as well as a writer. Although his chief interest is in the fine arts, he is equally at home with such subjects as environmental pollution.

Clockwise from above: Pittsburgh'sfootball team plays at the Three Rivers Stadium. The 30-story Alcoa Building, America's first aluminum-sheathed skyscraper.

Children frolic in the fountain in Point Park.

Pittsburgh at night the steel mills stand out in a panoramic shot; the city is still a steel center, but without most of the earlier pollution problems.

U

ncannily resembling a rocket, the giant rotary kiln dwarfs everything else at the plant. Not so much by reason of its size- there are other equally big machines but because of the sheer power it embodies. One hundred and twenty feet long and eight feet in diameter, the cylindrical oil-fired furnace. its exterior stained with carbon soot, rotates gently and silently.

Inside rages a ball of fire, whose intensity is felt through a tiny. gaping hole as it is opened for a few fleeting seconds. The temperature is more than 2,000 degrees F. T he mighty kiln is the heart of lndia Carbon's operations at Gauhati, Assam; it calcines raw petroleum coke (RPC).

A black, brittle. shiny substance, RPC is a by-product from the distillation of crude petroleum oil. Until calcined. when it becomes one of the most sought after industrial raw materials, RPC is of little commercial consequence. In fact. prior to 1962. when commercial petroleum coke calcination technology had not arrived in India, it was, at best. being used as a fuel in homes. furnaces and cement kilns. It was then selling at a mere R~. 10-20 per ton. This once lowly waste product now commands a price of Rs. 1.100 or more per ton-thanks to the import of calcination technology.

"Calcination." as described by H .L. Aggarwal, chief executive of I ndia Carbon's Gauhati plant, "is devolatilization and densification of raw petroleum coke under controlled atmospheric conditions. Stated simply, it is a process of purification at very high temperatures in the absence of air, or very little air."

The value of calcined petroleum coke (CPC) lies in its inherent properties, which differ markedly from raw petroleum coke. also called green coke. With a carbon content of 99.5 per cent or better, C PC. one of the purest forms of carbon, second only to diamond, acquires such useful and versatile characteristics as refractoriness, inertness to a large range of reagents and, most

important, high conductivity of heat and electricity. It is as an electrical conductor, however, that calcined petroleum coke is treasu red the world over; its chief application is in the fo rm of electrodes, which are used in a large number of industries.

Take. for instance. the dry battery cell that lights up a torch and turns on a transistor radio. T he carbon rod in the cell is an electrode that serves as either of the two terminals, called cathode (+)and anode ( - ), of the cell's electrically conducting medium. The main constituent of this carbon rod, usually called the midget electrode, is calcined petroleum coke.

Or, take the cinema arc carbon, used for projecting movies on the screen. Often refer red to as a man-made miracle, these pencil-like carbons (one positive and one negative), when burned. produce a white light that enlarges the tiny film images as much as 300.000 times. But for CPC, the miracle of motion pictures probably would not have been possible. For, again, it is a basic raw material in the manufacture of cinema arc carbons.

T hese are but two examples of calcined coke's versatility.

CPC is also a basic raw material for the production of synthetic graphite electrodes used in steel arc furnaces and caustic sodachlorine cells. Carbon anodes used for transmitting electric current in calcium carbide. and ferroalloy furnaces are also made of calcined coke.

But the biggest use of CPC is in the production of aluminum, a metal that touches our lives in more ways than one can imagine.

The pressure cooker and other utensils at home a re made of it.

Containers of numerous domestic goods, like tooth paste, are made or it. The shiny wrapper enclosing medicine pills is of aluminum foil. T he electric cable that brings light to the home is probably made of it. One could multiply the list no end. To produce one ton of aluminum metal, as much as 0.45 ton of calcined coke, in the form.ofca.rbon anodes, is co umed. ~

TEXT BY KRJSHAN GABRANI PHOTOGRAPHS BY AV INASH PASR!CHA

A joint Indo-American venture, India Carbon at Gauhati, Assam, produces calcined petroleum coke, a vita] industrial raw material, from raw petroleum coke, a residue from the distillation of crude.

26

SPAN MAY 1979

Although CPC is a vital industrial raw material, India did not have any calcination plant until 1962. All the requirements of calcined petroleum coke for the Indian industry, until then, were being met through imports, mainly from the United States. costing the country large sums of foreign exchange yearly.

"The obvious answer was to import calcination technology, and produce CPC here at home," notes B. Himatsingka, managing director oflndia Carbon Limited. "And that's exactly what we did. India Carbon entered into a collaborative agreement with Great Lakes Carbon Corporcttion of the United States in 1961 to manufacture CPC at Gauhati. The choice of Gauhati was natural. because Indian Oil Corporation was then setting up a refinery there from which we could buy the bulk of our RPC requirements."

But why Great Lakes Carbon Corporation (GLCC)? "Simple.

We studied the international calcination industry, and discovered that they were the best." GLCC provided the technical knowhow, machinery, cash, and sent their chief engineer to assist in setting up the plant and training its personnel. GLCC holds 37 percent oft he equity. The Himatsingkas own another 30 per cent,

and the rest is held by the public. " In fact, Great Lakes Carbon Corporation wasn't very keen on working with us," reminisces Himatsingka. "This wa~ mainly because what we were contemplating was a very small unit with an annual capacity of 50,000 tons of calcined petroleum coke, whereas they were and are accustomed to operating in millions of tons. In the course of our discussions with them," the mana~ing director recalls, "they asked me a simple. straight question: 'Mr. Himatsingka. give us one good reason why we should collaborate with you.' To trus. I gave an equally plain. businessman's reply: 'This i~ the only chance for you to come to India . If you don't. we will go to the second best, even the

=>UITING WASTE TO USE cominued

A versatile raw material, calcined petroleum coke is used in the manufacture of such products as dry battery cells, cinema arc carbons and aluminum metal. third best. But, somehow, we'll meet the requirements of calcined petroleum coke.' That decided it.,. ''Our pattnership deed." he continues, ''is essentially an agreement offaith.ll is probably theshortesteverwritten between two companies- less than 20 lines, and drawn without the assistance of any solicitors or lawyers. And our relationsrups are so cordial that we rarely write to each other except when we ha vc to exchange information on some recent developments in calcination technology, or exchange the results of our research."

Is it still a one-way flow of technical information- from GLCC to India Carbon? " No, certainly not," Himatsingka says. "Although we still look to Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, which is located in New York, for advice and guidance if there are any problems, India Carbon has carried out a number of basic research and development projects that have been highly appreciated by our American partners. India Carbon has even refined the technology to suit our needs and conditions. " 1mport of technology is very important for a developing country like ours. It acts as a catalyst. Look at us. T here are several plants producing calcined coke in India today. Besides, the availability of indigenous CPC bas saved the country crores of rupees in foreign exchange, and has led to the logical development of a number of carbon industries producing items such as cinema arc carbons, which used to be imported from abroad.

This is another saving of foreign exchange."

But doesn't India Carbon rerrut dollar dividends to GLCC ?

"Yes, we do.'' H imatsingka answers. " But it is an insignificant fraction of what we were spending when we were importingcalcined coke. The important thing is that they are partners in the company. They have invested their money in it as we have, or as our other shareholders have. As partners, they are as entitled to the dividend, which depends upon the profits we make, as we are. And as partners they also bear the losses if there are any.

That's what happened last year. We were in the red. GLCC accepted the loss. However. we have turned the tide, and hope to make reasonable profits this year as we did in past years. Our annual dividend has averaged 12 per cent."

India Carbon bas come a long way since its formation 18 years ago.ln 1970, as part of its expansion program, the company set up another calcination plant at Budge Budge, near Calcutta.

This was completely designed, engineered and fabricated by its own personnel, and was equipped with Indian machinery.

