EDITORIAL 30.01.10

Please contact the list owner of subscription and unsubscription at: editorial@samarth.co.in

 

media watch with peoples input                an organization of rastriya abhyudaya

 

Editorial

month  january 30, edition 000417, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

Editorial is syndication of all daily- published newspaper's Editorial at one place.

http://editorialsamarth.blogspot.com

For ENGLISH  EDITORIAL  http://editorial-eng-samarth.blogspot.com

For TELUGU EDITORIAL http://editorial-telugu-samarth.blogspot.com

 

 

THE PIONEER

1. OBAMA HAS GOT IT WRONG
2. WHAT PEACE? WHAT TALKS?
3. JUSTICE DONE, BUT IN PART - HIRANMAY KARLEKAR
4. BE ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE - SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
5. INDIA IN THE NEW BANGLADESH - JOYEETA BHATTACHARJEE
6. HASINA DELIVERS HISTORIC OUTCOMES - SWARN KUMAR ANAND
7. MAJOR HUJI ELEMENTS STILL AT LARGE - SAMUEL BAID

MAIL TODAY

1. THE ARMY CHIEF DOES THE RIGHT THING, AT LAST
2. IRRATIONAL MAYAWATI
3. SCRAP PADMA AWARDS
4. YOU MUST REPORT THE REAL THING - BY AMRITA IBRAHIM
5. DIGITAL INK - SACHIN KALBAG
6. SENA THREAT TO KING KHAN AND AMBANI
7. RAISINA TATTLE

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. CHUCKLE DE, WORLD
2. MY COMMUNITY, MY COUNTRY - CHETAN BHAGAT
3. STATE SUPPORT JUSTIFIED TO REVIVE HOCKEY
4. THE GAME'S ON THE DECLINE - PRODOSH MITRA
5. THE OLD HOME TOWN - GAUTAM ADHIKARI

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. OBAMA'S STATE OF DISUNION
2. STROKE OF LUCK
3. INDRAJIT HAZRA
4. MULLIGATAWNY, DEAR WATSON! - DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA
5. FILM STARS ARE THE NEW TV ATTRACTIONS - POONAM SAXENA
6. A JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS - PRATIK KANJILAL
7. THEY SERVE A PURPOSE - GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI

INDIAN EXPRESS

1. WITH NO CREDIT
2. FRAMED
3. DOUBLE STANDARDS
4. WITH NO CREDIT
5. EXIT AMERICA. AND THEN WHAT? - ROGER COHEN
6. PRINTLINE PAKISTAN - RUCHIKA TALWAR
7. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN - ALIA ALLANA
8. WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT SO QUIET ON THE CULTURAL FRONT? - GITANJALISURENDRAN

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. RBI ERRS
2. IT'S STILL RHETORIC
3. SUBBARAO'S MONETARY POLICY MUDDLE - MADAN SABNAVIS
4. POPULISM ON OUTSOURCING WON'T HELP - DARLINGTON JOSE HECTOR
5. BEND IT LIKE JAIRAM - RITUPARNA BHUYAN

THE HINDU

1. MOVING AWAY FROM EASY MONEY
2. EARTHQUAKES AND SCIENCE
3. ONE MONTH AFTER COPENHAGEN - M.R. SRINIVASAN
4. HAITI'S RECOVERY SHOULD START WITH DEBT CANCELLATION - SUPACHAI PANITCHPAKDI
5. WHAT LIES IN STORE FOR ANTARCTICA, THE WORLD'S LAST REPOSITORY? - ILYA KRAMNIK

THE ASIAN AGE

1. INFLATION: RBI MEANS BUSINESS
2. THE PADMAS & CHAPLOOSI - SHOBHAA'S
3. ADVENTURES IN BOOKLAND - KISHWAR DESAI
4. HOPE REDUX? - SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

DNA

1. BALL IS IN FM'S COURT
2. THE PILAO, IRANIAN STYLE - JAVED GAYA
3. ECHOES OF MUMBAI IN KUALA LUMPUR - NINAD SIDDHAYE
4. GOODBYE SALINGER - MICHIKO KAKUTANI

THE TRIBUNE

1. RBI CURBS MONEY SUPPLY
2. OUTSOURCING BLUES
3. LAW ON CLINICS
4. IMPROVING GOVERNANCE - BY B.G. VERGHESE
5. THOSE FOUR LETTER WORDS - BY RAJ CHATTERJEE
6. SRI LANKA MUST SHARE POWER WITH TAMILS - BY RAJINDER SACHAR
7. SECURITY, GOVERNANCE TOP AFGHAN AGENDA - BY ANITA INDER SINGH
8. INSIDE PAKISTAN - BY SYED NOORUZZAMAN

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

1. COMMISSION'S REPORT
2. CHILD TRAFFICKING
3. TIME MANAGEMENT - ARUP KUMAR DUTTA
4. MAHATMA GANDHI – AS AN ECONOMIST - MOON MOON SARMAH

MUMBAI MERROR

1. JAPAANI JOOTA PINCHING
2. BLAIR APPEARS FOR IRAQ WAR'S CHILCOT INQUIRY IN LONDON   

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. TATA STEEL: ROBUST NUMBERS - VISHAL CHHABRIA
2. PLAYING WITH FIRE - T N NINAN
3. MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING - DEEPAK LAL
4. E-READING THE TEA LEAVES - DEVANGSHU DATTA
5. ARE ECONOMISTS ALONE TO BLAME? - V V
6. YIN AND YANG - SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY
7. JYOTI MALHOTRA: WE'RE NOW PART OF THE SOLUTION - JYOTI MALHOTRA
8. GEETANJALI KRISHNA: OLD ISN'T GOLD, IT'S COPPER - GEETANJALI KRISHNA
9. KISHORE SINGH: MORE KIMCHI THAN TEA - KISHORE SINGH
10. CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS - WEI GU
11. BEARD UNTIL 2014 - RICHARD BEALES
12. CAT RETEST FROM TODAY, 10,000 TO APPEAR - CHITRA UNNITHAN & VINAY UMARJI

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. UPBEAT RBI
2. A WELCOME INITIATIVE
3. HEELING TOUCH
4. CRR HIKE MAY TAKE INVESTORS TO FIPS - NISHANTH VASUDEVAN
5. SEBI LIKELY TO TIGHTEN RULES FOR RATING AGENCIES - REENA ZACHARIAH
6. FUNDS MAKING A BEELINE FOR GOLD FUND OF FUNDS
7. INDIAN TELCOS CAN BECOME GLOBAL PLAYERS: BT CHIEF - SUDESHNA SEN
8. A COMPOSER OF COSMIC TUNES - VITHAL C NADKARNI
9. 'BANKERS HAVE ASSURED RATES WON'T RISE SOON

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. INFLATION: RBI MEANS BUSINESS
2. KITCHEN TERRORISTS - BY FARRUKH DHONDY
3. HIGH 'PRESSURE'
4. THE PADMAS & CHAPLOOSI  - BY SHOBHAA'S TAKE
5. HOPE REDUX? - BY SHREEKANT SAMBRANI
6. ADVENTURES IN BOOKLAND - BY KISHWAR DESAI

THE STATESMAN

1. ANTONY'S 'ADVICE'
2. BASIC OBLIGATION
3. MANAGING MINORITIES
4. TOUGH LOVE - SANKAR SEN
5. DELHI DURBAR
6. 100 YEARS AGO TODAY
7. CALCUTTA KENNEL CLUB
8. ON RECORD

THE TELEGRAPH

1. TEST OF A DIFFERENT CLASS
2. LEARNING FROM AMERICA - RAMACHANDRA GUHA

DECCAN HERALD

1. STRANGE RELUCTANCE
2. RISKY VENTURE
3. GM CONTAMINATION - BY DEVINDER SHARMA
4. PAVE WAY FOR THE PALESTINIAN STATE - BY MICHAEL JANSEN
5. STAYING YOUNG - BY D V GURUPRASAD

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. THE INSURER VS. THE HOSPITALS
2. IRAN, AFTER THE DEADLINE
3. LOST IN TRANSLATION - BY CHARLES M. BLOW
4. A RADICAL TREASURE - BY BOB HERBERT
5. THE PRE-POSTMODERNIST - BY DAVID LODGE
6. ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH - BY GAIL COLLINS

I.THE NEWS

1. THE MISSING
2. UP IN SMOKE
3. DEMOLISH THE MYTH
4. CONSPIRACY THEORIES - ARIF NIZAMI
5. LEARNING FROM KOREA - JAVED MASUD
6. PLAYING THE SINDH CARD - ZAFAR HILALY
7. FISCAL COMPLACENCY - SHAHID KARDAR
8. REFORMING OF SELF - BABAR SATTAR
9. PITY THE NATION - MIR ADNAN AZIZ

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. CJ DISPELS UNFOUNDED APPREHENSIONS
2. SINDH PA'S SHOCKING OPPOSITION TO POWER PROJECT
3. BREAKTHROUGH AT LONDON CONFERENCE
4. EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION - NOSHEEN SAEED
5. INDIA'S SECULAR TERRORISM - SAJJAD SHAUKAT
6. PAKISTAN'S STAND VINDICATED? - MOHAMMAD JAMIL
7. USA'S NEW TURN…! - SAJID ANSARI
8. IRAQIS HAVE REAL HOPE FOR THE FUTURE - WILLIAM SHAWCROSS

THE INDEPENDENT

1. QUAKE PREPAREDNESS
2. PIRACY IN THE BAY
3. KILLJOYS IN THE GOVERNMENT..! - ROBERT CLEMENTS
4. UPDATING EXISTING COPYRIGHT ACT - PROFESSOR MOHAMMAD NURUL HUDA
5. INDONESIA UPS TRADE WITH SOMALIA - DR TERRY LACEY

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. MEMO PM: TIME TO SHIFT SPEEDS
2. A VICTORY FOR EVERYBODY WHO BELIEVES IN EDUCATION

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. OBAMA'S HIGH-WIRE ACT ON THE ECONOMY
2. LET US THEREFORE BRACE OURSELVES TO OUR DUTY
3. THE IRAQ WAR MUST NOT REMAIN A CLOSED BOOK

THE GUARDIAN

1. BLAIR AT THE IRAQ INQUIRY: NO REGRETS
2. GREECE: UNDER A BYZANTINE SHROUD

THE KOREA HERALD

1. HONEST LOOK
2. INNOVATION KEY
3. IS GREEN DESIGN JUST GOOD DESIGN? - M.K. THOMPSON
4. GOING AFTER TERROR'S TOP SYMBOL

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. SHOTS ACROSS THE BOW
2. OUR DUTY TO REMEMBER AUSCHWITZ
3. YEAR OF U.S.-CHINA DISCORD? - BY IAN BREMMER AND DAVID GORDON

DAILY MIRROR

1. RUMOUR, LIKE A TUMOR IN THE BRAIN
2. THE MAGIC BEHIND THE MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA VICTORY
3. POLARIZATION ON ETHNIC LINES: A BAD SIGN  

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

OBAMA HAS GOT IT WRONG

PROTECTIONISM WILL PROVE COSTLY FOR US

In announcing an enhanced tax burden on those American companies that "ship jobs overseas" President Barack Obama may end up creating more problems than he resolves. Admittedly, he is within his rights to focus on the unemployment crisis in the US. More than Iraq and Afghanistan, more than nuclear non-proliferation and nice speeches in faraway capitals, what is going to affect Mr Obama's re-election chances in 2012 is the economy. It can make or break him. If Middle America is no more optimistic of his capabilities of managing the economy and improving prosperity, Mr Obama will almost certainly go down as a one-term President, Nobel Prize or no Nobel Prize. However, he has done little to give the impression that he understands the depth of the economic mess his country is in, or has a sustainable solution to it. What is worrying him most is that, as the stimulus begins to be withdrawn and corporate America and Wall Street go back to being on their own, bereft of Government bail-outs, the fledgling recovery seen in the past few weeks will vanish. A W-shaped, double-dip recession is now seen as a near certainty and a second reversal, albeit a smaller one than the big decline of 2008-09, is likely in the middle of the year. A pick-up in the economy, say some analysts, may not be forthcoming till the latter half of 2011, perhaps even later. This is a nightmare scenario for any politician, especially an incumbent President who has to go back to his people and convince them they have become better off under him. Mr Obama has to invent jobs, and invent them quickly.

Unfortunately, the route he has chosen is inherently short-sighted and tackles the symptoms rather than get to the crux of the issue. In terms of sheer numbers, outsourcing technology jobs to Bangalore has contributed very little to job losses in the US. On the other hand, it has increased profitability of American firms and put more money in the hands of shareholders. However, the "Buffalo not Bangalore" dialectic has become a catchy slogan for protectionist sentiment. Mr Obama has actively encouraged this. Low-cost, Government-subsidised manufacturing in China costs the American worker much, much more. Yet, the man in the White House is too overawed by the Chinese to ask hard questions of them.

Ultimately, however, it is not a question of which country takes away more American jobs — India or China or a third. What is at stake here is American commitment to free trade and to the tradition of innovation that has made it an economic powerhouse. Every recent recession has been vanquished by a technology surge. The Great Depression ended with the defence industry's boom during World War II, the spin-offs from which transformed American homes, offices and factories. The slowdown of the early-1990s was finally brushed aside by the Information Technology revolution that began in Silicon Valley. The seeds of an American renewal are to be found here and not in proto-xenophobic grandstanding. In reality, the market is ripe for green technologies that will combat climate change and herald new-generation manufacturing processes. Of all the countries in the world, the US is best positioned to develop, commercialise and deploy such technologies. This is what Mr Obama should focus on, even if the time-frame doesn't suit his re-election hopes.

 

***************************************

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

WHAT PEACE? WHAT TALKS?

LET PAKISTAN STOP AIDING TERRORISTS FIRST

The past week has witnessed needless debate about the current freeze in India-Pakistan relations and the non-selection of Pakistani cricketers for IPL 3. Pakistan has been constantly complaining that the freeze in diplomatic relations is harming the prospects of regional 'peace'. Some within the Indian establishment too are beginning to question the efficacy of not talking to Pakistan. But the question here is not whether the diplomatic freeze is detrimental to regional peace but whether engaging Pakistan through the composite dialogue process will achieve anything. Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani is reported to have said that "one incident" — the 26/11 fidayeen attack on Mumbai — should not be allowed to hold talks between the two countries to ransom. But Mr Gilani forgets that things have come to this pass not just because of what happened in Mumbai when Ajmal Amir Kasab and his fellow Pakistani jihadis colleagues butchered 189 innocent civilians, but the numerous instances of Pakistan-sponsored mass murder that amply prove Islamabad's refusal to give up terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Even today Pakistan is dragging its feet over the prosecution of those who planned 26/11. All that it has done, despite numerous dossiers provided by India, is file a chargesheet against middle and lower-level Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operatives while sparing the terrorist organisation's chief Hafiz Saeed. It is clear that groups such as the LeT are too closely associated with the Islamabad establishment to get rid of.

The Pakistani leadership, such as it is, makes it sound that unless talks are resumed, war between the two countries is the only option. This is plain bunkum. Talks have been put on hold because Islamabad refuses to address the core issue of cross-border terrorism. Bilateral talks cannot move forward unless there is progress on this front. Islamabad cannot expect things to be normal while we continue to be at the receiving end of the nefarious designs of Pakistan-based terrorist groups. Moreover, whom do we talk to in Pakistan? The so-called civilian Government? The Army? The ISI? Or the American Ambassador? Pakistan is facing a serious crisis with the Taliban turning on their masters. Yet, Pakistan refuses to acknowledge the problem. Under these circumstances, there is no logical reason for India to revive dialogue with Pakistan. For the moment, Islamabad should worry about talks at home, not 'peace' talks.

 

***************************************

            THE PIONEER

COLUMN

JUSTICE DONE, BUT IN PART

HIRANMAY KARLEKAR

The execution on January 27 of five persons guilty of assassinating Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all members of his family, except daughters Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, who were then abroad, signifies that justice has been done over 34 years after the commission of the crime on August 15, 1975. Of the seven others sentenced to death, one died in Zimbabwe in 2002 and six are still at large. While justice delayed is better than justice denied, one needs to ensure that justice is fully done.

Bangladesh's Law Minister, Mr Shafique Ahmed, said on January 27 that the Government had taken effective steps to bring back the six to the country and try them. The Awami League's deputy leader in Parliament, Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury, told reporters, also on January 27, "If there is humanity in the world, the respective countries should arrest the convicts and send them back here." For the six to be sent back to Bangladesh, intense pressure has to be mounted on the countries where they are now. Here, Bangladesh's efforts should be supplemented by other countries, particularly India, with whom Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had a very special relationship.

The responsibility of other countries merits attention. It will be morally reprehensible if the killers of a leader like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman go scotfree even after being sentenced to death. Despite the nearly all-pervasive cynicism of our time, morality remains important as the most important pre-condition for freedom, the content of democracy. Besides, one can hardly exaggerate the need for deterrence to such crimes in the future in the form of the rendition of full justice. The message must go out, that the long arm of law will catch up with the guilty, even if that takes over 34 years.

The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and all but two members of his family was not an isolated criminal act or merely the work of ambitious and/or embittered military officers. It was a part of a conspiracy to undo the secular and democratic legacy of Bangladesh's liberation war which claimed the lives of three million Bangladeshis and saw the mass rape of women. As Chief Martial Law Administrator, Maj Gen Zia-ur Rahman revoked Article 38 of Bangladesh's 1972 Constitution, banning communal parties and organisations. Later, as President, he removed in 1977 the declaration in the same Constitution of secularism as a principle of state policy, and a definition of what secularism meant in practice. Gen Zia-ur Rahman and Gen HM Ershad, who became President a brief while after the former's assassination on May 30, 1981, put Bangladesh on a course of Islamisation underlined by the 1988 declaration of Islam as the country's state religion. Islamist fundamentalists became increasingly assertive and violent.

The undoing of this sinister process which facilitated the rise of organisations like the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, is important not only for reviving the heritage of the liberation war but for victory in the fight against global Islamist terrorism. The main beneficiaries of the military dictatorships, functioning with or without a civilian fig leaf, were people like Mr Golam Azam, Mr Matiur Rahman Nizami, Mr Abu Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid who had collaborated with the Pakistani Army during the liberation war and their party, Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh. They had identified freedom fighters and their families, tortured and murdered them, collaborated in the mass killings and rape besides being involved in the infamous murder of intellectuals and cultural personalities in December 1971.

The collaborators either fled the country or went underground after liberation in December 1971. President Zia-ur Rahman allowed Mr Golam Azam to return on a Pakistani passport and two weeks' visa in 1977. He was not only not tried for his crimes, but allowed to stay on at his residence at Mogbazar, Dhaka, even after the expiry of his visa. The Jamaat re-emerged as a political party at a conference in Dhaka in 1979. Mr Golam Azam functioned secretly as the party's Ameer while Mr Abbas Ali Khan became its officiating Ameer. The latter declared at the reincarnated Jamaat's first Press conference on December 7 that year, "What I did for the country and the race was right in 1971 and was meant to defend Bangladesh from the Indian aggressor."

The Jamaat and its organisation for students, the Islami Chhatra Shibir, constitute the principal spawning ground of Islamist terrorism in Bangladesh. Almost all of the latter's leaders like Mohammad Asadullah al-Galib of JMB, 'Banglabhai' or Siddiqul Islam, the Operations Commander of JMJB, and Mufti Abdul Hannan, Operations Commander of the HuJIB, are from the stables of the two organisations.

The killing of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was the starting point of a process that led to the rise of Bangladesh as a hub of Islamist terrorism. The promulgation of the infamous Indemnity Ordinance by Khandakar Mushtaq Ahmed, who became Bangladesh's President following Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's assassination, was the first indication of the two being linked. The Ordinance provided the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as well as those of the Awami League leaders in Dhaka Central Jail on the night of November 3-4, 1975, immunity from punishment and blocked investigation into both crimes.

Things started moving only after Mr Mohitul Islam, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's personal assistant, filed a case against the killers on October 2, 1996, and Sheikh Hasina's first Government revoked the Indemnity Ordinance in November 1996, enabling the trial to proceed. Though the Bangladesh High Court finally sentenced the 12 accused to death on April 30, 2001, an appeal to the Supreme Court held up matters. Significantly, the latter did not hear the appeal even for a single day during Begum Khaleda Zia's second tenure as Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's killers, Begum Khaleda Zia's BNP, the Jamaat and the terrorist organisations linked to the latter, are thus parts of the same political formation that promotes terrorism. Punishment of the rest of the killers is bound to demoralise Islamist terrorists, as will the trial and sentencing of the war criminals, most of whom are, or were, leading lights of the Jamaat or its foot soldiers. Meanwhile, Bangladesh must be ready to face retaliation, and India to render it every assistance it needs.

 

********************************************

THE PIONEER

COLUMN

BE ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE

SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR

There are five types of restlessness. The first is due to the place you are in. When you move away from certain places, streets or houses, you immediately feel better. Chanting, singing, or the innocence of children playing and laughing can change this atmospheric restlessness. If you chant and sing, the vibration in the place changes.

The second type of restlessness is in the body. Eating the wrong food, eating at odd times, not exercising and overworking can cause physical restlessness. The remedy for this is exercise, moderation in work habits and following a simple diet.

The third type of restlessness is mental restlessness. It is caused by ambition, strong thoughts, likes or dislikes. Knowledge alone can cure this restlessness; this includes seeing life from a broader perspective, knowing about the Self and realising the impermanence of everything. If you achieve everything, so what? After your achievement, you will die. Knowledge of your death or life, confidence in the Self and in the divine can all calm down mental restlessness.

There is also emotional restlessness. Any amount of knowledge does not help here. Sudarshan kriya helps. With it all emotional restlessness vanishes. Also, the presence of a guru, a wise person or a saint, can help calm emotional restlessness.

The fifth type of restlessness is rare. It is the restlessness of the soul, when everything feels empty and meaningless. Do not try to get rid of this feeling. Embrace it! This restlessness of the soul can bring genuine prayer in you. It brings perfection, siddhis and miracles in life. It is also needed to get that innermost longing for the divine. Satsangs and the presence of enlightened people soothe the restlessness of the soul. Do not look for the divine somewhere in the sky. See god in every pair of eyes, in the mountains, water, trees and animals. See god in yourself.

Heightened awareness brings you close to the reality. For this you have to increase your prana. When you have reverence for the whole universe, you are in harmony with the whole universe.

 

***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

INDIA IN THE NEW BANGLADESH

THE MANMOHAN SINGH GOVERNMENT HAS PLACED HIGH STAKES ON A NEW DIPLOMATIC BREAKTHROUGH WITH BANGLADESH, AND THEREFORE SHOULD CONSTANTLY LOOK FOR WAYS TO TOP UP COOPERATION FOR FEAR OF REVIVING SHEIKH HASINA'S RETROGRADE OPPONENTS

JOYEETA BHATTACHARJEE

Optimism on the future of India-Bangladesh relations is ranging high following Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India earlier this month. The new high struck in the four-decade-long, roller-coaster diplomacy exemplifies the golden fact that all adversities in bilateral relations can be resolved if the political urge is genuine.

A veritable mountain of impossibilities was conquered. Issues once regarded as permanent fell by the wayside. The climax of the Hasina visit was the signing of three major agreements on security affairs, viz, the Agreement on Mutual Assistance on Criminal Matters, Agreement on Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Agreement on Combating Terrorism, Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking. The biggest clincher was Bangladesh agreeing to provide India port access at Chittagong and Mongla. Such a historic breakthrough would not have been possible without an Awami League government into power in Dhaka. The League has historically been inclined to developing friendly relations with India. Under the previous, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), India-Bangladesh ties often reached boiling point over security matters. On many occasions India accused Bangladesh of being a safe haven for anti-India groups and clashed with Dhaka over inaction which was both perceived and real. Inevitably, Bangladesh declared India's claims as baseless.

