EDITORIAL 30.04.10

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Editorial

month april 30, edition 000495, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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THE PIONEER

1. NOW PUNISH THE GUILTY
2. JOKER IN THE PACK
3. WE'RE FIGHTING A GUERRILLA WAR - GAUTAM MUKHERJEE
4. JUDGES ARE NOT ABOVE SCRUTINY - ONKAR CHOPRA
5. ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE - KALYANI SHANKAR
6. WIN-WIN POLITICS - SHIKHA MUKERJEE
7. INDIA A GARBAGE DUMP FOR WORLD - ANURADHA DUTT
8. IS EDUCATION SAFE IN PRIVATE HANDS? - SACHIN JAIN

MAIL TODAY

1. CORRUPTION AS A WAY OF LIFE IN OUR DEMOCRACY
2. MORE DIRT ON SPECTRUM SALE
3. DESERVED TREATMENT
4. BIG AND UGLY IS THE DESIGN DICTUM OF OUR TIMES - BY GAUTAM BHATIA
5. THE LAHORE LOG - BY NAJAM SETHI

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. DEJA VU IN RANCHI
2. BACK TO BASICS
3. MAHARASHTRA TURNS FIFTY - DILEEP PADGAONKAR
4. 'ANY SIGNAL FROM SPACE WE CAN'T EXPLAIN IS EXCITING'
5. KINDNESS OF STRANGERS - JUG SURAIYA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. WORKING THE PHONES
2. ASYLUM IN RANCHI
3. LOOKS ARE DECEPTIVE - RAJDEEP SARDESAI
4. FIGHT THE DARK FORCES - SRIJANA MITRA DAS
5. THE OTHER IPL SCAM - PREETI SINGH

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. LOST IN RANCHI
2. MOVING ON, SLOWLY
3. LAB ACCIDENT
4. BACK TO COURT - EJAZ HAIDER
5. UPSTAGING THEORIES - MK VENU
6. THE INDIAN TAMASHA LEAGUE - SANJAY JHA
7. EUROPE UNDER THE ASH 
8. WAITING FOR THE KING - ALIA ALLANA  
9. A NEW GROUND ZERO

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. REGULATION AFTER GOLDMAN
2. GETTING POWER TRADING RIGHT
3. HOW WRONG IS GOLDMAN SACHS? - K VAIDYA NATHAN
4. METHODS OF VALUING SHARE PRICES - SATVIK VARMA
5. RAJA JUMPS THE GUN - ANANDITA SINGH MANKOTIA

THE HINDU

1. UNLIKELY FRIENDS
2. GREECE IS NOT ALONE
3. TOWARDS A TRUE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT - K.K. VENUGOPAL
4. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SENDERO LUMINOSO  - PRAVEEN SWAMI
5. WHY THE U.S. WANTS TO SILENCE NORIEGA - SIMON TISDALL
6. AT LONG LAST, A FIRM STEP FORWARD - SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

THE ASIAN AGE

1. DHONI & CO SEEK WORLD CUP GLORY
2. STEALING SEEDS
3. THE ELEPHANT'S LAST STAND
4. HOUSE OF SCANDALS

DNA

1. SAARC REALITIES
2. GREEK LESSONS
3. ADVANTAGE CONGRESS - MAHESH RANGARAJAN
4. BETTING'S LEGAL, AND I'M IN JAIL - FARRUKH DHONDY

THE TRIBUNE

1. THE WATER CHALLENGE
2. UPHOLDING FREE EXPRESSION
3. ALL PHONE CALLS ARE VULNERABLE - BY INDER MALHOTRA
4. GREEN FINGERS - BY I.M. SONI
5. RAJASTHAN FACES HEAT - BY PERNEET SINGH
6. DELHI: CAPITAL OF DIRT AND DEBRIS - BY ASHALI VARMA
7. HYDERABAD DIARY - SURESH DHARUR

MUMBAI MERROR

1. WHAT JAIHIND AND GLC SHARE

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. HALF-EMPTY GLASS
2. DOCTOR, HEAL THYSELF
3. WHY GREECE WILL DEFAULT - MARTIN FELDSTEIN
4. ENABLING BETTER PROFIT FOR SMALL EXPORTERS - JAMAL

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. ET IS EVERYWHERE
2. FOR A FEW INDICES MORE
3. GETTING A REGION MOVING
4. 'MFIS NEED TO INTROSPECT MORE' - ATMADIP RAY
5. GLOBETROTTING ANEW - LUBNA KABLY
6. PETROLEUM PRICE FIXATION - MUKESH KACKER
7. OUR THRUST IS ON BUILDING BRANDS AT HOME: CHAND DAS, ITC CEO - ANURADHA HIMATSINGKA

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. DHONI AND CO SEEK WORLD CUP GLORY
2. HOUSE OF SCANDALS - BY BALBIR K. PUNJ
3. FOR TRUE DEMOCRACY, BRING BACK OSTRACISM - BY PAUL JOHNSON
4. THE ELEPHANT'S LAST STAND - BY MAHESH RANGARAJAN
5. STEALING SEEDS  - BY SUMAN SAHAI
6. LET'S BUILD GOD'S TEMPLE - BY FRANCIS GONSALVES

THE STATESMAN

1. ANIL NAURIYA
2. COUNTERING NAXALS
3. RAIL ROKO
4. PARLIAMENT, CUT-MOTION & MAOISTS
5. WHAT IS THE POVERTY LEVEL?
6. EXPLOSIVE RETURN OF THE ACTION HEROES
7. 100 YEARS AGO TODAY
8. OUR DEBATES, THEIR DEBATES

 THE TELEGRAPH

1. STATE OF FLUX
2. NO SUBSTANCE
3. APPEALING ALTERNATIVE - SWAPAN DASGUPTA
4. CRUDE GAMES -  MALVIKA SINGH

DECCAN HERALD

1. A PRAGMATIC VIEW
2. CHANGING WORLD
3. GENESIS OF INFLATION - BY DIPAK BASU
4. DANGERS TO GLOBAL ECONOMY'S HEALTH - BY PASCAL LAMY, IPS
5. INVITING TROUBLE - BY MAYA JAYAPAL

THE JERUSALEM POST

1. FAYYAD'S 'PALESTINE'

HAARETZ

2. ARAB MKS' LIBYA TRIP A PATH TO MIDEAST PEACE
3. NETANYAHU AND BARAK KNOW THAT THE TIME FOR PEACE IS NOW  - BY YOEL MARCUS            
4. ISRAEL'S CHOICE: MAKE PEACE OR DISAPPEAR - BY TZVIA GREENFIELD
5. THE FRIENDS OF THIEVES - BY YOSSI SARID
6. ONLY INSPECT! - BY EMANUELE OTTOLENGHI
7. DIVEST - FOR ISRAEL'S SAKE  - BY MATTHEW A. TAYLOR
8. SHOULD CLEGG BECOME FOREIGN MINISTER - BY DAN KOSKY
9. CHEAP THRILLS - BY JILL JACOBS
10. AN EVIL WIND  - BY SEFI RACHLEVSKY

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. THE COST OF DELAY
2. STOPPING ARIZONA
3. A TOXIC ANGER
4. CROSS IN THE DESERT
5. AMERICAN POWER ACT  - BY DAVID BROOKS
6. GUILT AND DEATH, NORTH AND SOUTH - BY PHAN THANH HAO
7. SAIGON'S FALL, 35 YEARS LATER - BY LINH DINH
8. THE EURO TRAP  - BY PAUL KRUGMAN

USA TODAY

1. Our view on money in politics: Make CEOs and union chiefs stand behind political spots
2. OPPOSING VIEW ON MONEY IN POLITICS: 'A CYNICAL PARTISAN PLOY' - BY JOHN SAMPLES           
3. Goldman: Bad guys or just a scapegoat?
4. ARIZONA'S PROBLEMS ONLY BEGINNING
5. OPINIONLINE
6. 40 years after Kent State, reassessing 2010 - By Chuck Raasch

TIMES FREE PRESS

1. GOV. HUCKABEE'S 'BEST JOB' -- YET     
2. THE CROSS AND THE COURT
3. INVASION OF UNITED STATES!
4. CHRONIC HEALTH WOES IN U.S.
5. ALEXANDER WARNS ON OBAMACARE
6. GOVERNMENT'S 'PAY GUIDELINES'

TEHRAN TIMES

1. A LACK OF DIPLOMATIC FINESSE - BY KOUROSH ZIABARI

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

2. FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - HALTING A THREAT TO EU VALUES
3. THE DELICATE BALANCE - MİTHAT MELEN
4. ARATO AND THE CONSTITUTION - NURAY MERT
5. TURKS NOT GLOATING OVER GREEK DIFFICULTIES - SEMIH IDIZ
6. PINK 'HASEMAS' VS BLACK, STONES VS DEATH - BURAK BEKDIL
7. HONOR OF PERVARI - YUSUF KANLI
8. JOURNALISTS CAN TAKE SIDES - MEHMET ALİ BİRAND
9. CHANGE ISN'T EASY FOR ANYONE

I.THE NEWS

1. GIVE AND TAKE
2. IN COLDEST BLOOD
3. ALIVE AGAIN!
4. THE NEW TROIKA - AYAZ AMIR
5. RIGHT TO THE CITY - AHMAD RAFAY ALAM
6. THE LAST LINE OF DEFENCE - AMEER BHUTTO
7. NO REVENGE ON ESTABLISHMENT - HARRIS KHALIQUE
8. BALANCE BETWEEN INSTITUTIONS - SHAFQAT MAHMOOD
9. BACK TO BASICS - KAMILA HAYAT

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. SHARP AXE FALLS ON 54 BUREAUCRATS
2. PRESERVATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES
3. CASE OF THE HONEY TRAPPED HONEY - M D NALAPAT
4. THE MADHURI GUPTA AFFAIR - SULTAN M HALI
5. HOLY QUR'AN, GUIDANCE FOR ALL - MAHMOOD RIAZUDDIN
6. TERRORISTS AND TERRORISM - AFSHAIN AFZAL
7. DEEP THOUGHTS BEFORE ARMAGEDDON - ROBERT WRIGHT

THE INDEPENDENT

1. SAARC STANDS FIRM
2. RECONCILIATION IN SIGHT
3. HELLO SHORTY..!
4. CONTRACT FARMING FOR ENSURING FARM INPUTS - ASIF MAHFUZ
5. OPINION: SILENCE OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY - SHIMUL CHAUDHURY

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. DETERRENT OR SMOKESCREEN?

1. WHY CHINA IS THE KEY TO EUROPE'S DEBT CRISIS
2. A CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP
3. POOR POLITICAL SKILLS DOOMED RUDD'S CLIMATE POLICY
4. BEFORE POLICY.
5. HEALTH SYSTEM IS STILL AILING
6. EUROPE'S GREEK TRAGEDY HAS A LESSON FOR AUSSIES
7. PLAIN PACKAGING PLOY LIKELY TO GO UP IN SMOKE
8. NO BIGOT HERE: ANY CAUSE THAT SAVES HIM WILL DO
9. HOW TO COOK UP A STORM: FIRST CATCH YOUR RAT, THEN NAIL HIM TO THE TABLE
10. NOTHING NEW IN OLD 'CIGS UP' PLOY

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. CIGS UP, NANNY OUT AND ABOUT
2. THAILAND'S BEST WAY FORWARD
3. CONFINING THE CREDIT CONTAGION IS NOT ENOUGH
4. PLAIN PACKAGE, ELABORATE CONTENT

THE GUARDIAN

1. EQUAL PAY: FAIR'S FAIR
2. IN PRAISE OF … DANNY DORLING
3. GULF OIL SPILL: CLEAN, BABY, CLEAN

DAILY EXPRESS

1. GILLIAN DUFFY ASKED THE QUESTIONS WE ALL WANT ANSWERED - BY CHRIS ROYCROFT-DAVIS
2. JOSE MOURINHO IS THE MAN TO KEEP GLAZERS AFLOAT
3. A TRIUMPH FOR BRITISH AMATEUR NATURALISTS  - BY JOHN INGHAM
4. SECRET AGENDAS OF PARTIES ARE AN INSULT TO DEMOCRACY
5. QUANGOS MUST GET THE BOOT - BY FREDERICK FORSYTH
6. SECRET AGENDAS OF PARTIES ARE AN INSULT TO DEMOCRACY
7. BRITAIN IS SUPPOSED TO BE A MATURE DEMOCRACY.

THE GAZETTE

1. ALL THAT SALT IN OUR FOOD LEAVES A BAD TASTE
2. BAD MEDICINE
3. ÇA SENT LA COUPE?

THE KOREA TIMES

1. EUROPEAN LESSON
2. LET'S NOT FORGET
3. ANOTHER FAILED BRITISH EXPERIMENT - BY HAROLD JAMES
4. GETTING IN ON GREEK LIQUIDATION SALE - BY DALE MCFEATTERS
5. ELITE COLLEGES SOFTEN ON ROTC BANS - BY DALE MCFEATTERS

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. RUSSIA EXTENDS ITS REACH
2. AMERICA'S STAR IS RISING IN WORLD OPINION - BY FRANK CHING
3. A CLOUD OVER AIRPLANE SAFETY - BY PETER SINGER

THE JAKARTA POST

1. ACCESSING PUBLIC INFORMATION
2. THE ACT UPON INFORMATION - SHITA LAKSMI
3. ANTI-CRISIS, GROWTH CONSENSUS  - UMAR JUORO
4. IGNORANCE, A DISASTER FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT - FRANS H. WINARTA

THE KOREA HERALD

1. ILL-ADVISED ACTION
2. REFORM? WHAT REFORM?
3. GETTING HITCHED IN IOWA
4. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: LESSONS FROM THE DISASTER
5. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LAST WORDS? - BY JOHN M. ROSENBERG

CHINA DAILY

1. LAW REVISION FALLS SHORT
2. A FIGHTING CHANCE
3. PREVENTING TRAGEDIES
4. WHY THE NOUVEAU RICHE IN CHINA STINK - BY WILLIAM DANIEL GARST (CHINA DAILY)
5. RENEWING THE FRENCH CONNECTION - BY JOERGEN LINDGREN HANSEN (CHINA DAILY)
6. BUILDING UP GOVT CAPACITY AT THE GRASSROOTS - BY CHAN CHOI HI (CHINA DAILY)
7. BEHIND CHINA'S TRADE DEFICIT - BY FAN GANG (CHINA DAILY)

DAILY MIRROR

1. DISMANTLE SAARC
2. ENOUGH OF ELECTIONS! IT'S TIME TO GET TO WORK
3. DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT HUMAN CAPITAL WILL BE STILLBORN OR DEFORMED
4. SAARC: SILVER JUBILEE SHAM

THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. CHEWING THE FAT - BY MICHELE A. BERDY
2. THE DANGERS OF NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT - BY SERGEI KARAGANOV 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

NOW PUNISH THE GUILTY

CITING NEGLIGENCE BY CALLOUS STAFF WON'T DO

With investigations into the Cobalt-60 contamination in a busy marketplace in Delhi finally making a breakthrough — it has been established that the radioactive material came from the Chemistry Department of Delhi University — it would appear that the episode is coming to a close. However, this cannot be further from the truth. Even though the source of the deadly Cobalt-60 has been identified, there are several questions that remain unanswered. Shocking as it is that the radioactive waste came from a laboratory of a Central university, the way the material was handled while it was in the possession of the university and at the time of its sale to scrap dealers is no less a cause for concern. This is because it is quite apparent that safety norms were blatantly flouted by the proprietors of the radioactive substance all the way till it was sold as waste. Hence, the investigation into the case should now focus on finding out how the Cobalt-60 was stored, who was in charge of the radioactive material, and how was it auctioned without following the proper safety procedures. Inquiries have revealed that the radioactive substance had been purchased by the Chemistry Department of Delhi University from Canada in 1968. But it was lying unused since 1985. Thus, the investigators also need to find out who all were responsible for handling the Cobalt-60 in the 25 years since and what prompted its sale in February this year. For, accountability needs to be fixed if we are to prevent such a disaster from re-occurring. Already one person has lost his life and seven people have been taken critically ill due to the exposure to the radioactive substance. Those responsible for the lapses in handling the material — at least those who had knowledge about what it was — and their supervisors need to be identified and punished.

The other aspect of the issue that has not got enough attention is the possibility of such radioactive material falling into the hands of terrorists. This presents a significant security risk as such substances can be used to make 'dirty bombs'. The effect that such an improvised weapon would have if it were to be used in a major metropolitan city would be devastating. Therefore, from a security perspective, it is extremely dangerous to have unaccounted for radioactive material slipping from one person to another. There is no telling when it can land up in the possession of those with nefarious intentions. Having said that, the Government would do well to prepare for such a terrorist strike. It is welcome that the Delhi Government has decided to set up a 40-bed special isolation ward in one of the city hospitals to treat those who are exposed to lethal doses of radiation; other State Governments should emulate the measure. Doctors and paramedics also need to be trained to specifically deal with radiation victims. For, in the wake of the Cobalt-60 contamination, it has come to light that our hospitals, including the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, are not adequately equipped to deal with such mishaps.

But all this will hardly matter if the root of the problem is not addressed. The Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University has apologised for the radiation mishap and admitted that the lapse was on the part of university officials. It is now for investigators to take the case forward and bring the guilty to book. Or else, promises of action will remain just that — so many words and no more.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

JOKER IN THE PACK

KERALA CONGRESS FACTION QUITS LDF

The decision of Kerala's Public Works Minister PJ Joseph to merge his Kerala Congress(J), a minor constituent of the CPI(M)-led ruling LDF, with former Minister KM Mani's Kerala Congress(M), a partner in the Opposition UDF, is causing unrest in the Congress. Mr Joseph is expected to formally announce the merger move and leave the LDF on Friday. Despite his association with the LDF for almost three decades, the CPI(M) considers his decision to part ways with it as good riddance because of the huge embarrassments he and his party colleagues have caused to the front in the past four years. Problems involving Mr Joseph and his party MLAs had forced the LDF to change Kerala Congress Ministers thrice in four years. Also, the decision of Mr Joseph to leave the LDF has come exactly when the CPI(M) is planning to turn the front into an exclusive club of Left parties. But the merger move is indeed an embarrassment for the Congress for many reasons. Several of the serious allegations the Congress had levelled against Mr Joseph and his colleagues are still relevant issues and any association with him would tarnish the image of the Congress as well as the UDF. If long-time ally Mani demands more seats in the coming Assembly election claiming increased strength because of the merger, the Congress will have to agree to it. That Congress leader Oommen Chandy has already openly complained that Mr Mani had kept the merger move a secret from the front till the last moment says it all.

The Congress may have its objections to welcoming Mr Joseph into the front but it will eventually have to live with it because the force behind the merger move is none other than the powerful Catholic Church which wants a stronger party of its own in Kerala — the various Kerala Congress groups, except one, are thriving on the support of plantation owners and workers belonging to the Christian community. The Congress cannot even think of causing displeasure to the Church and this is the trump card that Mr Mani would be playing. The Congress is already facing the prospect of losing some of its seats due to the induction of a faction of the Janata Dal (S) into the front some months back. The new situation will make the position of top Congress leaders difficult as the different factions within the party and feeder outfits have raised the flag of mutiny saying that the leadership cannot allow 'refugees' coming out of the LDF to walk freely into the UDF. Hence, it is the turn of the Left to feel ecstatic as the Congress is becoming the dumping ground for its waste, a term the CPI(M) leaders are fond of using while referring to deserters.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

WE'RE FIGHTING A GUERRILLA WAR

GAUTAM MUKHERJEE

While the Vietnam War was raging, with the Americans unable to subdue the Viet Cong, there was a little-known war being fought against Communist-inspired and trained mountain tribesmen in the Gulf. But fortunately for the 'free world' and its dependence on petroleum, this one was decisively won in the mist-shrouded mountains of Dhofar, bordering Socialist South Yemen.

The winning force was professional and multi-national, even as the wily enemy routinely inflicted heavy casualties on it. The Sandhurst-trained Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman wisely asked for help. And so there were Iranians from the Shah of Iran's Army, the largest contingent of British forces involved overseas since the Korean War, and Omani soldiers drawn from tough men of Zanzibari and Balochi extraction.

The key to victory, however, was the discipline that had been inculcated by British officers in the Sultan of Oman's armed forces, ably assisted by seconded officers and soldiers from the fabled British 22nd SAS Regiment of commandos. This war, largely off the world's radar, secured the Arabian Gulf from a determined takeover attempt by Communist forces from both China and the Soviet Union, working through 'Adoo' tribal irregulars.

Following the recent hardening of the conflict between the Indian state and the Maoists, the considerable similarities with that little-known war in Dhofar are remarkable. Hopefully we will be spared the fact that the war in Dhofar raged for two decades.