H owever, its proudest moment came in 1973 when Goa Carbon Limited asked India Carbon to design and build its calcination factory in Goa, and to train the Goa Carbon staff. India Carbon did the job well-and ahead of schedule. " We are now selfsufficient in calcination technology," notes Himatsingka. ''In fact, we have the capability to undertake turnkey projects anywhere in the world."

Leji: A ppnoramic viell' of the India Carbon p/am at Cauhati. Leji, abo1¡e: To keep The environmenT clean, the company installed an air-pollwion comrol system in 1971. Far left, abo1â&#x20AC;˘e: Researchers conduct an experiment at thefactory's research and de1¡elopment laboratory.

Located a few miles on the outskirts ofGauhati in Noonmati, the India Carbon plant is a fascinating place to visit. One's first spontaneous feel ing at entering the factory is of utter disbelief and unreality. Can this be a factory? The plant sits at the foot of a lush green hill; tall. luxurious wild and fruit trees almost obliterate the factory from sight. Many-hued flowers, most prominent of them roses, splash color all a round. A strange aura of quietness surrounds the sprawling plant, spread over many acres and employing some 280 people. There is no screeching and scraping noise of machinery. No purr of lathes cutting through steel. All that one sees is a network of criss-crossing conveyor belts, either feeding the kiln with RPC, to be calcined, or delivering the finished product- CPC- to the storage sheds.

Although calcination takes place within the confines of the furnace, it is not too difficult a process to understand, one thinks.

Here is an oversimplified description of what happens.

Pounded into tiny granules by a massive crusher, conveyor belts carry RPC to the settling chamber atop the kiln. There, it is fed to the furnace at a regulated speed, and heated to temperatures2,000 degrees F. and more-high enough to expel the volatiles and other impurities. As the horizontally inclined kiln rotates, the calcined petroleum coke gradually slides down to the other end of the furnace, where it is collected in another chamber, and cooled by sprays of water. Thence, conveyor belts carry CPC to two huge barnlike sheds for bagging, stitching and then to wagons for shipment to the consumers across the country.

Amidst its sylvan setting, the plant strikes a discordant note. lt is stark black. This is inevitable; after all, it handles carbonsome 100,000 tons of raw petroleum coke and 70,000 tons of calcined coke annually. (To produce one ton of CPC, the requirement of RPC is 1.4 tons.) The floor is littered with carbon.

Every piece of machinery is stained with it.

With all this carbon around, however, the plant's chimneys do not belch out dirty, black soot; what they errut is a white cloud of almost pure steam. This is because of the airpollution control system that India Carbon Limited installed way back in 1971. "Although our research and medical tests have established that carbon is an inert substance and not harmful to human life- or to marine or plant life, for that matterwe set up this device because we feel we have a social responsibility not to pollute the atmosphere," says H.L. Aggarwal. "Of course, we had a selfish reason as well. Before we installed the air pollution control unit, we noticed that some particles of calcined coke were escaping through the crumneys, which was a loss. Now, there is no escape whatever, and that is a gain for the company."

The company's concern for the environment is not restricted to air pollution alone. India Carbon has a nursery with all kinds of flowers, decorative and fruit tree plants. " We plant these at our factory, and also each year during the Vana Mahotsav week, we give them to our employees to plant around their homes," notes Aggarwal.

One leaves India Carbon amazed at what technology has done-transformed a waste product into a raw material that is 0 vital in the life of the nation.

SPAN MAY 1979

29

Let us now praise famous men A RF.C"ONSIDERATION BY PRIAOEVJ

ID the days of America's Great Depression, James Agee, writer and film critic of extraordinary perception, went to poverty-ridden cotton country in Alabama with photographer Walker Evans, some of whose pictures are shown here and on page 33. The object was to do a three-piece serial on how the southern sharecropper lived. The result was the classic work Let U.'i Now Prai.'ie Famo11s Men. On the following pages, Priadevi brings out the passion and sensitivity of the book, places it in the perspective of Agee's other literary writings, and discusses the complex motivations of this unforgettable writer.

LET US

OW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN wntinued

A

the book opens your eye is immediately a rrested by a seq uence of classic documentary photographs. T hey are understated and superbly unequivocal. Their spare, stripped elegancecomes from a keen visual intelligence that obviously respects its subject sufficiently to leave well enough alone. T here arc no captions, no comments. T he camera records a nd we are left to view three sharecropping or small-tenant families.

T hey are '·poor whites." "parriers·· of the Deep South. I t is 1936. The G reat D epression is still with us. And we are in the cotton country of rural Alabama.

Lean as their own lean clapboard shelters in the pitiless light, they stare out of their frames or move about their business in gaunt. t wilit interiors. They are sun-stripped, unsmiling, angular, weather- and work-beaten to the grain.

There is something startling here, something t ha t resists pity-somethi ng stark and memorably beautiful in ways that we have forgotten. Timeless. Bone-deep.

Durably human. Whether in spite of or because of the grime, the struggle and the persistent sour reek of poveny, it would be difficult to say. We have met their kind before. And at each encou nter something in us was subtl y held to question by these a nonymous and fleeting lives.

For we have known the odds that they are always up against. O r were ....

1936: these photographs are silent, still, precise. T hese were the Gudgers, the Woods, and the Ricketts. T hen James Agee's text takes over, presenting the conditions of their survival and the story of their separate and collective lives.

And with words start up all over again the urgent and ungainly sounds, congested, poignant, deeply passionate and passionately poetic, to being a live. This is the power of the book. This is its weakness: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Cracked as a collage, there follows a passage from Lear, a fragment from the lmemationale (with a defensive footnote), a bland scrap. savagely ironical in intent, from a child's elementa ry geography text found in a sharecropper's dwelling and, finally. the '·cast" of characters we may expect to meet: the Gudgers, the Woods and the R icketts. End of Book One. T hen a long tortu red preface. By page 75 we begin to get off the ground. We still have someth ing less than 400 pages to go.

Famous Men is not a comfortable book.

It is angry, anguished, complex. It is easy to see why reviewers grew impatient

32

SPAN MAY 1979

of it whi le the mainstream of American writing moved o n. It is unclassifia ble: neither fiction, poetry, nor good red herring journalism. It is too intense and highly strung for good reportage. Agee himself seems to have been full of mixed feelings about what he was doing and whom he was add ressing. At one point he even thought of presenting the book cheaply covered like a po pular hymnal.

Yet his structuring is as deliberately, a lmost pointlessly complicated, as an obstacle race to deflect or deter the casual reader. There is immediacy. There are passages that a rc shockingly and compellingly beautifu l. Yet the writing su rfers and halts with self-consciousness. Why·?

Originally commissioned by Fortune (Time Inc.) to do a three-piece serial on how Southern sharecroppers lived, Agee

Famous Me11 is not a comfortable book. It is angry, anguished, complex. It is neither fiction, poetry, nor good red herring journalism. It is too intense and highly strung for good reportage.

and photographer Walker Evans joined forces in 1936 and lit out. It was not easy to explain their business to the sullen. reticent people they had come to meet, nor after eating, sleeping and living with them at below-surviv-al conditions, to explain the significance of this experience either to themselves or to a middle-class urban a udience up north. The magazine, as it turned out. refused Agee's copy as unusable. The war broke out. After reworking the original manuscript several times and belligerently falling out with a potential publisher, Agee finally saw the book to print in 1941 . It was obviously the wrong time. By then the Depression itself was well over. Pearl Harbor had been hit. America had entered the war.

Agee died I 5 years later. H e spent the last years working on scripts and screen adaptations in conti nuation of a lifelong interest in film. H is literary out put had been comparatively sma ll , a nd most of it now was out of print. At the time of his death he was best remembered for his brilliant features in Fortune and for his

topical movie column in the Nation: Agee seemed to sum up something of the whisky- and cigarette-smoke-flavored era.