Dhaka's attitude only made India sceptic about the country's intentions. Similarly, the bilateral relations witnessed a downward trend with regard to issues concerning connectivity. India needed transit rights to it's north-eastern region apart from port access and successive governments since PV Narasimha Rao had ceaselessly articulated the benefits that could accrue to Bangladesh from this. But Dhaka always scotched the possibility saying it amounted to turning over its territory to India and surrendering its sovereignty. The major obstacle to resolving these issues had been the divided politics of the country. The Awami League is the left-of-centre party that led the country's freedom movement with a rich past in working with India. In its previous term in power (1996-2001), the League government had sharpened a nuanced tilt towards India. On the other hand, the BNP is right-of-centre and has many radical right-wing political parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami as its partners. The BNP-led coalition often utilises the Awami League's India-friendly image to attack it as anti-national and the anti-India propaganda buttresses its claim to nationalism.

Quite naturally, every change of regime in Dhaka significantly influences the country's relations with India. Bilateral relations with India improved under the only Awami League government that preceded the present one. The Ganges Water treaty was signed during this tenure. But the two BJP regimes that New Delhi had to deal with since restoration of democracy in 1991 often saw the relationship hit rock bottom. The lowest was reached during the 2001-06 term of Khaleda Zia.

However there were also instances when the Awami League had to distance itself from India just to counter the BNP's political attacks. For instance, Sheikh Hasina had to suspend the idea of providing transit rights to India after taking baby steps in that direction. She faced such strong anti-India propaganda attacks from the BNP that she feared her hard-won middle-class base could be swayed. In her current term also, she is challenged by the BNP's anti-Indiaism. So, Sheikh Hasina needs to be commended for taking bold steps to withstand pressure from the fundamentalists of Bengladeshi society and polity. She has virtually put her entire political future on the line by seeking a solid political and economic relationship with India.Undoubtedly, Sheikh Hasina's fondness for India has a certain compulsion. She has transcended all barriers because she recognises the economic aspirations of the new generation of Bangladeshis. She won the 2008 election on a landslide by holding out the promise of economic development, waging war against Islamic militancy and holding trials of war criminals. Being a poor country, Bangladesh has necessarily got to hitch its economic wagon on to the engine of India. In this respect, she has shown the greatest statesmanship among India's south Asian neighbours. Sheikh Hasina realises that having a neighbour (India) which is the world's fastest growing economy helps. Bangladesh stand to benefit immensely by linkage to India's infrastructure and market.

Another important reason was the scepter of fundamentalism. The pro-Awami mandate was a mandate against right-wing Islam. So, Sheikh Hasina is determined to take drastic measure for combating militancy. Her government has banned the dreaded Harkat-ul Jihad Bangladesh (Huji) and arrested many of its cadre. Interestingly, the investigations vindicated India's suggestion that many of the militant groups from Bangladesh had linkages with various international militant organisations, which was denied by the Khaleda Zia regime. The arrest of Huji cadre, along with Lasker-e-Tayyaba operatives from Bangladesh in connection with LeT's plans to attack the Indian High Commission and American Embassy in Dhaka is a grim example. Under the present circumstances no country would be able to fight militancy by itself. It needs to cooperate with other countries. Partnership with India, geographically Bangladesh's closest and also a country with the greatest experience in dealing with terrorism, was an attractive proposition. It goes to Sheikh Hasina's credit that she succeeded in overcoming inhibitions for crossing over.

The issue of the trial of Bangladesh's war criminals is also an important reason for Sheikh Hasina to seek India's cooperation. By 'war criminals' is meant those Bengalis who had collaborated with the Pakistani army during the country's liberation war of 1971 and carried out atrocities on the freedom fighters. The trial of war criminals is expected to begin shortly. But this issue has antagonised a significant section, mainly the fundamentalist Jamaat -e-Islami, as many of its leaders are believed to have partied with the Pakistani regime. This urge for settling old scores is an old one and found expression even during Sheikh Hasina's 1996-2001 term. But she was distracted by other problems and could not take it forward. The issue refused to die down however. During the Khaleda Zia tenure (2001-06), ordinary Bangladeshis were shocked to find the very men who had acted as agents of the Pakistanis taking over important posts in public life. The institutionalisation of the fundamentalist obelisk in Bangladeshi life was interpreted as a return of Pakistani influence. Naturally Sheikh Hasina got the benefit of the sentiment.

The other side of the anti-Pakistan coin in Bangladeshi politics is pro-Indiaism. The return of the 'war criminals' issue to the centre stage is, therefore, good news for New Delhi. It requires no overstressing that Dhaka-Islamabad ties are presently at its lowest. Maintaining stability and security in the region is an imperative not just for Bangladesh's economic development but also India's much-marginalised north-east. It is also essential for the future of moderate politics in the two countries. Hence, India should do everything possible for ensuring the success of the new diplomatic thrust. Sheikh Hasina's ability to remain in power hinges on the confidence of her people, which would naturally get eroded if the economic dividends of pro-Indiaism are not tangible in the short term. The onus, in this regard, lies with India.

The writer is a specialist on Bangladesh with Observer Research Foundation

 

***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

HASINA DELIVERS HISTORIC OUTCOMES

BY GETTING BANGLADESH TO END ITS OLD EQUIVOCITY, MANMOHAN SINGH MAY HAVE CLINCHED THE BIGGEST DIPLOMATIC SUCCESS FOR INDIA IN RECENT MEMORY. A SATURDAY SPECIAL FOCUS

SWARN KUMAR ANAND

The recent official visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India has injected new thrust and optimism into the traditionally stormy relationship. Sheikh Hasina's resolve to erase the anti-India chapter in Bangladesh's diplomacy was in ample evidence from the early days of her second term which began after a huge landslide poll victory in December 2008.

She addressed all the outstanding issues, in real time too. She expanded the meaning of Indo-Bangla friendship to the widest possible horizon, beyond trade and counter-terrorism. She enacted the Vested Property Return (Amendment) Act, 2009 which could pave the way for returning the properties confiscated by the former West Pakistani regime during the 1965 India-Pakistan war. The beneficiaries would be Hindus, and by doing it she has secured great credibility in India.

The agreements inked last fortnight are special because they herald a paradigm shift in the foreign policy of Bangladesh, as during her first tenure as prime minister, Hasina did not care about India's security concerns. In 1996, she preferred to pay her first foreign visit to Beijing in order to neutralise the negative image which Communist China held of her father, the founder of modern Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. All through the first term she faced vociferous opposition due to her pro-Indian foreign policy.

It is very encouraging that the ice has melted in Hasina's second term, and Bangladesh has refused to become another Afghanistan, much to the chagrin of the ISI of Pakistan and Hasina's arch-rival, the BNP, during whose rule Bangladesh had became a safe haven for anti-India Pakistani terrorists groups. Hasina gave her Indian interlocutors unequivocal commitment on mutual security concerns. Besides, New Delhi also got an assurance that Bangladesh would support India's candidature for permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

How India reciprocated is the bigger news. New Delhi has declared it would carry out its role as the dependable giant neighbour by helping Bangladesh wipe out its negative trade deficit with India and also allow Bangladesh trade access to Nepal. The icing on the cake is a low-interest loan of $ 1 billion.

India's gesture has changed the equation completely in Bangladesh. With the notable exception of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, all the institutions of public life, including the media, have hailed as historic the inked agreements to boost cooperation in the areas of security, power, trade and connectivity, water sharing and resolution of all other bilateral issues which unnecessarily soured relations. To the youth of Bangladesh, this dramatic breakthrough in regional diplomacy holds out hope of economic dividends. The new generation of Bangladeshis is now on the threshold of participating in the great Indian economic boom.

Hasina acknowledged --- and in this she mirrored the collective Indian leadership --- that the two most formidable problems South Asia faced were poverty and terrorism. She reiterated during her talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that her government would not allow Bangladesh's soil to be used for terrorism.However, all Bangladeshis are not satisfied. Before leaving for New Delhi, Hasina had 'vowed' to get for Bangladesh her 'just' share of the waters of the common rivers. It didn't happen, but the thaw in relations between the neighbours promises that a pragmatic solution is now within reach. As good relations with India has the potential to erode the base of the main Opposition BNP, its senior leader, Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, claimed: "Sheikh Hasina has put Bangladesh's security at risk by allowing India to use Bangladesh's ports." He said the BNP would prevent India from using Chittagong port.

The BNP is protesting against the extradition treaty as well, because underneath its claims to 'sovereignty' lie the secret fear that the criminals and terrorists who would be extradited to India might end up spilling the beans on their linkage with the BNP. Bangladesh's Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia has initiated moves for unity among anti-India parties and groups, and has already announced a movement to protest the agreements signed with India. On expected lines, Zia has termed Hasina's visit and the pacts signed as "a total sell-out." She has gone further and accused her political rival of signing "a secret security deal" with India.

It is worth noting that Hasina, who had made an election pledge in end-2008 of forming a South Asian Task Force on Terrorism, did not deter from her path even when she found no takers, especially in Pakistan. Only India and the United States have approved of it in principle and she has continued on the same broad road, keeping the two allies in focus. She also reopened the case pertaining to the April 2004 arms haul in Chittagong. Ten truck-loads of ammunition, purchased from China and brought on a ship belonging to a lawmaker close to the then Prime Minister, Zia, was captured. When unearthed, the incident was sought to be suppressed by the Zia government which also put forth misleading clues to frustrate investigations. After coming to power, Sheikh Hasina arrested two former generals who headed the National Security Intelligence and the Directorate General of Field Intelligence at the relevant time and is currently trying them.

The arms haul is significant, and so is the unearthing of millions of bullets at Bogra, supposed to have been air-dropped for use by the ULFA, whose leaders have for several years used Bangladesh as a springboard for operations, in direct coordination with Pakistan's ISI. The presence of ULFA leaders, which was persistently denied by past governments, was laid bare by the Hasina government when, after weeks of coordinated operation, it facilitated the arrest of Arabinda Rajkhowa, his information chief Raju Barua and five other Ulfa leaders.

The Pakistan angle to the operations of Ulfa and other militants was revealed just two days before Hasina's visit. One of her close aides, Awami League general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam, disclosed at a conference on Indo-Bangla relations that Ulfa leader Anup Chetia had a meeting with Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf, when he was paying an official visit to Dhaka in July 2002. The meeting, facilitated by the then Zia government, took place in Musharraf's hotel suite.There has been no reaction from Musharraf, now in
London, or from the Pakistan government. In Dhaka, there was a pro forma denial by Khandaker Delwar Hossain, secretary general of the BNP, who described the claim as 'irresponsible'. The Awami leader retaliated by repeating the charge and saying that the government had "clear evidence".

These disclosures formed the backdrop to Hasina's discussions with the Indian leadership. Expanding counter-terror and security cooperation thus topped the discussions. After the talks, the two sides signed three treaties on mutual legal help in criminal matters, mutual transfer of convicted prisoners, and cooperation in the fight against international terrorism, organised crime and drug trafficking. The three security-related pacts signal a big step forward in counter-terror cooperation and would enable New Delhi to press Dhaka for the extradition of suspected insurgents, who have taken shelter in Bangladeshi territory over the years, from its northeastern States.

The writer is Deputy News Editor, The Pioneer

**************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

MAJOR HUJI ELEMENTS STILL AT LARGE

THOUGH SHEIKH HASINA BEGAN HER TERM BY TAKING ALL THE RIGHT STEPS TO CURB TERRORISM DIRECTED AGAINST BANGLADESH AND INDIA, SHE STILL HAS A LONG WAY TO GO AS IS CLEAR FROM THE EVIDENCE THAT HUJI AND JMB MAY BE REGROUPING

SAMUEL BAID

This month, two leaders, one to India's west and the other on her east, made diametrically opposite declarations on the contentious issue of 'use' of their national territories for cross-border terrorism. In Dhaka, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina declared that her country would not allow its territory to be used by militants and terrorists of another country (read India's). On the other side, Pakistan's Yousaf Raza Gilani said in Islamabad that his country could not guarantee India future immunity from recurrence of Mumbai-type terror attacks. Pakistan, he said, was itself a victim of terrorism and that it was not able to stop it.

What Gilani said is known to be true. But the reason for his refusal to bow to international opinion is rooted in his government's nefarious considerations. On the other hand, Sheikh Hasina made her statement with a clear mind about peace and security in the region. That was her promise to the people when her Awami League party fought the December 2008 general election. The party won three-fourths majority. What was remarkable was the fact that she managed to complete one full year in government in December 2009 without losing her people's support. Two surveys conducted by The Daily Star and Samkal proved this. Sheikh Hasina started her second term as prime minister by directing her officials to form a South Asian Anti-Terrorism Task Force. This was unprecedented for any government in India's neighbourhood. She showed determination to walk the talk by helping Indian authorities capture seven top ULFA militants who had found safe haven on Bangladeshi soil and had constantly harassed the people of Assam through periodic bombings and destruction of public property. Her predecessor, Khaleda Zia, had bettered Pakistan in the game of giving sanctuary to anti-India terrorists. She had refused outright to even discuss the existence of these elements in her country. Sheikh Hasina went on to crack down on the Harkat-ul-Jahad-e-Islami (HUJI), a Pakistan-linked terrorist group which flourished under Khaleda Zia. It was well known that Zia had depended on fundamentalist groups as props.

Sheikh Hasina made a four-day visit to India beginning January 10. She signed five agreements ranging from security to culture. While one of the MOUs pertained to terrorism and the other exchange of criminals with additional reference to drug trafficking, the role of the Islamist groups was either downplayed or ignored. With their notoriously short memory, media commentators have forgotten that each time there has been a terror attack in India, particularly 2007-08, be it two explosions in Hyderabad, in Varanasi near a famous Hindu shrine, Bangalore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad, it was the unmistakeable hand of Bangladesh-based groups, including the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HuJI) and Jama'at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) which was in evidence. However, there was no follow-up from Dhaka except self-righteous denial.

Earlier too, groups were banned but in a most superficial way. They regrouped without difficulty and soon refurbished their operations. Some moved away from cities to remote areas, particularly the 'chars', the dried riverbeds, where they held training and set up camps. By the time Sheikh Hasina came to power in December 2008, about 40 Huji operatives including convicted and charge-sheeted terrorists involved in previous bomb attacks, were at large and posed an enormous threat to not just Bangladesh's security, but neighbouring India's as well. Even though HuJI and Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh (JMB), along with two or three other terror groups have been banned by Sheikh Hasina, they continue to operate underground. Some of the leaders have also gone scot free.

The absconding Huji leaders include top brass like Mufti Shafiqur Rahman, Sheikh Farid, Maulana Abu Bakar, Abdul Hannan Sabbir, Maulana Liton, Abdul Hye, Abu Jehad, Abu Musa, Abdullah, Sagir Bin Emdad, Maulana Monir, Maulana Masum and Golam Mostafa.The sacrifices of the Bengalis for liberation from Pakistan 39 years ago inspired the world with the hope that Bangladesh would be a refreshing example of democracy, secularism and nationalism. The Bengalis freed themselves from the dictatorship of Pakistani generals on December 16, 1971. Sheikh Hasina's father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman led the freedom struggle. He was in a Pakistani jail when his country got liberation. As tragic irony would have it, the people of Bangladesh found themselves sucked back into the same system from which they had earned freedom by sacrificing three million lives. Begum Zia chose the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islamic Oikya Jote as her coalition partners. Of these, the former had collaborated with the Pakistan Army against Bangladesh's freedom fighters. When the party became a coalition partner of Begum Zia's government it supported Islamic militants and terrorists who conducted bomb blasts and attacks on Awami League leaders, including Sheikh Hasina.

During her second term as prime minister, which began in 2001, religious terrorism became a serious threat not only to the Bangla society, but also Bangladesh's neighbours and the world at large. During Begum Zia's prime ministership Bangladesh began to be called as the second centre of global terrorism after Pakistan.

Now Hasina is out to wipe that tarnish forever. She recognises India's new credibility in world affairs and has wisely decided to tap international goodwill by securing India's trust. Her government showed a determination to turn a new leaf in India-Bangladesh relations by removing all stops to maintain vigilance so that terrorism does not get a new lease of life in the eastern slice of south Asia.

The writer is Director, Media Studies, YMCA

 

**************************************

******************************************************************************************

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

THE ARMY CHIEF DOES THE RIGHT THING, AT LAST

 

THE Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor has done the right thing by heeding the " advice" of the Union Defence Minister A. K. Antony and recommending disciplinary action against his Military Secretary Lt Gen Avadesh Prakash, instead of merely taking administrative action against him. There are some ex- service personnel who see in this action an untoward intrusion by the civilian authorities into the affairs of the military. That point would have been valid, had it been merely the Defence Secretary who had offered the advice. But the Minister is the representative of the Supreme Commander, the President of India, who has charged him with running the Ministry of Defence, of which the Indian armed forces are a part.

 

There should never be any doubt in a democratic system that, notwithstanding the autonomy of various government departments, including the Indian Army, the political executive is always supreme.

 

Mr Antony may have chosen to " advise" the Army Chief, but his counsel was tantamount to an instruction. Had General Kapoor not acted, the Minister could have ordered him to do so, or, be well in his right to censure the chief himself.

 

As we have noted earlier, General Kapoor has brought this on himself by his partisan handling of the recommendation of the Eastern Army Command which had convened a court of inquiry into the episode and recommended the dismissal of Gen Prakash and the court martial of two other officers for what is now being called the Sukhna land scam. While upholding the tough action against the two, General Kapoor recommended merely administrative action against Lt Gen Prakash. In this sense he overruled his own Eastern Army commander and now Army chief- designate, Lt Gen V. K. Singh. It is not surprising that he was, in turn, overruled by the Defence Minister himself.

 

**************************************

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

IRRATIONAL MAYAWATI

 

UP Chief Minister Mayawati's decision to have a special protection force for the memorials and statues of Dalit icons in Lucknow and Noida does not come as a surprise. She had set up a similar armed force in 2002, but it was disbanded by the successor government of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Aware of the opposition the ostentatious projects have attracted, it was expected that she would repeat the earlier effort and obtain legal sanction too. The State Special Zone Security Force Bill, 2010 introduced in the Uttar Pradesh assembly is precisely such a step.

 

But, Ms Mayawati appears to have missed the point. Memorials do not need to be protected by a special force because, in the main, they honour well- loved and revered figures. On those occasions when statues have been defaced, it has been the handiwork of people from the extreme fringe of politics. The controversy surrounding the memorials stems as much from the huge public cost, as the fact that Ms Mayawati's statues are also part of these structures.

 

She should ask herself whether the memorials would be in danger if only Bhimrao Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi or Subhas Chandra Bose's statues were erected.

 

It is clear that while Ms Mayawati talks of Dalit pride, good governance has been pushed to the background. Why else would she create a force to secure expensive statues, when she is unable to provide security for the people of her state, especially the downtrodden Dalits?

 

**************************************

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

SCRAP PADMA AWARDS

 

THERE is a simple solution to end the controversies that surface over the choice of Padma awardees year after year. Scrap the awards. As things stand, they have come to be associated with things other than excellence, or service to the nation. It is not just that people with suspect credentials often figure in the roll of honour. What is equally bad is that with lobbying often deciding who makes it and who doesn't, suspicion shrouds the choice of even the people who are otherwise deserving.

 

There is a mechanism in place for choosing the awardees but people who have been its part have disclosed how they are observed in the breach. This being so, there is little point in persisting with a system that reminds us of the colonial era when awards and titles were conferred merely as a form of patronage and favour.

 

**************************************

MAIL TODAY

YOU MUST REPORT THE REAL THING

BY AMRITA IBRAHIM

 

A LEADING news channel recently initiated a chorus of complaints when on the 9 o'clock news they ran some disturbing images of an injured policeman who bled to death because of delayed medical attention.

 

Tamil Nadu police officer R. Vetrivel was attacked while on his motorbike by unnamed assailants, and lay bleeding heavily on the road. A convoy of ministers passed by, stopped, but took no action until several minutes later, when it was too late. The decision of the channel to show this shocking sequence of events restarted a convoluted debate — what is the role of the journalist when reporting while someone is suffering? Should he keep shooting and doing his job, or should he help the injured? Images are powerful statements, which can act as witness to people's suffering, or jolt the conscience of the viewer and become an iconic symbol of mobilisation.

 

Prize- winning photographs have done just that: the little girl running towards the camera after her village was napalm- bombed during the Vietnam war; the starving Sudanese child who collapsed of hunger as a vulture stalked nearby; the hand of a grieving father brushing away the dirt from his dead child's face in Bhopal. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to say that the history of the last century and a half has been not only written in words, but also rendered in images.

 

Photography, and to some extent television, has documented world wars, freedom movements, natural and man- made disasters, and violent conflict from the very start of its technological development.

 

Suffering

 

However, the debate on the ethics of photojournalism has also accompanied this history. What is the role of the photographer in capturing a moment where another is in need or pain? Does taking a photograph or filming such an event turn the suffering of others into an opportunity for commercial or aesthetic gain? After Kevin Carter's picture of the collapsed Sudanese girl was published in The New York Times , hundreds of letters poured into the newspaper asking what had happened to her. The picture won him a Pulitzer, even as Carter was criticised for not helping the girl, instead waiting almost ten minutes to see if the vulture she had collapsed in front of would open its wings so that he could take the picture. Should he have done more? Readers who see images of stark suffering or violence, often see them stripped of context, without knowledge of the conditions before, during, and after the images are captured.

 

Given this lack of context that has always accompanied the photographic medium and more so in our highly mediatised times where the Internet, mms, or television can relay images much more rapidly around the world, the ethics of image production are very complex. Indeed, the problem of how the image is produced and whether what it shows is the ' truth' are weighty questions in philosophy and the humanities. Suffering is an experience that is fundamentally a part of the human condition, but when photographs or television footage of others' pain becomes exchanged for money, does that experience become subordinated to economic interests without care for those who it depicts?

 

In the 24x7 cycle of news and information, we see images of all kinds of suffering, but we often ignore the specific local and contextual makings of the crisis. Instead, viewers are pulled into a prurient voyeurism that sees the suffering as occurring naturally, or without our complicity. It is this work of naturalisation that enables right wing American television hosts like Pat Robinson to condemn the recent Haitian earthquake as a result of that country's " pact with the devil", rather than talking of how American and French political interests for centuries and crushingly unequal aid agreements have been responsible for keeping Haiti underdeveloped and dependent on foreign support. Certain places or people become stereotypically marked as poor or criminal, because of how we have been disposed to see them on our television screens, rather than looking at how these images come to be made in the first place.

 

The question of contextualisation is a particularly keen one for Indian television journalism, too. The industry has recently seen tremendous growth as a business, but less dramatic evolution in terms of institutional ethics or codes of conduct. The news industry, in particular, has been criticised for its high- pitched tone of reporting and use of uncensored and gory images. The case of Vetrivel is the most recent, but by no means the only one in the short history of television news in India.

 

Economics

 

Though the channel's aim was to wag a finger at the ministers who impotently stood around doing nothing, the same charge could be made of the cameraman who was filming instead of rushing the man towards medical aid. However, we could also ask, how many times do we stop when we see a road accident? We should not be too quick to shake our heads at the ministers, when many of us might not have stopped for Vetrivel either. What does a journalist do — shoot the event or intervene in it? Journalists will tell you that their job is to report what happens, as clearly as possible. The journalist is like a doctor in the emergency room, according to one analogy — one that is ironic given the images of the dying Vetrivel.