The Dhofar war is in mention again thanks to the appearance of a new book by British SAS officer Ian Gardiner who was there. It's called:In the Service of the Sultan, published in February. This book is relevant because it raises some of the very same issues at stake now in India, particularly when viewed from the perspective of a Chinese Communist-backed insurgency.

The Maoist insurgency has only nominally to do with tribal neglect and underdevelopment. It is more about a determined and well-planned attempt by the Maoists to take over the Indian state from within. The Maoists are dead serious. And their war on the Union of India is designed to ruthlessly debilitate, injure, thwart, bleed, encircle, corner, and destabilise a thriving, if far from perfect, democracy.

Yet, even as India stands bloodied, it remains complacent and does not call for external help from nations like Israel trained in counter-insurgency and battling guerrillas. You would think that we were being threatened by bow-and-arrow-wielding Adivasis, and not trained commandoes expert at jungle warfare and thoroughly conversant with their territory. They allegedly have access to training by military experts from China and the erstwhile Tamil Tigers, apart from many others.

Not only have the Maoists demonstrated their savage military prowess and the penetration of state agencies by their intelligencce-gathering squads, they have also managed to grab media space to publicise their so-called 'lofty motives' and whitewash their crimes through sympathisers among the NGO community and certain Left-leaning members of the intelligentsia.

The Government has underestimated this threat for far too long. The dilemma is about what level of force to use to deal with an internal challenge to the state. The Omanis, however, did not suffer from such semantic worries. They used helicopter gunships, fighters, the best and latest weaponry and training, intense patrolling, and a powerful hearts-and-minds campaign. Even then, it took two decades to finally win the war.

So, it is interesting to consider, as we fiddle around with debates on the choice of weapons, what kind of South Asia might obtain if we were to lose to the Maoists. Instead of becoming a counterpoint to Chinese ascendancy, India would all but lose its sovereignty to become a sort of Vichy State under Chinese over-lordship.

The Dhofar war had to be prosecuted not only in the mountains bordering Yemen but also far away in order to cut supply routes across the Indian Ocean. It was also to protect the arteries that connected Omani oil fields, pipelines and highways across the country. It forced the rapid modernisation of the sultanate from aoverlooked backwaters into a modern state and valued strategic ally of the West, perched as Oman is at the mouth of the Gulf of Hormuz.

There are lessons in this for India. The Maoists have already talked of taking the battle into the cities for example.

Coincidentally, I have lived in both Bastar and Muscat. I was a little boy in 1959 when we lived in Jagdalpur. My father was a Government civil engineer and had volunteered for the experimental Dandakaranya Project for the resettlement of East Bengali refugees.

I remember idyllic afternoons catching mud crabs on the banks of the river nearby and Mowgli-like trips to the deep forest replete with tented camps, jungle sounds, thunderous waterfalls and bare-bodied, bow-and-arrow-toting tribals. But even in 1960, the steel smelting furnaces of Bhilai were being lit. The propaganda of neglect which is treated as nearly axiomatic in the debate on causes of Maoism may actually be much exaggerated.

We lived in Oman also, through its scorching developmental years even as it fought off the Communists using the most modern means at its command. India too needs to modernise its armed response to the Maoist insurgency, even as its economy develops rapidly. We need to invest all the men, resources, planning, soft skills and technical expertise necessary to eliminate the Maoist threat in the shortest possible time. Given that we are confronted by hostile neighbours on more than one front, in addition to the depredations of Islamist terrorists and other insurrections in the North-East, we cannot afford the luxury of a long war of attrition.

 

Guerrilla war may indeed mean 'little war' in Spanish; but with its reliance on trickery, sabotage, ambushes and raids, its efficacy can be borne out by its disconcertingly successful track record. Witness the People's Liberation Army in Mao Tse-Tung's China, Fidel Castro's rebellion in Cuba, the Viet Cong in North Vietnam, the Irish Republican Army, the Kosovo War and so on.

In fact, guerrilla war, with its flexibility, relatively low cost, its undeclared ability to harass and weaken, could well become the preferred mode of future conflict between nations. There are indeed many advantages to its conduct, both stated and unstated. But as Henry Kissinger famously explained, "The conventional Army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose."

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

JUDGES ARE NOT ABOVE SCRUTINY

ONKAR CHOPRA

It is exactly a fortnight after two national dailies reported that the Domestic Violence Act can apply to women accused as well that a Delhi High Court judge has refuted the same, reserving the matter for deliberation. Why cannot our judiciary make up its mind once for all? Why unsettle the settled issues and put up obstructions in the justice delivery system so that domestic violence victim are denied justice? It is unbelievable that judicial minds are still scratching their heads over he subject.

There is absolutely no ambiguity about the fact that women accused of domestic violence — mothers-in-law, sisters-in-laws, etc— can be booked under the Domestic Violence Act. The reason why questions are being repeated raised over this settled matter is because some judges who have been at the receiving end of martial woes are unable to see a woman victim come away with justice in domestic violence cases. Hence, it would be appropriate to detail the marital status of these judges before they are assigned to such cases. For, they cannot be expected to sit in judgement in domestic violence cases if they have/are going through a troubled phase in their married life.

After all judges too are human beings. A judge with a background of an unhappy married life because of matrimonial discord is not in a fit mental state to sit in judgement in cases of domestic abuse. A judge who has in his own personal life been ill-treating his own wife can hardly be expected to deliver a fair-minded judgement in a domestic violence case.

Chief Justices of our High Courts and district judges must carry out a detailed check of the background of a judge as far as state of his married life is concerned before he is allowed to sit in judgement in matrimonial cases.

Moreover, at this juncture when a national debate on corruption in the judiciary has been initiated, this cross-check of a judge's married life is a must. It is a measure of his sensitivity towards a suffering domestic violence victim. Hence, in the interest of justice, judges' marital life should be examined before they are assigned domestic violence cases.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

ALLIANCE OF CONVENIENCE

THE CONGRESS AND THE NCP HAVE A STRANGE LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP. THE GLUE OF POWER AT THE CENTRE AND IN MAHARASHTRA KEEPS THE TWO PARTIES TOGETHER, BUT EVER SO OFTEN THE ALLIANCE IS TESTED BY SOME ISSUE OR THE OTHER, AS IT HAPPENED RECENTLY OVER THE IPL STORM. YET, THEY DON'T FALL APART!

KALYANI SHANKAR

The present coalition politics at the Centre has made strange bedfellows and a classic example would be the NCP and its parent party, the Congress. They have always had a peculiar love-hate relationship. During the current IPL controversy it has come to surface once again that how even cricket could become an irritant between the two parties. However, both are compelled to remain together as coalition partners because of political compulsions. Power cements their ties more than anything else. Besides its share at the Centre, the NCP is an important partner in Maharashtra, Goa and Meghalaya.

Why do strains develop between the two? First, it is because of the inherent contradictions in the alliance. Despite 10 years of being coalition partners, there is no cohesion at the ground level as there is suspicion and mistrust. This becomes more evident at the time of elections.

Second, it seems that NCP chief Sharad Pawar has not forgotten his removal from the Congress in 1989 and Congress president Sonia Gandhi has not forgiven him for raising the 'foreigner' issue against her. This is one of the reasons why there is no assimilation between the NCP and the Congress.

Third, the Congress has not been able to digest that its offspring like the NCP and the Trinamool Congress have become dominant partners in Maharashtra and West Bengal respectively. The friction had been visible with senior Congress leaders from Maharashtra like Industry Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh having a jibe at Mr Pawar. In the past six years, whenever there was a problem pertaining to his Ministry, the Congress leaders did not leave the chance to criticise him be it on the farmer's suicide or drought relief or now the IPL controversy. They even opposed alliance with the NCP before the 2009 Assembly elections. The result: Parent parties and splinter parties weaken each other. This is true for both the NCP and the Trinamool Congress.

Fourth, although the Congress would like the NCP's merger with it and there are many takers for this suggestion in the NCP, Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar is not in for the merger. Even recently the NCP working committee had rejected such an idea. There is fear of a succession war between Mr Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule, his nephew Ajit Pawar and some senior leaders like Mr Chagan Bhujwel and Mr RR Patil.

The IPL controversy has once again triggered a friction between the Congress and the NCP with fingers raised at the alleged involvement of some NCP leaders in the IPL scam. The IT raids and probing into the BCCI and IPL affairs have sent a political signal to the NCP leaders about their vulnerability. At one point of time, the controversy was moving from cricket to politics but the Congress quickly realised that it needed the NCP's nine votes for passing the Finance Bill in the Budget session. The Congress managers knew that the elbowroom for manoeuvrability is very limited in a coalition Government. After Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram had a meeting with Mr Pawar, things were worked out to the satisfaction of both. The Congress has achieved what it wanted and got rid of Mr Lalit Modi as the IPL commissioner. The NCP had voted with the Government on the Finance Bill and will be spared from any more embarrassment from the Income Tax and the Enforcement Directorate. So all is well that ends well.

Interestingly, cricket seemed to have soured the Congress-NCP ties even earlier. In 2004, Mr Pawar lost the race to head the BCCI to Mr Ranbir Mahendra, backed by the Congress. The combined strength of the NCP and the BJP together could not get him elected as the BCCI chief. Again, in 2006, the friction between the two parties surfaced when the Congress backed Mr Jagmohan Dalmia against the candidature of a West Bengal police officer to snub Mr Pawar who was supporting him.

Now that the Finance Bill has been passed smoothly, the Congress is quite relieved. It is clear that nothing more can be expected on the IPL investigation. Even the Ministry of Corporate Affairs is going slow on the IPL affairs. Mr Lalit Modi has become the fall guy and the Congress has sacked junior Minister Shashi Tharoor. There are some who see the return of Mr Modi after six months or a year. In the case of Mr Tharoor also there are rumours in the Congress that he may be rehabilitated at the earliest after a respectable cooling off period. So where does that leave the public? Those who are watching the political scene become more cynical and predict 'business as usual' sooner than later.

The NCP chief is a mature politician and knows how to handle the Congress although he has gone wrong in his calculations sometimes. The Congress leaders also have come to have a working relationship with the NCP. The Congress leaders seem to have learnt to deal with the Maratha strongman. It is a game of give and take and it is also a game of power play. Who wins and who loses depend on the capacity of the players?

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

WIN-WIN POLITICS

LEFT SHEDS A LOT OF ITS IDEOLOGICAL BAGGAGE

SHIKHA MUKERJEE

Consistency is the hallmark of the small-minded; therefore, the large-minded leaders of Indian politics have abandoned the convention of pursuing tense binary positions at all costs and adopted with enthusiasm and creativity more flexible strategies with the purpose of being permanently in win-win games.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the cut motions moved by anti-Congress parties in the Lok Sabha produced an array of responses. Complicated as the dynamics of these alignments are, these reveal the shedding of a lot of baggage by the Left. To jump to the conclusion that a new politics is emerging that produces combines based on issues rather than ideology, history and principles would be hasty and possibly incorrect.

The Communist Party of India(Marxist) and the BJP are on the same side because they have a common foe — the Congress. That is familiar history; but what is new is that increasingly they are willing to vote together, coordinating moves rather than contradicting and undermining each other. This does not amount to camaraderie; it does point to calculated complicity.

Thirty odd years ago, the Left would not have been caught in the uncomfortable position of voting on a motion moved by the BJP. Nor would it have agreed to allow the cut motions to be clubbed together and moved en bloc. Because it would not vote alongside the Jana Sangh, the CPI(M) pulled the rug on the Morarji Desai Government in 1979. In 1991, even though it rescued the minority Narasimha Rao Government by abstaining from the vote of confidence and bailed it out once more by staging a walkout on a Budget vote, it remained officially in denial about these moves.

In 2004, the CPI(M) shed more of its inhibitions and became less squeamish by extending outside support to a Congress-led UPA. It sat at the same table and negotiated over policy, taking credit, however hotly disputed by the Congress, for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme among other things.

Post 2008, the CPI(M) set out to establish new ties with regional parties and produced embarrassing failures. In Uttar Pradesh, the deal with the entirely whimsical Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Ms Mayawati unravelled. The Congress benefited. The realignment paid off on April 27; Ms Mayawati declared her principled opposition to the Congress's failure to curb price rise and then in a magnificent gesture extended support to keep the communal forces at bay. Fussier than Ms Mayawati, both Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav distanced themselves from the Congress as well as the BJP even as they promised to vote with the Left but were not given a chance to make good on it.

Even though these permutations and combinations mean the CPI(M) can and does willingly sup with its enemy, the BJP, because both are united in their anti-Congress politics, there is a remarkable absence of fuss. However, fastidious some may be in the CPI(M), the significant change is that it has abandoned its position that there are pariahs and there are others within the political space.

Untouchability, however, is not a practical guide to 21st century politics. Nursing grudges too is not practical any more. Even though the Congress and the Trinamool Congress have been at loggerheads over seat distribution in the forthcoming municipal elections, Ms Mamata Banerjee jumped into save the UPA on Tuesday. She did so without once registering her protest over the Congress failure to curb the rise in prices of food.
Her unconditional support is intriguing. She could have done what Ms Mayawati did; she chose not to. By voting without a fuss with the Congress on the cut motions, the Trinamool Congress has signalled that it needs the parent party to cement its victory run in West Bengal. Therefore the failure to arrive at a formula for seat-sharing, especially for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, has been partly compensated by Ms Banerjee's support on April 27.

In Kolkata, the alliance between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress is elastic; it is stretched to accommodate Ms Banerjee's claims. To the extent the partnership is between two parties, there are few complexities, unlike the tortuous alignments that are unfolding between the Congress and its supporters on the one hand and the anti-Congress left and the anti-Congress right and communal parties on the other.

For, to win is all. The cost of faltering now would be the equivalent of sudden death in a tense tennis match.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

INDIA A GARBAGE DUMP FOR WORLD

DIRT-CHEAP LABOUR, A DISMAL HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD, CALLOUS AND VENAL GOVERNANCE AND SLOW JUDICIAL PROCESSES MAKE IT THE PREFERRED DESTINATION FOR TOXIC WASTE

ANURADHA DUTT

Following the death of a labourer as a result of multi-organ failure, after exposure to radiation in the capital's Mayapuri scrap market earlier in April, the Union Cabinet, Parliament and all responsible political parties need to take a hard look at India's lax monitoring of imports of foreign waste. Seven persons were severely burnt in the mishap, of whom one died. Experts from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, National Disaster Management Authority, Defence Research and Development Organisation and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board had to be called in to isolate the radioactive substance — Cobalt-60 — and take it away.

According to BARC, the radioactive waste reached the scrap dealer's shop in West Delhi from the international scrap market. Global and local trade in waste transportation, disposal and recycling is estimated to run into billions of dollars. Reports from around the world suggest that enforcement of free trade laws over the past two decades have increasingly turned developing countries into dumping grounds for the most dangerous industrial and chemical wastes from other countries, especially the First World. Dirt-cheap labour; a dismal human rights record; civil society indifference; callous and venal governance; and extremely slow judicial processes account for India and its ilk becoming the preferred destination for ships that need to be broken up; computers and other discarded electronic items that require disposal; lethal industrial effluents; and god knows what else.

Anti-dumping activists, whose pleas have been ignored by policy-makers, now feel vindicated. Consequently, the land, where even the gods apparently yearn to take birth, is becoming a polluted, toxic terrain which, in the years to come, might become unfit for any species of healthy life. Much has already been written about the poisoning of groundwater and water bodies, and resultant maladies, as well as the state's colossal failure to counter this. Waste dumping is an issue that needs to be focussed upon with the same urgency, given the lethal repercussions. And it goes beyond the ambit of the environmental and commerce industries. Blame for the Mayapuri disaster must fall also on the local administrators, MLA and city Government, as too on the Centre for failing to ratify the amendment to the Basel Convention — Basel Ban Amendment 1995 — effectively prohibiting export (or import) of such waste.

The amendment came into being to give more teeth to the earlier international law, adopted in 1989, which monitored the movement and disposal of dangerous waste across boundaries. It forbids export of hazardous waste for final disposal and recycling from Annex VII countries (parties to the Convention that are members of the European Union, Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) to non-Annex VII countries (other parties to the Convention). India has ratified the Basel Convention but not the amendment, reportedly under pressure from traders in such waste. ToxicsWatch Alliance, which is working to increase public awareness about the tragic fallout of India's imports of toxic waste, and trying to influence policy in this regard, claims that about 88 countries have banned such imports via their own laws or regional agreements. In times of war, apparently, such trade is common. But India, during peace time, has turned a blind eye to it. Perhaps it is the weak-kneed response of successive Governments to the Union Carbide pesticides' plant leak at Bhopal in December 1984 that has commercial buccaneers targeting India for quick gains and hazardous enterprises. An estimated 8,000 people died within days of the leak, and an equal number, reportedly, over the next few years. Many affected by the gas leak developed crippling disorders. But civil and criminal cases against the accused here and in the United States have failed to bring the culprits to book.

The UPA Government's National Environmental Policy is said to refer to strategies for cleanup of poisonous and hazardous waste dump legacies; doing a national inventory of such dumps; online monitoring of the movement of waste; taking legal recourse to solve related problems; and so on. But the most important question that arises is whether any safety mechanisms have been put in place. The Mayapuri disaster provides the answer: None. One also just needs to look at the shipyards in Alang on the Gujarat coast for further corroboration. Since the early-1980s, these have gradually captured about half the ship-breaking and recycling business in the world. The work is done manually for a fraction of the cost entailed, say, in Baltimore in the US. But while providing livelihood, it does great damage to human health and environment.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

IS EDUCATION SAFE IN PRIVATE HANDS?

THROUGH RIGHT TO EDUCATION, THE GOVERNMENT IS SHRUGGING OFF ITS RESPONSIBILITY, WRITES SACHIN JAIN

Right to Education has been a three-decade long struggle for those who believe that education should reach every child in this country. Finally, education is a constitutional right for every child between ages 6 to 14 years. It is a reflective of social and political ethos, a reiteration the nation's commitment to build its pool of human talent, skills and resources to take the leap into a promising future.

However, there remains a niggling doubt, that in spite of all the right sounding noises, something does not ring true. Why is the Government which needs to go all-out to implement this on the ground, not only in form but in spirit now seems to be lagging behind?

There is dimension at work, not fully explicit but it throws up the uncomfortable angle of co-opting the private sector into what is clearly a Government's mandate towards its people. Large areas and sections of its implementation will be left to private hands who may have little or no commitment to the underlying principles behind this Act. Is the Government trying to say that private educators are driven by the same motivation as the state in implementing this right?

The Act says that every private school should ensure a reservation of 25 per cent of its seats for underprivilged children. The burden of educating these children will lie with the Government, so nothing goes out of their own coffers. The Ministry of Human Resources is moving ahead on the presumption that private sectors will develop infrastructure in the beginning that the Government will repay them as fees in 20-30 years.

This means Government resources would be used to create private property. There is again a contradiction here. While the Government will spend its funds to pay the fees and bear the education expenses of underprivilged children in private schools, it will not allocate its funds to create structure for the coming five years. Why is public money being used to benefit private sector?

At another level, the role of the Panchayats in the education system in villages would naturally diminish. With private players in the fray, the responsiveness of the system at the ground-level to the needs of the community could also take a blow.

While private schools would proliferate in cities and towns, would they open schools in remote rural areas, for adivasis and backward sections in remote areas? Would they not turn out a child once he/she turns 14 years and the Government stop paying fees? How will the parents, from poor backgrounds cope?

The shedding off responsibilities by successive Governments in public welfare and basic rights sector in the name of public-private partnership has become a pattern. This has been happening, in different sectors, each with its own trajectory since 1991, the beginning of liberalisation as the era is referred to.

The Government has categorically said that it does not have the resources required to implement this Act. But this statement, rather than being taken at face value smacks of a ploy to bring in private players into this arena. In last financial year, the Government has given a benefit of Rs 4.18 lakh crore to corporate and private sectors. The tax benefit given to the middle and upper class has cost the government Rs 55,000 crore. Yet the Government is unwilling to give Rs 1.78 lakh crore over five years for education.

These private players are not going to carry the onus of the Right to Education as a social commitment but a way to expand markets. Business organisations could be looking at generating revenue of Rs 3.4 lakh crore in next 10 years through the implementation of the Act.

When all the arguments are stated and the cards laid on the table, it all comes together in perhaps one simple short statement. According to the Constitution, the Government not private sector is responsible to ensure the Right to Education for every child. If it reneges on it, then it has to answer to the people of this country.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

CORRUPTION AS A WAY OF LIFE IN OUR DEMOCRACY

 

IT WAS the Austrian writer Karl Kraus who said that corruption is worse than prostitution.

 

" The latter might endanger the morals of an individual," he wrote, " but the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country." In the case of Indian bureaucrats, corruption has taken on far more sinister proportions.