H is epic all-night conversation was recalled. and his heroic battles with T ime Inc., his negligent jackets. his tall stoop. his husky intensity, his gentle hands. Many thought of him as an intellectual bohemia n, somewhat o f a n enigma, but harmless. ll took till the sixties for the tide to turn. It was the Nco-Realist coterie or "serious film" that first deferred to his opinion on the power of "observed truth .. and to film as "the illusion of the present tense." They called him "the best American critic of his period; indeed one of the best writers about cinema in any period."

Two volumes of Agee on Film were collected by the end of the fifties. In 1957 A Death in the Family received the Pulitzer Prize. Written in an early Joycean stream-of-consciousness style, it explored his Anglican childhood in small-town Tennessee and the incipient fracture in family relationship that was to carry over into Morning Watch and haunt his later years. Famous Men went into a reprint in 1960. Meanwhile his lifelong correspondence with his boyhood mentor (Letters to Father Flye) now drew attention by its frankness a nd the quality of its writing.

The end of the decade saw his collected prose and poetry (including the awardwinning Permit Me Voyage of 1934) in circulation.

If A Death in the Family seems to represent Agee at his lyrical and fluent best researching times past for clues to his troubled present, Famous Men shows him wholly absorbed in that present. Famous Men discloses as much of Agee as he does of his subject. We sec an acutely sensitive and self-aware man, a troubled "modern man" carrying the urban, educated burdens of guilt, rebellion and a consciousness of his own choices. He is the skeptic, the individualist. the humanist.

He learns to live with himself, but he is not satisfied .... Then suddenly he is brought up against a condition as basic and as perennial as poverty and its inheritors.

As for each o ne of us in this country, India, it is the condition that challenges our as~umptions and calls us to question.

Agee almost fears his personal inadequacy to his material. He is not a reformer for a ll his anger and his pity.

He is a writer. and an ambitious and gifted writer at that. T he easy way would be to record and to leave well alone.

Agee cannot. H e is outraged. He is moved

beyond himself by the impersonality of the situation. His fine sensibility is compelled to admire and to respect. And so he attempts to fracture, as by montage, the illusion bet ween art and life, even as he struggles to equal the condition by his prose. He is torn between recounting every detail and raking over his conscience and his society's conscience ... and finding both wanting.

It is idle to speculate what might have happened had Agee received the immediate hearing that might have persuaded him to stay with his material. But Time and the times moved on. He was never again to encounter such a challenge to his skills. Famous Men reveals an artist in search of a masterpiece. The masterpiece was never written. But in the writing of it, Agee came as close to one as he was ever likely to come. Long stretches unfurl lucid and passionate, or as objective and

as minutely observed as a county gazetteer, only to turn in on themselves like blind alleys. The tension for the reader is balanced between the power of the subject viewed by Agee's palpating senses, and watching him deal with it at one remove.

He is like a camera that shifts slightly out of focus to reveal two simultaneous images superimposed.

Evans and Agee are being entertained by the landlord. Later in the book we are to encounter the conditions of this landlord's tenants: the Ricketts, the Woods and the Gudgers. For now, he is hearty and is showing off a little to his visitors from up north. They have broken in on the foreman's Sunday afternoon. T he foreman is black. Relatives are over and the women are preparing supper. These now "hold their faces in the blank safety of deafness" as the landlord indulges hjs

taste for ribaldry at the foreman's expense. Three passers-by on their way to church are roped in to entertain the strangers. They sing gospel-style. Their singing [was] jagged and stony, acce111ed as if by hammers an d co ld-..:hi~cls. full of a nearly pa ralyzing vitality and itenllion of rhythm, 1he harmonies constantly splitung the nerves: so that of Western music the nearest approach to its austerity is in the first two centuries of polyphony. But here it W'dS entirely instinctual ; it tore itself like a dance of sped plants out of three youug men who stood sunk 10 their throats in land, and whose eyes were neither shut nor looking at anything.

It is rich, tense and expressive. The singers, when it is done, still and expressionless. Agee looks at them with respect.

Says: ¡That was fine. Have you got time to sing us another?" He has "a feeli ng through their silence before entering it , that it is their favorite and their particular

SPAN MAY 1979 -

LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN co111inued

pride.'' It is slow and heavy and "sunk along descents of a modality" that he has not heard before,

the situation was immediate, sensuous. and very real.

Famous M en reveals an Here are the Gudgers, the Woods and the R icketts. Mr. Woods is growing artist in search of a and they ran in a long slow motion and convolution ' old. He spits blood. His cotton picking is of rolling as at the bottom of a sto rm y sea. voice masterpiece. The masterpiece falling off. T here is no social security meeting voice as ships in dream. retreated, met was never written. But or pension for him; he must go on workonce more ... ing.

Gudger's sister-in-law says goodAgee came as close to it bye to the family; she is crying. She is almost as if each voice were reflecting to as he was ever likely to come. only 13. She is trucking off into the unitself aloud. And after it they are silent.

He was never again to known after a husband many years older The landlord objects that there .. was than herself, who will hold a job for a too much howling and too much religion encounter such a challenge few months, and then who knows? There . . . and how about something with some to his skills . is no welfare. For technically no ''tenantlife to it. They knew what he means ... farmer" can qualify for this New Deal but it was very hard for them to give it arrangement that we call we lfare. Yet right now ... they looked at each other everything that each family ..owns'' is with eyes ruffled with worry," and then, under mortgage. They are to pay this obediently back .. with labor... Ricketts is a "twomule" man. but his wife has pellagra. His they struck into a fast. sassy. pelvic tunc \\hose family of 10 liveotfSlO a month during the words were loaded almost beyond translation \\ith corntc sexual metaphor; a refrain song that mn like best of the growing season. Winter, the a raptd \\heel . . .. They sang it through four of 1he harshest time of the year, they have no probably three dozen turns they knew. then bit if off income whatsoever. They make do as best ~harp ... and for the first time. relaxed out of line, they can. Their overalls are sewn out of as if they knew they had earned the right, with it, meal sacks. They drink, all of them, infectto lcuvc. ed "fever water." Their shallow earth Agee hands the leader 50 cents and says graves are decorated with pitiful plastic sorry to have held them up and he hoped dime-store trivia. The women are continually pregnant and working in the fields. they would not be late; trying desperately meanwhile to communicate what he really But there is dignity. feels. They do not look him in the eye.

The schoolhouse is some miles away.

Thanking him .. in a dead voice" ...

In the rainy season the roads are impassand putting their white hats on their able red clay. Besides, in picking season James Agee heads as they walked into the sunlight. the children are needed in the fields.

We see it all as accurately as through now praise famous men and the fathers The textbooks anyway are unrealistic a lens. The landlord heavily but good- that begat us ... for their seed sha II and paternalistic, formulated in cities naturedly parades his power. The people remain forever.'' far away, and taught by spinster ladies whose afternoon to themselves has been Observed truth provides one kind of who are themselves tired and barely encroached on have been exposed, the information; poetic exaltation, another. literate. Louise Gudger, 10, is a fine authenticity and vitality of their expression At their finest these converge, each serving pupil despite the forced absences. What humbled and made to seem undignified. to augment the other. They can also will she do with her " learning" four Evans and Agee have unwittingly been be felt as conflicting pulls, literary and years from now·? The Ricketts barely identified with the wrong side. Everyone is subjective rhythm as against montage, attend. They each have talents and skills, era mped, constrained and under false cut, flash back and forward. Continuity but not of the kind usable in school. pretences, all but the landlord . Agee has and fracture. The book careens between Besides, they are laughed at for their the situation pat, down to the imitative these two, holding them in suspension. poor clothes and their broad dialect and Sunday ''white hats" and the careless This is the book's real subject. Society so are given to picking fierce fights with sunlight outside the yard. fractures. but people endure. the other children. They are described But there is another image. It too is locally as "a bad lot." Why else are they • * * an image of power; but free-associational, Deep South tenant-farming was a where they a re'? Have they no selfplangent and below the surface. It is tenuous affair. The system began with respect'? indicated by Agee's attentiveness to the Southern Reconstruction after the Civil T o us in India this is very immediate. music, an attentiveness that is taut, War. But what it actually worked out to Those of us who grew up in the country strained, creative, and that forces his was a system of landless labor by which probably met our Gudgers and Ricketts language into full stretch. H ere is the the tenant yielded half his cotton and early. What has become of them? And poet at work. It is a rich sonant language corn crop to the landlord, together with how have we used what they have taught and the prose has bursts of Elizabethan a high rate of interest on tools, fertilizer us·?

