Dholavira

An endless white expanse of saltpans, blue skies, and Dholavira.

If you are a history buff nothing quite prepares you for the ancient Harappan site of Dholavira. Perhaps you recall hearing about the place in school classrooms, or visits to museum galleries or books. Bits and pieces in our collective memory about the ancient civilisation that covered an area larger than known sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or China; cities with carefully designed streets, water supply and drainage systems, and of a script that is yet to be deciphered. And yet the scale of it all does not quite sink in until you see the place for yourself.

Kutch, the district in Gujarat where Dholavira is located, happens to the largest in India - 45, 674 sqkm! There are about a dozen Indian states that are smaller than this one district, including Kerala and Haryana.  Most of Kutch district barren scrubland or saltpans dotted with solar and wind farms. 

We reached the site after a long drive from Bhuj, with stopover at Hodka village, and a drive along the so-called "Road through Heaven" - a 50km road that cuts straight through an area that was once covered by the sea.

The open sea is today about 300km away from Dholavira. All available evidence suggests that maritime trade was the mainstay of this city with its seals and jewellery being found in the Nile Valley, Egypt.

Unlike most Harappan cities excavated so far, Dholavira is the only one which is built from stone. Most of this stone was quarried out of areas that became the large tanks for storing water. Canals, sluices and wells ensured that water was available throughout the city with special arrangements for those staying in the 'upper city', an area where the elites resided.

There is a nice ASI museum at the site but not much information seems to be available on the web, except for some websites aimed at attracting tourists to the luxury tent-cities that are built every year. YouTube does have some good talks on the Harappan sites in general but IO am yet to come across anything that does justice to the the oldest known port city in ancient India.

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REFERENCES and LINKS

YT - Michel Danino on Harappan Civilisation - https://youtu.be/_s5EDxuL0Vs

Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dholavira

https://www.evokedholavira.com/blog/dholavira-a-harappan-city-with-intricate-architecture-and-rich-history/

Tauktae

Looks like a Van Gogh? - a painting sequel to the Starry Night perhaps? It's actually a projection of wind-speeds visualised by the big data cats at earth.nullschool. This particular one shows Cyclone Tauktae hitting Gujarat square in the jaw a few days ago.

Tauktae means "lizard" in Burmese and is just one of the random names chosen from an annual basket of options prepared by the met department - IMD. In this instance the name seemed rather appropriate - this cyclone has been constantly changing its colours like a chameleon while racing thousands of kilometres across the Arabian Sea.

According to a report: "Tauktae has been intensifying very rapidly. From a depression formed in the southeast Arabian Sea on May 14 morning, it strengthened into a very severe cyclonic storm -VSCS - by the early hours of May 16.. Any tropical cyclone requires energy to stay alive. This energy is typically obtained from warm water and humid air over the tropical ocean. Currently, sea water up to depths of 50 metres has been very warm, supplying ample energy to enable the intensification of Cyclone Tauktae."

And what a build-up of energy it has been! IMD seems surprised by the way in which this tropical cyclone intensified. On 16 May it swept past Kerala, damaging coastal roads and homes, taking two lives it its wake. The windspeed then climbed to 114 mph off the coast of Mumbai and but by the time it hit Diu in Gujarat it was roaring at over 180 kmph. The lives lost in this section was the highest - over 80 oil-rig workers employed by the ONGC are reported dead or missing.

For an event unfolding about 2000 km away, this cyclone has had a surprisingly strong impact in the Delhi area as well. Yesterday was the most unusual summer day.  At a time of the year when the day temperatures hover around 45C with hot dry wind blowing in from the Thar desert, turning the city into an oven, what we got instead was cool, refreshing rain. Not a passing shower that evaporated as soon as it it the ground but rains that went on and on, for a whole day and a night. For the first time in 70 years, temperatures hit a record low of 23.8C for the month of May.

This came as a bit of a relief to those who have been working our Covid hospitals, wearing stuffy all day. The Covid Second Wave also seems to have eased in North India with a sharp fall in infections and increased availability of spare hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and medicines.

Meanwhile, as Cyclone Takutae ebbs, another kind of second wave in brewing on the eastern side, next to the Andaman Islands. This one is called Cyclone Yaas and let us hope the Bay of Bengal has less energy to spare for feeding another super cyclone!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

- https://mausam.imd.gov.in/imd_latest/contents/cyclone.php

- https://www.indiatoday.in/cities/delhi/story/delhi-records-coldest-may-cyclone-tauktae-cause-heavy-rainfall-1804625-2021-05-20

- https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-in-cyclone-tauktae-a-continuing-new-trend-from-the-arabian-sea-7317913/

- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cyclone-tauktae-live-tracking-gujarat-maharashtra-7319493/

- https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/tall-waves-lash-west-coast-as-cyclone-tauktae-dashes-to-make-landfall-in-gujarat-76945

- https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/science/cyclone-taukte-live-updates-taukte-extremely-severe-cyclonic-storm-imd-issues-alert-impact-on-mumbai-gujarat/2253205/

- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cyclone-yaas-west-bengal-odisha-7321599/

Extra Special Economic Zones

When it comes to productivity and export-competitiveness of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), clearly some states in India fare a lot better than the others.

How much better? If today's official press release (PIB) is to believed, more than 10 times!

18 SEZs in Gujarat exported, on an average, Rs. 12,500 Crores (US$ 2 billion) worth of goods & services. Its employees were by far much more productive too, with each employee sending out stuff worth nearly Rs. 3 Crores.

There are states with more than twice the number of export-zones with a fraction of Gujarat's productivity. Andhra Pradesh (pre-division) has 42; Tamil Nadu has 34 SEZs while Maharashtra and Karnataka have 25 each. Yet, for the latter three states average exports-per-SEZ hovers in the range of just Rs. 2000 crores.

What accounts for this huge difference? Is it that industries like diamond-polishing have export margins much more than any other goods or services?

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REFERENCES:

* "Functioning of SEZs" (6 Aug 2014) - PIB Press Release from Ministry of Commerce & Industry - Response to Rajya Sabha unstarred question No. 2919 - URL - http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=0