 

The result of one bureaucrat's dishonesty was responsible perhaps for the death of some of the 75 CRPF jawans and a Chhattisgarh state police official, who were killed in an ambush by Maoists in the forests of Dantewada district on April 6.

 

Actually, since the home ministry has scrapped the trials and the re- trials of bulletproof jackets after allegations that Radhe Shyam Sharma — now under CBI arrest — was favouring a particular company for procuring them, India's paramilitary forces would have to wage war against internal security threats such as the Maoists without this potentially life- saving equipment for a year.

 

Bureaucratic corruption has become so rampant in India that it is getting difficult to separate the honest officers from the dishonest.

 

It is a sad irony that in a government headed by one of the most honest prime ministers India has ever had — Manmohan Singh — corruption has prospered like never before.

 

The same day as Sharma was arrested for his shady involvement in the Rs 200 crore worth deal, another senior bureaucrat — a joint secretary in charge of the National Disaster Management Authority in the home ministry — was found to have allegedly earned Rs 25 lakh as payback for helping six firms in Daman evade taxes worth Rs 340 crore. Our honest prime minister needs to ask himself whether he has done all he could to check the growing cancer of official corruption. If not, the consequences could be worse than a Dantewada.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

MORE DIRT ON SPECTRUM SALE

 

EVERY round of fresh bidding in the ongoing auction of 3G spectrum has served to magnify the extent to which telecom minister A Raja's acts of omission and commission have robbed the government of revenue. The minister's explanations for why he chose to give away precious 2G spectrum resources to rank new entrants at 2001 prices without any bidding have failed to convince anyone.

 

Now, allegations have surfaced that the government has evidence in its possession, by way of tapped telephone conversations of a powerful lobbyist, of underhand dealings and kickbacks. Regardless of the veracity of these charges, the bloated bottomlines of some of the players, whose only ' achievement' was to bag the licences, was enough evidence to warrant some sort of action against Mr Raja.

 

The scandal also underscores the urgent need to review the way public resources and assets are defined by law. With technological advancement, resources are no longer simply uncut forests or un- mined mineral resources.

 

As the 3G auctions have shown, airwaves can turn out to be more precious than diamonds.

 

It is time the government brought the rules governing the control and use of resources into the 21st century. And it is high time that the Prime Minister, whose personal probity is unquestioned, ensured that his colleagues in government kept the same standards.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

DESERVED TREATMENT

 

IT IS not just Khusboo and women rights activists who will welcome the Supreme Court quashing criminal cases against the actress for speaking in favour of pre- marital sex. Civil society which has bemoaned the recent trend of illiberal people using the legal means to harass prominent citizens will also be relieved. If Khusboo as an individual thinks that premarital sex is desirable — and several arguments can be made backing this view — it is her fundamental right to air her stand in the public domain.

 

The Supreme Court seems to have been unnecessarily patient with the complainants in the case, trying to explain to them that no crime was made out against the actress.

 

Courts in this country must send out the message that they have far more important matters to attend to than grievances that stem from obscurantist or skewed sensibilities.

 

It is surprising indeed that this basic fact was not appreciated by the Madras High Court when it refused to quash the cases against Khusboo.

 

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

BIG AND UGLY IS THE DESIGN DICTUM OF OUR TIMES

BY GAUTAM BHATIA

 

MY SON uses a Gillette Mach III Turbo Triple Edged Razor, recently upgraded from the Double Edged Gillette Sensor Series 2. In the half hour it takes him to shave, he also uses a range of beard softeners, gels, aerosol cans of foam and after shaves, finally emerging with a mild reduction of facial hair. By contrast, my father only used an old Bharat blade, which he carefully saves for the next day's shave. The transformation from Bharat blades to Gillette Mach III in a mere 30 years, spells a generational shift from an era of useful functional objects to one of mindless consumer frivolity.

 

From the 1960s to now, just look at the range of ordinary conveniences that have undergone this change. Before liberalisation, the primary car on the Indian roads was the Ambassador. It came in three striking colours: beige, cream and egg shell, and could be repaired by anyone at the roadside tea stall using strings and rubber bands. Luxury meant an Ambassador with a sun visor and a fan on the dashboard.

 

Contradiction

 

Today's car brands are known not just for their colour, size, make, engine, gadgets, upholstery and sun roofs, but for a variety of other indecipherable assets. At a bar, it isn't unusual to hear someone say, " Yaar, mine is a Luxury Ex3L and a 4.8 Overhead Cam with Power Disc Sonic brakes and 520 CL Automatic Cruise Control. ( But you will not hear the same inane trivia for a washing machine. " Yaar we got the Whirlpool Cool Wash 351 Dx with the Automatic Spin Cycle." In matters of social class, the car is at the top of the heap).

 

Sadly, the dissociation between function and appearance is a phenomenon of our time, and one of the primary contradictions of the many new objects flooding the market. The shoe store is now a Foot Accessory Studio. Hundreds of sport shoes back lit on a wall of plexiglass.

 

Shoes for tennis, football, running, walking shoes, trekking shoes, strollers, hikers — all displayed with worryingly scientific tags: Triple Density All- purpose Fibre reinforced base with CVA Heel Support and Gel- pad Shock Absorbers. If you stand in front of the aerodynamic Apollo series with a guiding light in the heel, the salesman will tell you, " Notice that it's got a narrow footprint to reduce ground friction and air resistance". The all- purpose PT shoe is a museum relic.

 

I listen to about eight songs on my IPod.

 

Which is a real shame since it has a capacity to store 40,000, plus several full length films, office accounts and property tax data, and who knows what else? The Apple I- Phone 3G has video recording, voice control, GPS, maps, a compass, email, camera and many other non- phone features. Is this the new form of convenience living, to carry all your gadgets in a single object? When being so multipurpose overwhelms the original purpose, doesn't the implement in fact become less handy? Similarly, a wrist watch with multiple dials that provide the weather forecast, wind speeds, altitude, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature and humidity levels, can hardly be called a watch. That it is sold at watch and jewellery stores and not at a chemist is another matter.

 

But its wearer, proud of its link to Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, is hardly concerned with finding out the time. Nautilus, a watch that can take water pressure pressure up to a hundred metres below the ocean, is usually worn by teenagers who barely go near a swimming pool. Is this plain stupidity or just good marketing? If you think that adding new uses to old things is unique, then look at items that do away with the original object altogether.

 

Kindle, the electronic reader, has dispensed with the book. You hold an electronic page, barely a quarter inch thick, and pretend that there is a whole book in your hand.

 

Bloated

 

Can a 10 inch long, light- weight wireless screen, ever be a substitute for a heavy 300 page hardback, with curry stains and a torn book jacket? Will technology ever be a substitute for the sensory pleasure of a book's weight? Amazon, the promoters of Kindle, even promise, " We want to have every book ever printed in any language available within 60 seconds on Kindle". Downloading can hardly be a substitute for browsing in a musty bookshop.

 

More often than not, advancing technology needs serious scrutiny before application. Remember, when Windows 98 was given a shut down command, within seconds the computer had switched off. Try giving the same command to the more advanced Windows XP, you are offered a choice of Standby, Turn Off and Restart. If you choose Turn Off, the computer screen displays another sign indicating that it is logging off, but while doing so it asks you if you'd like to save your settings. Is this advancement or regression? Certainly, technology's ability to give greater access to a range of activities is a good thing, but there is always the danger of the abuse of technology. However, in a product culture everything gets designed, redesigned and over- designed to fit the changing demands of the era.

 

In the 1950s, furniture had spindly legs that splayed outwards.

 

The 60s and 70s returned to the straight line requirements of the age of chrome and steel. After the 1980s, objects began to bloat. CD players became fat and rounded with numerous dials and knobs; Cielo cars bulged as if they had consumed a few Marutis. Of late, the Mahindra Scorpio, baring its chromium teeth grille, is looking threatening enough to make its own road. Big and ugly and powerful is the design dictum of our times. And big and ugly will remain, till some Italian or Scandinavian designer says it's time to move on to things angular.

 

Advertising

 

Companies too will continue to rely on people's desire for conformity to ensure that their investment in new products is safe. Rolex watches, Gucci bags and Adidas shoes, instead of reflecting the individual personality of its users, are ironically given a mass produced image of individuality. This way everyone can display the same brand without the guilt of private choice. To have what you don't need, to buy what you can't afford, to display that which everyone has, is the real success of advertising.

 

By employing seduction, pictorial imagery, sci- fi aesthetics and other inessentials of design, marketing companies evoke a sense of newness with the product and ensure that you feel hopelessly outdated if you don't conform and buy. Consequently, design changes in objects are mostly cosmetic and pointless.

 

Products like car accessories are downright useless: wipers on headlights, indicator lights on side mirrors, sun roofs in the June heat, dimming light switches for dashboards, cup holders, foot lights, lights in the boot, foot level AC, spoilers … uselessness upon uselessness, fripperies to astound the most excitable consumer.

There is probably a full Research and Development division where grown men sit around a table bouncing off ideas.

" Hey Prakash, why don't we put a light in the dicky." " But why?" " Just so the luggage can read on long journeys." " Let's at least carpet the dickey so the luggage is comfortable". " Great idea. Let's also carpet the road so the tyres can take it easy". The debate rages. As long as there is advertising, people's needs can only grow.

 

The writer is an architect

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

THE LAHORE LOG

THE FUTILITY OF AN INDICTMENT

BY NAJAM SETHI

 

THE Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a significant indictment of the way Pakistan is ruled. Its conclusions are worth noting and require comment.

 

The Report shows a realistic understanding of how politics was played in Pakistan in the run- up to Benazir's assassination. The nature of the political " deal" between Benazir and President General Pervez Musharraf brokered by the UK and USA, how and why it soured closer to the general elections and the highly dubious role of the ubiquitous " establishment" are explained matter- offactly.

 

But it is extraordinary that the Report should have concluded that the federal government, Punjab provincial government and Rawalpindi police and administration of the time " deliberately" did not provide adequate security to Benazir and prevent the assassination.

 

Indeed, the dubious role of the " establishment" – whose " permanent core" is defined by the Report as comprising the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies – in subverting the original political " deal", then endangering Benazir's life, and finally pulling strings and obfuscating and obstructing the investigations, are underscored with great clarity and courage.

 

SUCH an approach is due in no small part to to the composition of the three- member commissio, which is headed by Chile's Permanent Representative to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, whose historical opposition to military rule in Chile is documented in his recent book on the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet who overthrew the democratically elected regime of President Salvador Allende with the assistance of the United States in September 1973.

 

The Report also sheds indirect light on why the PPP government took a year after coming to power before asking the UN to lend a hand in investigating Benazir's murder. Mr. Zardari was privy to the rights and wrongs of the political " deal' and shared Benazir's aversion to, and apprehension of, the " establishment" which had twice earlier in 1990 and 1996 sent PPP governments packing.

 

Initially, therefore, he targeted the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (" Qatil" League) instead of General Musharraf directly, because he didn't want to give the general any excuse to delay the elections further, but also because the PML( Q) was the PPP's " established" competitor. After forming the government with General Musharraf's concurrence, however, Mr. Zardari tried to seize control of the ISI while getting rid of General Musharraf. He failed abysmally in the former objective and was therefore chastened not to clash with the " establishment". Instead, he sought outside ( UN) assistance to investigate Ms. Bhutto's murder.

 

The UN Commission met with some officials from the USA, UK, Afghanistan and UAE. But it laments the fact that it was denied access by the US government to intelligence officials, including Michael Hayden, a director of the CIA who had alleged an Al- Qaeda- Baitullah Mehsud hand in Benazir's assassination. This is inexplicable, unless the US motive was simply not to embarrass the Pakistani " establishment", with which Washington is currently working closely in the " war on terror", by commenting on its not- soinvisible links with the Jihadis and Taliban who carried out Ms Bhutto's assassination! The Commission makes several major recommendations. ( 1) " The Pakistani authorities should consider conducting an independent review to determine responsibilities and hold accountable those individuals who seriously failed in their duties". How this can be done, with the powerful establishment very much in command, is not spelt out. In fact, the best that the Zardari government has been able to do to the guilty policemen named in the report, is to make them Officers on Special Duty! Equally, the DG- MI, Major- General Nadeem Taj, whose role is questioned in the report for authorising the hosing down of the scene of crime, has submitted a defiant four page denial to the Inquiry Commission constituted by the government after the UN Report. As far as the " establishment" is concerned, this is the final word on the subject and an end to the matter.

 

( 2) The UN Report wants the government " to undertake police reform consistent with the principles of democratic policing and operating in a structure of accountability for protecting the Rights if Individuals as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Tombs have been written on this subject and are collecting dust. The police in Pakistan is deeply politicised and linked to the " establishment". Without redressing the original sin – the civil- military imbalance – it is futile to try to radically reform the police to become efficient and accountable.

 

( 3) " The autonomy, pervasive reach and clandestine role of the intelligence agencies in Pakistani life underlie many problems, omissions and commissions set out in the Report… the actions of politicised intelligence agencies undermine democratic governance… [ therefore] a thorough review of intelligence agencies based on international best practices" is required. This is easier said than done. All politicians, including the current crop of popular leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, have concluded that discretion is the better part of valour in this matter of the " establishment". Indeed, even the newly independent media is in thrall to the " establishment" for " national security" reasons! ( 4) " The assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred against the backdrop of a history of political violence that was carried out with impunity. To address this issue, Pakistan should consider establishing a transitory, fully independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate political killings, disappearances and terrorism in recent years." Hah! That is like asking the " establishment" to investigate itself, indict itself, punish itself and disband itself in pursuit of some lofty UN principles of human rights when the very life purpose of this " establishment" is to continue to do exactly the opposite with ruthless unaccountability and impunity in the national interest! Therefore it is no surprise that the " strategic dialogue" between Pakistan and the US is currently being conducted by the Pakistani Establishment rather than the democratically elected Government of Pakistan!

The writer is Editor of The Friday Times

 

JUGNU MOHSIN

CAN you imagine? The Hospital ( as in mum's place, the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital) in Lahore has received a directive saying two portraits should be put up immediately in the lobby. One of Zardari as President and the other of Shahbaz Sharif as Chief Minister, Punjab. The directive says the Hospital can also put up my portrait if they like. Alright, I said, put up Zardari and Shahbaz's pictures with the caption: " Two reasons to feel sorry for Pakistan". And under my photo, the head doctor suggested we put the caption: " No danger of reason". What a great idea. I've also told them to put up a sign saying " Mum's Sums" on the door to the accounts department.

 

Zardari's finished. And Nawaz Sharif is also finished.

 

His problem is he doesn't want to upset the apple cart.

 

Once a tradesman, always a tradesman. I should write a book about Pakistan's unscrupulous and corrupt politicians. I know all about them. In case you've forgotten, I'm the one who unearthed Zardari's Surrey Worry. Jimmy Goldsmith was alive at that time and as my father- in- law, he very kindly offered to ferret out everything else on the Bhutto- Zardaris in Switzerland and France where he put Jacques Chirac, God rest his soul in peace, on the job. At that time, Asif Zardari accused me of using my in- laws. You should know, I told him, and if we don't use them, someone else will. So, I think I'll plan a book on Pakistan's corrupt politicians.

 

And then I'll get someone else to write it, as I always do.

 

Chapter 1 will be written by Mick Jagger, Chapter 2 by Prameshwar Godrej, Chapter 3 by Fruity Fitztightly and so on till Chapter 10, with internationally renowned has- beens and some never- weres doing the writing. My best friend Yusuf Salahuddin said, " go on. Why stop at Chapter 10?" I said, " because I've run out of fingers". Then Yusuf said, " You've called President Zardari and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif so many names. What are you going to call them when they're no longer President and CM?" I said, " Asif Zardari and Shahbaz Sharif." I took my latest squeeze out to dinner in a private club in Islamabad. Against my advice, she wore a dress. But it was down to her ankles so she had her legs covered.

 

I had everything else covered. The waiter asked her what she'd like. She said, " Grilled fish, please". He said, " what about the vegetable?" She said, " He'll have the same". Then the waiter asked me. I said, " I'll have ibex steak". He said, " Well done?" I said, " thank you so much". Then my latest squeeze kicked me under the table. We're so deeply in love. She with me and me with me.

 

Im the Dim

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

BACK TO BASICS

 

A quarter-century after its establishment, SAARC continues to struggle in limbo. As so many of the previous summits of South Asian leaders under its aegis have been, the just-concluded conclave in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, has revolved around the elephant in the room the fraught India-Pakistan relationship. And given that this is the 16th such meeting, one thing has become abundantly clear. SAARC will make no real headway while tensions between its two largest members remain.

Since South Asian cooperation is nevertheless a must, it therefore falls to India to build a web of such cooperation through bilateral ties with SAARC member states. The most effective way to do this is through boosting trade flows between SAARC member states. As it stands now, the concept of a South Asian free trade zone a SAARC initiative hasn't taken off. Smaller steps are needed first, and it is here that India can lead the way. It currently has a free trade agreement only with Sri Lanka and another one with Bangladesh in the works. New Delhi would do well to look at opening up its market to other South Asian neighbours as well.

This is not to say that SAARC does not have its functions. But expecting multilateral initiatives within its framework to ease bilateral tensions is putting the cart before the horse. The flaws of this policy have been thrown into stark relief by the various leaders at Thimphu this time around. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has admitted that declarations and meetings do not amount to much while Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigme Thinley has been even blunter, pointing out that SAARC has not been a success, waylaid too often by squabbles between member states.

Good atmospherics were reported when Singh met his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani, the most positive outcome of which is that talks between India and Pakistan are back on track. Engagement needs to be kept up no matter what differences between New Delhi and Islamabad there might be. That's true even if a lot of energy is likely to be expended on what the structure of future talks or "modalities", that word beloved of bureaucrats on both sides is going to be. It, however, remains a moot question how much Pakistan's embattled civilian authorities are in charge of its foreign policy, particularly India policy. Talks, no matter how structured they are, are unlikely to succeed unless New Delhi also moves outside formal structures and engages Pakistan's military and security agencies.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

DEJA VU IN RANCHI

 

Jharkhand has been here before. Four months after being sworn in, the coalition government in Ranchi has been reduced to a minority. Hectic parleys are on to salvage the JMM-BJP government, with a range of possibilities being discussed. Some of the options are bizarre since ideological common ground has ceased to matter in coalition building in Jharkhand. The deliberations are driven by self-interest and political parties are intent merely on capturing office. Shibu Soren's decision to vote for the UPA on the cut motion in Parliament was an act of self-destruction. A feeble attempt to blame Alzheimer's for Soren's faux paus didn't pass muster with the BJP. The party's sense of outrage is understandable since it broke convention to persuade the chief minister to attend Parliament. His action has left the BJP leadership looking silly.

Political uncertainty has dogged Jharkhand since its inception in 2000. The powerful tribal movement that led the struggle for a separate state has fragmented. The political churning in the state has spawned numerous outfits but there's been no sign of any ideologically coherent and stable coalition. The political instability has resulted in the formation of seven different governments, including one headed by an independent MLA, in the past nine years. The frequent change of governments has not helped governance in the state. This mineral-rich state continues to house some of India's poorest and vulnerable people because successive governments have failed to develop public institutions and make use of the state's resources. Maoists have exploited the crisis in the political system and built a base in the state. A stable government is sorely needed to improve administration and keep the Maoists under check.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 EDITORIAL

MAHARASHTRA TURNS FIFTY

DILEEP PADGAONKAR

 

Enthusiasm will be in short supply tomorrow when Maharashtra's movers and shakers celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of the state. Most Maharashtrians are far too concerned about the problems assailing them from all sides to respond to the hype and hoopla. Indeed, the claims that the ruling establishment is bound to make about the strides the state has taken over the past five decades can only generate a torrent of cynical despair.

On the face of it, certain statistics that the rulers advance to bolster their claims might appear to be upbeat. Since 1960, the proportion of the literate population, for example, has more than doubled from around 35 per cent to a little more than 77 per cent. Only Kerala among the major states has a more impressive record on this score. The figures for infant mortality and life expectancy, too, give cause for satisfaction.

The bald statistics about the overall growth of the economy are, at first sight, also pretty impressive. The state's income has increased manifold as has per capita income. The latter stands at more than Rs 47,000, a figure that places Maharashtra way ahead of most states. But once you begin to go through the statistics with a fine toothcomb, the picture changes in a dramatic fashion. In Mumbai and its surroundings, the per capita income is close to Rs 74,000; in the Konkan, a little more than Rs 66,000; in Marathwada, it stands at some Rs 30,500; and in Vidarbha, it is Rs 29,000.