 

One sees a lot of suffering, but it is important to put one's feelings aside and just work on the story. This is a feeling that many journalists around the world feel — especially those covering war or unprecedented disasters.

 

Except that in Indian television, the economic conditions that determine how images are produced and broadcast become a source of deep suspicion for the viewers. With a greater part of most television channels budgets going towards distribution and in house production, there is not much left over that can be dedicated to intense newsgathering and research.

 

Stories are put together ad hoc, culled from images from the Internet, especially YouTube and run ad nauseam for a day at the most, before rushing on to the next visually dramatic moment. In these kinds of circumstances of production, the better stories, the calmer moments, which do exist, are lost or buried away under the pile of daily hysteria that we encounter on our television sets.

 

Regulation

 

We are so used to having our television journalists dramatise the news, and act like drama mongers, that they have not gained our trust. Almost every televised event seems like infotainment, a soap opera, or trick for ratings. In this context, it is hard not to see almost everything the news media does with an intensely suspicious eye. The discussions over regulation on television have been frequently raised as a way to control the runaway speed of television news, but this doesn't seem to address the deeper problem.

 

The response cannot be to move towards censorship, the enforcement of silence, which is another danger.

 

State regulation cannot bring about what is sorely needed in television news — reflection from within the industry on what constitute groundbreaking, historically significant, and epoch defining images and stories.

 

For this, we need to be able to put more money into newsgathering and research, which focus on investigating behind the stories that appear momentarily on our screens and are then gone. Television, and news in particular, is an ephemeral experience; it does not stay with us the way photographs or films do. Nevertheless, it has the power to do much more than it currently does, for which our media owners, journalists — and also we, the audience — are definitely to blame.

 

The writer is a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University currently on fieldwork in India

 

***************************************

MAIL TODAY

 

DIGITAL INK

SACHIN KALBAG

 

IPAD MIGHT CHANGE THE WORLD, ONE USER AT A TIME

SOMETIME in the year 1990 Vincent Canby, the legendary film critic of The New York Times , was having a conversation with another of the paper's critics, the superbly articulate Janet Maslin, about Godfather III . Maslin, Canby's friend and mentee, told him that she was excited about watching the movie that she would be reviewing later. " I am very excited," Maslin remembers telling Canby while going into the movie hall. Canby replied, " I think I'd rather be excited on the way out." I was reminded of this story on January 27 when Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced the launch of the iPad. For a gadget that promised so much, the end result was, well, not worldchanging.

 

It is a tablet PC to beat all other tablet PCs, no doubting that. And it continues with the Apple tradition of designing the sexiest gadgets the world has ever seen, and all with the help of nothing but a few curves at the right places.

 

Yet, it does not have world- changing potential that everyone expected it to have for months before its release. What it can change though, and I presume gradually, is the way we use gadgets and make use of them. And for that, the key element in the Apple iPad is that it does not depend on a 3G network alone to get things going. A mere Wi- Fi connection at your local coffee shop, your office or your home is enough to get all the apps you want to get started.

 

Which means that in India where full- fledged, non- government 3G services are still at least six months away, the Wi- Fi bit may kickstart the iPad's usage. One of the reasons the Apple iPhone 3G ( which has sold close to 43 million units worldwide) did not make even a pipsqueak in India is possibly because of the network issue.

 

There is just not enough bandwidth available for iPhone enthusiasts to make full use of their super- expensive gadget.

 

It's like buying the world's best home theatre system for a place that has no electricity.

 

So what really are the drawbacks of the Apple iPad? On Twitter, there are perhaps a few million tweets on the iPad and the mixed reviews it is getting.

 

The web is simply abuzz with experts weighing in on the issue with their opinion.

 

I am not going to term themissing features of the iPad as drawbacks because with thirdparty apps, you can more than make up for the missing features of the tablet. As British writer Stephen Fry says: " There's much to like of course ( in the iPad): The physical beauty and classy build quality, as in anything designed by Jonathan Ive ( Apple's legendary designer who also created the iPod). The shockingly low price — $ 499 for the basic model. The contractfree, unlocked nature of the 3G version. But there are two chief reasons for its guaranteed success." Fry, who was one of the 600 people present at the Yerba Buena Cultural Center for the Arts Theatre in San Francisco, later also used the product and came up with his two reasons for its guaranteed success. " It is so simple," he says. " It is basically a highly responsive capacitative piece of glass with solid state memory and an IPS display.

 

Just as a book is basically paper bound together in a portable form factor. The simplicity is what allows everyone, us, software developers, content providers and accessory manufacturers to pour themselves into it, to remake it according to the limits of their imagination." The second reason, Fry argues, is because it is made by Apple. And I don't disagree with him here. The iPad is not the world's first tablet PC just as the iPod was not the world's first media player or the iPhone the world's first smartphone.

 

" If it was made by Hewlett Packard, they wouldn't have global control over the OS or the online retail outlets," says Fry. " If it was made by Google, they would have tendered out the hardware manufacture to HTC. Apple — and it is one of the reasons some people distrust or dislike them — controls it all.

 

They've designed the silicon, the A4 chip that runs it all, they've designed the batteries, they've overseen every

detail of the commercial, technological, design and software elements. No other company on earth does that.

 

And being Apple it hasn't been released without ( you can be sure) Steve Jobs being wholly convinced that it was ready. ' Not good enough, start again. Not good enough. Not good enough.

Not good enough.' How many other CEOs say until their employees want to murder them? That's the difference."

 

BUT WHY DIDN'T THEY FIND A BETTER NAME FOR IT?

LET'S get it over and done with right now. The Apple iPad, clearly not one of the most innovative names for a handheld gadget, is coming under a lot of flak for its very awkward nomenclature.

 

And not just from female Apple fans.

 

The Financial Times of London reports that two of the world's largest semiconductor companies — Fujitsu and STMicroelectronics — are up in arms over the naming of the device. But they are not alone. German major Siemens and a lingerie manufacturer named Coconut Grove Pads are angry too. Cisco, another technology giant, also owned the trademark to the iPad name and sued Apple before they agreed to settle it out of court.

 

The FT reports: " While trademark disputes rarely prevent the release of products or force a change of name, if Apple cannot overturn Fujitsu's application or demonstrate that the two products will not be confused, it may have to buy the rights from Fujitsu.

 

" The Fujitsu iPad has a 3.5- inch screen, an Intel processor, a Microsoft operating system and supports both Wi- fi and Bluetooth wireless connections. It is designed to link shop assistants and managers to data on stock and sales.

 

" STMicro's iPad is less likely to be confused with Apple's products. It stands for integrated passive and active devices, a type of technology that STMicro uses in many semiconductors."

 

THERE IS A COLD WAR RAGING OUT THERE

 

MEANWHILE in all the hoopla surrounding the Apple launch in San Francisco, another significant announcement — although not at the same level — was missed. It essentially confirmed what we had always suspected — that the Web is the next frontier for conflict between countries.

 

McAfee, a leading anti- virus services provider, released a report recently that said that critical infrastructure such as power grids, oil wells and other essential utilities around the world are at risk of being attacked by cybercriminals. The report is titled " In the Crossfire: Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyberwar". McAfee surveyed 600 IT executives specialising in security at infrastructure firms around the world. And the figures are startling. Close to 54 per cent, the report says, have already suffered large- scale attacks from organised crime gangs, terrorists or nation- states. McAfee added that the average downtime losses are around $ 6.3 million per day.

 

" In today's economic climate, it is imperative that organisations prepare for the instability that cyber attacks on critical infrastructure can cause," said Dave DeWalt, president and chief executive officer of McAfee. " From public transportation, to energy to telecommunications, these are the systems we depend on every day. An attack on any of these industries could cause widespread economic disruptions, environmental disasters, loss of property and even loss of life." What was even more shocking was that a hefty majority ( 59 percent) of the IT executives believed that representatives of foreign governments had already been involved in such attacks and infiltrations targeting critical infrastructure in their countries.

 

***************************************

MAIL TODAY

SENA THREAT TO KING KHAN AND AMBANI

 

ACTOR Shah Rukh Khan and RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani came under the Shiv Sena fire on Friday — SRK for his IPL comments and Ambani for his ' Mumbai- for- all' remark.

 

The party is upset that Khan, owner of IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders, wanted Pakistani players to play in the tournament.

 

" It looks like the Khan in Shah Rukh has suddenly woken up. If he is so keen on getting Pakistani players, he should go to Karachi or Islamabad.

 

If he has guts, let him get Pakistani players in the IPL. We will see him then," Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said.

 

There were reports recently that SRK's team had approached Pakistani players Abdul Razzaq and Umar Gul for the series.

 

As a mark of protest, Sena activists tore down the posters of SRK's upcoming film My Name Is Khan from Eternity Mall in Thane.

 

Thane Sena unit chief Eknath Shinde even asked the mall management not to show the film that will hit theatres next month.

 

Ambani, on the other hand, got a lashing from Sena chief Bal Thackeray, who used his party mouthpiece Saamna to issue threats, dubbed as warnings.

 

He asked Ambani to reconsider his stand on ' Mumbai for all'. " Why do you not say Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Rajkot for all?" he asked Ambani from his newspaper.

 

" Don't forget you and your late father Dhirubhai, who was also my great friend, became what you are thanks to Mumbai. You do business, nothing else.

 

Don't you dare say anything about Mumbai and Marathis," Thackeray said.

 

" Mumbai belongs to Marathis as much as Reliance belongs to Mukesh. You have a right to do business here and the Marathis have their right to pride. Mumbai is and will remain Maharashtra's capital," he added.

RIL chose not to comment on the issue but highly placed sources in the company said the threat was expected.

 

" We understand his ( Thackeray's) compulsions. His party is fighting hard to keep up with his nephew's ( Raj Thackeray) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

 

So we had expected the threat.

 

But we are not going to comment yet," an RIL source said.

 

Company sources also said Ambani's comments were reported out of context.

 

The chairman had said the row over making knowledge of Marathi mandatory for issuing taxi permits in Mumbai was " unfortunate" and the metropolis belonged to all Indians.

 

" The issue was about licence raj and taxi permits was an off- the- cuff remark," the source added.

 

RIL has decided not to press the issue with the state or central government yet.

 

Lanka police raid Fonseka's office & arrest 15

 

Agencies

 

THE POLICE raided the office of Sri Lanka's defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka on Friday and arrested 15 former military members of his staff, his aides said.

 

" The Special Task Force broke into the office of Fonseka," aide Asanka Magedara told reporters.

 

The former army chief had lost Tuesday's election to incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa after a bruising campaign with personal attacks by both.

 

" The police seized all the computers and mobile phones there," Fonseka's lawyer Shiral Laktilake added.

 

Police spokesman I. M. Karunaratne said he could not confirm the news.

 

Opposition officials said the raid was designed to intimidate them and stop their plans to protest against the results.

 

Fonseka has said he will launch a court challenge. The Lanka government alleges he is planning a coup.

 

" We are in the process of organising ourselves to launch a protest and this action is aimed at affecting our morale," said Rauf Hakeem, head of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress that backed Fonseka.

 

On Friday, opposition lawmaker Vijitha Herath said the police arrested Chandana Sirimalwatte, editor of Lanka

newspaper.

 

The paper is seen as favouring the JVP, a Marxist party which joined other opposition parties to back Fonseka.

 

Lankan authorities also reportedly expelled a Swiss reporter covering the island's presidential vote and asked her to leave the country.

 

Karin Wenger of Swiss Public Radio said she was sent a letter by the immigration controller saying she must leave the island before next Monday. " I fear I have been kicked out for asking uncomfortable questions at a government press conference," she said.

 

RAISINA TATTLE

 

CIC'S POWERS

THE Central Information Commission's ruling to allow the inspection of files pertaining to the controversial Sharm el- Sheikh joint statement of India and Pakistan last year has rattled many in the UPA government.

 

There is a feeling that the commission has exceeded its brief. A rather uncharitable opinion is to check if the ruling was not inspired as it came from a person who has been well- versed in foreign affairs in the ministry of external affairs. Union minister of state for personnel Prithviraj Chavan is reportedly keen for a review of the CIC's powers so that sensitive information and names of officials and persons involved in framing important documents, along with file notings, are not made public.

 

POLITICAL ACUMEN

CALL IT political ingenuity — that is turning an adverse report to an advantageous one! A junior minister in the government woke up one day to a frontpage news about diverting funds meant for his senior's constituency to his own.

 

He immediately asked his sidekicks to get as many copies of the newspaper and headed for his constituency. There he distributed the newspaper and told the voters how he had " risked" his career to get funds for the people. Later, on the sidelines, he explained this " show" before the masses. " Well, the senior minister will be unhappy with me for a few days and then he will forget. But the people will remain grateful to me and never forget my courageous deed in the elections. After all, their votes matter, right?" Smart, very smart!

 

AN OVERLAP

UNION external affairs minister S. M. Krishna is toying with the idea of hiring a media consultant.

 

But foreign service officials, led by foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, is opposed to the induction of a non- IFS official in the minister's staff.

 

Moreover, the new post is likely to overlap with the functioning of the joint secretary in the ministry, who acts as the official spokesperson.

 

SHOT IN THE ARM

THE Congress's " Mission Uttar Pradesh 2012", the unofficial name given to its campaign to dislodge Mayawati in the next assembly polls, received a shot in the arm when five former state ministers belonging to the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, joined the grand old party. The " deserters" included a sitting member of the legislative council, Anwar Ahmed.

 

WEIGHT MATTERS

BRING on the samosas, sweetmeats and cardamom tea! Well, many politicians from parties cutting across the political spectrum celebrated a " heartening" news with extra helpings of the fried stuff that they have been resisting for good reasons. American researchers have found that voters prefer overweight contestants. Physical appearance plays a major role not only in the life of filmstars, but also of male politicians. The study, which involved 120 volunteers, including 75 women, concluded that voters believed that overweight men were more reliable, honest, dependable and inspiring than their thinner counterparts.

 

This gave our politicians who are rounder a good reason to cheer

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

CHUCKLE DE, WORLD

 

Humour can sink many a ship bearing the king's bounty. It can turn aaj ka MLA/MP into comic relief. It can make a war room of wag-the-dog generals morph into a uniformed muppet show. Laughter, as you can see, is serious business. It's also a universal language. Researchers now suggest that laughter's the vocalised expression of a human emotion joy, amusement shared by culturally diverse peoples from England to Namibia. Wanting everybody to choose between hammer and (their) tongue, Maharashtra's grouches won't be amused. Laughter, after all, has a natural advantage overall imposed lingos. From Mumbai to Mombasa, everybody's born knowing the A-B-C of a good guffaw.

There are, however, health reasons for divide-and-rule politicos to grin and bear it. Laughter, for instance, boosts blood flow to the heart. So it can in fact help all humourless netas undergoing various forms of cardiovascular stress, be it fear of disproportionate assets-related RTI queries, or the dread of stings catching them Gandhi topi-less. Talking of stress management, scholars say that watching a comedy has physical effects akin to doing flab-busting aerobics. So, gaffe-bag Berlusconi can silence critics by claiming to serve the cause of global health.

And why not? Medical caregivers habitually deploy fun and games to beat job pressures and heal their patients. Now, there's a lesson for all stiff upper-lip politicians who treat the world as their oyster-cum-ICU. They could humour-lace public policy diagnostics to cure enfranchised people on poll-time sick leave. What'll become of their trade if voter cynicism and absenteeism hits epidemic proportions? To upgrade skills as stand-up comics, they can emulate much-misunderestimated Bush. Not even Berlo can match the (unwitting) wit of Bush's war cry: "There's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans again. There just is...And I wish him all the very best!"

Originating in play, laughter is multifaceted. There's the programmed laughter of courtiers around unfunny patrons. There's canned laughter signalling when to chortle if you miss the punchline. And there's spontaneous laughter that's contagious. There's also laughter that's cause for laughter: think of the Tanganyikan guffawing epidemic of 1962 that lasted six months. No 'ruler' in the world could survive that, if he were the joke's butt. As they say, Authority beware hilarity. Monk, monarch or mercenary, officious History-writers have always feared their grand narratives of power can be laughed out of court. Recall Jorge in Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose. This aged monk would rather have an entire library burned down to keep one 'subversive' philosophical tract from reaching an indoctrinated world. For, this treatise humanism's early flower at a time of bigotry celebrates the enlightening and, therefore, liberating power of laughter.

Humour, say modern thinkers, pits hope against despair. And it helps us see the "big picture" of the shared humanity of rib-tickled people across continents. Laughter, then, is chicken soup for the mind, body and fraternal soul. So, ask yourself. Have you had a good laugh today?

 

***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

MY COMMUNITY, MY COUNTRY

CHETAN BHAGAT

 

The recent proposed Marathi language requirement for taxi drivers in Mumbai (and the subsequent backtrack) shows that divisive politics is alive and kicking in our country. We are fortunate that this scheme didn't sail through, for it would only have been the start. For why only cab drivers, why not BEST bus drivers? How about drivers of trains operating in Maharashtra (complete with ceremonial crew exchanges at the state borders maybe?). If taxi drivers need to speak Marathi, then maybe cooks at restaurants do too?

Yes, we are in 2010, but rather than fix the rickety, old, third-world inspired cabs, our lawmakers choose to tug at the hearts of Marathis. The Marathi voter is supposed to say See he cares, vote for him!

With due apologies, sorry, but he doesn't care. Because what he is doing is harmful to the taxi business, harmful to the state and harmful to the country. Let us talk about them one by one.

First, the taxi business. Taxi-driving is a commercial activity, not a social service. And any business thrives only if it services its customers. Does the customer care if the driver speaks Marathi, as long as he can communicate with him? There has been no surge in grievances about language problems with Mumbai taxis. However, complaints about dilapidated and smelly taxis remain unaddressed. If these issues are fixed, customers will take more taxis, pay more and increase the financial health of the taxi business including drivers. Imposing language norms won't.

Second, such actions harm the image of the state. Maharashtra is blessed to have a city of national importance within its geographical limits. Mumbai can be a means to bond with the rest of the country, not a symbol of division. Also, Maharashtra claiming Mumbai and its wealth as its own is foolish. Mumbai-based corporates do pay a large amount of taxes. However, they do business and make profits from all over the country. The taxes they pay come from these national profits. Take away the rest-of-India business for Mumbai companies and most of them will be bankrupt. India is integrated as far as trade, commerce and finance is concerned. Geography has increasingly become irrelevant. To continue to harp on physical location is a lack of understanding of the modern world, and any leadership which lacks that cannot uplift its people. The Maharashtra-only way of doing business is regressive, impractical. It pushes away pan-India inclined investors and, without them, it is the state's children who lose out on job opportunities.

Third, such proposals are terrible for India. We are a poor country with limited capital for development. Our best shot at advancement is if we concentrate our efforts on one national agenda of progress, rather than on pulling in different directions. Even in practical terms, the central government controls the finances of the nation. If the states rebel, it will only lead to chaos. Foreign investment will suffer, Parliament will be an inter-state battleground rather than a place where things get done and we will remain, like we have for the last 60 years, a third world country.

So what is the solution? How can we check these divisive knife-wielders who are only too happy to cut up our people at the slightest provocation? What do we do about people who refuse to look at the big picture but only care about the next vote count? Here are three suggestions:

One, any act of preference to any community which may disadvantage other Indians should be made illegal. Too many laws are never good, but anyone favouring one community is by definition harming the prospects of the others. If this is not racism, what is? And racism should be illegal, even if disguised as a welfare scheme.
Second, we as Indians need to decide for once our primary loyalty whether it is to the country or to community. If we choose country, we have a good chance of becoming a progressive nation. If we choose our state first, things won't change. Are you a change agent or are you a roadblock? Decide, and live with it.

Third, Indians need to intermingle. This is not an overnight process, but migration, education outside the state, inter-community marriages should be culturally encouraged. A case can even be made for tax incentives (such as lower property taxes) for people who work outside their home state. A pan-Indian race, maybe still a generation or two away, will be extraordinarily beneficial in moving us towards the status of a developed nation. Almost any Asian country that saw rapid development enjoyed homogeneity amongst its people.

For now, state leaders need to respect the privilege they have of being part of a great nation. A national process overseen by the Election Commission has elected them. For all their state jingoism, they have no business to interfere with national progress. This is harming their own state anyway. For, they may force their taxi drivers to speak a local language. However, if there are no customers in the backseat, the meter does not tick and the taxi driver takes no money home. And that, in any language, is not a good thing.

The writer is a best-selling novelist.

 

*****************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

TIMES VIEW

STATE SUPPORT JUSTIFIED TO REVIVE HOCKEY

 

The demand for better pay and incentives to hockey players is justified. Unlike cricket, which generates its own funds without the support of the government, hockey is short on money. Hence, state support is essential for hockey, at least until it attracts private funds, if the game has to survive in India. With help from the government, hockey in India could regain its past glory and, perhaps, even turn into a money-spinner like cricket.

Such optimism is based on the popularity hockey continues to enjoy in India. This is not derived from nostalgia for India's past record of winning Olympic medals in hockey. Hockey, like cricket, is both played and viewed in most parts of India. However, unlike in the case of cricket, hockey has failed to translate public interest in the game to money. This is largely because of the appalling conduct of hockey administrators. A comparison with cricket is revealing. Two events in the 1980s changed the history of cricket: One, winning the 1983 World Cup and two, the spread of television. Cricket administrators grabbed the opportunity and transformed the way the game was played and promoted it not just in India but also across the world. When the economy started to expand in the 1990s, Indian cricket could attract funds to the sport. As cricket got popular on TV, money started chasing it in the form of sponsorships and endorsements. Administrators also responded with innovative formats suited to the requirements of new audiences.

Unfortunately, hockey administrators were blind to changes in the offing. They were slow to respond to the demands of a rapidly changing game. They didn't see the emerging opportunities in the spread of television. They failed to market hockey to sports lovers who, for various reasons, were increasingly following sports on TV sets. They failed to improve infrastructure to attract more people to hockey.

The premier hockey league was a step in the right direction to attract funds. The pace of the game and the format were suited to make it attractive to TV viewers as well. But the quality of the game must also go up. Hockey will attract talent only if it is a paying proposition. Besides, the game must be administered professionally. A makeover of Indian hockey is possible only if the government extends support, for now.

After all, it's our national sport.

 

***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

COUNTERVIEW

THE GAME'S ON THE DECLINE

PRODOSH MITRA

 

The demand by both men and women Indian hockey players for better pay has been dominating headlines. One feels for our hockey players who represent the country, but get peanuts compared to our cricketers. The disparity in the salaries can, however, be explained in the huge gap in popularity of the two sports.

For better or for worse, cricket is our national passion. This popularity gets reflected in sponsorship, endorsements and television deals for Team India which run into several crores of rupees and abundantly fill the coffers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Indeed, over 70 per cent of cricket's global revenues is generated in India making the Indian cricket board the richest in the world, and Indian players the most handsomely paid.

In contrast, the Indian hockey federation which is currently in a state of disarray has to depend on the largesse of government and a handful of sponsors. Unlike cricket, there is good reason why corporates are not queuing up to sponsor hockey. Though hockey is our national game, over the years it has lost much of its shine. The reason for the fall in the popularity of hockey over the past few decades is a complex story. In a nutshell, the precipitous decline of hockey since 1980 when India last won an Olympic gold medal has to do with mismanagement of the game, poor showing in international tournaments and the attendant rise in cricket's popularity.