0 surprise (down to the last recondite and draught animals. This accumulated reference to medieval plainchant). Behind against him during lean years. A succes- About the Author: Priadel'l· i:, a ji·ee-lance him is the Great Tradition . And in the sion of bad seasons would bring him to ll'l'iter. and a frequent contrihutor to SPA/\'. background the Bible on which he was actual ruin. This is what happened with H£•r most recent article in thi.1 maga: ine II 'GS on raised thunders and rolls. . . . "Let us the D epression. Agee's apprehension of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture.

34

SPAN MAY 1979

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE '·How do you spell your name ?" (¢ 197~ by pcrmsssion of Suturtlnt Rfln't<n and V. G~ne Myers.

'"We'l'e decided not to hm•e eggs." ©

I 97~ by permtsston of Sllttmlm

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and Bob Schoch ct...

··Too late. Someone has already picked ma all the almonds andjilbertsr· © Canoon Feature> Syndicate.

7-{. .

Drawing by Ltvm ; © 197K 1hc Ne" Yorker Magazine. Inc.

THE TRAINING OF WRESTLERS Young Americans are learning to keep fit and self-reliant through the various sports and physical fitness programs that are a regular part of the high school curriculum.

Wrestling attracts many young men because it is a tough, individual sport where you are on your own. It is just you against your opponent.

Farmingdale High School on Long Island , to the east of New York City, has a strong wrestling team thanks to coach Irv Apgar.

Forty-year-old Apgar's stress is on concentrated practice and strict discipline. He insists on punctuality and regularity for his classes, which are held every afternoon for an hour on Clockwise from /eji: Bobby Heller, cocaptain of the Farmingdale team, strains to pin down his opponent d11ring an exciting moment of the match which Heller won.

Before the match, coach Apgar watches as Heller checks his weight and the other Farmingdale cocaptain John Couone exercises on a weight-lifiing machine.

Matches over, Apgar has other responsibilities toward his boys- congratulating the victor Ken Fare/1 and consoling a downcast Todd Ferrara who lost his match.

weekdays and two hours on Saturdays. To condition themselves physically, the boys work out on an elaborate weight-lifting machine three times a week and run on the other days. Besides, Apgar conducts the regular school physical education classes. He also runs physical fitness programs and wrestling camps during the summer vacations and encourages his students to join similar camps wherever they may be vacationing.

Apgar's classes look like a cross between a dancing school and hand-to-hand self-defense training, with Apgar as an active and alert master of ceremonies. As some 50 students wrestle to the accompaniment of taped instrumental jazz rock, Apgar is on his feet shouting instructions, corrections, admonitions and praise, occasionally blowing the whistle to¡ get the boys to stop- and then restart-if he wants to demonstrate a certain hold.

Competitive meets with other high school wrestling teams test the boys' training, talent and mettle and keep them on their toes. Featured on these pages¡ are scenes from one such meet between Island Trees High School and lrv Apgar's Farmingdale boys.

D

WHAT'S HOLDING UP NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION? K.P. MISRA TALKS WITH ALTON FRYE

MISRA: Alton, it is very appropriate that we should have this discussion on nuclear nonproliferation strategies, with emphasis on the Carter Administration's safeguards approach in New Delhi. In the context of nuclear nonproliferation, India holds a special position.

FRYE: I am pleased to have a chance to talk to you about this central issue, because you understand and express India's position so well. Besides, as you know, for several years it's been a special concern of mine that we adopt a policy that both our countries can pursue in support of what I think is a common goal- namely, the reduction of reliance on nuclear weapons as a factor in international relations.

MlSRA: Let us begin our discussion with the broad framework of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), because this is the treaty in the background of the measures which are being discussed and adopted by the Western countries on the one hand, and, on the other, by the so-called threshold powerspowers that have developed the capacity and can go in for nuclear weapons.

As you know, the main objection against the NPT, insofar as a country like India is concerned, has been that this treaty has been discriminatory, that there is no balance of obligation.

Connected with this are two more points; one is that this treaty provides for what we call horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons-to countries that don't have them now- but does not talk about the vertical proliferation, i.e. , the stockpiling in countries that already have nuclear weapons.

The second point is that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not attempt to distinguish between nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes and nuclear explosions for the purposes of producing weapons. These are very briefly the objections of the so-called threshold powers. ¡ FRYE: I think they are important objections. You were right to say that the NPT is the center of this discussion on nonproliferation. But it's only one of several elements affecting American policy. The fact is that at the beginning of the nuclear age the Congress of the United States adopted a very strong antiproliferation policy. The 1946 Atomic Energy Act bound the United States to restrict cooperation in nuclear technology in the interest of avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons around the globe. We understood very poorly how this new technology might be managed, and the Congress was frightened by the prospect of spreading weapons. It forbade the United States to cooperate even with its wattime allies. This caused great difficulty in our relations with the United Kingdom.

38

SPAN MAY 1979

In 1954, however, the Congress responded to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's interest in sharing peaceful nuclear technology-the Atoms for Peace Program-and changed the American law to permit cooperation in peaceful nuclear applications- without distinguishing, frankly, between nuclear reactors for energy and such possible applications as nuclear explosives, for digging canals or other construction purposes.

After several years of the Atoms for Peace Program, there grew up a concern in the United States that we had been spreading nuclear materials and technology around the globe without adequately taking account of the danger that the materials might be diverted to weapons purposes.

This is the kind of concern that over a period of years led to our participation in the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Agreement of 1963, which Congress very strongly supported, and then in the late 1960s, the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Now let me turn to the key points that you've mentioned as of very proper concerns to the threshold non-nuclear-weapon states. The Non-Proliferation Treaty came into being for over 90 countries- not including India, I regret to say- at a time when history had already presented us with five nuclear weapon states.

It did not solve that problem. It was, if you will, a small dike, a small dam to slow the flow toward additional nuclear weapon powers. The NPT was adopted in the hope that, by slowing the increase in the number of nuclear weapon states, it might become possible to reduce nuclear weapons held by the powers that had already tested and deployed them. In the years since then, India and other countries have properly said that we've not done very well in the United States, and the Soviet Union particularly, in beginning the process of reducing nuclear armament. There has in fact been a continued nuclear arms race ... .

That's a valid complaint in important respects, although [ don't think the charge of discrimination is a product of the treaty. [l was rather a result of history that the treaty came into force after several states bad acquired the weapons. What I believe has happened now, by the end of the 1970s, is that the United States and the Soviet Union have invested almost a decade of serious intensive diplomacy in the interest of beginning to limit the nuclear weapons that they have deployed. They are on the verge of signing, and I hope approving, a substantial treaty that would put a ceiling on the number of strategic nuclear weapons they have. We will be able to say that we have begun to solve the problem ....