It is thus no surprise that about a third of Maharashtra's population lives below the poverty line. On this count, in the country as a whole, the state figures third from the bottom as far as the number of people is concerned and fifth from the bottom in terms of percentages. Part of the reason for this must be attributed to the mismanagement of agriculture. Over the past five decades, the output of wheat, jawar, bajra, cereals, pulses, cotton, oilseeds and sugarcane has decreased, in some instances quite drastically.

Add to this the state's failure to address the bleak situation in the drought-prone areas, notably of Vidarbha. Since 1995, over 40,000 indebted farmers have committed suicide, not least because they haven't been able to benefit in full measure from various government schemes. The latter have in fact been niggardly compared to the schemes of other state governments surrounding Maharashtra.

The low agricultural output accounts for the sharp rise in food prices. This burden would have been easier to bear had people been gainfully employed. However, despite the setting up of manufacturing units, IT software enterprises and growth in other service sectors, job losses have been mounting. From 1995 to 2008, as many as 1,800 people lost jobs everyday. This was before the recession struck. Indeed, according to official figures, jobs generated by various government schemes declined by 30 per cent.

All this would have been enough cause for Maharashtrians to bemoan their fate. What also galls them is that the creation of the state has not allowed them to control the levers of the state's economy. Before 1960, a bulk of commercial activity was in the hands of non-Maharashtrians: Gujaratis, Marwaris, Khojas, Bohras, Sindhis, Parsis and Punjabis. That is true today as well.

With the exception of the Kirloskars, no Marathi-owned company figures prominently in the country's corporate world. The Marathas, who dominate politics and therefore hold the bureaucracy in a tight grip, have done pretty well for themselves. Political clout has enabled them to operate in areas where the resources of the state can be manipulated for personal gain: real estate, agricultural cooperatives and educational institutions.

In national politics, too, there is no Maharashtrian with an all-India appeal. That requires a reputation for intellectual rigour, personal integrity and a steadfast commitment to a set of ideas and principles. The last politician with such a reputation was Y B Chavan. Much the same conspicuous absence can be found in areas of scientific and artistic endeavour. How many Marathi-speakers have emerged as national, let alone international, icons? In some fields notably classical music and cricket you can cite three or four names. Add to that a couple of scientists and writers. In the upper echelons of the armed forces and civil services, in think tanks and prestigious universities, in the national media and in the entertainment business too, Maharashtrians are few and far between.

Unable or unwilling to accept why things have come to this pass above all, an aversion to risk and adventure most Maharashtrians prefer to rail against the world. Those who exploit Marathi grievances for short-term political gains are content to promote vada-pao, force shop-owners to put up signs in Marathi and compel taxi drivers from outside the state to speak the language. Such swagger in an urban, increasingly cosmopolitan India invites ridicule. Maharashtrians need to regain their self-esteem. That is possible only when they discard their quintessentially mofussil mindset as, for instance, Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar, Kishori Amonkar and R A Mashelkar have done with such exemplary success.

Jai Maharashtra! all the same.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

'ANY SIGNAL FROM SPACE WE CAN'T EXPLAIN IS EXCITING'

 

As we celebrate 20 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA is readying its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), for launch in 2013. With physicist Stephen Hawking's reiteration that all math points to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, the powerful JWST is key to detecting life-sustaining atmospheres of Earth-like planets. Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who heads the team evaluating JWST's planet-hunting capabilities, spoke to Prakash Chandra:

While hunting for habitable planets, how do telescopes study their atmospheres?

Ground-based Radial Velocity Technique measurements enable us to observe the wobble of the star when tugged by its orbiting planet. This tells us the mass of planets. From this we calculate their density and analyse spectral fingerprints. Venus and Earth seem alike in terms of size and mass, but Venus's spectrum only shows absorption of carbon dioxide, while Earth, even in very low resolution, shows water, oxygen, ozone, carbon dioxide and methane.

How can we specifically detect oxygen?

By splitting white light into individual wavelengths or colours -- much like a rainbow -- we measure the intensity of individual colours. The planet's atmosphere absorbs some of the light, which we find 'missing' in its spectrum. Since each molecule absorbs at a characteristic position in the spectrum, we know what chemical is in the atmosphere when we see what flux is missing. Carbon dioxide, water, oxygen and ozone in Earth's atmosphere are relatively easy to measure, so they should be easy to detect in Earth-like planets.

Which is more effective: direct imaging -- studying light from the planet itself -- or the transit technique?

Right now, transits are our only means to study planets and their atmospheres. If we are lucky, the orbit of a planet will be aligned just right for it to transit, which would let us screen it with the Hubble or the JWST for habitability.

You have zeroed in on planets orbiting red dwarf stars as likely candidates bearing conditions suitable for life. Why?

The signal from a planet is usually drowned in the radio 'noise' from its star. If the star is smaller, the 'noise' is less. So it is easier to study planets around small stars like red dwarfs, and it takes less time too. The smaller -- and thus cooler -- the star, the closer the planet must orbit to be warm enough to have liquid water on its surface and be habitable. It also needs less time to orbit: in one Earth year we'll find the planet circling its star more than once, which lets us gather signals from more than one transit.

Isn't it conservative to look for carbon-based life in space?

Absolutely. But we do not know what else to look for that could indicate life based on other chemicals. As long as we cannot make life in the lab, we can only observe the telltale signs of life as we know it in a planet's atmosphere. Any signal we can't explain will be exciting, but we have no one-to-one reference of what they would mean. I am waiting for someone to generate 'life' from its building blocks. If that works we'll see if carbon is really the best material to base 'life' on. Or, if other chemicals also work, what gases such life would produce, which we could then detect remotely in a planet's atmosphere.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

JUG SURAIYA

 

As global aviation limps back to normal after being rudely interrupted by an erupting volcano, stories pour in about people who were stranded, far from home, by Eyjafjallajokull blowing its stack. While some of these stories are about travellers exploited by unscrupulous hoteliers and others who took advantage of the situation, many more are about the kindness that people often show to strangers. Having briefly been refugees ourselves, many years ago, Bunny and i can attest to this kindness of strangers.

 

In 1973, Bunny and i were on a six-week tour of western Europe. Our travel bible was Arthur Frommer's Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and we were going to stick to that budget, despite friends and family repeatedly telling us it couldn't be done. We were determined to prove them wrong. And we almost did.

 

We travelled by coach and train, through France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria. Our last destination in Europe was Munich, from where we were to take a Syrian Arab Airline flight to Delhi. The two one-way cut-price tickets had been bought in London.

 

To keep within our budget we often skipped meals: a missed lunch paid for admission to an art gallery or museum. Food could come later; Picasso, or Rembrandt, couldn't. By the time we reached Munich, both of us were half-starved. And in Munich a bombshell awaited us. Unknown to us on our travels, an Arab-Israeli war had taken place, as sudden, swift and fierce as a desert storm. Syrian Airlines' entire fleet of three planes had been damaged or was ferrying wounded Arab troops back from the front. As the airline was not an IATA member, no other carrier would fly us. In Munich we demanded a refund on our tickets. We were told we'd have to go to London for the refund. Our family in India wanted to pay our airfare home, but RBI rules wouldn't permit it.

 

Money fast running out, we were stuck in Munich, one of the most costly cities in the world. We lived on a diet of rejected supermarket chocolate, the cheapest food available. Eventually, all our money exhausted, we had to go to the Indian consulate and apply for repatriation. Declaring ourselves destitute we had our passports defaced in front of us and were issued one-time travel warrants, normally reserved for escorted criminals. Air India flew us to Delhi. At the airport i wanted to kneel and kiss the ground. We were home. But one memory of Munich we'll never forget.

 

Waking past a street fair one day, Bunny had stopped before a woman selling toffee apples. The woman had smiled and held out two apples. Bunny had shaken her head, held up one finger; we could afford only one apple. The woman seemed to intuit our plight. She accepted money for one apple. Then she'd held out the second apple, indicating it was free. Bunny had hesitated. Hunger is bitter; pride is even more bitter to swallow: Bitte, the woman had said. Please. Please? Why had she made a plea for us to accept her gift? Because, by accepting the kindness of strangers, the recipient gives back the greater gift of trust? Bunny had taken the apple. And by doing so, had perhaps given back something in exchange. A belief in our common humanness, a mutual recognition that the person who receives is also a giver.A simple thought to remember, particularly when we in India are -- at long last -- preparing to reach out to those of us who all their lives have known only hunger and poverty. Think of what they might be waiting to give us. Not gratitude, never that. But perhaps a mirror -- flat, hard and unsentimental -- in which we see ourselves, as we might have been, as we might be one day. The gift of ourselves for the price of a toffee apple? What better bargain in the world. But why does it take wars, or volcanoes, for us to find that out?

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

WORKING THE PHONES

 

Radio frequency sold for a song to telecom operators two years ago is making headlines yet again when auctions are on for spectrum that can provide Indians high-speed internet services on their cellphones. The highest bid for countrywide third-generation (3G) spectrum has already crossed Rs 9,000 crore in a month-long online auction with another week to go before the hammer comes down. Comparisons are being drawn to the first-come first-served process conducted by the Department of Telecommunications in 2008 when pan-India licences for slow-speed telephony were handed out at Rs 1,600-odd crore a pop. Subsequently, a couple of start-ups sold stakes to foreign telecom majors that valued them upwards of five times the fee they paid for the licences — without having a single cell tower or subscriber to their name. Essentially, these companies were as valuable to their buyers as the licences they held. This underselling of scarce airwaves, argue auditors, courts and a section of our lawmakers, cost the exchequer anything between Rs 26,000 crore and Rs 100,000 crore.

The ongoing auctions could be a better proxy for the revenue forgone in doling out spectrum for second-generation (2G) telephony services at prices set in 2001. Especially since bids in the 3G auctions are being pushed higher by cities where mobile networks are choking up for lack of frequency and where analysts expect a big chunk of the new spectrum will be used to carry the regular voice traffic. Upgrading a 2G cellular network to 3G costs around a third of what it takes to set up a 2G network from scratch. Factor that into the final bids for 3G spectrum and we get a fix on the extent of markdown in 2008.

All this must be read with a caveat, though. India is adding 20 million cellphone users every month as the cost of calls dip to levels the countryside can afford. Huge upfront costs, like spectrum fees, must be passed on to customers and don't permit the bruising price war Indian telecommunications's been witnessing. Auctions at home in 1995 when the first bunch of companies bid for telecom licences and Europe's 3G spectrum sale show companies tend to bid themselves out of the market. The larger goal of universal telecom access may not be best served by setting the entry cost so high that subsequent investments get delayed or scrapped. Spectrum auctions might yield better price discovery for high-end niche services like streaming cricket matches on your cellphone. But a more statist approach may be needed for the spread of India's telecommunication revolution to its villages. Which is all the more reason this mechanism should be above board.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

ASYLUM IN RANCHI

 

You'd have to be a heartless beast — or the proverbial mad man from Ranchi — not to feel for Shibu Soren. The man has been ticked off by the BJP for voting against the BJP-Left-sponsored cut motions against the UPA. The truth of the matter is that the poor man was confused. Voting against the UPA's economic policies meant voting for the cut motions. Mr Soren, his head brimming with just the word 'against', must have pressed the red button and then cast the 'wrong' paper vote thinking he was supporting his allies in the Jharkhand government, the BJP.

Which brings us to the second level of confusion. The JMM never walked out of the UPA at the Centre for the BJP in the state. So, taking a cue from those masters of bipolar behaviour, the Left, Mr Soren may have been under the belief that in Delhi he should support the central Judas government and in Ranchi, he should support the state BJP. And the man, on Tuesday was in Delhi. So...

But the heart really breaks for another man: BJP president Nitin Gadkari. After Mr Soren played Vibhishan with the BJP in Parliament, the BJP removed its support from the Soren-led Jharkhand government. Mr Gadkari, however, was supping with — to switch metaphors — Judas. Perhaps no one in the BJP leadership had told him of Mr Soren's momentary lapse of reason; perhaps they did and he was suffering from his very own condition that makes people forget. Poor Congress, now having to deal with a confused 'new old' friend. But hang on, weren't we supposed to spread the pity about Mr Soren? Sorry, our human error.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

LOOKS ARE DECEPTIVE

RAJDEEP SARDESAI

Fourteen years ago, as a 13-day A.B. Vajpayee government fell, the BJP's man for all seasons, the late Pramod Mahajan, offered an interesting explanation for what had gone wrong. Speaking to a group of  journalists, he said, "We were all so excited at having become the single largest group in Parliament and being invited to form the government that we forgot you need 272 MPs to win a confidence vote!"

Two hundred and seventy-two: that magical number that even Sonia Gandhi tripped over in 1999. Politics, as practised in a television studio may be about its vocabulary, in the heat and dust of a campaign about its chemistry, but in the forbidding corridors of Parliament it is about plain arithmetic. The 2009 general elections ensured that the maths was firmly in favour of the Congress-led UPA. The UPA won 265 seats, seven short of an outright majority, but still more than a 100 seats better than the NDA with 151 seats. The Left was virtually wiped out with 23 seats. The gap was simply too wide to allow a non-UPA combination to stage a democratic coup.

Which is why it's fanciful for some Opposition leaders to have actually believed that they could bring down the Manmohan Singh government through a cut motion in Parliament. That the Left and the Right were excited enough to shed ideological inhibitions and vote together against the government is no surprise. The Left's been itching to teach Singh a lesson since it was isolated on the Indo-US Nuclear Bill. The BJP still hasn't entirely got over its defeats in two successive Lok Sabha elections that it believes it should have won.

But what the Left and the Right seem to have forgotten is that the notion of a 'combined' Opposition is a misnomer in contemporary politics. In 1977, the excesses of the Emergency brought the entire non-Congress Opposition together against Indira Gandhi. In 1989, the Left and Right famously came together to support the Janata Dal government of V.P. Singh. Two decades later, any hope of repeating a 1989-like experiment is betrayed by the reality of a political climate where convenience, not conviction, matters. Anti-Congressism and anti-BJPism — both powerful glues for previous experiments in oppositional politics — have now been replaced by naked self-interest and, in some cases, sheer survival instinct.

A Mayawati may challenge a Rahul Gandhi on home turf in Uttar Pradesh. But she needs the Centre to bail her out in the Supreme Court. A Shibu Soren, a proven political bigamist, may have entered into a shotgun marriage with the BJP in Jharkhand. But his romance with the UPA in New Delhi will endure till such time as the fear exists of another jail sentence. And then, there're Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav, both of  whom also face the prospect of a judicial knock on the door. Both are conscious of the Congress's attempts to invade their territory, but also cannot afford to be seen publicly siding with the BJP.

This disparate group of non-NDA, non-UPA, non-Left 'others' is a substantial 103 MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha. It includes parties like the Biju Janata Dal, which has seemingly committed itself  to principled 'equidistance' but mainly comprises political outfits whose leaders are caught in the 'DA trap': not dearness allowance, but disproportionate assets. Their legal tangles make such political leaders acutely vulnerable to pressures from the State machinery, and the CBI — now dismissively referred to as the Congress Bureau of  Investigation — in particular.

But while the UPA is clearly in the comfort zone, there is the danger of comfort turning to complacency. In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi's 400-plus majority withered away as the Opposition was treated with disdain. Singh is not Rajiv: if he does have an ego, he hides it well under his turban. And yet, there's a growing sense that in UPA-2 the Congress, as the dominant party, appears to be moving away from a coalition dharma towards a single-party rule mindset, sanguine in the belief that its position is unchallenged till 2014. The result is a gathering disquiet among some of its allies whose support is critical to the government's well-being.

The Nationalist Congress Party, for example, appears convinced that the Indian Premier League (IPL) 'leaks' have been engineered from within the government to embarrass its leadership. The Trinamool, numerically the largest ally, is worried that ahead of next year's West Bengal elections, the Congress may trip it up at the last moment. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, too, sees next year's assembly elections as a test case: a surprise defeat could lead to another political realignment. Not to forget Lalu, once a staunch ally, now feeling sidelined after being kept out of the Cabinet. There is also a seething anger across parties at the way in which the Women's Reservation Bill was sought to be rammed through.

Yes, the numbers are still firmly with the UPA government, and there seems no immediate danger to the stability of the ruling coalition. But in politics appearances can be terribly deceptive, and the calm waters may only be masking a certain inner turbulence. To take the IPL analogy: just a month ago, it appeared that Lalit Modi and his team were here to stay forever. It took one tweet to bring down the entire edifice. Politics is far more slippery than cricket. This April has been open season in cricket. Next year, it could well be the case in politics.

Post-script: When asked of his father Shibu Soren's decision to vote with the UPA in Parliament, his son Hemant described it as 'human error'. He's not wrong. It's the frailties of human nature that make politics so unpredictable and exciting.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

FIGHT THE DARK FORCES

SRIJANA MITRA DAS

Amid the frenzied welcomes recently greeting newly-married Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik in Pakistan, there came an intriguing remark. Malik's brother-in-law reportedly stated, "If the government wants us to celebrate in the dark, we'll do so."

The comment illuminates an area of ire in Pakistan. The country is suffering from a severe power crisis that has hit governmental, social and private realms hard. Some regions are undergoing power outages up to 18 hours a day, with business slow-downs and angry protests.

Electricity generation in Pakistan currently equals 10,300 megawatts daily while national demand is 17,000 megawatts. A host of 'crisis measures' have been introduced to plug a gap of over 6,000 megawatts. These include load-shedding for homes and offices, a shortened five-day week, early closure of shops, curbed power supply to street lighting, agriculture and industries and restricting marriage activities to three hours a day.

Despite their aim of power-saving, the measures have not met with uniform popularity. The dissonances emerging shed light upon fissures that cut across Pakistan's polity. While Lahore traders agree to close shops by 8 pm, Karachi traders reject the proposal. They cite the authorities' failure to provide power during the day, pointing towards private generators that keep business going despite load-shedding. Power supply to Karachi from the national grid has been slashed by 300 megawatts. Additional generation using oil is being planned. However, traders in Pakistan's commercial capital are not happy to stand by in the dark meanwhile.

Things aren't peachy in Lahore either. In addition to the time-curbs on wedding venues, the Punjab government has imposed an 'austerity' measure of 'one-dish' to be served at marriage parties. For food-loving Lahoris, this is deeply troubling. Weddings in Lahore are cuisine events, dishes from around the world showcased alongside Punjabi favourites. Mountains of kebabs stand by fountains of chocolate and hills of fruit. Stalls feature spicy chaat, cooling sweets, Arabian, Oriental and European delicacies with rich biryanis, paya and nihari. There are even a few vegetarian offerings (like palak-gosht) amid the rivers of fish and tandoors of bread abounding at Lahore weddings.

Imagine Shoaib Malik's consternation then, having transported Sania and the in-laws from the feasts of Hyderabad, to be allowed only a simple chicken curry at his wedding function in Lahore. To be given no additional time or lighting either might have got Malik's goat.

Interestingly, lessons from Pakistan's power crisis can be learned by India too. Smarting from shared heat and power failures, Indians and Pakistanis should consider how desperately our region needs to develop power sources alternative to hydroelectricity. It is blazingly obvious we have enough solar energy to harness; if we could tear ourselves away from developing the latest in missiles, perhaps we could make something useful instead.

Another lesson lies in how we continue thinking of power as a predominantly middle-class experience. Both countries bemoan the pressure on inverters and diesel-run generators but few accounts explore the world of the poor who enjoy extraordinarily little power to begin or end with. Nationhood, more than a celebration of sameness or an exposition of ideals, is about empathising with difference. It might be refreshing for a middle-class householder to not obsess over her inverter during the next power cut but consider her rural equivalents.

For developing nations, sharing experiences and according dignity to those who have less rather than more are as essential as the enjoyment of resources. While India and Pakistan both negotiate this, there is one more lesson we might learn from them; how to do the bhangra in the dark.

Srijana Mitra Das is a social anthropologist. The views expressed by the author are personal.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE OTHER IPL SCAM

PREETI SINGH

 

Little did Richard Nixon and his pals know that their wickedness (or stupidity, depending on how you wish to look at it) would be immortalised for generations (and rip-offs) to come. Watergate, it seems, was the Waterloo that closed the floodgates of creativity forever.

 

So, even as con men and crim- inals continue to dream up those ingenious schemes to keep authorities running around in circles, their laudable hard work is not being mirrored by that of us hacks. In direct contrast to your average media person's imaginative potential, taglines are lagging way behind head- lines. No sooner did a fresh scan- dal hit the airwaves, than we went scurrying off to add a rather stale, uninspired suffix to the lead character in the eye of the storm.

 

The jerky christening and re- christening of the current indig- nation that is keeping our par- liamentarians busy is a sad comment on a nation famous for inventive nicknames. From flirt- ing with `Tharoorgate' and `Twi- ttergate' to `Kochigate', the fran- tically-jumping roulette ball has stopped at `IPL gate' and stuck.
And bingo! We have our latest scam.