If there's not much interest in hockey anymore, what can be done? Cricket is mismanaged too, but money has come to it because there's public interest in the game. The same cannot be said for hockey. If one makes a case for extending taxpayers' support to it, the same case can be made for extending subsidy to any number of obscure games where there's no public interest. Forget the hockey medals India may have won half a century ago, it can't be kept on artificial life support if no one's queuing up for the game. Let Indian hockey find sponsors if it can, or otherwise die a natural death.

 

"***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

JUST GRAFFITI

THE OLD HOME TOWN

GAUTAM ADHIKARI

 

KOLKATA: I flew in a few days ago to prowl my old home town and sniff out its current flavour. The most interesting part of the flight was when the aircraft sat on the ground for a couple of hours in Delhi's IGI airport waiting to get a clearance for take-off. Thanks to the daily fog and a three-hour shutdown for Republic Day aerobatics practice, our plane was behind about 50 others in the queue. An overheard conversation from the row behind me made the wait bemusing and the mind nostalgic.

A middle-aged lady, probably in her mid-50s, who was returning to Kolkata, struck up a conversation with her neighbour, a man in his late 30s or early 40s, who had been born and raised in old Calcutta but now lived abroad. He was excited to be going back for three days. "It's my favourite town in the whole world," he said. "I don't go there much but when i do i catch up with friends and we always have a terrific time. I never find Calcutta boring. The people are so nice and friendly. The pace of life is so easy."

"Yes," agreed the lady. "It is a wonderful place. My husband (sitting across the aisle) retired from a multinational company and we decided to stay back in Calcutta. We don't have relatives there, our children have moved on, but we wanted to live in that city with our circle of friends. We really like it."

That's when the third person in the row, a lady in her early 30s, said: "Excuse me, may i say something?" It turned out she had been born in West Bengal, had lived seven years of her working life as an executive in Kolkata but now lived in Delhi. "Yes, it is a good place. If you want to discuss ideas and plans, it can be productive. The trouble is with implementation. It is very hard to make people work."

After four days in Kolkata, it is possible to agree with all three of my fellow passengers.

The pace of life is indeed easy; in fact, it can be infuriating in its lethargy. But it can be a fun place, especially if you are visiting. In the so-called 'winter' months, festivities erupt like a bottle of bubbly; everyone wonders every day where the party is tonight. The clubs hum with activity golf, receptions, weddings, high merriment while folks animatedly discuss politics, club-related as well as general.

That 'everyone' here, of course, means only a slice of upper and upper-middle-class Calcatians, a group to which all three of my fellow passengers belonged though none seemed to be Bengali by birth. This group is well-educated, lives in inherited houses or self-contained apartment complexes where power cuts and water shortages are problems to be criticised and blamed on the commies, not seriously felt, while public transport may be an occasional trip across miserable drive-over parts of the city in a cab.

For this group, Kolkata is truly a fine place to lead a contented retired life. As a friend of mine often says with a grin, "We did the right thing moving to this place from Bombay in our retirement. Living is easy, cheap too, and it's possible to employ full-time servants at home here. But then, i don't have to work."

Which brings up the problem blurted out by the youngest of my three flight companions. Kolkata hasn't yet evolved a work ethos that has moved forward from an old culture of the landed gentry, for whom the concept of working for a living was humiliating. Calcatians still refer reverentially to someone being of 'bonedi' or buniyadi origin, that is, someone whose ancestors didn't have to work for a living even though he or she, like Lady Madonna, may be struggling to make ends meet. Work is, alas, necessary these days but distasteful. That's perhaps why lunch hours are long and office hours compressed at both ends to make the irritations of the workplace as tolerable as possible before repairing to the club.

But, hey, it's a fun place. As long as you're on vacation. Or retired.

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

OBAMA'S STATE OF DISUNION

 

Just past his first year in the White House and President Barack Obama no longer walks six inches above the ground. If this week's State of the Union address is an indication, he walks today with a heavy tread. Three inter-related political developments served as the backdrop to his speech. First, his Democratic Party has faced political reverses at the local level. Second, underpinning these defeats and a slump in Mr Obama's personal ratings was a double-digit unemployment rate. His administration's fragmented agenda was popular with his Democratic base but was seen as irrelevant to independents, the crucial swing voters. Finally, Mr Obama cannot claim any countervailing accomplishments in handling hostile regimes.

 

Unsurprisingly, Mr Obama's address sounded like an advertisement for a headhunting firm. Whether it was clean technology or boosting exports, the US president leg-itimised it in terms of employment generation. Even his party's touchstone issue, healthcare, is to be shunted aside to make way for job creation. Part of this message was a long-standing criticism of US corporations who transferred employment to countries with lower corporate tax rates. This has caused needless heartburn in India — corporate tax rates in India are higher than those in the US. The Indian software industry has rightly argued that the larger concern should be whether this signals a broader protectionist sentiment in the US. Barriers to foreigners is one way to shore up employment. Mr Obama has not shied away from protectionism but his target has been Chinese imports. Nonetheless, the world must watch to see how an 'American Jobs First' policy will unfold in the coming months.

 

Amid all this, Mr Obama deserves credit for trying to urge his people to look beyond the bread and butter concerns of the present. He exhorted his countrymen to invest more, both in their own education and physical infrastructure. This is the first time any US president has invoked India as an economic challenge in his address. Indians may feel some pride. They would be equally right to feel surprise: India's infrastructure is among the world's shoddiest. However, it is a reminder that India should increasingly expect to find itself being cited as an economic concern by other world leaders. Mr Obama used India to prod his people. Future leaders may be less generous.

 

*************************************** 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

STROKE OF LUCK

INDRAJIT HAZRA

 

I've always liked the Strokes. Their urban, unwashed, boogie-woogie has charmed me when I'm running on low fuel. The engine of the band, singer Julian Casablancas has come out with his first solo outpouring, Phrazes For The Young, and it's exactly what it should be: a sideways treatment of New York rock'n'roll minus the heavy guitars of Strokes guitarman Albert Hammond Jr. At his best, Casablancas manages to mix his trademark lyrics and greasy spoon-cleaned-under-the-tap singing voice with a 80s New York feel where synth keys are still fearlessly pressed and the  CBGB's hasn't closed under former NYC mayor Giuliani's squeaky clean watch.

 

The cookie start in 'Out of blue' is a big city folksy number in which Casablancas daisy-chains along laconically: "Somewhere on the way/ my hopefulness turned to sadness/ Somewhere on the way/ my sadness turned to bitterness/ Somewhere on the way/ my bitterness turned to anger/ Somewhere on the way/ my anger turned to vengeance." In the wrong hands, this could have turned into a nursery rhyme. Here, it's like reading a line from the Old Testament while on your third Guinness.

 

But it's in 'Left & right in the dark', that things lift off and we know Julian-bhai is taking us somewhere where he can't take you on his day job duty with the Strokes. The frenetic energy of a sheer pop tune comes over. Shaking his hair at the Pet Shop Boys (Praise be upon them), he dances into '11th dimension'. Don't forget the opening synth lines that allows all of us who slagged off the 80s when it was really the 80s to finally appreciate the decade. The slow gospel '4 chords of the Apocalypse' is beautifully calm, reminding me that I must go to New York one day to pray in front of those great cathedrals of steel and glass. The heavy key press takes on the tone of an organ that in turn takes on the sound of a siren.  

 

The bar room country sway of 'Ludlow St' takes us in yet another alley. Casablancas has the genuine talent not only capturing the warp, woof and growl of city life in his lyrics, but the music takes urban swagger and gives it a rootsy flavour.

 

'River of brakelights' breaks up the sound — the voice and the synth-driven music seem to be indulging in some sort of slam dancing competition. The  caterpillaring of the lines 'Getting the hang of it, getting the hang of it' segueing into 'Timing is everything, timing is everything' sounds like the glorious soundtrack of an early 20th century silent German Expressionist movie about modern life. The album ends with the delicate 'Glass' and the swirling Human League-ish stomp of 'Tourist'.

 

Phrazes For The Young is the sort of album that I dream of: having the experimental edginess of a Radiohead record and the pop sensibility of a Blondie EP.  Listen to it. Casablancas has not only been brave in serving this bar roomful of sounds right on the rock mainstreet but he's also been bang on in bringing us wonderful, wonderful city music.

 

Gosh, it's Joss

 

It's Soul Girl Joss Stone and her new album, Colour Me Free has fingerclicked its way into my lap. The British blonde with the best black voice — made apparent to most of us for the first time in her 2003 debut album, The Soul Sessions — starts with a shimmy in  'Free me'. The mmm-quotient is raised in the piano tinkle-toed 'Could have been you'. Stevie Wonderesque funk comes in to the room in 'Parallel lines' and the touch and go of the guitars do much to create a thicker smokescreen than Joss already has with her voice.

The retro feel of 'Lady' seems a little slippery, with Joss more keen on changing notes per bar than singing the rhythm and blues. Instead, the R&B thrust of 'Big Ol' Game' is a trainmover of a song. It's a rolling song that picks up as it moves down the slope.

 

The rest of the fare — the mike-being-gobbled-up 'Incredible', the backbeat and Quincy Jones bassline funk of 'You got the love, and the slo-mo heartbreaker 'I believe it to my soul' (where the nodules on Rod  Stewart's vocal chords are borrowed) — is standard Joss Stone, and not heavy ear-perking stuff. Which still isn't bad at all if you're in a soulful mood.

 

ihazra@hindustantimes.com

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

MULLIGATAWNY, DEAR WATSON!

DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA

 

'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…' Generations of young readers have had their first brush with Aristotelian logic outside of their geometry books in this admonition by Sherlock Holmes to his impressionable friend Dr Watson.

 

Arthur Conan Doyle's cerebral Dick retains his attraction centuries later because of the scientific rigour he brought to the art of solving crime. The method, of course, results from Doyle's training as a doctor, which relies as much on deduction as detective work. No crime writer has, understandably, scaled the heights Doyle has.

 

It, therefore, takes a hardy soul to recreate Holmes. But there seems to be a band of die-hard fans who cannot resist the temptation to keep the saga alive, among them Doyle's son, Adrian, whose pastiche doesn't come close to the The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a 1974 novel by American Nicholas Meyer. Holmes has even been sent ahead in time — Sherlock Holmes In The 22nd Century — so it was only a matter of time before a Raj version appeared.

 

Vithal Rajan's Holmes of the Raj (first published in 2006 by Writers Workshop) suffers from the common affliction of most Indian writing in English of trying too hard to overwhelm the reader with the sights and smells of India. Rajan makes a valiant attempt to rise above the 'naked fakir' genre of writing by adding dollops of potted history. From Vivekananda to Jinnah, they're all there in this collection of Holmes' adventures in India. The menagerie of historical characters, however, distracts. Doyle, writing when Britannia ruled the waves, had the luxury of choosing his cast from across the Empire. But he used the artifice lightly and only to the extent that they fleshed out his plots.

 

Doyle's camera was always trained on his protagonist in an attempt to faithfully recreate the crime. When out of the frame, Holmes served to show up the contrast between his thought process and that of the rest of the world. So it is unnerving when Rajan's Holmes resurfaces late in the episode to do his "Elementary!" number.

 

Only that elementary is truly elementary in this case. "With patience… and the right amounts pressed into the right hands at the right moment, I learnt about all the suspicious movements of the recent past." Holmes has indeed lost big chunks of his acute deductive prowess on the long sea voyage to India.

 

Rajan enters the crime fiction genre from the wrong end of the plot-protagonist-prop progression. In the event, he does justice neither to Holmes nor to the crimes Doyle got him to solve.

 

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

FILM STARS ARE THE NEW TV ATTRACTIONS

POONAM SAXENA

 

Over the last couple of weeks, I've seen more movie stars on my TV screen than the cinema hall screen. After Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, it's now Abhishek Bachchan's turn to anchor a television show — National Bingo Night, which opened on Colors to very good ratings.

 

The channel is on such a roll at the moment that anything it touches turns to gold. They might consider re-launching Krishi Darshan: who knows, it could become a national rage (imagine the whole country animatedly discussing the price of urea and the seductive charms of lok sangeet). But unfortunately, the same can't be said for the other entertainment channels. Salman's Dus Ka Dum, for instance, was a whacky, fun, totally mad show. But it never got the ratings it should have. Could it be because the show was on Sony, a channel not exactly known for its soaring ratings?

 

Back to Bingo: Abhishek made for a relaxed, easy host. In the inaugural episode, he played Bingo with his

father Amitabh Bachchan, and the senior Bachchan also appeared very relaxed — he was full of stories and anecdotes about his films and his life, and happily recited his father's poetry (Madhushala, Agneepath) and dialogues from films (yes, the

 

temple dialogue from Deewar and the 'Vijay Dinanath Chauhan' dialogue from Agneepath).

 

But why do neither of them look as relaxed when they're being interviewed on TV? I can't remember when I saw an interview where they laughed, joked, told stories, had fun. But when they're hosting shows? Well, Amitabh as a TV host is a class act. And Abhishek has made a confident debut with Bingo. I'm not sure I'd ever play Bingo the game sitting at home, but I'm perfectly happy to watch Bingo the show sitting at home (though the guests on the show will also have something to do with how the episodes play out; unfortunately you can't get an Amitabh every time).

 

More stars on my screen: Some time back, Salman Khan appeared on Zee's Dance India Dance to promote his new film Veer. Dance India Dance is about, well, dancing, which is truly quite spectacular. The boys lift the girls as if they weighed a few grams (which they probably do, given their slender bodies), twirl them around, flip them backwards, forwards; short of making them dance on the palms of their hands, they do pretty much everything.

 

Salman joked non-stop with Mithun Chakraborty (who is mysteriously called 'Grandmaster' on the show though you never see him playing chess or wearing a Masonic costume), danced with the contestants and generally gave the audience a good time (pity it didn't help his film).

 

But like all reality shows, Dance India Dance also periodically feels the need to go into the whole drama and tears scenario — heartbreak and heartache (not to mention backache and leg ache and arm ache, given the strenuous dancing), disappointment and despair etc etc. Speaking for myself, the instant the attention veers from the dancing, my attention veers equally swiftly to the next channel.

 

If Salman was on Dance India Dance, Shah Rukh popped up on Music Ka Maha Muqqabala, along with Karan

Johar, to promote his new film, My Name Is Khan. Music Ka Muqqabala is a first-rate show and the SRK episode was an absolute firecracker. Shah Rukh took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and danced and sang with full energy and gusto. Who would have believed that he was dancing after almost a year (for those who came in late, he had an injury). Most enjoyable.

 

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

A JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

PRATIK KANJILAL

 

Cultural nationalism is a fickle business. On Republic Day, we learned that South Korea's first lady traces her bloodline back to Ayodhya. We were so happy. Here was more evidence that all the things that matter originated in India. But the next day, there was disturbing news about a Chinese pop star who sings in Sanskrit. How cunning! Would the Chinese lay claim to Sanskrit next? That's what they're really good at, laying claim. Some people are good at maths, at cooking, at investing, at PHP. The Chinese are good at all these things, but their core competency is laying claim. As George Fernandes once said, it's like having an elephant in the room and it's eating up everything in sight.

 

But relax. The pop star in question, Sa Dingding, is not really a 'Sanskrit singer', as she is being branded. She is an interesting fusion composer and performer of mixed Han and Mongolian descent whose songs are written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit and a language that she classifies as "self-created". I had me a listen, and the Sanskrit was Greek to me. Beijing isn't about to use Dingding to lay claim to Kalidasa. It is promoting her as an instrument in a more important project — to lay claim to multiculturalism and gloss over its history of minority oppression. It's working already. Seek on Google, and ye shall find pots of reports from journalists who have just discovered that China has 55 minorities. They are quite prepared to go easy on the Tibetan question, or disremember that the Uighurs have issues with Beijing. They think China has invented multiculturalism.

 

Utter bosh, of course. Any cultural nationalist can tell you that like all good things, multiculturalism originated in India and we have a patent on it. Everything worth having originated here — the number zero, Ayurvedic cough drops, idlis, bananas… What, bananas are not Indian? 'Banana' is a word from the Congo? These Africans want to take credit for everything, even for originating the human race. And anyway, banana chips are of guaranteed Indian origin, so there.

 

The trouble with cultural nationalism is that cultural history is as uncertain as a Delhi fog. You can't go back too far in time without encountering the imponderable, or discard academic caution without embarrassing yourself. In this journey without maps, nothing is as it once was, and it's silly to believe that things hold still so that we can fit them into familiar geographies.

 

This fascination for owning and treasuring the past extends beyond the cultural domain. The environmentalists are all excited about saving the Himalayas, but they were not supposed to last. The mountains did not exist before the Gondwana Plate came wandering by, and they will vanish in the distant future. This is normal. So R.K. Pachauri was not only wrong in believing that the end of the world was nigh, he was also misguided.

 

Sure, parts of India will vanish too, in the meantime, thanks to global warming, but should we despair? We can always move to China. I understand they're turning multicultural over there. By the time we emigrate, they could all be speaking Sanskrit. And they should be happy to have us. As you know, everything worth having comes from India.

 

Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine

 

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

***************************************

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

THEY SERVE A PURPOSE

GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI

 

When an envelope arrived at my Chennai doorstep a few days ago, I could not but laugh out aloud. The lifafa was addressed to 'Shri M.K. Gandhi, Former Governor of West Bengal.' Museums show letters addressed to him with impossible-sounding addresses such as 'Mahatma Gandhi, Somewhere in India', and 'Mahatma Gandhi, Emperor of India'. But this one, with its particular designation was an absolute, if unintended, original. Gandhi had, at different times, been a 'former' many things — a former barrister, a former sergeant major from South Africa's battlefronts, a former editor, a former Congress president. But being at the needle-point of the present moment, he was never really a former anything. He was the present.

 

But 'former governor'! Try as I did, I could not picture him seated behind an ornate table under chandeliers, attending with unhurried ease to the transactions of a Raj Bhavan. He, too, would have had a hearty laugh at the mix-up in the honest-to-goodness envelope meant for his grandson whose name has often got abbreviated to 'G.K'. But on, and with governors, the Mahatma had much to say and do.

 

Having returned to India from South Africa via England on January 9, 1915 at the age of 46, he met Lord

Willingdon, the then Governor of Bombay before a week had elapsed. "The moment I reached Bombay," he writes in the autobiography, "Gokhale sent word to me that the Governor was desirous of seeing me, and that it might be proper for me to respond..."

 

A key word here is 'proper'. A sense of propriety led Gandhi to call on many a British governor during the 33 years that he was to spend fighting for the freedom of his country and the redemption of his people from their own self-inflicted enervations. Gandhi's discussions with Lord Willingdon who was later to become Viceroy of India (1931-36), were soon followed by a very constructive interaction in June 1917 with the Lt Governor of Bihar, that led to the setting up of a commission of inquiry into the plight of Champaran's indigo workers.

 

In Bengal — and later West Bengal — for instance, having sought in vain an appointment with Lord Curzon in

1901 when visiting the city from South Africa, he went on to interact with successive governors. Meeting Sir John Anderson in 1937, Lord Brabourne in 1938, the Churchill-appointee R.G. Casey over seven sessions stretched across December 1945 and January 1946, and Sir Frederick Burrows twice in 1946 and 1947, he corresponded with them to differential effect. His crucial intervention with Governors Casey and Burrows played a timely part in the release of political detenus.

 

Maie Casey has written in her engaging memoir Tides and Eddies, "I was not the Governor. I was only the Governor's wife, therefore my conversations with Gandhi flowed in unrestricted freedom. His eyes behind the thick lenses were shrewd and kind and comforting. I had the feeling that if I were in trouble I would like to go to him for advice, which though it might not be for me entirely functional would be wise and human..."

 

Change was in the air when Gandhi called on Bengal's last British Governor, Burrows. The Clement Attlee-appointee asked Gandhi on October 30, 1946, "What would you like me to do?" The question was remarkable and historians would not fail to note it was coming from a direct successor-tenant in that house, of George Nathaniel Curzon who, 48 years earlier, had refused to see Gandhi. The answer Burrows received was terse. "Nothing, Your Excellency." Gandhi was indicating that, after the British declaration to quit, the governor's position was to be that of a constitutional head.

 

Burrows' successor and West Bengal's first Governor C. Rajagopalachari, reversing the earlier pattern and

 practice, called on Gandhi at his Beliaghata camp-residence five times in August and September, 1947. So, did Gandhi believe that with independence coming to India, governors would have nothing left to do?

 

Narayan Agarwal, a dedicated Gandhian and later a follower of Vinoba Bhave, gave Gandhi an occasion to express himself clearly on the subject. In November-December 1947, Agarwal cogitated on the office and role of governor as was being debated in the Constituent Assembly. He, of course, did not know then that he himself would, some two decades later, be Governor of Gujarat, when he wrote in an article that winter: "In my opinion there is no necessity for a Governor. The Chief Minister should be able to take his place and people's money to the tune of Rs 5,500 per month for the sinecure of the Governor will be saved..." Agarwal then went on to make some suggestions regarding the criteria and procedure for the appointment of governors — if indeed that position was to be retained under the new Constitution.

 

Responding to Agarwal's comments, the Mahatma wrote in the Harijan of December 21, 1947: "There is much to be said in favour of the argument advanced by Principal Agarwal [sic] about the appointment of provincial Governors. I must confess that I have not been able to follow the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly. I do not know the context in which the proposal under discussion has been made. But, examined in isolation, the criticism appears irresistible; with the exception that much as I would like to spare every pice of the public treasury, it would be bad economy to do away with provincial Governors and regard Chief Ministers as a perfect equivalent. Whilst I would resent much power of interference to be given to Governors, I do not think that they should be mere figure-heads. They should have enough power enabling them to influence ministerial policy for the better. In their detached position they would be able to see things in their proper perspective and thus prevent mistakes by their Cabinets. Theirs must be an all-pervasive moral influence in their provinces."

 

On May 8, 1949, Governor General Rajagopalachari convened a meeting of governors which was also

addressed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel. The word 'figurehead' featured in what Rajaji said to the gathering of governors. "You should not imagine that you are just figureheads and can do nothing... Our Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister do not hold that view. They want you to develop your influence for good and they expect you to find means for achieving it without friction and without prejudice to the march of democracy." The governors attending included industrialist Homi Mody, the veteran non-Congress political leader M.S. Aney, the free-thinking political leader and barrister Asaf Ali, the Congressman and lawyer K.N. Katju, the Maharaja of Bhavnagar, and ICS officer C.M. Trivedi. All of them  took the 'march of democracy' forward. None of them saw their role as being bigger or less than what the Constitution had envisaged. They saw things, to borrow Gandhi's phrase, "in the proper perspective".

 

It is not always easy to see things in the proper perspective, especially when unearned criticism or undeserved praise surrounds one. I can never forget an unintentional lesson in perspective of a governor's role that I received from an unknown correspondent in Kolkata. Meaning to give me a sense of gubernatorial grandeur, she managed to do exactly the opposite. In the process, she gave me a laugh as hearty as the envelope addressed to a 'former governor' that India never had. She began her letter to me in a beautiful hand with the unforgettable words: "I am honoured, Sir, to be addressing a letter to the Figurehead of the State."

 

Gopalkrishna Gandhi was the Governor of West Bengal from 2004 to 2009

 

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WITH NO CREDIT

 

A spectre is haunting the RBI, the spectre of inflation. The month-on-month seasonally adjusted WPI inflation is hovering around 15 per cent. Some of this is food — the WPI inflation is running at 20 per cent by the same measure — but a lot of it is non-food inflation. But what choices did the RBI have to make a difference? Decades of policy mistakes on the bond market and on banking have resulted in an ineffective monetary policy transmission. Increasing or decreasing the interest rate does not seem to impact inflationary pressures. The size of impact is not statistically discernable from zero. The central bank is a spectator when it comes to using the short-term rate to deliver low and stable inflation.