MISRA: Well, Alton, the points which you have raised are very

History had already presented the world with five nuclear weapon states when the Non-Proliferation Treaty came into being. The many real problems this situation presents for countries like India that have developed nuclear capability are discussed here frankly by an Indian and an American-both very knowledgeable, and each as willing to understand the other's point of view as to explain his own. well taken. But, being newly independent countries, we look peaceful purposes, that India conducted in 1974. That explosion at problems from the point of view of dependence and dom- persuaded Congressmen and Senators that even countries inance in international relations. And when the Nuclear Non- committed to nonweapons applications of nuclear technology Proliferation Treaty came into being in 1970, we thought might develop explosive capabilities, which under some circumthat here is an attempt to perpetuate some kind of a nuclear stances could be diverted to military applications. So India's dominance over those countries that a re nonnuclear powers. test had a cata lytic effect; it triggered Congressional action I'm not saying that this was the specific intention of the nuclear in the United States. It had a much greater impact on Congrespowers, but what we saw was an effort to perpetuate the kind sional opinion b~cause of the manner in which that test was of dominance which was fu ll of structural violence from our conducted. The fact that the materials were diverted clandestinely, without prior information being shared with others that India point of view; therefore we objected.

FRYE: I think the experience of the past decade suggests that was about to conduct such a nuclear explosive test, made Amerifar from being a design to perpetuate the power of the nu- can opinion much more suspicious. It made it more difficult clear weapon states, the NPT has in fact been only designed to for Americans to accept at face value India's known commitment pave the way for the nuclear weapon states themselves to begin not to engage in a nuclear weapons program.

What happened is not at all that Congress said the United to reduce their reliance on these weapons. I don't believe, for example, that there have been significant instances in which States will not cooperate. It did not pass a law that said the the nuclear weapon states have threatened the non-nuclear- United States is abandoning peaceful cooperation in nuclear weapon states with the use of nuclear weapons. I offer that fact technology. It did pass a law that said, in essence, that those as demonstration that they have not been exploiting that power. countries that wished to cooperate with the United States in They've, in fact, found it not a very useful power. T he episodes peaceful applications of nuclear technology would be invited to over this past decade, if they relate to potential violence between do so. H owever, they shou ld testify to their commitment to states, almost invariably relate to conventional force, not to peaceful applications by permitting all of their nuclear facilities nuclear weapons. We're rather like the tar baby story that to be inspected under suitable international safeguard arrangeAmericans know well : A rabbit gets stuck in a baby made of ments. tar and can't get loose. Nuclear weapons are really a tar baby, MISRA: J know, and as you have very rightly said, the May and they have caught the United States and the Soviet Union 1974 explosion accelerated efforts in different parts of the world, particularly in a relationship that they can't disengage from including the United States. India has been saying right from unless both disengage together. So they have not used" their 1947, when it became independent, that it wants to develop possession of these weapons to dominate in any direct way their nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. A very distinguished Indian relationships with other countries .... I think India would public man has said : "India missed the first industrial revolution, be able to say that that's been true in Indo-American and Indo - but it does not want to miss the second"- tbat is, the revolution Soviet relations. which may be brought about by the development of nuclear MISRA: So far as the safeguards are concerned, President energy for peaceful purposes. The father of the Indian nuclear Carter bas been making vigorous efforts to do something effective, program , Homi Bhabha, said this as early as 1944.

In 1974, when this explosion took place, India said both and his policy pronouncements have been couched in somewhat moral and international terms. His policy in essence is before and after the explosion, that it was not for the purpose of enshrined in a recent enactment which is known as the Non- making nuclear weapons but for peaceful purposes. But this did proliferation Act, which provided for the stoppage of the supply not carry conviction with others. It was not considered to be a of enriched uranium to the countries to which it was being credible assurance. The problem of credibility between two supplied. beyond a period of 18 months from the time the act sets of countries. which a re more powerful and which are Jess came into being, unless full scope safeguards were agreed upon. powerful, has always been there. In India we remember. how in 1920 when Mahatma Gandhi started the noncooperation moveWould you care to comment on this very important legislation?

FRYE: Yes, I would, and I think again some context is neces- ment, it did not carry conviction at all outside the frontiers of sary, K .P . President Carter is the leader in the American I ndia. When the nonaligned movement was started by Jawabarlal effort to strengthen barriers against proliferation of nuclear Nehru in the late forties and early fifties, it did not carry conweapons, but it's extremely important to understand that viction either. John Foster Dulles called it an immoral policy, he is not unique in that commitment. He in fact came to office at a and Stalin said that these nonaligned leaders are running dogs time when pressure in Congress had already developed to the of imperialists. point at which it was inevitable that new legislation would be FRYE: I think that's a very perceptive insight, especially with enacted constraining A me rica's cooperation with other countries the two examples th.a t you mentioned - the nonviolent change in nuclear matters. That would have happened if President that you did bring about despite the skepticism of others, and your experience in leading the nonaligned movement.

Jerry Ford had been elected.

I would in fact say quite frankly that India had a great deal 1 would urge you to consider the distinctions that make it more to do with the passage of the Nonproliferation Act of more difficult to attain credibility on the nuclear issues we're 1978 than even President Carter had. The genesis of that legisla- discussing. The question is not whether the United States is tion lay in a concern for (he kind of explosive test , albeit for prepared to accept India 's assurance; the problem is that India's

SPAN MAY 1979

J9

IUCLEAR NONP ROLIFERATION cOillillued

neighbors are so skeptical themselves that the Indian policy triggers other countries toward a nuclear weapons capability.

In Pakistan there've been strong pressures to move toward a nuclear weapons capability as a contingency. And the United States has been working very emphatically to resist that discouraging cooperation between France and Pakistan in exchanging key technology. We ourselves will of course not coo perate with Pakistan or any other country which does not participate in full scope safeguards in this area. So it is not so much that we react with skepticism, it is that the problem multiplies, and other countries in the region and around the world, being doubtful about whether proliferation can be stopped, are doubtfuJ about India's example of testing a peaceful device which is technologically equivalent to bombs for military purposes. T hey are not identical in shape or configuration, bnt in terms of the process there is no distinction between a peaceful nuclear explosive and a nuclear weapon. The process is identical. ...

MISRA: That's true, but what I was talking about was the credibility of a nation and its assurances. Because of these facto rs, a section of i ndian public opinion has seen in all these negotiations on the nuclear nonproliferation affairs something which is racial in nature. I hate to say that; I have myself stayed in your country for several years, I know how open American people are. But a section of public opinion in india for instance has said that it is the theory of white man's burden.

FR YE : I believe it is certainly not there in American Government policy. I can understand, given the mixed history of race relations in the United States, how difficult this problem can be and how misunderstandings can be bred. Whether other countries acquire the bomb would become a serious problem, no matter what their traditions or skin color. It is not a racial problem.

It is a problem of an inadequate international system in which sovereign nation states acquire powers to threaten each other, greater than their capacity to manage those powers. We in the United States are not wise enough or good enough to possess the weapons we possess. We have unwisely developed capabilities out of fear.

We're vulnerable to those human concerns as well. But if the problem of nuclear weapons as a threat to the world is ever to be contained, it cannot be contained by passing those weapons into other hands. What has to be done is to restrain the spread as a prelude to dramatic reductions in what you have described as vertical proliferation, the enormous accumulation of weapons, primarily by the Soviets and the Americans and secondarily

by Britain, France and China.

MIS RA: As you know, the fundamentals of Indian policy on this issue are three: no manufacture of nuclear weapons; at the same time no signing of the NPT; and, explosions, yes, but not for other than peaceful purposes. These are the main strands in Indian policy.

But let me reler to one more point which is very ;..,.,portant and which has been discussed in the Indian press very animatedly.

When P resident Carter was in New Delhi, he mooted an idea which was pursued by Joseph Nye when he was here, and that was to constitute a panel of scientists for insuring global safeguards. Has there been some thinking at your end about this

has reacted, saying that India will agree to any kind of inspection only if it is based on the principle of mutuality. India will open its nuclear establishments for inspection only if the other parties, including the United States, agree to the inspection of their installations. So the basic point is that these inspections or safeguards should not be discriminatory, they should be based on equality.

