MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday angrily rebuked a shipyard chief for delays to repairs of a Soviet-era aircraft carrier set for delivery to India, urging work to be completed quickly.
Television pictures showed Medvedev adopting a tough style reminiscent of his predecessor and mentor Vladimir Putin as he rebuked the head of the Sevmash shipyard on the White Sea in Russia's northern port of Severodvinsk.
"We must finish it and sell it. Anything else would set a very poor precedent," Medvedev told the director of Sevmash, Nikolai Kalistratov.
"We should consider this as a first and very trying experience," Medvedev said in comments broadcast on state television.
Last year, India and Russia ended a protracted dispute over the cost to modernize the 44,570-tonne aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, which will be sold to the Indian navy for an undisclosed price in 2011.
In front of television cameras, Medvedev scolded Kalistratov for agreeing commitments that the shipyard had been unable to fulfill.
"It was a mistake," said Kalistratov, sighing loudly. "There is still a lot of work to do. It's a difficult business."
"Of course it was a mistake!" replied Medvedev, laughing sarcastically.
"Why did you sign? As a result everyone has to make excuses -- you in front of me, and me in front of my Indian colleagues," said Medvedev.
Putin has made televised admonishment of wayward officials one of his trademarks and last month publicly rebuked Russia's former richest man Oleg Deripaska in an extraordinary scene that saw him throw a pen at the oligarch.
Until now, Medvedev has usually been more restrained in his television appearances.
Russian amrs export firm Rosoboronexport in 2004 signed a deal to refurbish the 30-year-old carrier for 970 million dollars, but last year demanded India pay an additional 1.2 billion dollars.
Since resolving the pricing dispute, India sent about 100 trained personnel to join the some 1,200 Russian engineers at the Sevmash shipyard working on the massive vessel, according to Indian officials.
Medvedev later told a meeting of naval chiefs that the project had to be finished on time in line with the basic timetable agreed by the two sides, RIA-Novosti news agency reported.
Russia accounted for 70 percent of Indian arms supplies in 2008, but late deliveries and commercial disagreements have led New Delhi to turn to suppliers such as Israel, Britain, France and the United States.
Russia is due to supply India this year with a nuclear submarine, the Nerpa, in which 20 people died after a toxic gas accident during a trial in 2008.
Gorshkov project sole irritant in Indo-Russian ties: Medvedev
India to give 240-mn dollars for South Asian University
The Union Cabinet today approved payment of India's contribution of 239.930 million dollars to the South Asian University, which is around 79 percent of the total cost of the full establishment of the University until 2014.
As part of India's asymmetric commitment to SAARC, India is ready to disburse the first tranche of its financial commitment of 9.464 million dollars to ensure that the University is operational in July-August 2010.
The University will be the first international University to be hosted by India. The objectives of the University are to disseminate and advance knowledge, wisdom and understanding by providing instructional and research facilities in such branches of learning as it may deem fit.
The South Asian University shall be a non-state, non-profit self governing international educational institution with a regional focus for the purposes set forth in this Agreement and shall have full academic freedom for the attainment of its objectives.
The jurisdiction of the University shall extend to whole of India and to campuses and centres established outside India in the SAARC region.
The Ministry of External Affairs is acquiring hundred acres of land from DDA next to Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) for leasing to the University.
At the Thirteenth SAARC Summit held in Dhaka, in November 2005, Prime Minister proposed the establishment of a South Asian University to provide world-class facilities and professional faculty to students and researchers from SAARC member countries.
The Inter-governmental Agreement for the Establishment of the South Asian University was signed at the 14th SAARC Summit (April 3-4, 2007). The SAARC Member States also decided that the University would be established in India. (ANI)
Job for Indian royal descendant
A descendant of India's last Mughal emperor has been rescued from a life of penury in Calcutta by getting a job with the state-run Coal India.
Madhu is the illiterate great-great-granddaughter of emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and has been employed to run errands in Coal India's offices.
A letter of employment will be formally handed over to her by the coal minister at a function in Calcutta next month.
She and her mother currently run a tea stall in the slums of Calcutta.
Rehabilitation
"It will great to have Madhu working for us. Actually, it will be a great tribute to the last Mughal emperor who played a key role during the first war of independence in 1857," Coal India Chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said.
Bahadur Shah Zafar
Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last of a long line of Mughal emperors
The move by Coal India follows sustained efforts by a Delhi-based journalist Shivnath Jha, who launched a campaign to rescue her from poverty.
Madhu's cause was one of several highlighted by Mr Jha and his wife Neena in an initiative to rehabilitate descendants of the forgotten heroes of India's independence wars.
Mr Jha told the BBC that he first hit upon this idea when he tried to raise funds for one of India's greatest classical musicians, Bismillah Khan, earlier in the decade.
"We published a pictorial biography of Bismillah Khan and raised some funds. After his death, we institutionalised this movement," Mr Jha said.
Last year, he persuaded India's former Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav to help the descendants of Tantia Tope, one of the leaders of the 1857 mutiny which many Indians say was in fact the country's first war of independence.
'Barely survive'
"Two of his great granddaughters were given employment by the Container Corporation of India on Mr Yadav's intervention," Mr Jha said.
Bus in Calcutta
The pair live in poverty in one of the most crowded cities in the world
In 2009 Mr Jha began promoting the cause of Sultana Begum, the poverty-stricken widow of Muhammad Bedar Bakht - a direct descendant of Bahadur Shah Zafar - who died in 1980.
Ms Begum has five daughters - all are married except for Madhu, her youngest daughter.
"My other daughters and their husbands are poor people, they barely survive, so they cannot help us," she said. "We have been living, but God knows how."
The tea shop run by Sultana and her daughter earns the pair a subsistence income.
Mr Jha said that he hoped to provide the pair with more funds by donating money raised from the sale of a book about Indian prime ministers.
Another industrialist-philanthropist, Madhusudan Aggrawal, owner of Ajanta Pharmaceuticals has also offered help.
"Mr Aggrawal has promised a house for Sultana and a small job for her in a school run by his company," Mr Jha said.
If all works out, Sultana Begum and her daughter can surely look forward to moving out of the slums of Howrah, a decrepit industrial area.
Bahadur Shah Zafar was placed on the throne in 1837. He was the last of a line of Mughal emperors who ruled India for three centuries.
In 1857, when Indian soldiers mutinied against their British masters, Bahadur Shah Zafar was declared their commander-in-chief.
Mr Zafar was exiled to Rangoon after the British crushed the mutiny in 1858, where he lived for five years until his death at at the age of 87.