 

When will we finally unlock the rusted gates to our creative imagination and do what we do best: break the mould even as we break the news. And why, when it comes to homegrown rogues and their tales, must we be shackled by American folk- lore? Let's go local, I say. In fact, I quite like the sound of `IPLkala- fdaghapla'. What's more, this would get those western tongues rolling a bit, and even the scores a little for having to embarrass- ingly mumble `volcanic ash' every time that flight-grounding, smoke-spewing volcano with the sadistically unpronounceable name is mentioned.

 

While we're on the subject, don't you ever wonder how we celebrated India's sporting suc- cesses before `Chak De' came waltzing in and just refused to leave? Like Scamgate on loop is our country's victory song. Oh, and I'm sure Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must definitely be thinking twice about flashing a victory sign these days, shak- ing in his boots at the thought of having Snoop Doggy Dogg synch a hundred replays of `Singh is King' as he marches out of a gru- eling Parliament session. In fact, I wonder if BBC might get away with serenading Gordon Brown with `The Final Countdown' one of these days?

 

So I say, let those Yanks enjoy their 21st century reincarnations of Nixon's bumbles in the form of `Climate gate', `Trooper gate' and what not. Why must we be bound by their lack of imagin- ation? Come now, it's our scand- al. Why pay obeisance to some- one else's? And while we're at it, let's hear some new tunes, eh?

 

preetisingh@hindustantimes.com

 

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Man proposes; nature disposes. We are seldom more vulnerable than when we feel insulated. The miracle of modern flight protected us from gravity, atmosphere, culture, geography. It made everywhere feel local, interchangeable. Nature interjects, and we encounter -- tragically for many -- the reality of thousands of miles of sepa- ration. We discover that we have not escaped from the phys- ical world after all.

Complex, connected societies are more resilient than sim- ple ones -- up to a point. During the east African droughts of the early 1990s, I saw at first hand what anthropologists and economists have long predicted: those people who had the fewest trading partners were hit hardest. Connectivity provided people with insurance: the wider the geographical area they could draw food from, the less they were hurt by a regional famine.

But beyond a certain level, connectivity becomes a hazard.
The longer and more complex the lines of communication and the more dependent we become on production and business elsewhere, the greater the potential for disruption. This is one of the lessons of the banking crisis. Impoverished mortgage defaulters in the United States -- the butterfly's wing over the Atlantic -- almost broke the glob- al economy. If the Eyjafjallajökull volcano -- by no means a mon- ster -- keeps retching, it could, in these fragile times, produce the same effect.

We have several such vulner- abilities. The most catastrophic would be an unexpected solar storm -- which causes a surge of direct current down our elec- tricity grids, taking out the trans- formers. It could happen in sec- onds; the damage and collapse would take years to reverse, if we ever recovered.

As New Scientist points out, an event like this would knacker most of the systems which keep us alive. It would take out water treatment plants and pumping stations. It would paralyse oil pumping and delivery, which would quickly bring down food supplies. It would clobber hospitals, financial systems and just about every kind of business -- even the manufacturers of can- dles and paraffin lamps. Emergency generators would function only until the oil ran out. Burnt-out transformers cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. Over the past year I've sent freedom of information (FoI) requests to electricity transmit- ters and distributors, asking them what contingency plans they have made, and whether they have stockpiled transformers to replace any destroyed by a solar storm. I haven't got to the end of it yet, but the early results suggest that they haven't.

There's a similar lack of planning for the possibility that global supplies of oil might soon peak, then go into decline.
My FoI requests to the British government reveal that it has made no contingency plans. The issue remains the preserve of beardy lentil-eaters such as, er, the US joint forces com- mand. Its latest report on possible future conflicts maintains that "a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity".

It suggests that "by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10m barrels per day". A global oil shortage would soon expose the weaknesses of our complex economic systems. As the cultural anthropologist Joseph Tainter has shown, their dependence on high energy use is one of the factors that makes complex societies vulnerable to collapse.

His work has helped to overturn the old assumption that social complexity is a response to surplus energy. Instead, he proposes, complexity drives higher energy production. While complexity solves many problems -- such as reliance on an exclusively local and therefore vulnerable food supply -- it's subject to diminishing returns. In extreme cases, the cost of maintaining such systems causes them to collapse.

Tainter gives the example of the western Roman empire.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine sought to rebuild their diminished territories: "The strategy of the later Roman empire was to respond to a near-fatal challenge in the third century by increasing the size, complexity, power, and costliness of... the government and its army. ... The benefit/cost ratio of imperial government declined.
In the end the western Roman empire could no longer afford the problem of its own existence." The empire was ruined by the taxes and levies on manpower Diocletian and Constantine imposed to sustain their massive system. Tainter contrasts this with the strategies of the Byzantine empire from the 7th century onwards. Weakened by plague and re-invasion, the government responded with a programme of systematic sim- plification. Instead of maintaining and paying its army, it grant- ed soldiers land in return for hereditary military service: from then on they had to carry their own costs. It reduced the size and complexity of the administration and left people to fend for themselves. The empire survived and expanded.

A similar process is taking place in Britain today: a simplifi- cation of government in response to crisis. But while the pub- lic sector is being pared down, both government and private enterprise seek to increase the size and complexity of the rest of the economy. If the financial crisis were the only constraint we faced, this might be a sensible strategy. But the energy costs, environmental impacts and vulnerability to disruption of our super-specialised society have surely already reached the point at which they outweigh the benefits of increasing complexity.

For the third time in two years we've discovered that fly- ing is one of the weakest links in our overstretched system.
In 2008, the rising cost of fuel drove several airlines out of business. The recession compounded the damage; the volcano might ruin several more. Energy-hungry, weather-dependent, easily disrupted, a large aviation industry is one of the hard- est sectors for any society to sustain, especially one beginning to encounter a series of crises. The greater our dependence on flying, the more vulnerable we are likely to become.

The state of global oil supplies, the industry's social and environmental costs and its extreme vulnerability mean that current levels of flying -- let alone the growth the government anticipates -- cannot be maintained indefinitely. We have a choice. We can start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it. Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means.

The Guardian

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

LOST IN RANCHI

 

The BJP may be inclined to blame it all on a Lok Sabha vote gone awry. Having staked political capital on rallying support to cut motions in an effort this week to find out the UPA's numbers in the Lok Sabha, its own tally was found to be one ally short. Shibu Soren, the chief minister of Jharkhand, who is still a member of the House (pending election to the state assembly, but that is another drama), had voted with the treasury benches. Even as the BJP cried betrayal, the comic situation it's found itself in yields from more than the vote.

 

Consider the entreaties from Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha that BJP leaders have had to field. Soren's vote was a mistake, born of confusion and not intent to side with the UPA. And if Soren had indeed created bad faith, why not just abandon him and carry on the BJP's coalition with the JMM by anointing another chief minister? And however much the BJP clarifies it, the postponement of the meeting with Jharkhand Governor M.O.H. Farook to formally withdraw support only gave strength to speculation that it was considering the merit in these arguments by the JMM. If the BJP today finds itself caught in a trivialised politics, the reason goes beyond the cut motion. It draws from an alliance clearly of convenience that was put together in December 2009 — and the lack of political coherence was made evident right at the beginning when Soren called off anti-Naxal operations without a strong response from the BJP. Of course, Jharkhand's record of statehood is one of alliances of pure convenience, without even the semblance of any common programme for governance — and in this both national parties have been complicit, with Soren himself being in and out of alliance with the Congress in the recent past.

 

This entrenched culture of political expediency has, predictably, resulted in a governance deficit. But it has also fed the stereotype of government in the resource-rich state as a facilitator in deal-making. Jharkhand's sorrow is that Madhu Koda's case has become emblematic of governance in a state which was won as the flagship of tribal entitlement. To blame it on split verdicts would be a mistake. Blame it instead on a politics that's reduced itself to just a numbers game.

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

 

MOVING ON, SLOWLY

 

On April 28, the Supreme Court of India upheld actor Khushboo's constitutional right to free speech and quashed 22 cases of criminal defamation filed against her. The apex court's decision comes almost five years after her comments on pre-marital sex. In those five years, Khushboo's life was made hell. Violent protests were staged; case after case was filed against her in different courts. During one of her many court appearances, she was pelted with eggs and tomatoes. Now that she has finally been found innocent, who is to blame for what she has suffered? Opportunistic politics and moral policing are, of course, the usual suspects. However, the incident also asks a big question of our legal system: given the delays, is not the process much too often a punishment?

 

As of 2009, there were around four million cases pending in the high courts and 27 million in the lower judiciary, as per one estimate. Apart from procedural hurdles like adjournments, there is a paucity of resources. A million Indians share, among them, a mere 10 judges. There is then the government problem, meaning that India's largest litigant clogs up the courts with unviable appeals. Law Minister Veerappa Moily has spoken of the need for an "internal mechanism" to reduce government litigation. Such a mechanism must disincentivise needless appeals while protecting civil servants from an archaic provision of law that links file closure with corruption. But the law ministry is still to flesh out its "internal mechanism". In a similar vein, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan emphasised, on April 25, the need for more judges and courts to combat case pendencies. It is hoped that this too is followed by a time-bound action plan.

 

The costs of judicial delay are not just that the process becomes a punishment. Delay enables the guilty to push the verdict into the future, buying time while the grinding wheels of justice move ever so slowly. From their statements, it appears that both the higher judiciary and the law minister are seized of this problem. But, as with the legal process, time is of the essence.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

LAB ACCIDENT

 

After the lethal cobalt-60 found in a scrapyard in Delhi's Mayapuri left seven people seriously ill from radiation exposure and killed one, India has been forced to confront its spotty record with radioactive waste. While fingers were first pointed abroad, the problem turned out to be home-grown — from an imported gamma irradiator machine from Delhi University's chemistry department that had been stashed in a storeroom for 25 years, and then thoughtlessly auctioned off as scrap to dealers in Mayapuri. The dealers peeled off the lead covering, leading to the radiation exposure. Of course, Delhi University has failed to conform to the standards expected of any minimally responsible research unit — but the incident has also highlighted how weak the regulatory shield around radioactive material is.

 

India has long been lax about the ways in which industrial equipment and medical scanners with radioactive content are disposed of. Our vast recycling market, which scavenges and smelts metal to recast and sell, is largely unmonitored at each link of the chain. Data is dated and incomplete and despite limits set by the Environment Protection Act (last amended in 2003), a city like Delhi is still dotted with illegal dumping sites. While India plans to install radioactive detectors at all ports to ensure that no toxic material slips in from abroad, there is no point of scrutiny at the foundries.

 

This legal framework is just as vague — neither the Bio Medical Waste Rules 1998 nor the Hazardous Wastes (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules cover norms for radioactive waste-management and disposal, though a comprehensive set of rules on electronic waste under the Environment Protection Act is being drafted. Indicating helplessness, the government has also pointed to the fact that no law exists for civil compensation for these victims of radioactive accidents. One can only hope that this incident, which has exposed our criminal carelessness about hazardous waste, will finally galvanise the government to put safeguards in place.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

BACK TO COURT

EJAZ HAIDER

 

Social science has recorded, and tried to understand, the incidence of transformative processes, including revolutions; scholars have sought to nuance the idea and differentiate between political and social revolutions. If the current high tide of judicialisation of politics in Pakistan is anything to go by, we might have to add another category to the literature on transformative processes — judicial revolution.

 

But let's start with some facts.

 

After the February 2008 elections, there was an overall demand from all political parties to revisit the Constitution and cleanse it of the toxics put in it by military dictators. A committee was formed with representatives from almost all political parties. The debate was intensive, spanned some nine months and reviewed over 100 clauses of the Constitution. The result: the Eighteenth Amendment.

 

The procedure is not as rigid as envisaged by the United States Constitution but difficult enough, requiring two-thirds majority of both Houses of Parliament, to push an amendment through. The reason: an amendment, as opposed to simple legislation, must reflect the broadest possible will of the people through their representatives.

 

End of the story? No. One of the changes, the new Article 175, which deals with the appointment of judges, has become the red rag for the judicial bull. Instead of the Chief Justice of Pakistan deciding in his infinite wisdom who to appoint as a judge of the superior courts, there shall henceforth be a two-tier process. A judicial commission shall nominate judges who shall be appointed, unless vetoed with a three-fourths majority by a parliamentary commission.

 

This new provision regarding the appointment of judges has now been challenged in the Supreme Court as a violation of the basic structure of the Constitution. Such challenges are now routine but what makes these particular ones worth noting is that they are filed not only by the usual legal flotsam but also by the Supreme Court Bar Association.

 

Reinforcements have come from one media group which has decided to headline and front-page warnings of an impending "judicial crisis" when there is none in sight. And the rest of the media, barring some exceptions, instead of checking the law, has blithely and blindly followed the trend.

 

The question: can the Pakistani Supreme Court strike down a constitutional amendment? The answer: yes, it can. The reference: the Indian Supreme Court's judgment in the Kesavananda Bharati case. Of course, the reference completely ignores the fact that this judgment was rejected, by name, by the Pakistan Supreme Court less than five years ago! The court's argument: "The position adopted by the Indian Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati case is not necessarily a doctrine which can be applied unthinkingly to Pakistan. Pakistan has its own unique political history and its own unique judicial history."

 

Despite the transparent attempts to whip up hysteria, the hope was that better sense would prevail and the judiciary would resist the calls to challenge Parliament's turf. This impression was reinforced by the fact that the bench announced by the chief justice to deal with the Eighteenth Amendment was composed of five members and hence bound by the 2005 judgment in which the Supreme Court had unequivocally stated that it did not have the power to strike down a constitutional amendment.

 

The impression was short-lived. On its very first meeting the five-member bench threw the gauntlet by requesting the chief justice to form a bigger bench, if not to convene the full court to deal with this issue. Whither now? One thing is clear. If the chief justice grants the bench its request, the court would be on a warpath with Parliament. One can say, somewhat indignantly, that Pakistan faces bigger problems than the method by which judges are to be appointed; or, even, that the Eighteenth Amendment represents the single biggest gain for parliamentary democracy since the promulgation of the 1973 Constitution.

 

But there are more cogent arguments against what the judiciary might be spoiling for. For one, framing the Constitution is the preserve of Parliament. The judiciary can judge and interpret, not frame. There are precedents in case law to that effect. But more than that, the important question is, where must the judiciary draw the line? If judges have to go beyond interpreting into the domain of framing the Constitution, then we might as well send the legislators home.

 

Some members of the bar and former judges have begun trotting the argument that legislators do not have the capacity to judge the judges or understand subtleties. We have heard this argument before, except, until now, it was made by the army to justify its coups. One jurist friend dryly remarked that this "deliberate creation of a crisis leaves one with the impression of a temperamental diva, unable to come to grips with the fact that the camera is no longer focused on her fading charms."

 

The writer is national affairs editor, 'Newsweek Pakistan'

 

express@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

UPSTAGING THEORIES

MK VENU

 

One can sense a lot of creative tension within the Congress leadership over how to intellectually nuance the discussion over the growing Maoist threat in different parts of the country. This debate seems to have gathered fresh momentum after the ambush of over 70 CRPF personnel by Maoists in Dantewada. Many agree that by ignoring development in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and West Bengal, the Indian state created conditions over the decades for the Maoists to take control. So there is a growing consensus developing within the Congress that much more redistributive intervention may be needed in the backward regions of the country to give a renewed boost to the development agenda, and consequently blunt the edge of ultra left-wing movements that have taken roots in a third of India's districts.

 

In a way the growing Maoist presence appears to have further strengthened the section within the Congress which has always had a strong left-of-centre bias. Indeed, this section had very close relations with Left leaders and often acted as mediators between the Congress leadership and the CPM on critical issues during the UPA's first tenure. The left-of-centre group within the Congress would often fire from the CPM's shoulders, and vice versa, for greater socialist intervention.

 

Both Sonia Gandhi and the Nextgen Congress leadership led by Rahul Gandhi have a strong bias for redistributive intervention even while letting the government pursue its market-based economic reforms agenda. Now, there is bound to be creative tension between these two opposing ideological strains and that is part of a new dialectic that Indian politics is currently witnessing. Just note the manner in which the Planning Commission increased the population coverage for the proposed food security legislation. This was clearly done after pressure came from the left section of the Congress leadership! The revival of the National Advisory Council under Congress President Sonia Gandhi is clearly meant to institutionalise and give shape to this new dialectic of socialist intervention within the larger framework of capitalist growth agenda.

 

In a sense, this contradiction is most visible in the Maoist controlled areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Orissa which are rich in iron ore and other minerals. Big companies want to pump in huge capital to exploit these resources in the midst of resistance from local communities. There cannot be a better social science laboratory to understand how the dialectic of capitalism's historical and unrelenting march will get finessed by socialist interventions. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi are as much students of this laboratory as are those companies which want to create massive steel projects in these regions.

 

However, dealing with this Marxian contradiction is easier said than done. This requires an intuitive understanding of how to take society to a new social and material equilibrium without upsetting the applecart. Of course, Marx believed that an enlightened bourgeoisie would manage to take society to higher stages of material condition even as the owners of capital appropriate surplus value from labour. The bourgeoisie would also create a welfare framework, such as minimum wages, better work conditions and adequate pension, as seen in the West, in order to ensure a smooth functioning of capitalism. The question is, how will India's political class manage this fine balance as it comes under increasing pressure to move 60 per cent of its population from a feudal, pre-industrial condition of existence to a more modern capitalist framework. In some ways, the task for India is much harder as this transition process began in the West before democracy, with all its modern institutional attributes, was put in place. In India, this transition is occurring in the midst of a robust, often fractious, democratic political process.

 

Therefore, managing the contradiction between capitalism's march and simultaneous welfare interventions, both of which would appear necessary, will have to be thought through in a rigorous manner.

 

Off-the-cuff and random interventions, like the one made by Congress leader Digvijay Singh, will not necessarily help matters.

 

The Congress's dilemma is somewhat similar to that of the CPM's in West Bengal after it did badly in the Lok Sabha elections. The failure of the Left Front was analysed in a lucid article by Prabhat Patnaik, a professor of economics at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and a CPM ideologue, where he implied that the Left (read Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) in West Bengal did not have enough theoretical clarity that socialist intervention must be a constant process, softening the inherently surplus-seeking tendency of capitalism. He also suggested that the Left perhaps got misled by the "stage theory" which implies socialist intervention is only possible after capitalism has somewhat matured and created enough surplus value that can be redistributed. Translated in plain terms, what Patnaik probably meant was Buddhadeb did not do enough in terms of assuring people of their long-term livelihood before launching the massive industrialisation programme in West Bengal.

 

This also seems to be the Congress's main dilemma today in the context of allowing massive capital infusion for exploiting India's rich mineral resources in the tribal areas. It is under pressure to clear the forests of Maoists so that businesses can smoothly implement big steel projects. For that the state also has to put in place proper rehabilitation programmes for the local, tribal populations and ensure they have a long-term stake in these projects.

 

Though Patnaik rejects the "stage theory", in advanced capitalist societies this seems to have worked quite well. For instance in America, substantial socialist interventions came after massive surplus value got created over the decades through the advance of capitalism. Take the case of just two icons of American capitalism, General Motors and Ford. In the '60s, the two companies committed substantial post-retirement pension benefits to their workers. This was subsequently derived from the surplus value created by the companies. At one stage, the cost of pension benefits amounted to nearly a fifth of the price of a car. This was the cause of GM and Ford's near bankruptcy in 2008 when the US government intervened with a big bailout packages to sustain the pension benefits of workers. The lesson here is that more substantive state intervention can come after adequate surpluses are created by capital accumulation. It is to be seen whether this model works in a fractious polity such as India's.

 

The writer is Managing Editor, 'The Financial Express'

 

mk.venu@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE INDIAN TAMASHA LEAGUE

SANJAY JHA

 

Dad, I know who is going to win the finals today, said my daughter. No you don't, I said, dismissing her with the same casual flourish with which the IPL commissioner promised to swat away Shashi Tharoor. She was as adamant as teenagers usually are: I know. Everyone is saying it.

 

Yes, really? Who and how did you figure that one out?

 

It's fixed, Dad. You should know.

 

Those are just silly rumours, I said, feigning indifference. I moved on but I am compelled to revisit the mood and the moments of just a few weeks ago.

 

I have never been the IPL sort, so had stubbornly resisted the occasional urge to go and see the circus. It helped that the 2008 matches were held at that collapsing monstrosity, the Wankhede, where if you left your precious seat for even a moment, by the time you returned a different posterior would claim to be its legitimate title holder. IPL 2 was abruptly transported to South Africa, and it wasn't worth flying eight hours to watch a three-hour gig. IPL 3 was back in familiar territory; better still, it was being held in the Cricket Club of India, of which I am fortunately a member. But I still resisted.