FRYE : l think that's a very wise stand in many respects by Prime Minister Desai. What I think is still an important question to consider further is whether one could not phase in safeguards, not only between l ndia and the United States, but between all the relevant countries. Several states are in different stages of their development. Nuclear weapon states do have problems of direct military security that are unique compared to non nuclear-weapon states. Jt would not help the cause of non proliferation if safeguards led to sharing of military information that only triggered further proJjferation . Between the United States and India. there could possibly be discussion of reciprocal exchange of inspectors sufficient to establish the necessary safeguards, but perhaps not initially covering all the military installations that would still be the subject of negotiations in the SALT talks and in other wider international forums, like the International Atomic Energy Agency. But I do think that Prime Minister Desai has put forward an important possibility for discussions that might point toward suitable mutual safeguards, demonstrating that our peaceful civilian programs are in fact that. That's all safeguards are. They are not intrusions designed to slow and impede technology. They are simply devices to signal among the parties concerned that weapons are not being produced, and that materials are not being diverted for weapons purposes. That's a simple goal but it requires technical cooperation to reach it.

MISRA: To conclude this very fruitful discussion, let us hope that the world community is able to evolve a set of safeguards which are acceptable to both sets of countries.

FRYE : l share that hope very much, K.P .. and I think that it is not beyond the power of two states that share the objective of avoiding a nuclear war to devise mutually acceptable arrangements to provide such reassurances.

0

question¡~

F RYE: Oh no, that's a pattern of exploration that will be involved with other countries as well. There have been more than 40 nations taking part in a broader international examination of questions related to whether safeguards can be installed without intruding unduly on a national development of nuclear technology. My conviction is that there is no contradiction between safeguards adequate to assure all parties that there will be no weapons and the vigorous development or nuclear energy.

MIS RA: The Prime Minister of India has been under attack within and outside Parliament for agreeing to this panel. And he

40

K. P. Misra ( left) is a professor of intemwional relations at Jawa/wrlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was a Fulbright scholar 11959-60) and a .fellow of the Woodroll' Wilson /ntemationaf Center for Scholars in Washington. D.C. ( 1973-74) . He has authored and edited over 10 hooks.

Alton Frye ( right ) u¡as a fellow ofthe Woodrow Wilton International Center in 1971-73, and is now a senior (e!lmr of the Council of Foreign Relations, New York. Among his books ore The Hazards of A10mic Waste: Perspectives and Pfoposals on Oceanic Disposal and A Responsible Congress : The Politics of National Security.

A teen-ager, Victoria Lord (right), and other amateurs join in an unusual archaeological expedition in New Mexico, at one of the major locations of American Indian ruins.

DIGGING OUT AN AMERICAN INDIAN VILLAGE

PHOTOGRA PHS BY CHRISTOPHER SPRINGMANN

Victoria Lord shovels out one of the rooms in the settlement ( top) and then happily holds up her most exciting discovery -two painted pottery pieces (right) . Above: Detail from an lith century bowl.

AMERICAN INOlAN VILLAGE conrinued

S

ixteen-year-old Victoria Lord of Albany, New York, had studied archaeology in high school and wanted to apply her knowledge in a practical setting. " 1 was anxious to go on an actual dig," she recalls.

She got her wish. For a month during summer vacation, Tory (as she is known to her friends) dug, screened, cleaned and catalogued artifacts from Salmon Ruins, New Mexico, one of the largest and most important locations of early American Indian ruins ever discovered .

Tory's archaeological vacation at this II th century Chaco Indians' settlement, or pueblo, was made possible by an organization, based in Massachusetts, called Earthwatch, which recruits volunteer workers for scientific field projects around the world. Since 1971 , more than 2,000 Earthwatch volunteers have joined some 300 scientists conducting research in 20 U.S. states and 45 foreign countries.

Many of the volunteers are students like Tory Lord, but Earthwatch also has enrolled whole families, retired couples and other adults who wanted a change from their daily routines. Most projects require curiosity, enthusiasm and a willingness to work rather than any specialized skills. Volunteers pay their own travel expenses to and from the site, plus a contribution of several hundred dollars to help meet the expenses of the research team.

In 1978, Earthwatch expeditions included tracking of raccoons by radio in Georgia, recording the songs of endangered humpback whales in the Caribbean, catchi ng exotic birds and butterflies in Costa Rica and Ecuador, gathering oral histories from musicians in New York City and documenting prehistoric cave art in Kenya.

Tory Lord first flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for her summer Earthwatch vacation dig, then took a bus to the Salmon Ruins. The site is named for a farmer who previously owned the land and protected it from souvenir hunters and vandals. " First we had a tour of the pueblo," Tory says, "and then we were given a choice of working in the Ia bora tory or out in the field. " She chose the more strenuous field work. This consisted of locating and identifying items-however seemingly insignificant- that may add to the cumulative picture of the lives of the Chaco Indians, who lived there roughly nine centuries ago.

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SPAN MAY 1979

The settlement consisted of a communal dwelling with more than 700 rooms, built in the form of a great C. Some parts of the building, archaeologists speculate. may have been as high as rour stories. A circular structure nine meters in diameter, called a kiva, was used for ceremonial occasions and dominates the central plaza. Tory and her coworkers screened the soil for bones, com, pottery shards, charcoal, arrowheads or other traces of the settlement's inhabita nts.

They tagged each item with extensive information about its location, ground level, condition and the nature of the

soil in which it was found. Researchers at Salmon Ruins have a saying : " For every square meter of earth, there are three square meters of paperwork." A si ngle piece of pottery, for example, may yield as many as 500 separate bits of information.

AIJ the data are fed into a computer.

Right : A Chaco Indian cup with a paimed design. Below: An o~>era/1 view of the Salmon Ruins gh>es an indication ofits size and complexity. &tilt between 1088 and 1096, the settlement was a communal dwelling with over 700 rooms constructed in the form of a C.

" We couldn't handle the complexity of this site without it," says Cynthia IrwinWilliams, a professor of archaeology at Eastern New Mexico University at Portales, who is director of the Salmon Ruins project. The workday began early and ended in midafternoon, when the temperature peaked. Rain was infrequent.

"After work, we usually ran for the showers, or for the river to swim," says Tory. "The river was muddy and murkybut it was water."

The Chaco Indians built their pueblo on the banks of the San Juan River between 1088 and 1096. The architecture

was sophisticated and the craftsmanship meticulous. Workers traveled as far as 56 kilometers for high-grade lumber, and 8 kilometers for the finest stone. Rooms were a spacious 6 meters long and 3.6 meters high, with walls 91 centimeters thick. The builders strengthened the stone masonry of the pueblo with adobe (sundried brick), and whitewashed the walls for an even, finished look. To support the weight of the building, the Chacoans constructed a series of flying buttresses similar to those used at about the same time in medieval European fortresses and cathedrals. The Chaco Indians built their

SPAN MAY 1979

43

IMERICAN INDIAN VILLAGE continued

Right : Archaeology professor Cynthia Irwin- Williams examines one of Victoria's discoveries. Below: Victoria (her feet on a ladder) and other volumeers at the site take a break from the strenuous task ofexcavating.

settlement without wheeled vehicles, metal implements or beasts of burden.

From the evidence, concludes archaeologist Irwin-Williams, the Chacoans were relatively well-off. "Their pueblo was a very pleasant place to live- cool in the summer, warm in the winter," she says. " We can estimate that they probably led quite nice lives."

There appears to have been little division between rich and poor. Individuals worked as stonecutters and masons, farmed fields of corn, beans and squash, and hunted rabbits, deer and mountain sheep.

Craftsmen chipped distinctive arrowheads and fashioned pottery as meticulously and skillfully as they constructed their homes.

Yet by 1160, less than 100 years later, the pueblo was abandoned. Just why the inhabitants left so abruptly remains one of the mysteries of American archaeology.