 

The debate will continue on the RBI's decision to raise the CRR — but the honest truth is that this just does not matter. How, then, can inflation be checked? There is a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. The short-term strategy should focus on two issues. The first is food prices. Indian agriculture has been ill-served by policy blunders, particularly in the recent past. Fresh thinking is needed on an array of policy issues in agriculture. The second lever which can work in the short-run is the exchange rate. Unlike the short-term interest rate — where the measurable impact on prices is zero — the exchange rate matters. There is a visible and measurable impact on prices: when the rupee appreciates, this tames domestic inflation, and vice versa. To some extent, the inflation we are seeing today is the delayed reaction to the sharp rupee depreciation of previous months. The RBI document reflects concern about capital inflows. This betrays a lack of understanding of the relationship between capital inflows, the exchange rate and inflation. The right strategy for the RBI today is to continue with liberalisation of the capital account, so as to encourage capital inflows. This would yield rupee appreciation and thus combat inflation.

 

Politicians are right to be highly concerned about inflation. The only useful thing that monetary policy can do to assist India's long-term growth opportunities is to deliver stable inflation. In the short run, this requires new thinking on agriculture and on capital account liberalisation. In parallel, the three reports led by Percy Mistry, Raghuram Rajan and Jahangir Aziz outline the path for India to get a plausible financial system, where the RBI can deliver low and stable inflation through control of the short-term interest rate.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

FRAMED

 

If anyone still parrots the "root cause" argument for Naxal violence, two images might change her mind. The first was of the headless body of Sanjoy Ghosh, a 23-year old West Bengal state armed police jawan. Though Ghosh had been kidnapped during an operation, his beheading indicates a cold-blooded death, not retaliatory fire from Maoists under siege. The likely hearing that Ghosh received in the kangaroo courts that Maoists like to call people's justice was seen in the second image, this one taken in Jhargram in Bengal on Wednesday. The photograph shows "court proceedings" of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities — the Lalgarh-based, Maoist-backed group. The two accused, allegedly police informers, are sprawled, their hands tied, on the ground. Their judges, armed PCPA members, surround them, keeping the accused honest by beating them with sticks. This is, after all, people's justice.

 

While there can be no moral equivalence between the state and the Maoists, the worry is that lack of state coordination is imperilling the entire effort. Reports suggested that the new Shibu Soren government in Jharkhand had rolled back offensive patrolling and confined the CRPF and state police to the barracks. This was not just foolhardy for Jharkhand, it imperilled Operation Greenhunt by providing a safehaven for Maoists besieged elsewhere. It is in this context that Soren's statement that the Centre and his government were on the same page is reassuring. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has reiterated this, confirming that Soren is "on board with other chief ministers". It is hoped that the Jharkhand government now delivers, and these statements indicate a changed mindset.

 

Up ahead is the February 9 meeting of four Naxal-affected chief ministers (Soren included) in Kolkata, chaired by the home minister. This meeting follows a similar one held in Chhattisgarh, involving Orissa, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. It is these meetings — as much a forum for tactics as symbols of political cohesiveness — that are crucial for the success of Operation Greenhunt. But for those in search of other, more utopian symbols, perhaps the beheaded body of a poor jawan might provide some answers.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

DOUBLE STANDARDS

 

If the episode over the elevation of Karnataka high court Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran is an indictment of our opaque selection and lengthy impeachment processes, here's another one. Lalit Kumar Mishra, once additional judge of the Orissa high court, became the first judge in Orissa's history to be demoted to district judge. The allegations against Mishra are that he rigged the selection of judicial candidates. The Orissa high court chief justice conducted an inquiry and found him guilty. Mishra's appointment was subsequently not confirmed, and he is now district judge in Kalahandi.

 

The "demotion" raises two questions. If a judge is considered ineligible for a high court, what on earth is he doing as a district court judge? Is there a different standard of probity for different courts?

 

Alternatively, what confidence would litigants appearing before district judge Mishra have, knowing that he has been pronounced guilty by a superior court? The other question, one that Mishra's supporters raise, is the nature of the probe against Mishra. The inquiry was closed-door, hardly the kind of trial our judiciary would be proud of. Since he has been so publicly judged, should not he be given a chance to publicly defend himself? After all, that's a right all those accused in the Indian judicial system are guaranteed.

 

Either way, the larger question is of judicial accountability. Since Mishra was only an "additional" judge, it was possible to transfer him. Had he been a confirmed high court judge, disciplining him would have involved a never-done-before impeachment. This is why many HC judges are sometimes transferred to high courts elsewhere — begging the same question that residents of Kalahandi must ask: are they to receive lower quality justice? As the government mulls a new Judges (Standards and Accountability) Bill, these are some questions for the state and the courts to jointly consider.

 

 *************************************** 

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

WITH NO CREDIT

 

A spectre is haunting the RBI, the spectre of inflation. The month-on-month seasonally adjusted WPI inflation is hovering around 15 per cent. Some of this is food — the WPI inflation is running at 20 per cent by the same measure — but a lot of it is non-food inflation. But what choices did the RBI have to make a difference? Decades of policy mistakes on the bond market and on banking have resulted in an ineffective monetary policy transmission. Increasing or decreasing the interest rate does not seem to impact inflationary pressures. The size of impact is not statistically discernable from zero. The central bank is a spectator when it comes to using the short-term rate to deliver low and stable inflation.

 

The debate will continue on the RBI's decision to raise the CRR — but the honest truth is that this just does not matter. How, then, can inflation be checked? There is a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. The short-term strategy should focus on two issues. The first is food prices. Indian agriculture has been ill-served by policy blunders, particularly in the recent past. Fresh thinking is needed on an array of policy issues in agriculture. The second lever which can work in the short-run is the exchange rate. Unlike the short-term interest rate — where the measurable impact on prices is zero — the exchange rate matters. There is a visible and measurable impact on prices: when the rupee appreciates, this tames domestic inflation, and vice versa. To some extent, the inflation we are seeing today is the delayed reaction to the sharp rupee depreciation of previous months. The RBI document reflects concern about capital inflows. This betrays a lack of understanding of the relationship between capital inflows, the exchange rate and inflation. The right strategy for the RBI today is to continue with liberalisation of the capital account, so as to encourage capital inflows. This would yield rupee appreciation and thus combat inflation.

 

Politicians are right to be highly concerned about inflation. The only useful thing that monetary policy can do to assist India's long-term growth opportunities is to deliver stable inflation. In the short run, this requires new thinking on agriculture and on capital account liberalisation. In parallel, the three reports led by Percy Mistry, Raghuram Rajan and Jahangir Aziz outline the path for India to get a plausible financial system, where the RBI can deliver low and stable inflation through control of the short-term interest rate.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

FRAMED

 

If anyone still parrots the "root cause" argument for Naxal violence, two images might change her mind. The first was of the headless body of Sanjoy Ghosh, a 23-year old West Bengal state armed police jawan. Though Ghosh had been kidnapped during an operation, his beheading indicates a cold-blooded death, not retaliatory fire from Maoists under siege. The likely hearing that Ghosh received in the kangaroo courts that Maoists like to call people's justice was seen in the second image, this one taken in Jhargram in Bengal on Wednesday. The photograph shows "court proceedings" of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities — the Lalgarh-based, Maoist-backed group. The two accused, allegedly police informers, are sprawled, their hands tied, on the ground. Their judges, armed PCPA members, surround them, keeping the accused honest by beating them with sticks. This is, after all, people's justice.

 

While there can be no moral equivalence between the state and the Maoists, the worry is that lack of state coordination is imperilling the entire effort. Reports suggested that the new Shibu Soren government in Jharkhand had rolled back offensive patrolling and confined the CRPF and state police to the barracks. This was not just foolhardy for Jharkhand, it imperilled Operation Greenhunt by providing a safehaven for Maoists besieged elsewhere. It is in this context that Soren's statement that the Centre and his government were on the same page is reassuring. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has reiterated this, confirming that Soren is "on board with other chief ministers". It is hoped that the Jharkhand government now delivers, and these statements indicate a changed mindset.

 

Up ahead is the February 9 meeting of four Naxal-affected chief ministers (Soren included) in Kolkata, chaired by the home minister. This meeting follows a similar one held in Chhattisgarh, involving Orissa, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. It is these meetings — as much a forum for tactics as symbols of political cohesiveness — that are crucial for the success of Operation Greenhunt. But for those in search of other, more utopian symbols, perhaps the beheaded body of a poor jawan might provide some answers.

 

 ***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

EXIT AMERICA. AND THEN WHAT?

ROGER COHEN

 

I see that Gore Vidal, in an interview with the British daily The Independent, has been predicting America's demise with scurrilous relish, awaiting the day when it takes its place "somewhere between Brazil and Argentina, where it belongs" and China reigns supreme. The United States, he suggests, can then bow from the stage, war-drained, broken by "madhouse" politics, to become "the Yellow Man's burden."

 

I think Vidal's lost it, as the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens points out in a recent Vanity Fair piece entitled "Vidal Loco," but I have to say the words of the grand old man of letters echoed in my head during a recent visit to China, especially as I watched footage of the coffins of eight Chinese peacekeepers killed in Haiti being returned to Beijing.

 

This was a big event in China to which national television devoted many hours. The flag-draped coffins of the Chinese United Nations personnel, greeted at Beijing airport by sobbing family members and solemn Politburo members, put me in mind of numberless flag-draped American coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base from far-flung wars.

 

President Obama wants out of those wars. Indeed, to judge by the nine paltry minutes devoted to international

affairs in a State of the Union address of more than one hour, he's weary of America policing the globe.

 

When Israel-Palestine merits not a word from a president, you know the United States is turning inward.

 

The coffins have weighed on all Americans, however deeply repressed the pain. A fractured, draft-free America no longer has a Main Street. But somewhere out there the feeling has coalesced that some of the billions spent in Kabul could be used to create jobs at home.

 

China, in its "peaceful rise," has had no such distractions. Commentators on Chinese TV made much of how the Haiti sacrifice of the eight "heroes" was part of being "good global citizens."

 

But I found my mind wandering, fast-forwarding to 2040. I tried to imagine a time when such images would be frequent, when China could no longer freeload on a declining America and was obliged to step up to great power status with the attendant cost and sacrifice.

 

(I believe the rise of China is unstoppable. As Obama noted, Beijing is not "playing for second place." After my

last column about bulldozing Chinese development, a reader wrote describing how a new semiconductor plant in Albany, New York, only got the go-ahead after "almost two years and two million dollars to prepare the environmental impact statements" to present to "more than 100 local public meetings." Extrapolate from that to grasp how diktat outraces democracy.)

 

So, jump ahead to 2040. The United States has long since withdrawn its troops from Okinawa — "If the Japanese don't want us, we can no longer justify staying" said Democratic President Mary Martinez in 2032 — and Japan has predictably gone nuclear in the absence of a US security guarantee.

 

Now tensions between nuclear-armed China and nuclear-armed Japan have flared in an Asia where the United States no longer serves as the offsetting power. A naval clash over disputed, gas-rich islands in the East China Sea has revived century-old World War II grievances.

Asked about the escalating conflict, a State Department spokesman in Washington says: "We believe in good global citizenship, but frankly we don't have a dog in that fight. You'll have to ask Beijing."

 

But Beijing is busy. US troops have also long since withdrawn from South Korea — "the 38th parallel will just have to take care of itself," a departing US general was heard to mutter in 2034 — and China finds itself having to deploy its own troops to restrain the increasingly wayward North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from his threats to reduce Seoul "to an ashtray." A drunk-driving incident involving a Chinese general in Pyongyang and the death of three schoolchildren has prompted Kim to accuse China of acting "with imperial disdain."

 

"Beijing seeks the wellbeing of all people on the Korean peninsula, regrets the Pyongyang incident, and calls for dialogue," a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman says. The US State Department has no comment but officials privately confess to a certain "schadenfreude" at Chinese difficulties.

 

These difficulties are not confined to Asia. A shadowy terrorist group called ARFAP (African Resources for African People) has just claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 12 Chinese executives attending a Lusaka conference on copper extraction. Video has gone global showing the execution of two executives and threatening the murder of two more if China does not withdraw "from all predatory exploitation on the African continent."

 

The United Nations Security Council (now down to four permanent veto-bearing members since the United States chose in 2037 to resign a position serving only for "sterile institutional haggling over faraway nations that do not need our counsel") has been locked in discussion of the African crisis, but China is complaining of "paralysis."

 

A State Department spokesman says, "We hope China finds a way to negotiate with ARFAP. War is never a good option. We also hope the Chinese brokered Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire in Gaza, which is unravelling, can be saved by Beijing."

 

 ***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

PRINTLINE PAKISTAN

RUCHIKA TALWAR

 

STATE OF PLAY

Reacting to the exclusion of its cricketers from the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL), Daily Times reported on January 26: "Lahore High Court Chief Justice (CJ) Khawaja Muhammad Sharif issued notices to the Ministry of Sports and Culture and the Association of Film Producers for February 9 on a petition seeking ban on the screening of Indian films in Pakistan. The CJ also directed the petitioner, Muhammad Hussain, to assist the court in determining the authority under which the court could ban the screening of Indian movies in Pakistan. Ishtiaq Ahmed Chaudhry, counsel for the petitioner, submitted that the Indian Premier League (IPL) had humiliated the Pakistani players and the nation while Indian films were being exhibited in cinemas throughout the country. He requested the court to ban the screening of Indian films until the Indian government apologises from Pakistani cricketers and the nation." Not to be left behind, the government chipped in, as Daily Times reported on January 26: "Pakistan has successfully mobilised the defunct six-plus-two talks formula to counter the US pressure regarding giving India a 'greater role' in warn-torn Afghanistan's rehabilitation... Diplomatic sources said Pakistan has been lobbying for the renewal of talks among Afghanistan's neighbours in order to foil Indian designs of gaining a foothold on Afghan soil. Pakistan believes India is not an immediate neighbour of Afghanistan and therefore should have limited role in the country... 'It is not possible for us to give India a role in Afghanistan as it is using Afghan soil to destabilise Pakistan. Also, India has been traditionally aligned with Russia and played a part in the destruction of Afghanistan,' sources said."

 

AMERICAN COUNSEL

Dawn carried a report on January 28 stating: "The US urged India to be transparent with Pakistan about their activities in Afghanistan. At a briefing at the Pentagon, spokesman Geoff Morrell also discounted the Indian role in training Afghan security forces. The Pentagon press secretary said US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had discussed the Afghan situation with Indian leaders, including the issues that concerned Pakistan, when he visited New Delhi last week..." The US made another attempt to douse the flames erupting between India and Pakistan every now and then, as Dawn reported on January 27: "In a gathering that included senior Pakistani and Indian military officials, the US military chief urged all senior officers in attendance to avoid the kind of public disputes that have hurt regional relations in the past. 'I think it's really important that we work as hard as we can with each other, and that any kind of public accusations or public finger pointing, quite frankly, that does not serve any of us well,' said Admiral Mike Mullen. 'That doesn't mean we won't have disagreements. But I hope that we can do that privately, and not publicly.' Although the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff did not mention any particular dispute or country, it seemed an obvious reference to an altercation between India and Pakistan earlier this month over a statement by Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor."

 

PROFILING WON'T FLY

Pakistan's public outcry against the recent US announcement to screen passengers of Pakistani origin among others flying in and out of America might bear fruit, suggests an exclusive news item in Dawn on January 26. "US Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, and Ambassador Husain Haqqani are expected to announce... Pakistan's removal from a list of countries earmarked for additional security. Earlier this month, the US government issued a list of 14 countries whose citizens will have to go through additional security searches while coming to the United States. These include body searches for both male and female visitors, a restriction that caused uproar in Pakistan."

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

OUT OF AFGHANISTAN

ALIA ALLANA

 

69 foreign ministers gathered in London this week to work out the next phase in strategy for Afghanistan. Gordon Brown's stated intention is to "turn the tide" against the mounting insurgency. Alia Allana puts the conference in perspective:

 

• WHAT WAS DECIDED ON MATTERS OF SECURITY?

Afghanistan agreed to taking over certain responsibilities — security, policing and military functions — over a specified time period. Point 10 of the conference communiqué addresses the issues of security and the handing over of responsibility to Afghan forces. It is stated that the Afghan government is encouraged towards "conducting the majority of operations in the insecure areas...within three years" and that "within five years" it would be responsible for securing a majority of the main insurgent strongholds. Partnering between Afghan and NATO forces is seen as an important goal of the current strategy. The theme of the conference can be identified as the following: transition, handoff and eventual departure. Further, the communiqué was rife with words such as "deadline" and "timetable". Hillary Clinton however added that "this is not an exit strategy, It is about assisting and partnering with the Afghans." It has been decided that security for certain provinces would be handed over from NATO to Afghan forces as soon as the end of the year — however for areas of full-blown insurgency, the weaker Afghan forces would be expected to take control within three (to five) years. To this effect the international community will aid in developing Afghanistan 's security capabilities — the army will be boosted to 171,600 and the police will number 134,000 by mid-to-end 2011. Karzai, however added that even after Afghan forces have gained the upper hand, international assistance will be required for an additional five to ten years.

 

• WHAT IS THE PEACE AND REINTEGRATION TRUST FUND?

The fund is to encourage militants to lay their arms down. It is hoped that this fund will create alternate methods of livelihood so that insurgents have a channel "back into mainstream life on the condition that they renounce violence." At the London Conference alone, $140 million was raised and it is expected that this could go up to $500 million. (The US is not contributing to this fund). Part of this deal is the Karzai government's effort at reaching out to the Taliban. Karzai has also announced plans for a Loya Jirga (elders conference or tribal conference) where Afghans will discuss the manner in which dialogue will take place. Rangin Spanta — Afghanistan 's foreign minister — added that "the reintegration strategy is not to share political power with the Taliban." Rather, he said it was about offering "simple countryside Afghan citizens who are not happy with the government or paid by the hardcore Taliban" the "prospect of a real life, a job, education and a future." Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal predicted the figure for reintegration would be somewhere around $1 billion dollars, adding that this would amount to "peanuts compared to the costs of the war." Japan has provided $50 million towards the fund. In the longer term, Karzai is in favour of Saudi Arabia mediating talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan.

 

• WHAT ABOUT CORRUPTION?

Karzai's government has been accused of being one of the most corrupt governments in the world by Transparency International. Karzai has stated that battling corruption will be "the key focus" of his second term in office. He has pledged towards the creation of an independent body for oversight. This would consist of international monitors and would keep a progress report in Afghanistan's battle against corruption. There is also talk of appointing a corruption oversight body — the aim is to ensure proper accounting practices and audit.

 

 ***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT SO QUIET ON THE CULTURAL FRONT?

GITANJALISURENDRAN

 

At present, the Culture portfolio is with the prime minister. While I am sure that the UPA has a vision for culture, it is no longer enough to keep it to themselves. Let's look at the state of some of the institutions. The National Archives has not had a full-time head for more than five years. The National Museum has also been leaderless for over two years now. The fate of one other mission for intangible cultural heritage is unknown. Rampur Raza Library, the famous historic library, has not had a director since 1981 because no one can be found to fulfill the quite impossible job description! The list runs on. Cultural institutions in this country are in a state of crisis and as yet, the government has neither shown any long-term vision nor any substantial short-term action to arrest the decay that has set in.

 

The sheer weight of the problems faced by cultural heritage practitioners is daunting. Many government cultural institutions are tangled in red tape, and stagnating. Annual reports are difficult to obtain. Relevant institutions do not have published standards for museum display or archive preservation. Last I checked, just one state archive in the entire country had an online presence (Tamil Nadu). Our cultural institutions need a complete technological and knowledge overhaul. By this I mean websites, online catalogues, standards for display, preservation, public service, public programming and access to collections must be created or improved. Further, the task before us is to turn our cultural institutions into vibrant hubs for research, knowledge dissemination, and cutting edge cultural display, preservation and access.

 

Culture, of course, is many things — it's the way we live, our languages, food, art, theatre, festivals, music and more. It determines our identity, even our hopes and our dreams. There isn't one single culture in India but many. There are no tangible outcomes in culture — no obvious "deliverables". But a healthy respect and care for culture is critical to a healthy national culture and life. Culture belongs to all, cuts across national boundaries, celebrates the best that humans have to offer each other. Culture encompasses the new as much as the old. It's Indian literature in English; the contemporary landscapes of our cities; it's fusion music. No one is the keeper our culture/s. And yet, the government must show the way by providing the public with its game plan.

 

So what can be done? First, a competent person must be appointed as the Minister of Culture. Additionally, searches must begin for professionals to lead the many headless institutions. And it's not enough to pick an academician. The needs of the hour are competency, energy, ideas and skills in problem-solving which can only come from an honest search for the right person. This is an opportunity for UPA to reveal its own competency in appointing the right people. Second, the department of culture must move its wheels to generate a vision for the future that includes a sensible policy towards missions. It makes no sense to allocate large amounts of public funds to time-bound missions which are set up to do the work where existing cultural institutions have not proven able, only to hand them back to those institutions.

 

Further, government cannot sustain missions forever, and therefore some sort of clear end-game plan needs to be generated. Third, there needs to be a greater focus on standards creation and knowledge dissemination. With the creation, dissemination and enforcement of standards, will come quality, a feature that is sorely lacking in the area of cultural display and revitalisation today. Further, from the point of view of knowledge about culture, better use must be made of the internet and new media sources. Fourth, we must find ways to involve communities in the work of revitalising culture. Recently, this paper carried a report about a tree-documenting exercise undertaken by villagers in Maharashtra. This kind of initiative should serve as a model for many other such initiatives. Fifth, we must now see culture as linked with education, environment and technology. For instance, it can provide tools for education and help take learning outside of the classroom. One of the needs of the hour is to generate positive and creative links between the realms of culture and these other realms. Culture is as an end, an ever-evolving process and a means to an end, all in one. Finally, we need to replace (where we can) institutions and institutional thinking with movements. The difference between the two, as I see it, is in the greater involvement of the public in the latter. Just as we cannot expect the government to provide us with all the answers, the government must also take people into greater confidence in areas such as this. One area could be in generating new community libraries. The Ministry of Culture's recent announcement of new schemes for re-invigorating theatre in India, is a welcome step. Much more needs to follow.

 

The writer has worked for INTACH and the National Mission for Manuscripts. She is currently doing a History PhD at Harvard University

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

RBI ERRS

 

On Friday, RBI began India's exit from stimulus by announcing a sharp 75-basis-point increase in the cash reserve ratio (CRR). The hike in CRR is expected to absorb Rs 36,000 crore of liquidity from the system. RBI obviously hopes that this will help ease the pressure on inflation. Unfortunately, it may have a bigger effect on growth. Consider that credit offtake has only grown at 8.8% between April 2009 and January 2010. RBI's target growth for 2009-10 is 18%. Even if one assumes that credit offtake shows an upswing in the last three months of the financial year, it is difficult to see it hit the RBI's targeted rate of growth, especially when RBI has decided to take so much liquidity out of the system. Strangely, RBI's conservatism on rates was matched by a sharp upward revision of its growth target for 2009-10—revised from 6% to 7.5%. The first six months of the year recorded 7% GDP growth, which means that we need 8% in the last six months to meet RBI's target. Given that agriculture is likely to perform poorly, the onus of achieving the 8% target rests on industry and services. Industry is still faced with large costs of borrowing, close to double digits or, as is the case for small-scale industry, in double digits. How RBI squares this revised growth target with a tightening of monetary policy is anyone's guess. Of course, there may not be an immediate upward revision of lending rates by banks—thankfully repo and reverse repo were left untouched—but the signal from RBI for the near future is now clear.