 

However, IPL's marketing mantra clearly worked. My tennis-playing, football-watching daughter said: can I go for the IPL match this weekend? For a cricketing purist that was sacrilege, but she was going with a whole bunch of equally excited chums so the blasphemy angle was promptly discarded — a convenient excuse for me too.

 

At first, what hit me in the CCI was the maddening noise, sustained efficiently at high decibel levels throughout the match. Every time there was a dull session (meaning not a single six) the DJs would punctuate the "terrible boredom" with a typical ear-splitting truck horn, and, like in Pavlov's famous experiment, the crowd would respond with an equally loud, incoherent cheer.

 

The advertising sideboards flashed brightly, shuffling between sponsors. The giant scoreboard flashed ads even during the over; during the action replay one could see players check their acrobatics on it with a satisfied smugness. Intermittently, giant lights flashed on and off for no perceptible reason, as if to remind us that electric power supply was a national priority. When the match got over, it was like a Diwali firecracker display that nobody really cared for.

 

The Mexican wave usually started from the vociferous east stands, after a few aborted attempts. When it reached the more stuffed-up pavilions of the glitterati it fizzled out. My daughter enjoyed it; she and I exchanged SMSs, as she was in the family stand.

 

The DJs would periodically announce: Mumbai, do you want a six? The crowd yelled "Yes!", in a brilliantly coordinated chorus. I kept suspecting bowlers patiently awaited the DJ's cues before running in to bowl.

 

Cricket is not just innocuous entertainment in the IPL. It is like Roman gladiators on a giant 70 mm screen. To satisfy the bloodthirsty urges of its watchers, the demands for ruthless destruction from the willow, only sixes will do. As Kieron Pollard hammered one hapless soul into abject submission, the stadium burst into wild celebrations and paroxysms of derisive laughter.

 

The IPL also has an ingenious device to keep everyone on tenterhooks, awaiting fleeting fame, as anyone could, via TV cameras, appear on the giant screen at any time. Almost everyone secretly hopes to be there, briefly overshadowing Sachin Tendulkar. The lottery element is clearly central to the IPL, involving even the spectators.

 

In the distinguished members' enclosure, the aroma of fresh vegetables, blue cheese and garlic mayonnaise in Subway sandwiches dominated French perfume. People moved gingerly, balancing cans of beer in their forearms. Middle-aged couples bounced to the latest hits; the demographic dividend crowd exchanged SMSs as they sat next to each other in the din. Others blew franchise-branded horns, waved flags and had several curse them from behind for blocking the view.

 

Everyone looked everywhere but at the cricket pitch, where attention was diverted only when the bowler ran in to bowl. Everyone had presumably concluded that field placements in the IPL are superfluous. In fact, most seemed more glued to TV sets, strategically placed to ensure that they did not miss out if Shah Rukh Khan decided to drop casually in. Usually, all dismissals were first spotted there, rather than on the field right in front.

 

After the first few games, I felt a sense of ennui and forced exhilaration , but I may have been a solitary figure out here. I couldn't care less, though. I had conceded partial defeat to the oversold commercial logic that the IPL reflected genuine consumer demand being professionally satiated by franchise owners. If IPL was indeed a reality of our times, so be it, and frankly, how did my opinion matter?

 

But then, just as suddenly, chaos. Modi tweeted. A minister resigned, million-dollar kick-backs were discussed, IT raids followed; slush money trails, conflicts of interest, shameless profiteering, and political involvement became the new evening distraction. Then someone talked of betting syndicates, and before long the dreaded shadow of match-fixing made its appearance after a decade in hibernation.

 

My daughter watched all seven of the Mumbai Indians' local matches at CCI over the past few weeks, bunking tuitions, missing play practice, sleeping late at night, following Tiwary's heroics. But, on the Monday morning that followed the IPL final late Sunday night, she went to school not even wanting to know if they won the final.

 

Jha is the author of '11 — Triumphs,Trials and Turbulence: Indian Cricket 2003-2010', to be published soon

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

EUROPE UNDER THE ASH        

 

Eyjafjallajokull, that unpronounceable volcano, prompted inevitable chatter about nature's awesome fury and the inadequacy of human invention to deal with it. Few Europeans had even heard of the volcano before, and they marveled at, but mostly grumbled about, how such widespread havoc could be caused by such teensy particles of ash, adrift from Iceland. On the whole, Europeans tend to forget about Iceland until some fresh calamity compels their attention. The last was the banking implosion, and a line making the rounds in Europe has it that Iceland's final wish after its economy kicked the bucket was to spread its ashes across Europe.

 

Other jokes were even worse. Unforeseen though the event with Eyjafjallajokull was, it seems to have liberated Europeans to traffic in some predictable, hoary, but affectionately intended stereotypes about one another. Globalisation notwithstanding, supposed national traits prove to be surprisingly resilient, and on one level today they're also instructive.

 

So, initially there were the Italian authorities lingering over a second espresso during what they hoped was a crisis only for northern Europeans — which, predictably, it wasn't. And then it was like a Zeffirelli opera production. The Italian Civil Protection Agency had to set up hundreds of cots and air beds at Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome. Railway stations, meanwhile, became mob scenes, endless lines forming before ticket machines that took forever to work or too frequently didn't.

 

Fortunately, Italians are compassionate people, and the national public transport unions (trains, buses and subways) postponed a planned strike — unlike those in France. True to form, French workers declined to pause a strike that had begun before the ash arrived, volcano be damned. Thus, it was theoretically possible to travel by train from, say, Paris to Geneva, but not Paris to Bordeaux, exacerbating the general level of chaos and grief. When air travel resumed, the strike ended.

 

Not to be outdone, the Greeks, in a defensive lather owing to their self-inflicted economic meltdown, seized the moment to stage a strike or two of their own. Greek civil servants struck, and so did a communist-backed union, disrupting ferry service.

 

Meanwhile, the British dispatched (what else?) the fleet, including the aptly named HMS Ark Royal, rescuing British tourists marooned in Calais and trouble spots like Ibiza, along with soldiers returning from Afghanistan. This allowed the beleaguered prime minister, Gordon Brown, behind in the polls but kind of rallying, briefly to play Lord Nelson.

 

And in Russia, as The New York Times reported, a sudden black market in transportation tickets, not all of them authentic, sprang up. Huge lines at Belorussky station made Soviet nostalgists misty eyed.

 

As for the Germans, at first they said don't blame anybody. Nobody was to blame. But once the German airlines started moaning about lost revenue and the German news media began to fume about how the German government, forever playing the oldest brother anxious to please its father, had once again rolled over, by acquiescing to the broad European flight ban without sending up its own test balloons, the issue became a business matter, and an economic scandal.

 

Treacherous though they can be, different responses to Eyjafjallajokull nonetheless underscore, if nothing else, just how diverse Europe remains, culturally speaking, and how occasionally fractious is the unity of the European Union that ostensibly binds much of the continent together. Based on economic cooperation, the union has increasingly — and as it were after the fact — had to confront a barrage of moral, cultural and ethical issues like immigration and human rights. These are inextricable from economic welfare but pose a challenge to national sovereignty — the sort of issues the United States has grappled with from its founding.

 

In a nondescript building not far from the historic centre of Rome there is a sleek 24-hour command centre straight out of a James Bond villain's lair (minus the television screens playing Italian game shows), where military officials, meteorologists and emergency workers track all manner of potential natural calamities. From the center, aid to L'Aquila was swiftly coordinated after the earthquake struck last year.

 

At the heart of the centre is a cramped room devoted to the Big One: activity from hot spots like Mounts Vesuvius and Etna. Streaming videos deliver inky views inside the steaming volcanoes. The proud official in charge, the head of civil protection, Guido Bertolaso, explained on a late-night tour last year that this room was the ultimate reason the centre existed, a volcanic explosion posing a cataclysmic threat to Italy, and requiring perhaps the most coordinated planning and help.

 

The volcano. Nature has devised the perfect metaphor for the burden of unionhood, forcing Europeans to recognise, like it or not, that they are bound together, a family of nations, albeit with Iceland as the exceptional and slightly alarming cousin at the end of the dining room table who still believes in elves. According to Interfax, the Russian news agency, an organisation called the Association of Orthodox Experts piped up during the Eyjafjallajokull crisis in an attempt to link the volcanic ash to Iceland's role as a "centre of European neo-paganism of an Aryan occult kind." It turns out that, in addition to all its genuine woes, Iceland is headquarters to the Association of European Ethnic Religions, which brokered a merger between the World Pagan Assembly and the International Pagan Alliance.

 

Whatever. The point is that families have to pull together when there's trouble, as did those Italians stuck in Victoria Station in London. They found each other, bonded, hired a van and drove back home.

 

It's another Italian stereotype: only notionally a nation much of the time, a family in a pinch.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WAITING FOR THE KING

ALIA ALLANA

 

The Thai armed forces opened fire, but the Red Shirts refused to budge. Farmers still sat outside the Louis Vuitton and Prada stores; the stores remained shut. Bangkok's elite stayed holed up in their homes; government officials jumped out of windows as the Reds broke into government buildings. Streets normally, famously jam-packed with cars now held human traffic jams, the sound of engines replaced by chants of "down with dictatorship". What started seven weeks ago as a movement to unseat current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva lingers on today — with the prospect of further escalation.

 

The Red Shirts called for fresh elections, they questioned the constitution and marched through the streets of Bangkok. Rallies were held, financial districts became camp sites. When the Reds broke into government buildings, the riot police were called in and yet the Reds soldiered on — for they believed that what they had failed to achieve over the past five years could be a possibility now. After all, this time it was not just the farmers, peasants and rural folk dissenting: lower middle class Bangkok had joined in too. The support base was growing, slowly.

 

Vejjajiva's request for military intervention, and the decision by the armed forces to open fire on protestors, has made the situation in Thailand more complex. For one, over the past five years the streets have been dominated by two political colours: red and yellow. March 10, however saw men in black; their faces hidden behind balaclavas, toting guns. The Reds claim to have nothing to do with them, but both are fighting on the same side. An executive order is in place to hunt down the terrorists, interrogate any suspects, to imprison them if there's any doubt.

 

Few things remain constant in the Thai political landscape. But primary amongst them is the power of the army. Thailand underwent a political restructuring in the 1930s — absolute monarchy was replaced with constitutional monarchy, but the new constitution was much too weak. Political institutions too were underdeveloped, the legislature given limited power. Thus in the absence of a fully functioning civilian regime a politicised military grew in power, scope and importance.

 

In 1997, finally, a progressive constitution was written; it was after the drafting of this constitution that Thaksin Shinawatra came to power. Yet Thaksin is something of the villain in the Bangkok plot. How? Through his manipulation of the 1997 constitution. The new constitution allowed for increased power for political parties: Thaksin banked on this and used it to strengthen his party, Thai Rak Thai. It was this power that allowed him to control the legislature and ensure that key bodies — the Auditor General's Office and National Counter Corruption Commission — remained under his control. Simply put, his control was so far-reaching it silenced the opposition. But he angered the elite, and the elite and military have a close kinship. Thus the coup that overthrew the wildly popular PM.

 

The current protests, though pitted between the rural and urban (the north and the south) also need to be viewed through a post-Thaksin prism. Thaksin created anger at the traditional wealthy of Bangkok. One scholar at the Council for Foreign Relations in New York puts it thus: "the struggle is a battle between elites. Thaksin, a hard-driving telecommunications billionaire, symbolised new wealth in Thailand, which has developed an antagonistic relationship with the scions of older power, who tended to look down on the nouveau riche like Thaksin and his close associates."

 

Thus the on-going chaos. In the past five years, the two governments that were elected following Thaksin's self-imposed exile were affiliated to him. This further irked both the military and the elite.

 

Experts expect military involvement to only increase. James Ockey, the scholar of Southeast Asia, has written that the military have traditionally had a sense of entitlement in Thailand's political affairs that stems from their very first intervention, the 1932 coup that led to the overthrow of the monarchy. Military involvement is always an option.

 

But the matter gets murkier. Factions within the military are divided on the sort of response to the current crisis. Thai specialist Surachart Bumrungsuk says there is a division in tactics: on the one hand General Anupong — the current armed forces commander, on his way out — prefers a softer response, and political dialogue. Second in line General Prayuth Chan-ocha "would have liked a harder crackdown."

 

Ultimately there is only one real mediator in Thailand: King Bhumibol Adulyadej, to whom both factions claim allegiance. Thus far he has spoken very briefly asking for "restraint." It was he who mediated during the 1973 student uprising and in the 1992 anti-military protests. As the situation on the street unfolds, spectators can only wait for the king.

 

alia.allana@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

A NEW GROUND ZERO

 

A few weeks ago, traveling in Kazakhstan, I had the sobering experience of standing at Ground Zero. This was the notorious test site at Semipalatinsk, where the USSR detonated 456 nuclear weapons. There was little on the vast and featureless steppe to distinguish this place. Yet for decades it was an epicentre of the Cold War — like similar sites in the US, a threat to life on our planet. Its dark legacy endures: poisoned rivers and lakes, children suffering from cancer and birth defects.

 

Today, Semipalatinsk has become a powerful symbol of hope. On August 29, 1991, shortly after Kazakh independence, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, closed it and abolished nuclear weapons. It was a tangible expression of a dream that has long eluded us — a world free of nuclear weapons.

 

Now, for the first time in a generation, we can be optimistic. On the day I visited Semipalatinsk, President Obama announced a review of the US' nuclear posture. It renounced the development of new nuclear weapons and foreswore their first use against nations in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Two days later, President Obama and Russian President Medvedev, signed a new START treaty in Prague — a fresh start on a truly noble aspiration.

 

Momentum is building around the world. Governments and civil society groups, often at odds, have begun working in common cause. At the recent nuclear security summit in Washington, 47 world leaders agreed to do whatever is necessary to keep such weapons and materials safe. Their shared sense of urgency reflects an accepted reality. Nuclear terrorism is not a Hollywood fantasy. It can happen.

 

The United Nations is destined to be at the centre of these efforts. I proposed a five-point nuclear action plan in late 2008, as well as a historic summit meeting of the Security Council last September. On Monday, leaders come together at the UN for the periodic NPT review conference. Their last gathering, five years ago, was a failure. This year we can look for advances on a range of issues.

 

We should not be unrealistic in our expectations. But neither can we afford to lose this opportunity for progress: on disarmament; on compliance with non-proliferation commitments; on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

 

Looking ahead, I have proposed a UN conference later this year to review the implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. We will host a ministerial-level meeting to push the pace on bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force, and I have urged leaders to begin negotiations for a binding treaty on fissile materials. In October, the General Assembly will consider more than 50 resolutions on various nuclear issues. Our aim: to take the many small steps, today, that will set the stage for a larger breakthrough tomorrow.

 

All this work reflects the priorities of our member states, shaped in turn by public opinion. Everyone recognises the catastrophic danger of nuclear weapons. Just as clearly, we know the threat will last as long as these weapons exist. The earth's very future leaves us no alternative but to pursue disarmament. And there is little prospect of that without global cooperation.

 

Where, if not at the United Nations, could we look for such cooperation? Bilateral and regional negotiation can accomplish much, but long-lasting and effective cooperation on a global scale requires more. The UN is the world's sole universally accepted arena for debate and concord, among nations as well as broader society. It serves not only as a repository of treaties but also of information documenting their implementation. It is a source of independent expertise.

 

The United Nations stands today at a new Ground Zero — a "ground zero" for global disarmament, no longer a place of dread but of hope. Those who stand with us share the vision of a nuclear-free world. If ever there were a time for the world's people to demand change, to demand action beyond the cautious half measures of the past, it is now.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 REGULATION AFTER GOLDMAN

There is suddenly a renewed momentum to overhauling financial regulation in the US, following the SEC's charge of fraud against what is arguably the world's most reputed investment bank—Goldman Sachs. The accusation against Goldman is that it knowingly sold investment products certain to fail to unwitting clients. The charge will, of course, have to be proved in a court of law. But in the court of public opinion, the shadow of suspicion is itself very damaging, coming right after widespread anger over huge profits and massive bonus packages being reported at America's leading banks, the very ones that the wider public holds responsible for precipitating the financial crisis in the first place. The political class has little choice but to do something substantive to overhaul regulations. Of course, some of the elements of the overhaul proposed earlier this year in January are likely to be less contentious, like new regulations for credit card lenders and mortgage lenders. Reckless lending (and borrowing) was after all at the base of the financial crisis. There is also likely to be some new regulation—the details will, of course, be debated—on limiting the size of large financial institutions to prevent another 'too big to fail' event. There is still little agreement on how a bailout, if necessary, will be funded—the IMF proposals may not cut much ice with the US Congress.

 

However, the most contentious proposal is likely to be the one known as the Volcker Rule, which will ban proprietary trading by all deposit-taking institutions that in the post-crisis phase include the likes of Goldman Sachs. The logic is simple enough. Banks get excessively leveraged to engage in trading for their own profit, whereas they ought only to be trading their clients' money. If restricted to the latter, leverage in banks will obviously come down automatically. Combined with another proposal on making the trading of derivatives completely transparent (no OTCs), there will also be less likelihood of banks peddling fraudulent/'likely to fail' products. Wall Street will obviously oppose such stringent regulations. After all, most of their profits in recent times, before and after the crisis, have come from the very proprietary trading that is now proposed to be banned. Wall Street will inevitably be able to drum up some political support to nix these regulations, but in the aftermath of the exposure of Goldman's dubious practices, it is becoming harder to argue that such stringent regulations are not necessary. Free enterprise is a good thing but reckless practices by a select few cannot be allowed to hold the whole system hostage.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 GETTING POWER TRADING RIGHT

 

The reported move of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to discourage power trading through unscheduled interchange (UI) and encourage greater use of power exchanges by imposing an additional charge of 40% on UI trading is a welcome step. The UI mechanism, an indigenously developed innovative model that had successfully enforced greater grid discipline, is now creating distortions in the market as many potential buyers preferred to use the UI mechanism for trading instead of the exchanges. In fact, numbers for 2009 show that although the volume of the short-term power trade through UI transactions was comparable to transactions using trading licences and much higher than that through even the two power exchanges. The UI mechanism originally evolved in response to the chaotic conditions in an earlier era, where grid operators were faced with the challenge of relentlessly enforcing some semblance of order, as power producers and distribution utilities pumped in or withdrew power from the grid with impunity, thereby threatening the very reliability of the network. The UI mechanism replaced this command and control system with a contractual approach under which a schedule of supply and demand for power was worked out and priced as per the agreement between buyers and sellers. Any deviations from meeting this previously agreed demand-supply schedule are termed unscheduled interchanges or UIs and the suppliers or purchasers have to pay for their errant behaviour at a real-time market determined rate. This not only encouraged greater grid discipline but also ensured some flexibility in operations. The UI prices also served as an indicative ceiling for traders in bulk electricity as the utility had the option to overdraw from the grid instead of buying from other sources in the short-term markets if the real-time prices were lower than those of the traders or in the power exchanges.

 

But over time, the UI mechanism has slowly evolved to become an alternative mechanism to formal trading as the potential buyers preferred to use this mechanism wherein the cost of transactions was lower as were power prices. In 2009, the average price of electricity transacted through traders was Rs 6.41/kWh, while it was Rs 5.73/kWh in the power exchanges and just Rs 4.99 for UI transactions. This has also created new problems for the transmission networks as the UI electricity transactions are very uncertain, forcing them to keep, as reserves, a relatively larger proportion of transmission capacity. The result is a distortion of the markets, which suggests that the UI system has outlived its utility. It is time to move ahead and work out new models for enforcing grid discipline.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

HOW WRONG IS GOLDMAN SACHS?

K VAIDYA NATHAN

 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) job is to regulate the securities industry and investigate wrongdoing, if any. However, it has managed to sleep through every bubble and bust in recent memory and has done virtually nothing by way of enforcement for years. It woke up from a long slumber this month and announced a civil fraud lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. The entire business world, including the stock markets, has gone hammer and tongs about Goldman because it is a done thing to call names, when the mighty falls. Its stock price has come down from $185 on April 14 to $153 as of April 28. It is not as if Goldman hasn't done anything wrong. It has. However, it isn't a blood-sucking greedy Dracula that it is being made out to be. Before we get on with Goldman bashing, let's understand the facts of the case that the SEC has filed against the investment bank.

 

The SEC on April 16 brought securities fraud action against Goldman and a Goldman employee, Fabrice Tourre, a 31-year-old vice-president working at the structured product correlation trading desk. This desk was created in early 2005. One of the services it provided was the structuring and marketing of a series of CDOs called Abacus whose performance was tied to residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS), which are the collateral used in Abacus. The RMBS does well if house owners are paying their EMIs. If the homeowners default on their home loans, the RMBS's price goes down. If the collateral value goes down, the CDO price, too, goes downhill. Let's say, I bought a house for Rs 90 lakh by taking a loan for Rs 80 lakh from a bank. If my house is worth only Rs 30 lakh now, I would rather want that the bank takes possession of the house and suffer the loss, than me suffering the loss by repaying the loan of Rs 80 lakh.