The most widely accepted theory is that a change in climate destroyed the agriculture of the region. But archaeologists aren't certain that the weather holds the entire answer. "I like the idea that it's still a mystery," says Tory Lord.

In 1893, a homesteader named George Salmon settled on the land and protected the pueblo from treasure hunters. His preservation of the ruins greatly enhanced their value to archaeologists.

In 1967, Salmon's heirs sold the land to the citizens of San Juan County, New Mexico, who built a research facility at the site and invited Dr. Irwin-Williams to take charge of the project. Grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities have enabled more than 100 archaeologists to conduct research at Salmon Ruins.

The adjoining Salmon Ruins Museum has developed into a regional cultural center that attracts thousands of visitors a year. All of the artifacts from the pueblo are kept in the museum instead of being scattered across the country.

The museum also bas become a center for community and educational activities.

Navaho Indians are being taught masonry at Salmon Ruins, for example, a project that gives them valuable job skills while involving them in the preservation of their cultural past.

The Salmon Ruins project offers archaeologists invaluable insights into an ancient culture, provides students such as Tory with a unique work-study experience and serves the people of New Mexico as an important cultural resource.

0

of 77 (now numbering 119 countries), the Conference is a pivotal Speaking at the Washington Press Club a few days battle in the North-South conflict, a critical point in the pathway before the third U.N. Law of the Sea Conference to a New International Economic Order.

For all countries. rich or poor, a successful conference convened in Geneva on March 19, 1979, the leader of holds the promise of more stable and predictable relations the U.S. delegation dwelt on the gains of the previous that will flow from the rule of law. conferences and the hardcore issues that still needed to A brief rundown of what the Conference is striving to acbe resolved. If the participating nations acted with complish will underscore its important bearing on the here and greater restraint, Ambassador Richardson noted, the now as well as its implications for the future.

In December 1970. by unanimous resolution. the United meeting could become "a watershed event in internaNations General Assembly declared the oceans beyond the tional relations, emphatic testimony that problems of limits of national jurisdtction to be "the common heritage of growing global interdependence can be mastered." mankind.'' All of its resources, the resolution said, should be exploited for the benefit of mankind as a whole. As a result of this action, a Law of the Sea Conference was assembled to accomplish On March 19 representatives of 158nations-8 more than the the following tasks.

• To establish an international governing body to regulate membership of the United Nations- begin to meet in Geneva in yet another attempt to frame the rules of a Law of the Sea exploitation of ·'the common heritage" area. (Exploitatwn Treaty. Should their efforts yteld success, the world community alludes to the mining of manganese nodules laden with nickel, will have moved to the very threshold of a global treaty covering copper, cobalt, and manganese found on the seabeds.)

• To determine the outer limits of the continental shelf, in all of mankind's uses of the oceans.

Entering its sixth year of negotiations, the third United orderto define .. the common heritage" area.

Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea still struggles for • To develop rules for fishing. conservation of marine recognition of what it can become- a watershed event in inter- mammals, control of marme pollution, and the conduct of national relations, emphatic testimony that problems of growing marine scientific research. global interdependence can be mastered.

• To codify rules applicable to the high seas and international Despite the high promise it holds, the Conference is straits and establish the concept of archipelagic waters.

• To provide for the compulsory settlement of disputes. a maligned and misunderstood affair. It is dismissed by some as "the Olympics of the experts." It is described by others Grappling with this awesome challenge. without precedent as "the longest floating crap game in diplomatic history." m international affairs. what has the Conference accomplished Conventional wisdom charges that dtaftmg a constitution in its five years oflife? In my judgment, the list tS quite impressive.

Delegates have solved the incendiary problem of "creeping for the oceans is too complex, simply too mind-boggling a task for a body of more than 1,200 delegates to handle; further that jurisdiction" by reaching consensus on a 12 nautical-mile territorial sea over which the coastal state has complete sovereignit has degenerated into a tedious talkathon.

If, as conventional wisdom asserts with such assurance, the ty subject to a right of innocent passage by foreign flag vessels. outlook is worse than dismal, why do 158 nations continue to Contrast this to the current state of affairs where countries, by persevere? The short answer is that many countries place the individual decrees. have established territorial seas extending Law of the Sea (LOS) near the top of thelf national agendas. anywhere from 3 to 200 nautical miles. There is consensus also For the very poor countries, LOS spells protein-access to fish on an adjacent 188 nauttcal-mile exclusive economic zone in with consequent alleviation of want. It also means an infusion which the coastal state has sovereign rights over the living of capital from their share of the revenues generated by seabed and nonliving resources, such as fish, oil and gas. mining. For the mass ofThird World states joined in the Group National security mterests of the United States, as they SPAN MAY 1979

45

TOWARD A LAW OF THE SEA TREATY continued

pertain to the oceans, have always been a primary concern of the American delegation. Our main objective has been to ensure that we and all other states possess the maximum freedom of mobility in the world's oceans. .

We, as well as the Soviet Union, have adhered unequ1vocal1y to the position that our .commercial and military vessel~ and aircraft have the right to traverse on, over, and under mternational straits, and the waters beyond the territorial sea.

The world community. through the Conference, has accorded us that recognition. . .

Our proposals for prevention and control of manne poll.utwn won general acceptance during negotiations in New York m the summer of 1978. The new ru1es would strengthen the right of a coastal state to impose penalties for violations within its territorial sea. They emphasize that a coastal state can act to mitigate pollution following a marine casualty.

The Conference has agreed that once coastal states have determined the limits of their own fishing capacity, they must allow other states to harvest the surplus in their exclusive economic zone up to a limit set by sound conservation standards.

A bloc called the Landlocked and Geographically Disadvantaged States maintains it is entitled to more than this. They want less restrictive access to the exclusive economic zones of their neighbors and an equitable share of the living resources. Progress has been made on this issue. ln the early days of the Conference, the thorniest deadlock was over the role of the [nternational Seabed Authority, the body set up to regulate exploitation of the deep seabeds. The Third World saw the Authorit;· as a monopoly miner of manganese nodules operating on b~::half of aU nations.

The view of the industrialized states was diametrically opposite. They regarded the Authority as an inte~national claims office, processing applications from qualified ffiiDers and issuing licenses to mine. Redemption of "the common heritage" pledge would come through revenue sharing with the Authority.

•· And on the credit side: Forty-six billion herrings, eight million tuna. and si.\ hundred and fifr.r-lll'o thousand manganese noodles.·· Oruw~ng

46

SPAN MAY 1979

b> Ed FISher C> J9791hc Ne" Yorker Magnzono, Jno

This clash of basic philosophies fostered a period of discord and immobility, a condition which prevailed until 1976, when the United States put its weight behind a dramatic compromise in a bid to move the proceedings forward. In contrast to the unitary system of mining advocated by the Third World, we supported a parallel system of exploitation under the Authority.

In essence, we offered to split the difference. On one s1de would be the private corporations and state enterprises of the industrialized countries mining under license of the Authority with a share of revenues earmarked for that body. On the other would be the Authority's own operating arm- called The Enterprise - mining for Third World financial advantage.

Recognizing that the offer would be treated as an empty gesture if it did not provide for the viability of The Enterprise, we agreed that both seabed mining technology and capital should be made available to it so that it could function.

Our compromise was accepted during the course of negotiations in 1977 and 1978. One could claim that this has milestone significance in relations among states, for it marked the first time that the richer nations offered to set up the poorer ones in a large, sophisticated. high technology business of their own.

That is a summary of the ground we have covered up to this point. I believe it is fair to claim considerable progress toward a treaty. Delegates have agreed on 90 per cent of the more than 400 articles included in the current negotiating text. But saying you are 90 per cent of the way toward a global convention is about the same as boasting that you are 90 per cent of the way to the top of Mount Everest. That final I 0 per cent is fraught with hazard. The few hardcore issues remaining are those upon which success or failure rides.