 

RBI has stated that both growth and inflation are priorities in its policy. With this sharp hike in CRR, RBI may have ironically fallen between the two stools. Growth, as we have just argued, will likely be a casualty. But it isn't even clear how this hike in CRR will address inflation that is driven primarily by supply-side factors, mostly in food. There was no evidence that larger inflationary expectations were taking hold so far. And food-price inflation will likely show some abatement after a good rabi crop. In any case, supply-side factors need the attention of the Union government—ministries of finance, agriculture and food—not RBI. To the extent that the rising prices of other commodities were a worry for RBI, it need only have looked at the steps already being taken to cool down the economy in China. Unlike in India, in China they may have a genuine problem of overheating. Once the central bank there moves to slow down the world's fastest growing economy, commodity prices, including for food, would have shown a decline in any case. The rest of the world for now is still showing moribund growth. RBI reacted in a similar manner in response to commodity inflation in 2008 and ended up choking the real economy. One had hoped that this time around, RBI would have chosen to be more liberal for a while longer.

 

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

IT'S STILL RHETORIC

Barack Obama has once again raised the bogey of outsourcing at a time when the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector is on the rebound in the US, contributing significantly to the fortunes of Indian software companies as seen in the results of quarter ended December. The populist pitch about moving jobs from Bangalore to Buffalo, taking tax preferences away from firms that outsource and giving tax preferences to firms that create jobs in the US was first raised last year. The IT industry in India continues to remain optimistic, as companies in US will still need cost-effective services. Numerous studies have reiterated the fact that the money saved from outsourcing could be invested in research and development by companies, which could then be reinvested to create high-end jobs in the US. A recent McKinsey study estimates that 34% of global Fortune 500 companies expect to offshore some of their IT infrastructure services over the next three years, especially to India, and companies can save as much as $500 million in wage bills every year. That's a significant amount of money given the challenging times companies in the US have seen in the last two years.

 

For US firms, India still remains the most attractive destination for outsourcing. A Boston Consulting Group survey of global companies found that error rates in accounting were reduced by 60% when the work was outsourced to India and companies have been able to save about 40% for most services by outsourcing to India because of access to a large talent pool, better employee productivity and low taxes. It remains to be seen whether Indian software companies can still remain competitive if their clients have to pay higher taxes. Indian software companies, even though the overall macro drivers are strong and outsourcing still remains a compelling proposition, will have to gear up to move up the value chain in IT and BPO services if they have to stay ahead of the curve. They will have to invest to develop patented software for the global markets and look for new opportunities in infrastructure management services in Europe, Asia and Middle East instead of their overdependence on the BFSI segment in the US, which accounts for about 60% of their current revenue.

 

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

SUBBARAO'S MONETARY POLICY MUDDLE

MADAN SABNAVIS

A couple of days before the credit policy was announced, it was interesting to hear some of the chiefs of large banks, including those in the public sector, actually stating that they would not increase interest rates even if RBI hiked them. This is significant not because it is a view of bankers, but because it may also mean that the credit policy per se may be becoming a little less relevant in terms of drawing the desired response from the banks. On the lighter side, this may be the reason why the policy document is just 13 pages.

 

Two issues in the policy document stand out that leave ample scope for debate, as there is a certain degree of ambivalence in them. The first is with respect to GDP growth. RBI has, quite uncharacteristically, upped its projection of growth in GDP for the year from 6% to 7.5%. Such a sudden increase actually means adding something like Rs 50,000 crore of real GDP to the original estimate. Is this achievable? Growth in GDP during the first half of the year has been around 7% and in order to average 7.5% for the full year the economy will have to grow by around 8% during the second half of the year.

 

Agricultural production would play an important role in these two quarters with its weight of around 17-18% in GDP. The kharif crop has been suboptimal with a fall in output of rice, soybean, groundnut, maize, sugarcane, etc. The double-digit decline in output can only partly be addressed by the expected good performance of the rabi crop. This is so because we have already attained peaks in production of wheat, chana and mustard in FY09, which are the major rabi crops. Hence, scoring over these numbers would be a bit difficult. Even at the most optimistic level, there would still be a decline in farm output by at least 5%.

 

Now, even if industry grows by 10% (it has been 7.6% for the first eight months), finance sector by 9% and the social sector (fiscal stimulus sector) by 10% during the second half of the year (which will come over an increase of 17% in FY09), GDP growth would come to at best 6.5%. This is assuming buoyant growth in other areas like construction (8%), transport and trade (9%) and mining (9%). Even a status quo in agricultural production will at best push the number up to 7%. Hence, the projection of 7.5% would be difficult to attain.

 

The second issue pertains to monetary policy per se. The basic objectives of monetary policy are growth and inflation. Is RBI targeting inflation or growth? The answer is not clear based on the actions of RBI. The central bank has highlighted the downside risk of inflation becoming even higher than it is perceived today since even cost-push-inflation on the supply side feeds into inflationary expectations. In fact, if RBI's projection of 7.5% growth in GDP is to work out, then the economy will be getting overheated, in which case inflation on the demand side would also emanate. Prices of manufactured goods have already started increasing in the last two months, which means that we cannot brush aside inflation as being only a supply-side phenomenon. In such a situation, RBI should have been raising rates, which it has chosen not to do. The reason is ostensibly to not do anything that impedes growth. But, is the policy supportive of growth?

 

The answer is not clear since RBI will absorb Rs 36,000 crore from the system to send signals that it means business. However, with surplus funds of Rs 70,000 crore being invested in the reverse repo auctions on a daily basis by banks, this amount is evidently not significant from the point of view of liquidity as there will still be surpluses with the banking system. But, given that RBI expects the economy to grow rapidly in the second half, especially industry, there should logically be an increase in demand for credit. But, if this happens, then the move to absorb liquidity through the 75 bps increase in CRR will be counter-productive.

 

Absorbing surplus liquidity cannot control inflation just as the SLR increase earlier did not matter when banks had an investment-deposit ratio of 30%. The move is also not supportive of growth as it withdraws money from the system. Besides, the banks too would be bearing a loss of above Rs 1,000 crore as interest income forgone as this was being invested in the reverse repo auctions at 3.25%.

 

The credit policy, while clear on its numbers for growth and inflation, blows hot and cold on how its monetary measures would actually help in achieving them.

 

The writer is chief economist, NCDEX. These are his personal views

 

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

POPULISM ON OUTSOURCING WON'T HELP

DARLINGTON JOSE HECTOR

Barack Obama's barrage of verbal volleys on outsourcing appears to be losing its sting, especially from an Indian information technology standpoint. Sure there were concerns when he first spoke about it but with the US President trying to open old wounds repeatedly, his bark could well turn out to be more frightful than his bite.

 

Obama's fear of being 'Bangalored' does not seem to stem from any real concerns about India stealing America's technology thunder, but merely an attempt at trying to keep him afloat on popularity charts. The affable and charismatic President has been losing his sheen of late, and flaying outsourcing has become one of his pet projects.

 

Indian IT firms and lobby body Nasscom have consistently maintained that the US anti-outsourcing stance will not be able to nibble away at the software fortunes of the country. Their reading of the situation has been consistent and they firmly believe that the US is only trying to make sure that large multinational American firms do not set up subsidiaries in foreign lands merely to save taxes.

 

Nasscom has been trying to allay fears that India's IT exports would be hit, by stating that outsourcing is a phenomenon that cannot be reversed. And to a large extent that's the case. For all the outsourcing bashing that Obama loves to do, there is very little that he can do to curb outsourcing, as it's simply a very lucrative and cost-saving option for American companies. Obama's tirade has got more to do with the US trying to raise funds by mopping up additional taxes than anything else, the lobby body feels.

 

But there is more to it than what meets the eye. While Nasscom has a point, it's very clear that Obama has to now go for the jugular with regard to winning back jobs if he has to keep his poll promises. This Wednesday he pledged to push forward with his tax plan—first announced in May 2009—to curb overseas tax advantages enjoyed by US firms. Obama urged the Senate to approve new laws to close international tax loopholes, which could produce $210 billion in tax revenues over the next 10 years. And in days to come he is sure to build on this stance, and try to put added pressure on companies that threaten to outsource.

 

The reality is that it is still cheaper to outsource. The on-site or onshore cost of a starting-level engineer in an IT company is about $60 an hour. The corresponding cost for work done offshore either in India or China works out to around $25-30 an hour. If the US disallows offshore payments as expenses, then the cost of offshoring will go up to $40 or so, according to estimates. Hence, it is still cheaper for the US companies to offshore jobs to locations such as India and China. Surely, any anti-outsourcing move is likely to hit American companies as hard as it will hit the Indian IT sector, which earns over half of its revenue from the US. While US companies may lose their competitive edge, Indian firms may have to look at other geographies for added revenues.

 

At this juncture, it may also be worthwhile for us to know the difference between offshoring and outsourcing, to clearly understand what Obama is trying to convey. Offshoring refers to a situation when a firm ships jobs to its overseas subsidiary to save taxes, while outsourcing is about relocation of jobs abroad to save costs, which could result in job losses in the parent country. The offshoring company continues to save a huge amount of money due to wage differences, and then it pays a marginal amount of extra tax because of this change. But that's not going to be enough to stop offshoring, at least to India.

 

If Obama has his way, he would make offshoring slightly more expensive for US companies. The hit would then be equivalent to the tax rates of the country that the jobs would go to. The change will reverse a Bush-era policy where US companies were able to defer paying corporate tax on income earned overseas, until they brought it back to the US, either as dividends or as retained profits. They got a tax credit for whatever tax they paid overseas already, and paid the difference to the US government. But what is not clear is whether the change in the deferral policy would lead to more jobs in the US. In any case, Obama cannot hope to build a robust economy in the US by reducing competitiveness of American companies.

 

In a globalised world, there is no place for protectionism. It is quite amazing that the US is feeling the pinch from countries like India and it's also amusing to see Obama having to resort to such rhetoric to keep up with people's image of him. No wonder they call this the Asian century. Signs of that are in the air, just one decade into it.

dj.hector@expressindia.com

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

BEND IT LIKE JAIRAM

RITUPARNA BHUYAN

Junior ministers in the UPA-II regime recently marched up to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to submit that they are largely under-employed, if not totally unemployed. Their common grouse—Cabinet ministers kept the cake and the icing, leaving them with crumbs for work.

 

Ideally, senior ministers must talk to their juniors before assigning responsibilities. But usually junior ministers' work allocations include the most low-key and unglamorous aspects of a department's duties.

 

Among the youth brigade that met the PM, minister of state for commerce Jyotiraditya Scindia was apparently the most forthcoming. The PM simply asked them to work harder on propagating the UPA's work rather than air grievances in public.

 

While GenNext may consider the PM unsympathetic, there is good reason for his stand. Consider Scindia's predecessor in UPA-I, Jairam Ramesh, who now has independent charge of the sensitive environment ministry.

 

With exactly the same work allocation as Scindia, Jairam was one of the most active members of the ministerial council, not just among the juniors. While his then-boss Kamal Nath cornered headlines over 'high profile' issues like SEZs and World Trade Organisation, Jairam's work profile included the spices, tea and coffee boards; handicrafts and marine exports and a few administrative procedures.

 

Yet, Jairam's Udyog Bhawan office with a transparent glass door became a routine stop for commerce reporters. With limited international work, the minister travelled extensively in the hinterland—one day in Aizawl, the next in Moradabad—and came up with many new ideas for reviving sagging sectors like tea, handicrafts and even coir.

 

Jairam even went to all the key borders with neighbouring nations and got the Cabinet to sanction Rs 850 crore to modernise their checkposts so as to facilitate easy trade.

 

Young ministers need to take a cue from Jairam's proactive approach rather than expect everything on their platter. Nothing stops them from summoning an official or convening a review meeting on any issue related to their ministry. Scindia, who replaced Jairam's glass door the moment he took charge, and his peers, may please take note.

 

rituparna.bhuyan@expressindia.com

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

MOVING AWAY FROM EASY MONEY

 

In its latest review of the monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of India has tried to balance the often conflicting objectives of supporting growth and simultaneously reining in inflation against the backdrop of a fast changing environment. While the economy is seen moving into a higher growth trajectory, inflation has become a major policy concern. Besides, in any case, it was expected that the RBI would announce the first decisive steps to reverse the easy money stance ado pted since September 2008. At the global level, the outlook for most countries is improving. Compared to a year ago, a different set of policy challenges has emerged for both the advanced and the emerging economies. In 2009, India and other emerging economies were engaged in mitigating the impact of the global financial crisis on their real economies. In 2010, their endeavour would be to strengthen the recovery process without compromising on price stability and to contain asset price inflation caused by large capital inflows. Both domestic and global factors have influenced the RBI's decision to announce a sharp hike in the CRR by 0.75 percentage point — to 5.75 per cent — to absorb approximately Rs.36,000 crore in two stages.

 

The higher-than-expected increase in the CRR need not lead to higher commercial interest rates immediately. The policy interest rates, namely the repo and the reverse repo rates, have been left unchanged. Moreover, there will be sufficient liquidity even after the CRR hike takes effect. Almost 98 per cent of the government borrowing programme has been completed. The anticipated increase in credit demand during the rest of the year can be easily taken care of with the available funds. The RBI has lowered its projection of credit growth to 16 per cent and that of deposit growth to 17 per cent. The economy that has rebounded strongly with a 7.9 per cent growth in the second quarter is expected to maintain its momentum during the rest of the year. The RBI's revised forecast of 7.5 per cent is sharply higher than the six per cent it had projected earlier. Inflation, though still caused predominantly by supply side factors, is a major threat to growth. The RBI has raised its projection for WPI inflation for end-March to 8.5 per cent. There are factors that might lower growth and accentuate inflation. Uncertainty about the pace and shape of global recovery, surge in oil prices in the wake of a sharp recovery, increase in capital inflows beyond the absorptive capacity of the economy, and performance of the South-West monsoon in 2010 are some of the imponderables.

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

EARTHQUAKES AND SCIENCE

 

The 7-magnitude shallow-depth earthquake of January 12, which had its epicentre about 15 kilometres southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, ruptured the long Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault for a length of about 75 km and width of 13 km to 15 km. The extent of rupture along the fault will become clearer after detailed studies are carried out. While the quake relieved a certain amount of accumulated stress, the Fault, according to the United States Geologic Sur vey (USGS), has not been ruptured "appreciably" and still stores accumulated stress. An earthquake results when the rocks fail and the accumulated stress is suddenly released. According to the USGS, aftershocks of magnitude 7 will continue for months; there is also a "small chance" of subsequent quakes being larger than the calamitous one of January 12. It is well known that a sudden release of strain at one point loads another area along the same fault or adjacent faults, and may hasten the occurrence of another quake. The loading-unloading of stress becomes all the more pronounced after a major earthquake. Haiti lies in a seismically active zone between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Another major strike slip fault, the Septentrional Fault, runs across the country. The country is also sandwiched by two thrust faults, one in the north and the other in the south.

 

Yet Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean region, which resembles a small-scale ring of fire like the one encircling the Pacific Ocean, are largely ignored by the scientific community. Quakes produced by the strike slip faults, Enriquillo and Septentrional, occur at relatively shallow depths. Even smaller magnitude quakes can be felt on the ground, and poorly constructed buildings can get weakened or damaged. Unfortunately, smaller magnitude earthquakes are generally ignored by the global network of seismic stations, which report only quakes of magnitude 4.5 and above. This underlines the need for studying regional seismic activity. Indonesia, which was sparsely instrumented prior to the 2004 tsunami, is better studied today. It is important to study even the smaller magnitude earthquakes in seismically active zones because, over the long term, they may anticipate a remotely possible large earthquake. Establishing or improving building codes will become possible only when a thorough seismic hazard assessment is made. The good news is that it is possible to fast-track the assessment to get a better understanding of the likelihood and nature of quakes over different time frames.

 

*************************************** 

THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

ONE MONTH AFTER COPENHAGEN

SINCE INDIA IS STILL IN THE EARLY STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT TRAJECTORY, IT IS BETTER EQUIPPED TO DEMONSTRATE A LOW CARBON LIFESTYLE, WHICH OTHER SOCIETIES COULD EMULATE.

M.R. SRINIVASAN

 

One month after the global summit meeting on climate change is a good time to take stock of the events at Copenhagen. Leading to the summit was a well informed debate in Parliament, in which a number of our younger MPs took active part. Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh gave a comprehensive reply, stating clearly the red times in India's negotiating position. Before the Indian team left for Copenhagen, some of the negotiators expressed dis may at his announcement that India would work for a voluntary reduction of 20 to 25 per cent in energy intensity in 2020, compared to 2005. The Minister took his cue from China, which had announced a reduction of 40 to 45 per cent.

 

India has been saying it does not want to be part of the problem but wants to be part of the solution. India with a per capita carbon emission of a little more than one tonne cannot create a problem for the survival of the world. The U.S. with an emission of 23 tonnes certainly can. It refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and has been trying to let the Protocol die. Its position is that it can take on binding obligations only if countries like China and India undertake similar obligations.

 

There is confusion in the minds of many that the positions of India and China are identical. In one respect, they are identical: neither of them is responsible for the historical emissions from the advent of industrial revolution till the last decades of the 20th century. Now China is the biggest single emitter of carbon and its average emission is about 5 tonnes, compared to about 10 tonnes by the European Union, Japan and Russia. Hence its announcement of a voluntary reduction of 40 to 45 per cent by 2020, compared to 2005, is to be welcomed.

 

The U.S. is still a laggard in coming up with a target for reduction. There is legislative action under way

whereby the emissions are to go down by 17 per cent by 2020, as compared to 2005. But this will mean a reduction of only 4 per cent compared to the 1990 level. Thus this falls far short of what developed countries were obliged to effect under the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore, even the modest reduction goal set by President Barack Obama may not receive the approval of the U.S. Senate. These numbers have to be compared with the necessity of the developed countries to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, if the global temperature rise is to be restricted to 20 degrees C.

 

The Danish Chair of the Copenhagen summit was clearly under pressure to drive the negotiations in the direction desired by the developed countries. Thus it was that the financial assistance promised to the least developed and island nations, put at some $30 billion now (and going up to some $100 billion by 2020), was made contingent on the major developing countries, including China, India, South Africa and Brazil, taking on mandatory emission cuts.

 

The developing countries were pressing that a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, with higher emission reduction obligations for the developed countries, should emerge from Copenhagen. The least developed countries and island nations wanted to ensure that the developed countries committed themselves to substantial financial assistance. The conference was heading towards the predicted conclusion of total failure. At this stage, President Obama came in. Initially, he was trying for a one-to-one meeting with the Chinese Prime Minister. However, he was prepared to meet Mr. Obama only along with the leaders of Brazil, South Africa and India (the BASIC Group). In fact, Mr. Obama virtually barged into a meeting of the BASIC leaders.

 

It was at this meeting that the so-called Copenhagen accord was arrived at. The accord stated there should be an upper limit of 20 degrees C for rise in global temperature by 2050. No intermediate targets were set. No commitments were made by the developed countries. With regard to the developing countries (such as the BASIC Group), their voluntary emission reduction programmes would be subject to an international consultation process. The U.S., on behalf of the developed countries, indicated that some $30 billion would be available as assistance to the least developed and vulnerable island nations for mitigation programmes. This funding, which might go up to $100 billion by 2020, would come from a basket of governmental, private sector and other sources. There is considerable vagueness as to the actual amount of money that may in fact be disbursed.

 

When this accord was brought before the final plenary, it was formally rejected by a number of countries because it was arrived at non-democratically by a small number of countries. The developed countries, expectedly, went along with the accord. The BASIC countries themselves entered the caveat that the accord was legally non-binding. It is strange that the U.N. Secretary-General has asked India (and other BASIC countries) to commit themselves to their voluntary emission reduction programmes. The Prime Minister's prompt rejection of this initiative of the Secretary-General (and Danish Prime Minister) is timely and welcome.

 

The Planning Commission has been tasked with indicating how the energy intensity of the Indian economy can be cut down by 20 to 25 per cent from the 2005 level by 2020. A time frame of three months has been envisaged for the study. A proper study would need detailed consultations with stakeholders in various sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing industry, mineral extraction, transportation, housing, and service. India should not needlessly put pressure on itself to arrive at a hasty and unworkable programme.

 

India has held the view that there should be a convergence in per capita emissions over a period of time, as this would mean equitable sharing of the environmental space. It has, however, put no specific number on the table. One may speculate that this number could be about five tonnes per capita, about half the present level in the EU, Japan, and Russia. It is also close to the level China has already reached. This number could go down over a period of time, if most of our energy were to come from non-fossil sources such as solar, hydro, nuclear, wind, and bio-energy.

 

Another issue is the date by which carbon emissions should peak. R.K. Pachauri indicated that it could perhaps be 2015. This date may be acceptable to the developed world and even China. In view of the late start India made on its development process, the carbon peaking date would have to be much later. Our power generation will continue to depend heavily on coal (and gas to the extent available) for several decades. India hopes to induct nuclear power in a big way but inevitably it is time consuming. So far as solar energy in concerned, further R&D to reduce costs is absolutely necessary. India possesses the requisite S&T manpower to embark on this task. Indian industry is now sufficiently developed to embark on a partnership with government laboratories and academic institutions to make this possible. What we need to evolve is a cooperative partnership that can deliver the desired results. The expectation that the developed countries would make these technologies available other than for profit is unrealistic.

 

An issue that has engaged climate change specialists is carbon trading, which is already in vogue and may become a big business in course of time. Many specialists feel that this measure will do nothing to reduce emissions. The levy of a carbon tax or grant of carbon credit could directly reduce emissions.

 

Developed countries are loath to discuss lifestyle changes, which India insists are necessary to permit a transition to a sustainable future. Since we are still in the early stages of our development trajectory, we are better equipped to demonstrate a low carbon lifestyle, which other societies could emulate.

 

Finally, there is the question of population. So far as India is concerned, a peak population of one-and-a-half-billion is on the horizon. The resources of land, water and food, apart from energy and minerals, available to India will be inadequate to support such a large number, except at a marginal level. Therefore, it is imperative that we adopt policies leading to population stabilisation soon and, indeed, a declining population thereafter.

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

HAITI'S RECOVERY SHOULD START WITH DEBT CANCELLATION

THE TALK OF A NEW MARSHALL PLAN RAISES THE HOPE THAT THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS SERIOUS ABOUT HAITI AND ITS LONG-TERM NEEDS.

SUPACHAI PANITCHPAKDI

 

The massive response of the international community to the devastating earthquake has been directed towards saving lives and providing immediate relief to the victims. This will continue for some time. However, even at this stage it is necessary to think about the measures required to rebuild the Haitian economy, put its people back to work and provide a more hopeful future.

 

Given the scale of the damage and disruption, social and economic recovery in Haiti will take time. The government must be given the policy space necessary to undertake the reforms and adjustments needed to bring back a semblance of normalcy and create a viable economy. It will also need massive investments, which will depend on multilateral funding along the lines of the Marshall Plan, as has recently been suggested by IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

 

The Marshall Plan is all too readily evoked in the wake of large-scale disasters. But the parallel is particularly apposite for Haiti, given the scale of the devastation, the potential for political instability if recovery fails to take hold, and the prolonged period of reconstruction that will inevitably engage the international community. Moreover, given that close international involvement prior to the earthquake had failed to establish a viable development path for one of the world's poorest countries, talk of a new Marshall Plan raises the hope that this time around, the international community is serious about Haiti and its long-term needs.