 

In the case filed by SEC, Goldman is supposed to have misled their clients into buying CDOs linked to subprime RMBS. The reason they purportedly did it was that another client of Goldman—a hedge fund—wanted to sell those CDOs. This hedge fund called 'Paulson Credit Opportunity Fund' was run by John Paulson (not to be confused with Henry Paulson, the former treasury secretary and CEO of Goldman). Paulson wanted to take a bearish view of subprime mortgage loans. He was betting that the subprime loans would go bad. He needed somebody with whom he could play this bet, so that if his view turned out to be right, he could make money. It was a zero sum game like any other bet. And he got Goldman to get the other party who would bet the other way round by taking a view in 2007 that subprime assets were good. He got the bet bang on—the consequent subprime meltdown, as they say, is history. And did he make some money! He became a multi-billionaire by getting his bets right and is now the 45th richest man on earth with a net worth of $12 billion.

 

Although the jury is out and Goldman, for its part, is trying to say all the right things, I think that Goldman did intentionally mislead its investors by not disclosing that they were structuring this transaction because another client wanted to bet against the subprime loans. Is it a normal market practice among investment banks? Surprise: yes it is. Were these investors to whom they were peddling this stuff naïve. No, they were not. It wasn't as if Goldman was selling this to grandpas and grandmas who had no clue about CDOs. The investors were financial institutions, albeit not as smart and sophisticated as a Goldman or a John Paulson. True, it is unlikely that the investors would have bought CDOs had Goldman disclosed the information that another hedge fund was shorting it. If investment banks were as squeaky clean and honest, they would not be able to do a very large portion of the business they do right now. This is not to suggest that such behaviour should be condoned. Just that, that's how the financial markets are, or for that matter all markets are. It is similar to a vegetable vendor palming off rotten stuff to you because somebody else wants to sell it and the vendor is getting paid well to do the selling. Paulson paid Goldman about $15 million to structure and market Abacus. As an investor, it does hurt that you bought financial instruments from the market leader with an enviable reputation and the stuff turned out to be rotten. It is unethical for sure, but I suppose Goldman would be upbeat about defending itself.

 

The SEC had been sleeping all this while, impervious to such practices. Now that it has woken up, it might be a good idea to focus on regulations that would help clean the stables. The easy thing to do, however, would be to investigate this case and then put the blame for everything on Goldman and go back to sleep again.

 

The author, formerly with JPMorganChase, is CEO, Quantum Phinance

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

METHODS OF VALUING SHARE PRICES

SATVIK VARMA

 

On April 7, 2010, RBI issued a notification to amend the Foreign Exchange Management (Transfer or Issue of Security by a Person Resident outside India) Regulations. The amendments, published in the Official Gazette on April 21, 2010, came into force from the date of their publication and amend inter alia the method of calculating the price at which shares are issued to non-residents.

 

Prior to the above stated amendments, a person residing outside India, or an entity outside India, whether incorporated or not, could purchase shares of Indian companies in keeping with the FDI guidelines and the FDI scheme, which forms a part of the regulations. For the shares of an unlisted company, the scheme stipulates that the price of shares issued to non-residents shall not be less than the fair valuation of shares done by a chartered accountant as per the guidelines issued by the erstwhile Controller of Capital Issues (CCI guidelines).

 

Under the CCI guidelines, if the consideration payable for the transfer does not exceed Rs 20 lakh per seller per company, then the price may be mutually agreed upon between the seller and the buyer. It should be based on any valuation method currently in vogue and must be substantiated by a certificate issued by the statutory auditors of the unlisted company whose shares are being transacted. Where the consideration exceeds Rs 20 lakh, the price taken is the lower of the two independent valuations of shares, one by the statutory auditors of the company, and the other by a chartered accountant or by a merchant banker registered with Sebi. These valuations could be based either on the net-asset value method or the profit earning capacity value method.

 

With the April amendment, the pricing of shares issued should not be less than the fair valuation of shares carried out by a Sebi-registered merchant banker or a chartered accountant as per the discounted cash flow method (DCF method). Although not defined under the regulations or the Foreign Exchange Management Act, the DCF method relates the value of an asset to the current value of expected future cash flows of the asset. Notably, the method has previously been used by the department of disinvestment since it found favour in the disinvestment commission's recommendations for valuations of public sector undertakings. Considered fairly popular, the DCF method takes into account all the free cash flows available in the company by taking into account the cost of capital, the cost of debt, the cost of equity and market returns. It also takes into account the risk to which a corporation is exposed and attributes value to the non-core assets that may otherwise not be reflected in the cash flow of the company. The DCF method further takes into consideration the intangibles of a company like the brand, goodwill and market share, all of which have a significant bearing on a company's valuation.

 

Reflecting on the amendments to the share price valuation methodology, one can't help but note that while valuation methods use quantitative models to arrive at a determination, as the disinvestment commission observed, the input leaves plenty of room for subjective judgments. It is exactly for this reason that experts have for long argued that valuation must be differentiated from the price of the company. It is necessary to recognise that application of valuation methods depends on the intrinsic structure of the company being evaluated, the nature of the industry in which such a company operates and inherent strengths and weaknesses of the company. Since these factors are subject to constant change, so must the valuation. Interestingly, the above stated amendments, in so far as they relate to the issue of shares on a preferential allotment, are slightly unclear on the valuation process to be followed. It remains to be seen whether the erstwhile CCI guidelines will continue to apply to such preferential allotment or whether the regulator expects these valuations to be also based on the DCF method. Eventually, the process of price discovery needs to be transparent so that the seller is satisfied that the price paid by the buyer helps him realise the true value of the transaction.

 

The author is an advocate based in New Delhi. These are his personal views

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

RAJA JUMPS THE GUN

ANANDITA SINGH MANKOTIA

 

In the midst of the exuberance over ever-rising bids for the auctions of the 3G spectrum, the government seems to have once again lost sight of the misdemeanours of telecom minister A Raja. While it is common knowledge that the auctions took place despite him, the minister has left no stone unturned to spoil the government's party. He chose to speak to the media about 4G auctions, while the 3G auctions are still going on. Such remarks coming from the minister have the propensity to dampen the bids.

 

Perhaps that was an innocent act of folly, but what does one make of the minister's frequent remarks in the media over the last few days on the subject of how long the auctions would last, the point of price discovery, etc? Surely the minister should not speak on such sensitive matters as it could amount to dishing out insider information. In any case, even the minister should not be aware of such information.

 

So it was most off-putting to hear the minister tell the Rajya Sabha on Thursday that the auctions are expected to end in the next two days. Does this not send a hint to interested parties?

 

Such statements by A Raja convey to the operators that the government might increase the level of activity from the current 80% to 90% the next day. That can easily be taken as a cue to shift out from the category-A circles to the next rung of B and C. According to the auction guidelines, there are three parties involved, namely the DoT, which represents the owner of the spectrum to be auctioned; the auctioneer—NM Rothschild; and the bidders, the private operators.

 

In order to have a free and fair auction the rules allow all three parties to have the same level of information. All the bidders have been refrained from giving out any information regarding their plans and strategies during the auction and the only information available is the bid amounts at the end of a day and the number of operators bidding in each circle.

 

To prevent any leakage of information the government has even forbidden itself to act as proxy for bidding for operators in case of a technical hitch. Is it right then for Raja to speak on such matters while the process is on? Can he not wait for the auctions to end if he has to give his views on the entire process?

 

anandita.mankotia@expressindia.com

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

UNLIKELY FRIENDS

 

The euphoria in the United Progressive Alliance camp over the defeat of the Opposition-sponsored cut motions in the Lok Sabha is belied by the numbers: 289 for the government and 201 against. Exclude the Bahujan Samaj Party's 21 MPs — and it is immediately apparent that the Manmohan Singh government is a minority regime surviving on divisions within the Opposition, and leveraging its position to exploit the vulnerability of some of its rivals. That the dramatic rescue act by the BSP owes to some deft back-room understanding is plain enough. The larger question is the impact of this quid pro quo agreement on BSP-Congress relations in Uttar Pradesh. The BSP and the Congress have formally aligned just once, in 1996 when neither could have foreseen a situation where they would emerge as principal rivals in U.P. With 83 of 85 Lok Sabha seats from the State in 1984 and 269 of 425 Assembly seats in 1985, the Congress was master of all it surveyed in India's most populous State. Yet by 1991, the party was out of the reckoning in U.P. with only five seats in the Lok Sabha and 46 seats in the Assembly. While the Congress' marginalisation in U.P. was politically humiliating, it allowed the party the freedom to throw its weight behind whoever it perceived as a friend — the BSP in 1996 and the Samajwadi Party in later years, with a fair amount of cross-wooing thrown in.

 

Once Ms Mayawati wrested power from Mulayam Singh, the Congress's equation with the BSP changed — from on-again, off-again friendship to bitter rivalry accentuated by the deep personal animosity between the U.P. Chief Minister and Rahul Gandhi. The BSP chief and the Congress general secretary tend to bring out the worst in each other. The two fought bitter public battles much before the 2009 Lok Sabha election. The feud intensified after the Congress staged a surprise victory over the BSP. Not only has the Congress' rising star set himself the task of winning the 2012 U.P. Assembly election, he has left no one in doubt that he means to achieve this by weaning away Ms Mayawati's phenomenal Dalit following. But the BSP chief did not earn her formidable reputation for nothing. She has not deviated from the strategy of building an independent base and repeatedly testing its strength. Following her Lok Sabha setback, she has assiduously targeted her core constituency, placing Dalits in key positions of power and directing resources to Dalit-specific programmes. Against this background, it is difficult to see either party giving effect to the new 'friendship' forged at the Centre. It is a cardinal principle in politics that principal rivals cannot be friends. And that is how it looks, at least in U.P.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

GREECE IS NOT ALONE

 

Greece has confirmed its expected request to the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout of €45 billion as initial assistance in its economic crisis. Athens will have to pay out on bonds worth about €8.5bn which mature in May and also has to pay €54bn this year as debt-servicing on €300bn. In addition, the country's budget deficit for 2009-10 was 13.6 per cent of GDP, or about €300 billion; the eurozone rules allow member states only three per cent. As for the bailout itself, the EU as a whole cannot provide such. Individual member states will contribute €30 billion for three years at five per cent, with Germany and France providing half that sum; the IMF is due to contribute €15 billion. Conditions will most probably focus on public-sector cuts and substantial changes to the state-pension system. Early public reactions in Greece have been hostile, with demonstrators particularly resentful of IMF involvement. Financial markets have responded selectively, despite Standard and Poor's downgrading of Greece's debt rating to junk.

 

Kenneth Rogoff, a former IMF chief economist, points out that national debt defaults and restructurings usually follow banking crises. He concludes that Greece must do all it can now to maintain international financial credibility so as to avoid IMF-imposed restructuring in future. But the matter is more complex than this assessment suggests. First, Greece is hardly alone; the U.S. budget deficit for 2008-9 was 9.9 per cent and the U.K.'s was 10.9 per cent for 2009-10. Sweden has also survived a comparable crisis. Secondly, Ms. Merkel's party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), faces a hard reelection battle in the province of North Rhine-Westphalia and needs to talk tough on Greece. Thirdly, the preceding Greek government, a conservative one, hugely expanded public spending and the budget deficit, by increasing public-service employment and failing to tackle widespread tax fraud. Meanwhile, the EU's regulatory bodies did nothing about the country's rising budget deficit, and Greece colluded with an investment bank to falsify the figures. Finally, Prime Minister George Papandreou has announced measures to crack down on tax evasion, to raise taxes, and to cut the budget deficit by four percentage points in the current financial year. The EU is also likely to adopt tougher regulations, which will reduce the capacity of private players to attack member states through financial markets. The Greek crisis, though serious, gives the EU an opportunity to help a member state, curb predatory financiers, and improve its own institutions and procedures.

 

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

TOWARDS A TRUE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

THE CREATION OF FOUR REGIONAL COURTS OF APPEAL AS FINAL APPELLATE COURTS, WHILE RESTRICTING THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA TO ITS TRUE FUNCTION AS A CONSTITUTIONAL COURT, HAS BECOME IMPERATIVE.

K.K. VENUGOPAL

 

The importance of decentralisation of the administration of justice as a means of realising access to judicial institutions has been argued strongly by no less a distinguished jurist than V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India ("Questions of Judicial Access," The Hindu, February 3, 2010). Although Justice Krishna Iyer has advocated the setting up of four regional benches of the Supreme Court, I believe that the establishment, instead, of four regional Courts of Appeal (along the lines I suggested in the recent R.K. Jain Memorial Lecture) would be a more effective means to ensure that the poorest litigant from the farthest corner of India has inexpensive and ready access to justice. My proposal to create four regional Courts of Appeal as final appellate courts, while restricting the Supreme Court of India to its true function as a Constitutional Court, appeared to be acceptable to Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, who was the Chief Guest at the Lecture ("I Can't Let Apex Court Split: Chief Justice," DN A, January 31, 2010).

 

Over the last six decades, the Supreme Court's extraordinary power has manifested itself in the form of judgments encompassing every sphere of the nation's activity. No grievance has been too insignificant to attract the court's palliative and curative jurisdiction. Inspired by the desire to give true meaning to the Constitution's promise of justice, liberty and equality for all, no litigant has been turned away by the Supreme Court, and there is virtually no area of human endeavour in regard to which it has not exercised its jurisdiction, original or appellate.

 

There is, however, a price to be paid for the court's metamorphosis into a powerhouse of judicial activism: the problem of mounting arrears. As of September 2009, there were no less than 53,221 cases pending before the Supreme Court. Many would say that the writing was on the wall as early as in the 1970s. Arrears in the Supreme Court had leaped from 680 cases in 1950 to over 100,000 by 1989. The pendency of cases came down to 19,000 in 1997 due, in large part, to the manner in which petitions and interlocutory applications came to be numbered together. There has, however, been a worrying 150 per cent increase in total pendency between 1997 and 2009. In my view, this calls for a reassessment of the normative and constitutionally mandated role of the Apex Court. I am not convinced that merely augmenting the number of judges in the Supreme Court will solve the problem of arrears. On the contrary, there is good reason to believe that expanding the capacity of the court may aggravate rather than alleviate the inefficiencies in the current system.

 

A cursory glance at the Supreme Court's Practice and Procedure Handbook will reveal how far the court has strayed from its original character as a Constitutional Court and gradually converted itself into a mere court of appeal which has sought to correct every error it finds in the decisions of the 21 High Courts and numerous Tribunals from which appeals lie to it. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court may now be invoked in relation to matters falling within any of 45 categories listed in the Practice and Procedure Handbook. These include the entire gamut of routine cases involving labour law, the rent act, direct and indirect taxes, acquisition of land, service law, criminal law, family law, and so on. These 45 heads further have 140 sub-categories under which the court may be called upon to exercise its appellate jurisdiction. For example, there are 22 sub-categories under service matters alone and 35 sub-categories under indirect tax matters. Under family law matters, the court may be called upon to decide cases involving divorce by mutual consent, restitution of conjugal rights, child custody, adoption, minority and guardianship, alimony cases, and so on.

 

Surely, however generous one may be in seeking to render justice to all, it will be obvious to anyone that if an Apex Court attempts to adjudicate all such cases, it will defeat the great purpose for which the court was established under our constitutional system. In such a scenario, it necessarily has to accumulate vast arrears over a period of time, which will be impossible for it to clear in any foreseeable future. According to me, this is a self-inflicted injury and the cause of the malaise which has gradually eroded the confidence of litigants in the Apex Court, mainly because of its failure to hear and dispose of cases within a reasonable time-frame.

 

The effort, then, in the words of Justice K.K. Mathew, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, must be to voluntarily cut the coat of jurisdiction according to the cloth of the importance of the question, and not to expand the same with a view to satisfying every litigant who has the means to pursue his cause. I do not mean to imply that the Supreme Court should be the sole preserve of the wealthy or well-connected. Rather, it is my view that the cause of justice and the interests of the litigant public would be best served if the court entertains only those cases which measure up to the significance of national or public importance. It will be my thesis, for reasons to be stated presently, that cases which do not raise questions of national or public significance should be finally decided by intermediate courts which are to be created by an amendment to the Constitution.

 

Previous attempts to tackle arrears by making additions to the Bench have proven to be unsuccessful. The original strength of eight judges in 1950 has progressively been increased by amendments to the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act of 1956, to 11 in 1956, 14 in 1960, 18 in 1977, 26 in 1986 and 31, today. It is against this backdrop that I would suggest the creation of four regional or zonal Courts of Appeal that would absorb the 140 categories of cases spanning matrimonial, rent control, labour, service, land acquisition and other matters entertained by the Supreme Court today. These cases would belong to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of Appeal that would be established in the four regions of the country. The chartered High Courts of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, and additionally, the High Court of Delhi, could themselves well be the seats of these Courts of Appeal which would be manned by judges of the same calibre as the judges who would otherwise be elevated from the High Courts to the Supreme Court. The age of retirement of the Judges of the Courts of Appeal would be 65 as, logically, they would need to have a higher retirement age than Judges of the High Court. Correspondingly, the age of retirement of Supreme Court Judges may have to be enhanced to 68 or even 70 years as is common in countries like Australia and Canada. The Supreme Court would then be left with only those cases which would fall within the jurisdiction vested in it by the framers of the Constitution and covering essentially the following matters:

 

1. All matters involving substantial questions of law relating to the interpretation of the Constitution of India or matters of national or public importance;

 

2. Settling differences of opinion on important issues of law between High Courts or between Courts of Appeal;

 

3. Validity of laws, Central and State;

 

4. After the Kesavananda Bharati case, (1973) 4 SCC 217, the judicial review of Constitutional Amendments;

 

5. Resolving conflicts between States and the Centre or between two States, as well as the original jurisdiction to dispose of suits in this regard; and

 

6. Presidential References under Article 143 of the Constitution.

 

I would conceive that the Constitution would be amended by adding Article 136A, whereby the regional Courts of Appeal would exercise the powers which were hitherto being exercised by the Supreme Court under Article 136 of the Constitution. This means that the Courts of Appeal would finally decide all cases arising from the High Courts relating to the 140 sub-categories mentioned earlier, without any further appeal lying to the Supreme Court. If, however, any question arises before a Court of Appeal which would fall within the newly carved-out jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as elaborated above, it would refer the same to the Supreme Court for decision. Similarly, I would omit Article 32 from the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. This means that actions alleging breaches of fundamental rights would be brought before any of the Courts of Appeal instead of the Supreme Court which would only exercise its appellate jurisdiction in such cases if questions are presented whose resolution will have immediate importance far beyond the particular facts and parties involved.

 

( K.K. Venugopal is a Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India. This is the first part of a two-part article.)

 

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THE HINDU

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SENDERO LUMINOSO

INDIA NEEDS TO REFLECT ON THE LESSONS FROM PERU'S MURDEROUS MAOIST WAR, WHICH CLAIMED 70,000 LIVES.

PRAVEEN SWAMI

 

 "When the shooting began", wrote the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, "he thought it was thunder, another storm approaching. But he saw the sheer terror in the eyes of the creatures closest to him, and he saw how they went mad, running into each other, falling, getting into each others' way, blinded and stupefied by panic, unable to decide whether they should flee to open country or return to the caves and he saw the first ones whimper and fall, bleeding, their haunches opened, their bones splintered, their muzzles eyes ears torn apart by bullets."

 

Graceful vicuña, prized for their wool, lay dead all around. "In their world strategy", the young guerrilla who had led the killing explained to their caretaker Pedro Tinoco, "this is the role they've assigned us: Peruvians raise vicuñas. So their scientists can study them, so their tourists can take pictures of them. As far as they're concerned, you're worth less than these animals."

 

Four decades ago, Peru's Sendero Luminoso, or "the Shining Path", launched an insurgency almost unparalleled in its savagery — the inspiration for Mr. Llosa's masterpiece, Death in the Andes. Before it was eventually crushed by a brutal military campaign, seventy thousand lives were lost; half, Peru's Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) estimates, at the hands of the Maoists and a third to government bullets. Sendero began to fall apart after the 1992 arrest of its leader Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, but small numbers of insurgents continue to operate in Peru's jungles. The story of the Maoist group's life and death — and fears of its possible rebirth — hold lessons for India.

 

Peru first saw an insurgent movement in 1965, inspired by the uprising in Cuba. Less than six months on, they suffered a crushing defeat. The country's military, which deposed President Fernando Belaúnde Terry in 1968, learned some lessons from the experience and instituted land reforms.