Most difficult among these issues is the decisionmaking structure of the International Seabed Authority. How is the Authority going to be run, and who is going to run it?

The current negotiating text calls for an Authority with two major bodies-an assembly organized on the ··one nation, one vote" principle, and a much smaller council with perhaps 36 seats. We perceive the assembly as a chamber broadly concerned with all of mankind·s interests in the seabed. but exercising no direct executive power. The council, in our view, should make specific managerial decisions. The Third World wants the assembly to call the shots. It sees the council filling a lesser bureaucratic role.

A little simple arithmetic points up the unacceptability of this position to the industrialized nations. If the 150 member states of the United Nations are represented in the assembly, it takes the votes of only 51 to constitute a blocking third.

The 51 smallest countries in the United Nations have popula~ tions ranging from 7,000 to three million. Not one has any investment in the development of seabed mining technology; not one is a major user of the minerals located on the seabeds.

The United States together with the industrialized nations see only one way out of this impasse. We want the council organized so that it takes cognizance of the real economic interests at stake, those of seabed miners, consumers, and land-based producers of seabed minerals. We insist on retaining the legal means to prevent our legitimate interests from being overridden by arbitrary action.

Why are we so adamant on this point? American seabed miners and their partners in several multinational consortia have already invested many millions in the development of mining technology.

Entrepreneurs are the key players in this game, the pioneers willing to risk massive sums for gains commensurate with that

risk. Without their willingness to gamble. there will be no seabed mining, no revenue sharing with the poorer countries, and "the common heritage'' will dwindle to an empty slogan gathering dust in the archives ofthe United Nations.

Before leaving the seabeds, let me dwell for a moment on domestic legislation which would create a legal framework for American companies to go forward on their own pending Conference agreement on a treaty.

This legislation, which passed the House of Representatives last year. failed on the last day of the 95th Congress because one Senator refused to Jet it go to the floor for a vote. Potential seabed miners want it badly. With their heavy investment in the development of technology, they need positive signals now in order to make the costly long lead-time decisions that will enable them to initiate mining operations six or seven years from now. The U.S. Administration supports such legislation and will actively work for its passage. lt should be made clear that the seabed mining bill recognizes and accepts our responsibilities under "the common heritage'' concept. It calls for a portion of revenues to be set aside for c:!veloping countries. It will be superseded when the United States becomes a party to a Law of the Sea Treaty.

Nevertheless, It is clear that despite these assurances some nations of the Third World resent and oppose the legislation.

In the summer of 1978, when passage of the bill appeared imminent, the chairman of the Group of 77 told the Conference that unilateral action would be viewed by the Group as a grave breach of international law. He insisted that the United Nations' "common heritage" resolution overrode any nation's high seas righ,ts with regard to seabed mining.

The U.S. Government response to the Third World totally disagreed with this charge. We arc convinced that nations retain their rights to mine the deep oceans as one of the freedoms of the seas. On thiS point there is flat and unbridgeable disagreement which will someday become a major dispute unless we can all agree on a new treaty regime that resolves it.

Caught up as we are in the often unrealistic claims of various

contending nations. It is reasonable to ask if it is in world interest to continue with these negotiations. On balance. I believe it is.

We should realize that the United Nations itself is on tnal at the Law ofthe Sea Conference. Its effectiveness as an institution is being subjected to a harsh test. ll has to prove at this Conference that it can successfully mediate the burgeoning problems of global interdependence. Should it fail, those who will have lost the most are the poor, least developed African states who count heavily on the United Nations to help them meet their most urgent economic and political concerns.

Failure of the Conference can also have these direct effects: First, it may see the weakenmg of Third World moderates and the re-emergence of ideologues as the dominant force in the North-South dialogue.

Second, it may see an acceleration of"creepingjurisdiction" with concurrent attempts to impose navigation and overflight restrictions on U.S. commercial and military vessels and aircraft.

Third, it will produce conflict over fishing rights, maritime boundaries, pollution control, and the catch of marine mammals.

Fourth, it may see political reprisals against.the United States if mining companies begin operations in the absence of a treaty.

Finally, it could sec world opinion point an accusatory finger at America as the pnmary cause of Conference failure.

Clearly then, the consequences of failure are not insignificant.

Even after two years as special representative of the U.S. President for the Law of the Sea Conference, I am hesitant to predict the outcome. I believe success is possible.

But success depends, in a large measure, on the willingness of all opposing blocs to exercise greater restraint than they have shown in the past. The Third World has many just claims and should continue to press them: But they cannot ignore the real economic interests at stake in seabed mining or subordinate the seabed negotiations to the cause of a New International Economic Order. A good seabed regime can contribute to a better and more equitable world economic system, but this negotiation cannot succeed if it becomes the 0 captive of an ideological struggle. .

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AMBASSADOR GOHEEN ON HUMAN RIGHTS continued from page 4

can cause misunderstanding. President Carter has made clear that in situations where other vital U.S. interests are involved. our human rights concerns may have to weigh as a secondary component in the determination of U.S. policy- but that is not to say that they are ever irrelevant, or of no account at all.

As Dr. Brzezinski has pointed out, "Our effort to differentiate between hwnan rights as an essential standard of our foreign policy, while not establishing it as a precondition for relations with other countries, has been difficult and demanding." But we have been learning, and with some success, how we can tangibly support, both in our bilateral relationships with other governments and in international organizations, good human rights performance while we manifest our concern over human rights violations.

A charge which is often raised is that the injection of human rights into international relations means intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. The Government of India, let me frankly say, tends to feel that the United States sometimes goes too far this way in pressing its human rights concerns on third countries. This is a matter perhaps both of judgment and geopolitical circumstances. Certainly the Government of the United States no longer, if it ever did,

thinks that American institutions offer the models on which all other nations should seek to be patterning themselves.

We respect the diversity of peoples and cultures that makes the world such a wonderfully varied human habitat. We respect, further, as the Delhi Declaration so firmly states, "the right of each people to determine its own form of government and each nation its own political, social, and economic policies." And we agree that a cooperative and stable world depends on respect for these rights.

We do not believe them to be incompatible with the recognition, shared by India and the United States, that ''the ultimate sanction of power and public policy rests in the respect for the dignity and well-being of the individual" wherever he or she may be, of whatever race or creed. Consequently we in America find it hard to see how any member of the United Nations can claim that violations of internationally recognized human rights are solely its own affair.

America's purpose is to guide its own actions in accord with its beliefs, which find their further sanction in the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Rights, and to state our views, without either stridency or apology, when we think it is appropriate to do so. America's good faith in all this is shown, I submit, in its openness to criticism of itself, in the steps it is taking to improve its. own performance, and in its efforts to make the promotion of human rights a matter of international

cooperation through the U.N. and other multilateral bodies.

My Government's approach to the problems I have just mentioned JS summed up well in the following statement by Secretary of State Vance: "ln pursuing a human rights policy, we must always keep in mind the limits of our power and our wisdom. A sure formula for defeat of our goals would be a rigid, hubristic attempt to impose our values on others. A doctrinaire plan of action would be as damaging as indifference."

In seeking to advance the cause of human rights throughout the world, America hopes, then, to avoid both the Scylla of doctrinal rigidity and the Charybdis of indifference. As we pursue this course, our mistakes and miscalculations will be lessened, and the cause of human rights the better served, to the extent that our values are shared and our actions are understood by other nations.

Let me therefore emphasize again the significance that we attach to the common commitment of India and America to the dignity of the individual and the entitlement of every man to life, to liberty, and to freedom from want. Our two nations have these same guiding stars, and they link our destinies. Therefore we shall continue to seek your fellowship in spirit and, wherever possible, in action, as we search for ways to give these precious values full and effective embodiment both at home and throughout the community of nations.

D

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