 

Vicious cycle

 

A good starting point for the long-term objective is an immediate cancellation of Haiti's $1 billion external debt, a crippling legacy of years of dictatorships and mismanagement, augmented in recent years by recurrent natural disasters. The United Nations Conference on Trade And Development (UNCTAD) has estimated that natural disasters add an average 24 percentage points to the debt-to-GDP ratio in the three years that follow such an event. Shocks on such a scale can lead to a vicious cycle of economic distress, external borrowing, burdensome debt servicing, and insufficient investment to mitigate future shocks. Marshall was concerned with just such a vicious cycle gripping post-war Europe. It has been a constraint on Haitian development for over two centuries.

 

Despite having benefited from debt relief in 2009, Haiti was still at high risk of debt distress prior to the earthquake, thanks in large part to the successive external shocks that hit the country over the past decade. Considering the large direct cost of the earthquake (conservative estimates put this at 15 per cent of GDP) and the lack of any meaningful national capacity to service its own debt, in the absence of radical action by the international community a new debt crisis is all but assured, along with any hope of sustainable recovery.

 

The way to proceed is to declare an immediate moratorium on debt servicing, followed by its cancellation as quickly as possible. Several countries that were hit by the tsunami of December 2004 benefited from a debt moratorium on bilateral Paris Club loans.

 

It was encouraging to see that soon after the earthquake, several of Haiti's bilateral creditors announced a similar initiative. However, a significant part of Haiti's outstanding debt is owed to multilateral creditors (primarily the Inter-American Development Bank). To the extent that these institutional lenders do not have the resources or mandate to fully and unilaterally cancel Haiti's debt obligations, their membership will need to provide the requisite political and financial support.

It will be equally important, as assistance shifts from emergency aid to development financing, that continued multilateral support takes the form of grants and not loans, in order to avoid any future build-up of new debt as recovery gets under way.

 

Discussing the technicalities of long-term debt sustainability may seem premature in the face of the immediate human suffering. But cancelling the debt would serve not only to break with past development practice but also to signal the intention of the international community to stay engaged with Haiti over the longer haul. Indeed, if past experience with such disasters is any guide, the big challenge will be to connect relief and recovery efforts to the creation of an institutional framework capable of fashioning an inclusive national agenda that is not only broader and longer-term than in the past, but also able to repair trust in public institutions and authority.

 

A sustainable recovery will also depend on the revival and creation of state capacities to handle public finance, implement an emergency housing programme, create jobs and strengthen public security. The large financing gap — several billions of dollars annually for the foreseeable future — means that the involvement of the international community will be essential and unavoidable, but it is imperative that local capacities are mobilised as quickly as possible and that local ownership of the policy agenda is guaranteed from the outset. This last point was also a key feature of the Marshall Plan, but one that has tended to be overlooked in recent decades or obscured by the language of "absorptive capacity," "good governance," and so forth.

 

Marshall recognised that sensitivity to complex and cumulative economic and political forces was key to any long-term reconstruction effort when he called for a policy for Europe "directed against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos" and aimed at "the revival of a working economy so as to permit the emergence and social conditions in which free institutions can exist". Haiti needs its own George Marshall, and soon.

 

(Supachai Panitchpakdi is Secretary-General of UNCTAD.)

 

 ***************************************

THE HINDU

WHAT LIES IN STORE FOR ANTARCTICA, THE WORLD'S LAST REPOSITORY?

A NUMBER OF EXPERTS BELIEVE THAT THE ANTARCTIC TREATY'S YEARS ARE NUMBERED, REGARDLESS OF ITS HAVING BEEN RECENTLY RENEWED FOR ANOTHER 50 YEARS.

ILYA KRAMNIK

 

A historic discovery was made on January 28, 1820. A Russian navy expedition under the command of Faddei Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev sighted the last of the remaining unexplored continents — Antarctica.

 

Consequently, Russians were the third and last nationality, after the Spaniards who discovered America and the Dutch who found Australia, to discover an unknown continent. Today, Antarctica is interesting because it is legally "no one's 221; property, i.e. no one country owns its territory and it is not divided into any zones or sectors. It is accessible to all. The only question is how much longer this status will continue.

 

Antarctica is humanity's last unspoiled repository. Under the ice, under the continental shelf, there are enormous mineral resources and the surrounding seas are full if bio-resources. In addition, the glaciers of Antarctica contain 90 per cent of the world's fresh water, the shortage of which becomes all the more acute with the growth in the world's population. Therefore, Antarctica is attracting more and more attention.

 

The recorded history of the continent started by its not being found for a long time, and once it was found, nobody wanted to live there. The voyage of the sloops Vostok and Mirny was the first high-latitude expedition sent to the southern seas after renowned English seafarer James Cook was unsuccessful in his attempts to find the southern continent. In the expeditions of 1768-1771 and 1772-1775, Cook was able to penetrate the southern polar circle (66° 33? 39?S), but he said that further navigation to the south was impossible.

 

The Russian expedition was charged from the very beginning with penetrating as deep as possible to the south to finally answer the question of whether or not there was a southern continent. On January 28, the coast of Antarctica was first sighted at the coordinates 69° 21' 28" S and 2° 14' 50" W. Then the Russian ships circumnavigated Antarctica, discovering many neighbouring islands and mapping parts of the continent.

 

Earnest interest in Antarctica grew later, in the 20th century, after a number of expeditions into the interior of the continent, during which man first set foot on the South Pole (Amundsen's expedition of 1911-1912) and mapped the surface of the continent.

 

In the mid-20th century, many countries established scientific research stations in Antarctica. In 1961, a treaty went into effect stipulating the demilitarisation of Antarctica and its use for exclusively peaceful purposes. The treaty's signatories officially relinquished territorial claims to the continent's land.

 

Nevertheless, this did not mean the end of plans to develop Antarctica's natural riches. Official territorial claims were merely shelved. With the passage of time, the resources of the south seas and the Antarctic continent itself have grown more interesting to many countries and a number of experts believe that the Antarctic Treaty's years in its present form are numbered, regardless of its having been recently renewed for another 50 years.

 

Although Antarctica itself is a demilitarised zone, armed conflicts did arise in its vicinity. It's worth mentioning the lengthy conflict between Chile and Argentina over an island near Cape Horn, as well as the overlapping territorial claims of these two countries in Antarctica, where both of them are expanding their presence and are moving towards organising permanent settlements.

 

Another thing worth mentioning is the conflict between Argentina and the U.K. over the Falkland Islands. In and of themselves, the islands are not of significant interest, but they include and imply control of vast resource-rich areas of the ocean. In addition, along with the neighbouring islands controlled by the U.K., the Falklands are the de facto gateway to the Antarctic, which explains London's tenacity in maintaining sovereignty over them and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, as well as territorial claims regarding the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands under the Antarctic Treaty.

 

In turn, Argentina also insists on its rights to these territories, which include control of considerable tracts of continental shelf and sea. At present, the conflict is frozen; however, many analysts believe that it has a reasonable chance of flaring up again in the future.

 

Russia, the discoverer of Antarctica, is currently one of the most widely represented countries there. At present, Russia has five polar stations and one polar base, where a wide-ranging scientific research programme is carried out. There are also plans to reopen three previously closed stations.

 

RUSSIA FOR STATUS QUO

 

Russia is in favour of maintaining the status quo in Antarctica.

 

"In the interests of all countries, this is the only stance for the Antarctic Treaty's signatories — to avoid any action that would attempt to scuttle this agreement," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the subject.

 

At present, the countries directly bordering the Antarctic region continue to pay lip service to the agreement; however, there are activists in Chile, Argentina and New Zealand that hold that their country has lawful rights to ownership of Antarctic territories and are working towards this goal.

 

It is possible that the fate of Antarctic territories will depend on the coordinated stance of major powers, including Russia. If such a coordinated stance is not achieved, then the carving up of Antarctica could become a reality in the next 20 to 30 years. Under such conditions, Russia will need weighty arguments to defend the status quo of Antarctica with other countries, or, if this is not possible, ensure its participation in the development of Antarctica's riches.

 

It is impossible to name a specific timeline for a possible "War for the Antarctic." But conjecture is possible based on the following factors — for example, the appearance of technology allowing rapid and cost-effective supply of fresh water from Antarctic glaciers to arid and tropical regions; a new increase in oil prices and growing demand for crude, which will make oil extraction on the Antarctic shelf economically viable or an increase in demand for food because of the growing global population, which would require fishing in the south seas, etc.

 

For the time being, there has been no such convergence of interests. But it is ever more likely. Accordingly,

expansion of Russia's presence in Antarctica and development of its polar infrastructure is absolutely justified. These actions will provide Russia with a base on which it can rely in defending its stance on Antarctica's status. — RIA Novosti

 

(Ilya Kramnik is RIA Novosti military affairs columnist.)

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

INFLATION: RBI MEANS BUSINESS

 

Rising prices has been a growing nightmare for the common people. The Reserve Bank of India, aware of this, sent out the strongest signal ever about its intention to curb inflation and inflationary expectations in its third quarter monetary and credit policy on Friday. It raised the cash reserve ratio (CRR), i.e. the cash that the banks have to keep with the RBI, by 75 basis points. The move will withdraw Rs 36,000 crores from the banking system in two phases. This is not much if you consider the immense liquidity of over Rs 1 lakh crores in the system, but it sends a strong message about inflation concerns while not curbing the lending capacity of banks, which fuels industrial growth. The good news is that the bankers have told the RBI that there would be no immediate hike in interest rates so borrowers, whether for homes or autos, can still take advantage of the low interest rate scenario. Interestingly, despite the fears expressed by the RBI on "teaser" interest rates by a few banks, there has been no major increase in demand for housing loans. Till November, according to the RBI's own figures, housing loans grew by just seven per cent.

 

The RBI revised upwards it inflation figures for March 2010 to 8.5 per cent from the 6.5 per cent it had projected in its October policy, and also its GDP growth figures to 7.5 per cent from seven per cent in October. It, however, expects inflation to moderate from July 2010 onwards provided crude prices remain stable and there is a normal monsoon. Food prices have been the real culprits behind rising inflation. The wholesale price index would have been 7.3 per cent, the RBI said, had it not been for food prices contributing about 2.1 per cent. While the good news is that the economy is on the growth path, the not so good news is that this growth is not uniform. It has been restricted to the auto sector, consumer durables and, partly, construction, which have boosted the steel and cement industries. But the vast services sectors, like tourist arrivals, cargo handled at sea ports, and services dependant on external demand like exports, either declined or showed decelerated growth. Much of the growth, at least two per cent of GDP, was due to the implementation of the 6th Pay Commission awarding arrears. The RBI governor, Dr D. Subbarao, made it clear that while the RBI has started its exit from the accommodative monetary policy that it has maintained in view of the fallout of the global financial crisis, the government of India would have to do the same with its fiscal policies if the monetary polices are to be effective. It will have to roll back its borrowing programmes and unwind its huge fiscal deficit, which is 5.5 per cent of GDP. The RBI governor hoped the government in its coming Budget would indicate its intentions through a road map for fiscal consolidation and spell out the broad contours of its tax policies and expenditure compression. The RBI said it will keep monitoring the situation as there are still large pitfalls ahead. Both global and domestic recovery have been driven largely by government spending and commodity prices have consequently risen. The other major risk to the economy, particularly to the emerging markets, including India, which have recovered faster, is capital flows. Dr Subbarao said that so far capital flows to India have been manageable, but if they go beyond control they could add to inflationary pressures.

 

At the end of the day the economy will be on a stronger footing if there is a better balance between private sector spending and government spending. This is one of the reasons why the RBI did not touch the interest or repo rates.

 

***************************************

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

THE PADMAS & CHAPLOOSI

SHOBHAA'S

 

How we love our controversies! Especially when they involve awards! We quarrel over everything — those who got them, those who didn't. Those who should have, etc, etc. We are obsessed with awards and rewards. Right now it's the Padmas. And Sant Chatwal. He is the one guy everybody (but Manmohan Singh) loathes. Sant gets our goat! The question everybody's asking is, "How on earth did this undesirable man get one of the nation's highest recognitions?" Some of us know the answer! Fixing! It's called high level fixing. That's it. Sant is a super fixer. That's just so not kosher! And he, of all the usual suspects floating around, manages a Padma! Not just any Padma, mind you. The Padma Bhushan, no less. Wow! Had Sant been fobbed off with an or'nery Padma Shri (cheaper by the dozen), the honour might have gone unnoticed. But Sant was upgraded by his admirers — from cattle class to first class. Kya baat hai.

 

How did he manage it? Don't be stupid and ask such dumb questions. Sant is a pro at the game. This is a piece of toast for the man who has publicly kissed Hillary Clinton more often than even hubby Bill. Sant can manage pretty much anything (except his errant son). Now with the Padma Bhushan in his kitty (errrr, with the RTI filed by Pritish Nandy and Vir Sanghvi, there's a BIG hiccup coming up) there will be no stopping Chatwal as he parties away (unless the outrage over his receiving one of the top civilian honours snowballs into something bigger — like a national scandal, which it is). Who knows, Hillary herself may do the honours and be right there to show her support and solidarity… Obama may also be persuaded to climb into his dinner jacket and show up for the bash (Barack could do with a li'l PR right now).

 

At the time of writing, Chatwal was still thumping his chest and crowing. And assorted apologists were mewing across TV channels and fobbing off the whole fracas on a panel of "experts" who recommend and clear names for these prestigious awards. Let's start by identifying and naming the "experts" on that mysterious panel for starters. Who are they? What is their day job? On what basis do they put up names of potential candidates? Criteria, please? I guess we'll never know. But now that the can of worms has been opened, it would be interesting to take this debate beyond Chatwal and ask a few tough questions.

 

Personally, I couldn't care less. All awards are basically bogus (Dr Pachauri, are you reading this?). People across the world lobby shamelessly for them. I mean, come on, Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize? Could anything be more perverse? Nearly every top award comes with strings attached, if not a blatant price tag. In India, any and every award is highly coveted since awards are a national obsession. Awards and records thrill us to bits (Sachin's centuries! Rahman's Oscars!). We avidly follow who has got which award. I have seen business cards that shamelessly proclaim: "Padma Shri So-and-so". This is almost as crass, as gauche as an erstwhile royal of Kadkanagar adding H.R.H to his/her name. Or people who wangle honorary doctorates from obscure universities and happily call themselves "Doctors". Come on, you guys. This is the 21st century, not medieval India. Grow up!

 

Since we place such a premium on awards, it isn't all that surprising or shocking to discover there is a "process" in place. Yup. It exists, and a seasoned Dilliwalla took me through it, kindly offering to arrange an award for me! "It will take time", the man whispered, "but I'll get it done". I feigned great excitement and said hoarsely, "Really? But… Which award and how?" He looked over his shoulder, came three inches closer and answered, "Depends…" That was a very open-ended "depends". I pretended to be wildly interested but a little nervous, and asked him to elaborate. "I will need at least seven signatures of eminent people on a letter of recommendation. That is for a basic award like the Padma Shri. But for something higher, the system is different. It takes more…" Oh-oh. He stopped abruptly at this point. I played dumb (I can!) and asked innocently, "More…? More what?" Maybe he sensed my lack of seriousness or thought I was asking too many silly questions, because he promptly lost interest and went in search of some other bakra.

 

There is definitely a "process" here, and there are touts who fix these things. It is one of Delhi's worst kept secrets, but what the hell — it's out there. Everybody knows the drill and the deal. Which is why the Sant Chatwal issue is being treated with kid gloves. I feel a little sorry for those spokespeople of assorted political parties who have to present themselves nightly on various channels and defend the Chatwals of the world with a straight face. Strange. If that is the scenario, why stop at Chatwal? There are half-a-dozen others who are highly suspect, so why are they being spared? If these awards are supposed to be the ultimate recognition of an individual's contribution to the nation, what are goons doing on the Padma laundry list? Goons who haven't contributed a thing either culturally or even tangentially to India? Business people and corporate types working to enhance the bottom lines of their employers, for example? How have they served India's interests? To someone like me these people have merely done their jobs for foreign masters and got paid big bucks in return for the bloated dividends shelled out to international shareholders, at our expense.

 

Sorry. But as that wise old Taoji from Haryana would say, "There is something black in the lentils". The entire Padma "process" needs to be reviewed now that it is under the public's scanner. It is clear the Padmas are no longer what they used to be and their prestige value has been seriously devalued. Perhaps it needed the brazenness displayed while honoring Sant Chatwal and hoping to get away with it, that has triggered off the latest national uproar. Had it not been for Chatwal, this year would have been no different from previous years — the winners would have faked astonishment and delight (come on… we all know recipients are informed in advance and their acceptance of the award confirmed in writing before the announcement is made), and a few (strictly Bollywood types) would have tweeted and gloated away to glory. Nobody but the awardees themselves would have remembered or cared a week later. Chatwal's shocking award has put a spanner in the works. Kuch "setting" theek nahi hui iss baar. He must be hot under that red turban. Imagine a man who busses the mighty American secretary of state regularly, and dines with Obama, is forced to eat crow back in India. Enough to give a serious belly ache to the hotelier. What an unappetising mess! But, worry not. It's nothing that a drastic ingestion of Pudin Hara and some serious lobbying in the right places can't fix.

 

 Readers can send feedback to www.shobhaade.blogspot.com

 

***************************************

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

ADVENTURES IN BOOKLAND

KISHWAR DESAI

 

After a cold and miserable morning in Delhi, when the Jaipur Literary Festival seemed a distant dream lost in a dreary fog, I (along with author and psychiatrist, Dr Sudhir Kakkar) careened into Jaipur in time to have a quick lunch with Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Pavan Varma, his wife Renu and and my husband, Meghnad Desai. The sunshine in Jaipur and a stimulating conversation meant that things perked up enormously. We were certainly luckier than Shabana Azmi who had to wait for five hours at the Delhi airport before she found a car to drive to Jaipur — as most cab drivers were simply too reluctant to negotiate the thick white blanket. She barely made it in time for her wonderful session later in the day. Most of the 200 authors had a similarly existential experience — and poor Girish Karnad was far too late for his inaugural speech, which was then re-scheduled for the next day.

 

The Lit Fest itself, at the colourfully festooned Diggy Palace was awash with authors of various degrees of fame. Alas for the less glamorous ones (like me) the media focus and TV cameras remained firmly on the filmstars and well-known international writers present. But the very satisfying part was that all the sessions had plenty of substance and though many of us may have gone unnoticed, we were able to participate in sessions and also meet many whom we could only admire from a distance.

 

For me the highlight was to meet Alexander McCall Smith as we munched through our breakfasts in the hotel. At last I could tell him how much I enjoyed his Botswana-set Ladies No 1 Detective Agency series — and how I too had (quite accidentally) written my first crime fiction novel (Witness the Night) — with an intrepid Punjabi social worker at the heart of it. His hearty approval was like a benediction!

 

The Durbar Hall at the Diggy Palace overflowed many times — especially when Gulzar, Shabana and Javed Akhtar had their readings and discussions. Particularly interesting was the launch of Shaukat Azmi's book, Kaifi and I — with extracts read by Shabana. For me it was a particularly poignant moment as I remembered meeting Shaukat aapa and Kaifi sahib years ago when I was making a documentary on Shabana. Her parents shared a deep affection, love as well as similar ideals and a moment in history which makes this book a unique memoir.

 

Another house full was the debate on rediscovering India (taken from the title of Meghnad's new book, The Rediscovery of India) with the erudite Nayantara Sehgal, Chetan Bhagat and Meghnad — as well as another on Freedom for Sale in which the participants include Anne Applebaum, John Kampfner, Niall Ferguson and Steve Coll.

 

Every evening the Lit Fest organisers also managed to get authors to let their hair down with theatre or music. On the first evening extracts were read out from Tughlaq—Girish Karnad's play from the 1960s — with Om Puri playing the part of the mad king. The focus on theatre is a great new addition to the festival by one of the festival co-directors — Namita Gokhale.

 

The nights were a crush of dinners and much bonhomie. The first evening got the ball rolling with an exclusive

dinner (backstage) with the well-known writer and editor Tina Brown and the Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. As we drifted in and out of several interesting conversations there was little doubt that now the festival is very much on the world map (especially with the newly-announced $50,000 prize for South Asian Literature) — though Soyinka confessed that he was a little overwhelmed by the huge numbers of people attending and that he had to often retreat into his room for some peaceful moments. The JLF has become like a carnival — and though this is a relief for many usually reclusive authors — for others a quiet corner was often difficult to access.

 

My own book reading from my new novel Witness the Night clashed with several other functions, including a reading by the Queen of Bhutan, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk — and so you can imagine I was pretty nervous that we would not be able to draw a crowd. But to the relief of Soumya Bhattacharya — my co-reader and fellow author with whom I was sharing a charpoy in the Baithak — we had a full house.

 

My own level of excitement was a little heightened by the fact that my publisher Karthika V.K. from Harper Collins rushed in with two copies of the just-printed Witness the Night just seconds before the reading began! The reading was followed by a lively interaction — and I have to say I enjoyed it thoroughly because there were even school children (still in their uniform!) in the audience — and everyone had a serious question to ask.

 

Another nice part about the Lit Fest is the little cafes and eateries scattered around where you can take a break — and the free kulhad ki chai is probably the most attractive libation for throats parched from book talk. However, a darker side to the festival attendees was revealed in the book stall run by the lovely Poonam Malhotra and her soft-spoken daughter, Priyanka. They were both horrified by the fact that so many books were being stolen from their stall... it seems literacy is no bar to theft! Even if readers have no sympathy for book shopowners, they should feel sorry for those authors who survive on royalities and keep their itchy fingers from book-lifting.

 

For the organisers, Namita Gokhale, William Dalrymple and Sanjoy Roy — what started as a small festival with five attendees in an empty Durbar Hall, JLF is now a huge, well-attended and very successful mela. I think for me the best moment came when I was stopped by a very young girl and asked how she could become an author. It meant, definitely, that the festival is not just for the stars — but for the readers and aspiring writers as well.

 

The writer can be contacted at kishwardesai@yahoo.com

 

***************************************

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

HOPE REDUX?

SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

 

Americans — specifically, Massachusetts voters — handed US President Barack Obama a nasty first-year-in-office anniversary present by electing a clownish Republican to the late Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat. He retaliated a week later, as he usually does under such circumstance, by delivering another blockbuster speech, this time the State of the Union address. At 75 minutes (including numerous ovations), it was nearly twice as long as his memorable Nobel acceptance lecture and towards the end, scaled the oratorical heights we have come to expect from the Great Communicator.

 

The address had something for everyone — a promise of a jobs bill for those still left out of the economic thaw, charging profligate banks to fund jobs programmes, tax concessions for small businesses, thrust on education, rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure and clean energy, sorting out the messy healthcare and making it affordable to all, increased homeland security and adherence to troop withdrawal schedules for both Iraq and Afghanistan, appeals for bipartisan, far-sighted leadership, admission of own shortcomings and a pledge to continue the struggle. Verily, Mr Obama was a Santa come a month late with a bagful of goodies!

 

The questions beg themselves: Will Mr Obama be able to deliver? Will the Americans move out of their funk and improve Mr Obama's poll numbers? More interestingly, how did one who started with a strong reservoir of goodwill come down so quickly to the level of an ordinary American President? And is there anything in it for us in India?

 

It is far too early to answer the first of these. Mr Obama's challenges stem from situations not even partially of his making, be it the economy, or the wars, or healthcare, and the ultimate outcome depends not just on what policies and actions he uses but how the world reacts. Nowhere is this more evident than in his pursuit of the two wars and the campaign against jihadist terror. The Iraqis need to stop their self-destructive fratricide and take greater responsibility to run their affairs, the Afghan leaders have to realise that holding office is not license to steal but a mandate to bring peace and order to their long-suffering land and the Pakistani leadership and its Army have to treat Taliban, Lashkar and similar outfits as mortal enemies of their own state by leading the battle against all of them. Mr Obama's grand promises cannot become realities unless these conditions are met.

 

Mr Obama has realised that the strong economic recovery in many areas is not appreciated when job losses, which hit Jack the Plumber the hardest, remain high. So even as credit is due handsomely to the administration for its major push, it will not be forthcoming until new jobs start opening up, which would be a while yet. Mr Obama's rating will rise only after the job haemorrhage stops.

 

How did Mr Obama come to this pass? Ironically, Mr Obama's worst handicap is the overwhelming Democratic majority in Congress (witness the unprecedented ovations in the address). Passage of major legislations was taken for granted, making Congressional leaders powers unto themselves, even more than what they usually are. The administration woke up belatedly to this and started wooing even single members to meet its self-imposed deadlines. It had to cut confusing, and potentially suspect, deals in the process.

 

Mr Obama's phenomenal intelligence and communication ability are another set of ironical liabilities. He sees the picture clearly and envisages an effective solution. That makes him supremely confident of being able to solve the problem, almost to the point of complacency. Yet getting there involves having to rely on many others, as he has now acknowledged: "I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone". Much now depends on whether he puts this in practice and does not allow the best to be the enemy of the good. He has to achieve results in a faster, more "muscular" manner to create a wonderful image of a strong leader fully alert and wholly incharge, rather than a seminar chairman who easily understands all the views expressed around the table, summarises everyone's thinking accurately and eloquently, yet misses the crucial decision issue!

 

The American exasperation is reflected in widespread scepticism and increasingly sharp criticism of Mr Obama, despite last year's expectations of a great presidency. There is apprehension abroad that the enormous potential would be allowed to go waste. This is both premature and unwarranted. I told friends just before the 1994 US mid-term elections (the Great Gingrich Triumph) that Bill Clinton could well become the first half-term President! He could have won a third term in 2000 by a landslide were he allowed to contest, the stained little blue dress notwithstanding! Mr Obama's initiation has been bumpy, but not unexpectedly so. His candid statement, "We have finished a difficult year... I don't quit. Let's seize this moment — to start anew, to carry the dream forward", deserves to be taken seriously.

 

Herein also lies a lesson for our leaders: take the likely small consequences of the address for our BPO sector in your stride, but focus on issues closest to the people's heart and act forcefully. Our two priorities, as those of the US, remain the economy and security. As the US must create jobs, India must control stratospheric prices of daily necessities, rather than crow about high growth rates and bask in the (presumed) feel-good success of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. And if we cannot sleep easy with the continued North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (no-action-talk-only) strategy on internal and external threats, the United Progressive Alliance euphoria, already thin, could melt faster than the Delhi fog on a sunny day! If Mr Obama with his clear thinking and commanding presence is considered a wimp by a large number of Americans, what should Indians think of their woolly-headed and mortified-to-act government?

 

Mr Obama said, "Democracy... can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy". Yet hope persists, as it must, that these will turn out to be mere hiccups in the pursuit of great common good, as much in the United States as in India.

 

n Shreekant Sambrani, who has taught at IIM Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, writes frequently on economic and policy issues

 

***************************************

 

******************************************************************************************

DNA

EDITORIAL

BALL IS IN FM'S COURT

 

It's a cop-out. The Reserve Bank of India's latest credit policy review makes all the right noises about fighting inflationary expectations, but, in the end, admits that it can do little. Reason: since there is a supply side problem, monetary policy can only do so much. The key measure announced by RBI governor D Subbarao is an increase in banks' cash reserve ratio by 0.75 per cent —a move that will immobilise Rs36,000 crore of bank funds.

 

Given weak growth in non-food credit and the enormous amount of liquidity sloshing about in the system, this move will not hurt the ongoing economic recovery. But it will certainly damage banks' profitability a bit. It will also do nothing to change inflationary expectations unless the government does something about its own profligacy. In this financial year, the government has both borrowed excessively and spent excessively, with the fiscal deficit set to exceed Rs400,000 crore, according to budget estimates.

 

"The reversal of monetary accommodation cannot be effective unless there is also a roll back of government borrowing," Subbarao said.

 

On the other hand, the governor has sent out mixed messages of his own which cannot but confuse the financial markets. He has upped the GDP growth target to 7.5 per cent for 2009-10, but then goes on to say that he is not sure if the economic recovery is for real. According to him, the recovery is "yet to fully take hold". His worry is that if he focuses all his attention on tackling inflation, the RBI may end up precipitating another crisis by killing off economic growth too soon. This will deter private investment and consumer spending. While this is the obvious justification for not raising interest rates at this juncture, it also means that the RBI is partially buckling under political pressure to avoid rocking the boat prematurely. Subbarao is playing along with the government's do-nothing gameplan. The hope is that we will have a great monsoon this year, which will help douse food inflation some time in the second half of 2010-11. Hope is one thing, but if the monsoon plays truant one more time, the economy will be up the creek without a paddle. It is not a risk worth taking.

 

The best hope for the economy lies with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and prime minister Manmohan Singh, both mature statesmen with a good understanding of macroeconomics. 2010 is not an election year, and if at all the government has to take harsh economic steps — like withdrawing the economic stimulus in stages or reducing some subsidies, this is the time to do it. The basic message from Subbarao is simple: over to you, Pranab. It is time for the latter to deliver.

 

***************************************

DNA

EDITORIAL

THE PILAO, IRANIAN STYLE

JAVED GAYA

 

The Zereshk Pilao is one of the most stunning rice dishes one can possibly serve. The dish has a warm ruby glow with the burberries studding the rice with colour and the saffron with fragrance. This gives this Pilao a superiority and magnificence that is not easily replicated. It is one of the great dishes of Iran and many unfamiliar with Iranian cuisine will only have heard of it through the iconic berry pilao served at Britannia, the last of the great Irani restaurants in Mumbai at Ballard Estate.

 

What are the berries? The barberries belong more to the family of decorative plants, rather than berries for eating. They were traditionally used in medieval English cooking until about the 18th century and abandoned because the plant was considered a carrier of mildew and other diseases. In Iran it is widely regarded as a delightful addition to pilaos and stews, giving the dishes a biting tart flavour.

 

This is one of the dishes which I make and in my humble opinion knock the restaurant versions for a six. It would be untrue to say that this boasts extends outside Mumbai. I cannot, even in my cups, dream of saying my berry pilao is in the same league as that served by that great marvel of an Iranian restaurant in Dubai on the creek known as Shabestan. To eat at Shabestan is to eat the foods of the gods, from the egregiously generous portions of fresh salad with nan-o-panir, subzi-kharbkhan to the Persepolis, a banquet in itself, of fish, chicken and mutton kebabs with saffron rice. No, Shabestan is a different league and an eye opener for those unfamiliar with Persian cuisine, too often stereotyped as possessing the chelo kebabs and rice and not much else.For those who appreciate herbs, subtlety of spices and are into healthy eating, Iranian cuisines offer much.For those interested in discovering more about the cuisine, there is a truly splendid book called The Food of Life — a knowledgeable book as exquisitely and as delicately as produced as a Persian carpet from Isphafan — written by Nanjimieh Batmenghj and published by Maya Publishers in Washington for the serious foodie.

 

If we leave aside the glories of Iranian food (incidentally possessing the oldest recipes written on clay tablets over 4000 years ago on a cuneiform script), we come back to the humble berry pilao as served at Britannia. This is the last of the great Iranian eateries and combines contemporary Persian ingredients like the Zeresht with contemporary Parsi cooking, the patra ni machhi, dhansak; dishes that owe little to the Persian heritage.Even the Pilao is different in that it is not cooked in the Persian style.Traditionally, the Persians would cook the meat separately, and the spices would be used sparingly; cumin, for garnishing, otherwise the mainstay being chillies, garlic, seasoning and saffron making it, too bland for Indian taste.The Britannia's chicken pilao with berries, is cooked like a traditional Indian pilao with the rice and chicken mixed and with Indian spices making it quite unlike the Persian original.Different, but enjoyable and at least one gets a chance to eat the berries and have a whiff of an otherwise great cuisine

 

 ***************************************

DNA

ECHOES OF MUMBAI IN KUALA LUMPUR

NINAD SIDDHAYE

 

All of us who keep writing and reading about politicians, bureaucrats and all other government machineries who talk of transforming aamchi Mumbai into a world class city are sick and tired of it. However, it was only when I entered a city, which is actually called a world class city, I began to realise what exactly all these people were talking about. Me, a journalist writing on infrastructure, may have the pulse of Mumbai at the tip of my fingertips; however to actually experience a city which has managed to transform itself into a world class city was an experience to cherish for a long time.

 

The main aim of my visit to Kuala Lumpur — the capital city of Malaysia — was to check out the mode of public transport — particularly the single tracked monorail — which in about a year's time will also be running on the busiest streets of Mumbai. The train, in which I did travelled twice in my four-day stay, is a very pleasant experience. One gets a feeling of a joyride as the sleek train takes turns throughout the busy central business district of Kuala Lumpur.

 

While I enjoyed my stay in Malaysia, a corner of my mind was definitely wondering about when my own city

will get such world class transportation facilities. Though comparison between the well-developed Malaysian economy and the developing Indian economy is over-ambitious, in many instances I felt that most of the development that Malaysia is due to the Asian — particularly the Indian and the Sri Lankan — community.

 

I was a bit disheartened when I thought about the first phase of Metro, a stretch of barely 11km, which is still finding its scheduled completion date (end of 2010) a bit unrealistic. While monorail has achieved its first test run, it will take another year to see the light of the day.

 

However, it was only when I got to know how tiny Malaysia was compared to India that I started to realise the real difference. Malaysia has a population of barely 2.70 crore which is barely double the population of Mumbai. The per capita income of an average Malaysian is US$7733 which is at least seven times higher than the per capita income of an Indian.

 

As I was interacting with people, right from the streets up to the editors of major Malaysian newspapers, one thing that I noticed was despite all the facilities, the country still has its set of difficulties. The newspapers were full of issues related to illegal encroachments on open spaces, traffic violations and whatnot. At first I thought Kuala Lumpur simply cannot be matched with Mumbai, since first of all there is zero amount of garbage on the streets — one of the first signs that we recognize aamchi Mumbai by. However, when I saw a (possibly) drunk bhikari sleeping right next to the escalators of one of the monorail stations, I decided to click his picture… but I was stopped and asked by a polite cop about it, but just like in India, the 'press card' did the job for me.

 

Another striking difference was absence of honking even in the busiest traffic junctions. There were instances when some of us were taking pictures in the middle of the road while the vehicles waited for us to finish. When one of the ladies driving a car honked, everyone looked at her as if she just killed someone! Something I wish most Mumbaikars learn ASAP. And it occurred to me that though Kuala Lumpur differed from Mumbai there were echoes of Mumbai after all.

 

But the most interesting part was a casual conversation with a fellow journalist. While I was admiring their infrastructure projects, he was all admiration about the rehabilitation projects which I was telling him about. "Although your progress of development may be slow, but little that I know about Mumbai, it definitely has done quite a bit," he said, leaving me, someone very critical of our infrastructure projects, something to think about.

 

***************************************

DNA

GOODBYE SALINGER

CATCHER IN THE RYE'S MAGIC CONTINUES TO ENTHRALL GENERATIONS OF READERS

MICHIKO KAKUTANI

 

What really knocked readers out about The Catcher in the Rye was the wonderfully immediate voice that JD Salinger fashioned for Holden Caulfield — a voice that enabled him to channel an alienated 16-year-old's thoughts and anxieties and frustrations, a voice that sceptically appraised the world and denounced its phonies and hypocrites and bores.

Salinger had such unerring radar for the feelings of teenage angst and vulnerability and anger that Catcher, published in 1951, remains one of the books that adolescents first fall in love with — a book that intimately articulates what it is to be young and sensitive and precociously existential, a book that first awakens them to the possibilities of literature.

Whether it's Holden or the whiz-kid Glass children or the shell-shocked soldier in For Esmé — with Love and Squalor, Salinger's people tend to be outsiders — spiritual voyagers shipwrecked in a vulgar and materialistic world, misfits who never really outgrew adolescent feelings of estrangement. They identify with children and cling to the innocence of childhood with a ferocity bordering on desperation: Holden wants to be the catcher in the rye, who keeps kids from falling off a cliff; Seymour communes with a little girl on the beach about bananafish, before going upstairs to his hotel room and shooting himself in the head.

Such characters have a yearning for some greater spiritual truth, but they are also given to an adolescent either/or view of the world and tend to divide people into categories: the authentic and the phony, those with an understanding of "the main current of poetry that flows through things" and those coarse, unenlightened morons who will never get it — a sprawling category that includes everyone from pompous college students parroting trendy lit crit theories to fashionable, well-fed theater-goers to self-satisfied blowhards.

Salinger was able to empathetically limn the nooks and crannies of his youthful narrator's psyches, while conjuring up a sophisticated, post-F Scott Fitzgerald, post-World War II Manhattan — a world familiar to his New Yorker readers, bounded by Radio City Music Hall and Bergdorf Goodman and Central Park (where Holden wonders about the ducks on the lagoon and where they go when it freezes over in the winter). In doing so, he not only domesticated the innovations of the great modernists — their ability to manipulate stream of consciousness, to probe their characters' inner lives —but he also presaged the self-inventorying characters of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, and the navel-gazing musings of the writers of many Me Generations to come.
Some critics dismissed the easy surface charm of Salinger's work, accusing him of cuteness and sentimentality, but works like Catcher, Franny and Zooey and his best-known short stories would influence successive generations of writers. His most persuasive work showcased his colloquial, idiomatic language, his uncanny gift for ventriloquism, his nimble ability to create stories within stories, as well as his unerring ear for cosmopolitan New Yorkese (what he called an "Ear for the Rhythms and Cadences of Colloquial Speech") and his heat-seeking eye for the telling gesture — the nervously lit cigarette, the X-ray look, the inhibited station-platform kiss.

Over time, Salinger's work grew more elliptical. Tidy, well-made tales like A Perfect Day for Bananafish gave way to the increasingly prolix Zooey and the shapeless ruminations of Seymour — An Introduction." And as his Glass stories grew more and more self-conscious and self-referential, readers became increasingly aware of the solipsism of that hothouse family of geniuses.

Hapworth 16, 1924 (which appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1965) takes the form of a verbose, digression-filled letter ostensibly written from summer camp by the 7-year-old Seymour. Having been accused of loving his characters too much, of being too superficially charming, the author gave us a new take on one of his heroes, turning the once saintly Seymour into an obnoxious child given to angry outbursts and implausible intellectual boasts.

That story — the last work published during the author's lifetime — not only reflected Salinger's own Glass-like withdrawal from the world but also underscored his own fear that he might one day "disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms." Yet however sour and self-reflexive that tale was, it would never eclipse the achievement of Catcher in the minds of Salinger's fans — a novel that still knocks people out, a novel that is still cherished, nearly six decades after its publication, for its pitch-perfect portrait of adolescence and its indispensable hero. —NYT

 

***************************************

 

******************************************************************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

RBI CURBS MONEY SUPPLY

INTEREST RATES WON'T RISE IN NEAR FUTURE

 

The RBI on Friday surprised everyone by raising the cash-reserve ratio (CRR) by75 basis points instead of the expected 50 basis points, leaving the other key rates unchanged. This will not result in any interest rate hike immediately. So those wishing to take easy home loans still have some time before banks start facing the impact of the tightening of the monetary policy. There is enough cash with banks and foreign funds too keep flowing in at the usual pace. Like the central banks of China, Australia and the Philippines, the RBI is gradually tightening the monetary policy, which was eased last year to help the industry face the global meltdown.

 

The RBI's aim is to control inflation, which it has projected at 8.5 per cent by March. There is, no doubt, excessive money supply in the system and the RBI has suggested to the government to cut down its borrowing spree, which will mean a slow withdrawal of the tax breaks given to the industry. However, prices may not come down by monetary steps alone. Inflation is driven up by high food prices and these may not decline in the near future. Inflation may start moderating only if the monsoon turns normal this year and the global oil prices do not shoot up. Agricultural productivity needs to be raised and the distribution system strengthened to contain food prices.

 

The central bank has raised the GDP growth forecast for the current fiscal to 7.5 per cent from the previous projection of 6 per cent. It is eminently achievable since the RBI measures so far do not affect the growth pick-up. Banks are under pressure to slow down loans to industries, but right now industrialists have nothing to complain about. The BSE Sensex fell in the morning but recovered its losses to end flat after the RBI unfolded its policy review. The government is nurturing recovery and growth and resisting suggestions about a rollback of the stimulus.

 

 ***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

OUTSOURCING BLUES

OBAMA'S TAX BREAKS ARE JUST POPULIST

 

One cannot quibble over US President Barack Obama's earnest desire to create more jobs for his countrymen but the protectionist manner in which he intends to go about blocking outsourcing of jobs by US firms is ill-advised. Worried about the growing rate of unemployment in the US, Mr Obama has warned US companies in his State of the Union address that he would slash tax breaks to firms that move jobs abroad. On the face of it this may spell trouble for the nearly $60 billion outsourcing industry in India but considering that US companies actually outsource jobs to low-cost locations like India mainly to cut costs, Mr Obama will unwittingly be only harming the American industry by his projected measures. The US President has been consistent in his criticism of outsourcing but it is unlikely that his own country's industry would fall for his line which would rob them of low-cost benefits. Indeed, it is debatable whether the Senate which is yet to pass the jobs bill which provides for tax breaks to US firms that move jobs abroad would surrender to his view.

 

Mr Obama's dream of doubling exports and also working on bilateral trade agreements can hardly be achieved by protectionism. Such an attitude could lead to a backlash against the American companies, many of which derive considerable revenue from outside the country. Citigroup, for instance, which is a major outsourcing firm, gets nearly 75 per cent of its revenues from international operations spread over nearly 100 countries.

 

As India and China invest in their future, Mr Obama's contention that the US cannot afford to be in second place, is unexceptionable. His resolve that his administration's 2011 budget will invest in a new generation of scientists is constructive and sound. In addition, he must work towards obviating the need to outsource jobs by increasing productivity to levels that justify the high-wage structure. Taking recourse to restrictions to seek to block outsourcing is no solution to the woes of American industry. President Obama must inspire his countrymen to work harder if the US is to retain its pride of place in the world's economic arena.

 

 ***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

LAW ON CLINICS

NEW BILL CAN REGULATE HEALTHCARE

 

The need for regulating healthcare in India, increasingly falling prey to unscrupulous medical practices, has been felt for long. The Union Cabinet's approval of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Bill to bring clinics under one law is indeed a path breaking move and can go a long way in improving the quality of health services. While the Bill aims to check fraudulent practices it will also play a crucial role in bringing relief to victims of road accidents and other emergencies who are denied treatment on the pretext of being "medico-legal cases".

 

Medical practice in India, especially in the private sector, has turned into a moneymaking enterprise and malpractices ranging from commissions, unwarranted tests and procedures, exorbitant charges and favours from drug companies are rampant. Many medical establishments in the private sector are more interested in raking in moolah and have forsaken the prime purpose of the medical profession — to render service to society. While the public health system is beset with many ills, private healthcare fares no better. Patients' hope of proper healthcare is invariably met with dissatisfaction, despair and often penury too.

 

To keep a check on healthcare and to ensure quality health services, the government must pass the Bill, likely to be introduced in the Budget session of Parliament, on a priority basis. Once it becomes a law, it must be implemented throughout the country. While the irregularities prevalent in medical institutions need to be checked, regulation alone is not the answer to the woes of patients. The government that spends little, merely one per cent of the GDP on public health, must increase public spending and fulfil its promise of better health infrastructure in the country. Doctors too must realise that the growing-doctor patient trust deficit harms their interest as much. Keeping the Hippocratic oath in mind, they can play the most pivotal part in providing medical care for all.

 

 *************************************** 

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

IMPROVING GOVERNANCE

NEED TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE

BY B.G. VERGHESE

 

Jyoti Basu was a fine individual whom the nation rightly mourns. But emotion appears to have overtaken reason in the kind of uncritical adulation accorded to the CPM leader who was chief minister of West Bengal for 22 years. The fact is that apart from some initial good work done on the first phases of land reform and devolution of power to panchayats, West Bengal's HDI indices and state of infrastructure deteriorated and there was disinvestment, de-industrialisation, mounting poverty and unemployment as a result of ideological rigidities.

 

On any reckoning, the state was in decline during Jyoti Basu's long watch. It is fortunate that party ideologues did not permit him to move to Delhi as prime minister when this was mooted. Had he done so, the consequences might well have been problematic.

 

This may appear a harsh judgement on someone who has departed. But the sycophancy that attends our leaders when alive, and even after they are gone, is disconcerting and prevents us learning from experience. The secrecy attending archival policy is partly a reflection of the tendency to shore up reputations by precluding the world from prying too closely into the past of our heroes. A nation that does not learn from history risks repeating its mistakes.

 

G. Parthasarathi's diary entry on Nehru's true view on Chinese attitudes during the Bhai-Bhai period and of his Man Friday, V.K. Krishna Menon, just published by the former's son, Ashok, casts a flood of light on matters that it would have been better to know contemporaneously. The continuing classification of the Henderson-Brooks report on the 1962 debacle stems from the same desire to protect a legacy. Nehru is surely big enough to do without this shield.

 

Another problem of governance was aired recently by junior ministers in the UPA government who complained to the Prime Minister that they had little or no work. This is largely because of a tendency to centralise decision making with the result that secretaries to government do what could well be disposed of by their deputies while Ministers usurp the role of their permanent secretaries.

 

This often leaves Ministers and secretaries — Central and states — with insufficient time for policymaking, monitoring and evaluation. They are overly buried in files, some in dispensing patronage, and still others in running sports associations or indulging in other extraneous activities.

 

The enlargement of cabinets to satisfy all manner of representational principles has also resulted in fragmenting sectoral responsibility without adequate coordination. In the first few governments formed after Independence many bright sparks were appointed Deputy Ministers or parliamentary secretaries who answered questions and assisted the Minister in other ways, thereby gaining experience that equipped them to shoulder heavier responsibilities over time. Now everybody aspires to be a minister ab initio, if not Prime Minister or Chief Minister. This may be a matter of political culture but it certainly impinges on good governance.

 

Another issue of governance that calls for attention is the battle being fought over the right to access file notings under the Right to Information Act. The RTI regime has certainly helped promote transparency and accountability in governance but there has been a difference of opinion on whether or not file notings should be made public as a rule.

 

There is currently a dispute over an information commissioner's decisions to permit an applicant access to file notings pertaining to the decisions reflected in the Indo-Pakistan joint communiqué at Sharm el-Sheikh some six months ago which aroused much controversy over how it was to be interpreted.

 

Insistence on making public all file notings is misplaced as this could well inhibit officials and ministers from giving frank expression to their views. These would not be noted on file but recorded elsewhere or exchanged orally, resulting in double entry book keeping of another kind. Suffice it that a reasoned statement is made available so that a fair judgement can be made about the quality and ethical basis of the decision taken.

 

Every day at seminars, meetings or even in private conservation, one hears people invoking the basis of Chatham House rules (without attribution) or a clear understanding that what they say is off the record. Why? So that they may speak frankly, a contract beneficial both to the speaker and the audience. File notings are no different.

 

At a very different level, concerning public relations more than governance as such, is the unwise decision, fortunately rescinded, of the Maharashtra government to insist that new cabbies in Mumbai must have lived in the city for 15 years and read and write Marathi. This was a misguided concession to parochialism, in competit