 

During the tumult that preceded the 1965 uprising, Peru's communist party — the Partido Comunista del Peru, or PCP —split. In January 1964, a faction led by Saturnino Paredes set up the PCP- Bandera Roja, or "Red Flag". In 1970, Guzmán led a split within the PCP- Bandera Roja. From the small provincial University of Huamanga, where Guzmán taught philosophy, the Frente Estudiantil Revolucionario por el Sendero Luminoso de Mariátegui (Revolutionary Student Front for the Shining Path of Mariátegui) slowly spread out.

 

Sendero launched military operations a decade later, targeting the police with considerable success. In the

summer of 1982, groups of guerrillas launched simultaneous attacks on police stations at Vilcashuaman and Luricocha, over a hundred kilometres apart. The police were forced to withdraw from rural areas of Ayacucho, leaving Sendero in de-facto control of the countryside. Maoist courts began to settle disputes and enforce justice — often in a brutal fashion. Like India, the Maoist ascendency was founded on the state's anaemic presence in the heartlands. The police, in particular, were poorly trained, under-resourced and had little usable intelligence.

 

Many analysts believe the underlying objective of Sendero's strategy during this period was to precipitate a military coup against the Belaúnde regime, which held power between 1980 and 1985. Sendero hoped to precipitate a crisis which would compel the military to depose Belaúnde — leading to increased repression and an upsurge in peasant and proletarian militancy. Belaúnde was obliged to declare an emergency in some of Ayacucho's provinces in October 1981. Hundreds of federal police were pumped into the area, but with little success. Later that year, troops were finally flown in to the central sierra — setting off a decade-long war of attrition.

A Defeat Destined

In a 1982 party document, Desarrollamos la guerra de guerrillas, Sendero claimed the Peruvian state was "bureaucratic and landlord, dominated by a dictatorship of feudal landowners and the big bourgeoisie under the control of imperialism". Much of Sendero's conception of Peruvian society drew on Mao Zedong's 1926 Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society and Left-wing author Jose Carlos Mariátegui's popular Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality published two years later.

 

Mao's simply-written tracts were profoundly attractive to a new generation of Maoist leaders emerging from Peru's desperately poor highlands: first-generation university students from artisan, peasant and petty-bourgeois backgrounds who were seeking an explanation for the backwardness and poverty of their people. Peru's complex hierarchy of race — with white Peruvians at the top and native Andean people at the bottom — coloured their Marxism. Slogans like necesitamos un gobierno de Indios (we need a government of Indians) or hay que matar a los blancos y destruir las ciudades que siempre nos han explotado (we have to kill the whites and destroy the towns, that have always exploited us) were just as popular as the work of Ernesto Guevara.

 

But, as the Cambridge University scholar Lewis Taylor noted in a perceptive 1983 essay, Sendero's characterisation of Peru as a rural, pre-industrial society dominated by feudal landlords was "hopelessly mistaken". "Feudal landlords", Mr. Taylor noted, "play no role in today's Peru, while large-scale landlordism, feudal or otherwise, as an economic force was decimated by a thorough-going agrarian reform between 1969 and 1976". Post-reform Peruvian society, he argued, "was characterised by an expansion in the ranks of medium-scale farmers and comparatively well-to-do kulaks, who co-exist alongside vast numbers of semi-proletarianised minifundists [small farmers] and landless labourers, 'feudal' landlords being conspicuous by their absence".

 

Even in the backward Ayacucho zone where Sendero flourished, Mr. Taylor pointed out, "the only people who even remotely merit the title of large-scale landowners are in no way feudal, being involved in that most capitalistic of businesses, the cocaine trade. Neither has nearby Hauncavelica been a zone of great landlord influence, being a predominantly mining region".

 

Put simply, Sendero sought to bring about a peasant revolution in a country that had ceased to be a peasant society. In 1980, agriculture contributed just 10 per cent of the Gross National Product and 20 per cent of the country's exports; some 70 per cent of Peru's citizens lived in its cities.

 

Peru's Maoists often adopted tactics that alienated their core constituency. In August 1982, Sendero destroyed

the University of Huamanga's agricultural experimentation farm and slaughtered livestock that had been painstakingly acclimatised to the region's harsh environment. Workers at the farm were told it was an example of "imperialist domination", since it was part-funded by western aid. Electricity generation and transmission systems were frequently destroyed, telephone networks disrupted and shops and schools burned down. Factories run by major multinationals such as Bayer and Nestlé were also targeted. In one bizarre operation, television stations relaying the finals of the 1982 football World Cup were destroyed — an action Sendero claimed it took because the sport was exercising a narcotic effect on the population.

 

Many groups of the Left had long understood that Sendero was headed towards a dead end. Between 1977 and 1980, Peru's working class mounted successful struggles for better working conditions and brought about a widening of democratic space. Key communist factions participated in the June 1980 general elections that Sendero had chosen as an occasion to launch its armed struggle. Even Peru's peasants increasingly turned against Sendero. In 1983, the organisation felt obliged to massacre 69 children, women and men in the village of Lucanamarca in the face of assaults by rural militia set up to support the military.

 

By 1992, when a Sendero car-bomb killed 24 and injured 200 in Lima, the organisation had lost much of its popular base. President Alberto Fujimori, who had staged a coup that April and dissolved Congress, was able to unleash the army and private death squads against the group, capitalising on the outrage.

 

Regrouping

 

Despite Sendero's death, there are well-founded concerns that conditions exist for the organisation to take root again. Ever since 1999 there have been credible reports that the group has tapped the cocaine trade in the valleys of the Apurimac and Ene rivers — a jungle region close to its birthplace. Sendero guerrillas have succeeded in mounting a series of murderous raids against Peru's security forces despite their numerical weakness. In next-door Colombia, the Maoist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) has also used narcotics revenue to recruit new cadre and build resources.

 

Peru is not India; but the key narrative elements of Sendero's story will be depressingly familiar to anyone who

has followed the rise of Maoist power in recent years. Both the government and the Maoists need to reflect on the horrors that seem, with increasing inevitability, to lie ahead.

 

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THE HINDU

WHY THE U.S. WANTS TO SILENCE NORIEGA

THE FORMER PANAMANIAN DICTATOR IS A REMINDER OF U.S. INTERVENTIONISM IN CENTRAL AMERICA.

SIMON TISDALL

the headquarters of the Panamanian defence force. Inside the compound, shattered masonry and bullet holes in the walls bore witness to a coup attempt by junior officers. The putsch had failed. Now the people outside were waiting for the General. They wanted to see him, to know for certain he was still alive.

 

Further down the pavement on Calle 23, a woman sobbed. People said her Army officer husband had not

returned home, that she feared he was among the 50 mutineers reportedly killed in the U.S.-backed coup. As the crowd grew and the sun came up, an old man sold lottery tickets and on a balcony overlooking the street, a woman hung out her smalls to dry.

 

Then, suddenly, the doors of the comandancia flew open and out came the man they were waiting for. Here, in crude good health, was President George Bush Snr.'s pet hate figure, America's most wanted, and Panama's answer to Colonel Gaddafi: General Manuel Antonio Noriega himself — an indicted drug trafficker and at that time perhaps the world's most infamous dictator.

 

Acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, Noriega, small and burly in crisp green combat fatigues and a red baseball cap, wore a triumphant smile. "Who did this?" a journalist shouted at him in reference to the attack on the comandancia. "The Americans did this. The Americans, the piranhas did this. They want to finish Panama," Noriega replied.

 

Though he had no inkling of it that morning, Noriega's days in the sun were numbered. Two months later, Mr. Bush sent the American Army to finish what the coup leaders began. After causing a large and still disputed number of civilian deaths in the El Chorrillo neighbourhood around the comandancia, U.S. forces hunted down Noriega, arrested him, put him on trial in Miami, and sentenced him to 40 years.

 

The stated reasons for the U.S. intervention were many: anger at the harassment of military personnel based in Panama, worries over the safety of American nationals, the failure of diplomacy and sanctions, the security of the Panama canal, the city's position as a leading entrepot and money-laundering centre for illegal narcotics, and the importance attached to Mr. Bush's top domestic political priority — winning his self-declared "war on drugs".

 

But Noriega's extradition to France this week, where he faces more drug-related charges, has refocused attention on the unspoken reasons why the "Maximum Leader", also known as "Pineapple Face", became such a threat to the then U.S. government and why such extreme measures were taken to silence him. His case also serves as a reminder of the U.S. policy of direct and indirect interventionism in Central America that bedevilled the region for decades.

 

America's thug

 

Noriega was a thug. But for many years, he was America's thug — until he turned on his mentors. Trained in military and intelligence matters at the School of the Americas, he became for a time a valued CIA "asset" working for the agency and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

 

Government documents submitted to the Miami court in 1991-92 confirmed that Noriega was paid (at least) $320,000 by the U.S. government for services rendered.

 

Simply put, Noriega knew too much. He acted as a Cold War listening post for the U.S. during turbulent times in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to William Buckley's book, Panama: the Whole Story.

 

The jury in Noriega's trial on 10 narrowly defined drug-related counts heard none of this. Nor did it hear about Noriega's contacts with Oliver North, John Poindexter, CIA chief William Casey and other key figures in the Ronald Reagan and Bush administrations who, allegedly, connived in the supply of arms to Nicaragua's Contra rebels paid for with Medellin cartel drug cash.

 

Proof of connivance

 

There were many other such allegations, and Noriega claimed to have proof of senior U.S. politicians' connivance in drug trafficking for political purposes. But none was allowed in evidence. Nor was the new Panamanian government's demand that Noriega be returned there for trial accepted.

 

In Panama, Noriega would have been free to tell all he knew. And for many powerful men in Washington, some of whom are still alive, that prospect was potentially dangerous.

 

The outcome of the Miami trial, like the 1989 invasion, was never in doubt. It was a show trial, a warning to others. It was pure vengeance. It was a cover-up of decades of illicit regional meddling. But it was also a demonstration of raw American power, of which the world was soon to have more frightening examples. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE HINDU

AT LONG LAST, A FIRM STEP FORWARD

THE MEETING IN BHUTAN BETWEEN THE TWO PRIME MINISTERS HAS OPENED A PATH, BUT INDIA AND PAKISTAN ARE NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET.

SIDDHARTH VARADARAJAN

 

1. India and Pakistan wisely decided to transcend the confines of nomenclature and form in the dialogue
2. The talks will not work if the leaders succumb to the temptation of playing to domestic galleries

 

The history of India-Pakistan relations is full of examples of leaders from both countries travelling to distant points on the globe — from Tashkent and New York to Sharm el-Sheikh and Havana — to meet each other only to end up standing still. Meetings held in the subcontinent, on the other hand, have invariably led to breakthroughs, big and small. Think Simla and Lahore, Islamabad and Delhi. Each of these encounters produced conceptual breakthroughs that briefly carried some promise of momentum before being swamped by the forces of inertia, dead habit, treachery or bad faith that are the constants in this cursed relationship.

 

To the list of promising South Asian summits can now be added the name of Thimphu, where Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani met on Thursday. Defying naysayers within their respective establishments and wider strategic communities, the two Prime Ministers crafted a simple but elegant formula for breaking the current impasse, thereby ensuring that the process of engagement — stuck for several months — now has some chance of moving ahead. The Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers have been tasked with meeting each other to assess the current state of the relationship and identify the reasons for the trust deficit. This is to be the first step in what will eventually lead to a dialogue process aimed at discussing and resolving all outstanding issues and disputes.

 

With the "composite" nature of the dialogue becoming a political stumbling block, India and Pakistan wisely decided to transcend the confines of nomenclature. The process they engage in may eventually take the form of the composite dialogue or, more likely, improve upon it. But that will depend on two factors, both equally important: the results of the review the two sides conduct, and their ability to reduce the trust deficit.

 

For India, the restoration of trust depends on very simple metrics. New Delhi's overarching priority is to get Islamabad to honour its commitment to prevent terrorists from using Pakistani territory to launch attacks on India. Mr. Gilani reiterated this promise in Bhutan but the Manmohan Singh government will need more than mere words in order to convince sceptics at home. It needs the seven Lashkar-e-Taiba men currently on trial in Rawalpindi for their involvement in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai punished. And it needs credible evidence that anti-India terrorist organisations like the LeT and their leadership no longer have the freedom to operate. Infiltration levels in the valley, which have been rising over the past few months, also need to fall.

 

Even within the constraints of what Pakistan's increasingly independent judicial system is prepared to accept, there is a lot more that the Pakistani government can and must do to address Indian concerns. The current thaw assumes the absence of engagement is making it easier for the military establishment in Pakistan to justify the continuation of its links with anti-Indian extremists. Prime Minister Singh's decision to agree to the resumption of dialogue is based on the principle of trust but verify. If terrorist groups continue to speak and operate with impunity, chances are any substantive talks the two sides begin on issues like Kashmir or Siachen will flounder. After all, the oxygen of trust is needed to scale those daunting heights, which no leader has managed to ascend so far. As for water, it is hard to imagine India agreeing to surrender rights given to it by the Indus Water Treaty or shouldering obligations not enumerated there — which is essentially what Pakistan would like it to do — in the absence of trust and normality. Putting the terrorists out of business is, therefore, very much in Pakistan's interest.

 

As the two sides review the relationship, they will try and come up with a framework that can build on what the composite dialogue has accomplished so far while transcending its limitations. It is clear, for example, that bureaucrats and officials have done all they could to resolve Sir Creek and Siachen and that those discussions have reached the stage where a dialogue between politically-empowered envoys is the only way a settlement can be produced. Similarly on the "core issue" of Jammu and Kashmir, the back channel has proved to be a more effective platform for serious negotiation than the front channel operated by the two Foreign Secretaries. Should the Kashmir dialogue, too, be made political?

 

An obstacle here, of course, is that the Pakistani side appears to have repudiated the understandings reached between 2004-2007 on maintaining the territorial status quo, making borders irrelevant, demilitarising the area and crafting administrative links between the two parts of Kashmir. But even that is not the biggest problem since either party is well within its right to walk away from the back channel. Today, however, the real challenge in reviving and working the back channel is the lack of clarity in Islamabad about who Riaz Mohammed Khan — the designated counterpart of Satinder Lambah — will report to.

 

Political circumstances allowed General Musharraf to work within the dictum of l'etat c'est moi and India dealt with him as such. But today there is no clarity. Depending on how the wider internal politics in Pakistan plays out over the next year, some clarity may emerge. It is in India's long-term interest that democracy in Pakistan gets stabilised and empowered. This means, every effort must be made to work with Prime Minister Gilani and his government, while keeping lines of communication open with other political parties and leaders. There have also been suggestions in several high-level Track-II meetings that a dialogue between the intelligence chiefs of both countries could serve a useful purpose. These are issues that need to be discussed and evaluated when the Foreign Secretaries and Ministers take stock of where the relationship stands.

 

Alongside this evolving process, forward movement on trade, investment and energy sector cooperation would produce mutual gains that could enlarge the constituency for peace in both countries. None of this will work, however, if the leadership in India and Pakistan succumbs to the temptation of playing to domestic galleries. Going by the record of the past few years, terrorists will attempt to destroy this latest attempt to restart the dialogue. Acting with maturity and restraint in the face of provocation will pay more dividends in the long run. In Thimphu, both Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Pakistani Foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi struck the right tone even when "nationalist" questions were thrown at them. If the dialogue process is to survive the critical early months, leaders and officials up and down the food chain in India and Pakistan need to exercise great caution.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

DHONI & CO SEEK WORLD CUP GLORY

 

April.30 : India's campaign in the third edition of the ICC World T20 Championship — which begins in the West Indies on Friday — will be closely watched. Three years ago the Indians, then led by Rahul Dravid, were among the favourites for the World Cup title they had last won in 1983 under Kapil Dev, but a poorly-managed campaign was cut short early on and the Men in Blue eliminated in the very first round. That event was also marked more for its off-field controversies that culminated with the death of Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer in Kingston, Jamaica. A world-level tournament returns to the Caribbean under the sceptical gaze of the cricketing world. Having said that, India — champions in the inaugural edition of the T20 Worlds in South Africa — will once again go into the tournament as one of the better-favoured teams based equally on the diehard optimism of their fans as much on the solid preparation almost every member of Mahendra Singh Dhoni's squad has had at the recently-concluded IPL-3. Other than Ravindra Jadeja, who sat out the domestic extravaganza after he was banned for the season having sought to renegotiate his contract midway through its validity, all the other 15 have been in the thick of the action that culminated in the Chennai Super Kings walking away with the title they had first come agonisingly close to at the first  IPL final in 2008. At the same time, a host of players from around the world too start the T20 Worlds battle fit for the same reason. Given what happened in 2007 and more recently during the business end of IPL-3 — with off-field battles elbowing the cricket off centrestage — cricket's bosses around the world will be hoping that the quality of the sport on display at St. Lucia, Guyana and Barbados will bring the spotlight back where it belongs.

As far as the tournament itself is concerned, there are at least four teams that look equally good — at this stage — for the title. Other than India, defending champions Pakistan must be counted as being among the teams that matter. They may not have had the best of preparation and have been torn apart by infighting, but Pakistan have the best record at the T20 Worlds, having been finalists twice, winning it once and with an enviable 22-7 win-loss record in 30 matches, with one no result. South Africa are always a dangerous team and the core of their team — Jacques Kallis, Dale Steyn, the Morkel brothers, J.P. Duminy and Ab de Villiers — are all match-fit after IPL-3. The West Indies too have to be reckoned with both as hosts and as a side bursting with talent in the form of skipper Chris Gayle, the big-hitting Keiron Pollard, Dwayne Bravo, the super-quick Kemar Roach and the ever-dependable Shivnaraine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan to drive their campaign. England will be the other team to watch out for, and that does not in the least discount the ever-dangerous Australia and even Bangladesh who have some serious ability in the shorter formats of the game, as Dravid discovered in 2007 in Trinidad. Still and all, the calm presence of Dhoni at the helm — as much as his title win with CSK — is a huge plus for India, as is the form of some of his key players. With the organisers at pains to avoid the pitfalls that ensnared the 2007 World Cup, it is to be hoped the calypso flavour of the Caribbean that was so badly missed three years ago will counterpoint some memorable cricket this time.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

STEALING SEEDS

 

There is a draft Seeds Bill in Parliament which could be enacted any day now. The new Seeds Bill, drafted originally in 2004, will replace the old Seed Act of 1966 which was meant to set standards for trading in seed. The conditions of seed production have undergone a sea change in the last 25 years, with a growing presence of the seed industry. Earlier, seed production was largely in the hands of the public sector. So a new Seeds Act is needed to respond to the altered conditions. A law regulating the seed trade is necessary to ensure that farmers are protected against spurious seeds and that seed producers are obliged to put into the market only seeds of good and reliable quality. But the current Seeds Bill is not the new law that this country requires. It favours the seed industry and is against the interests of farmers.

The Seeds Bill is structurally flawed and bad in principle. This is because it has strayed from its original mandate of setting standards for the seed that will be traded and has attempted to meddle in affairs which belong in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) legislation. The seed industry, which has been angry over the pro-farmer provisions of the Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Rights Act (PPVFR), has attempted to reclaim ground by getting the PPVFR provisions overtaken by the provisions of the Seeds Bill. The draft Seeds Bill undoes many of the pro-farmer provisions of the PPVFR .

The Seeds Bill requires mandatory registration of the varieties/seeds which the PPVFR does not. In the PPVFR, the breeder applies for registration for a Plant Breeders Right. This right is valid for a period of 15 years for crop varieties and 18 years for trees. The Seeds Bill allows the period of protection to be doubled so that the seed variety can be protected by the seed producer for 30 years and 36 years respectively. This extension of the seed owner's right will allow monopolies to be established.

A serious shortcoming of the bill is the failure to include a provision that would make it mandatory to declare the parentage (passport data) of the new seed that is developed and for which registration is sought under the law. This is not only shoddy science, it is also unethical because it would allow the seed industry breeders to use crop varieties developed by farmers and public sector scientists without acknowledging the source. This amounts to theft. It also means that no opportunities for benefit sharing are in place post commercialisation and profit making. Not declaring passport data will make the new variety a black box. This will facilitate unrestricted commercialisation of varieties in the public domain, including farmer varieties, by private parties. It also will permit the industry to use farmer varieties without paying the mandated fee for such use into a National Gene Fund designated for the purpose, under the PPVFR.

In the case of the Seeds Bill, the registered varieties will be made known to the public only through periodic publications. The public has no opportunity to object to a new variety for any reason. This lack of transparency could mean that varieties of dubious performance could get registered without giving people a chance to oppose such grants.

 

Unlike the PPVFR which allows legitimate opposition to the grant of a registration for a new variety before registration is granted, the Seeds Bill has, despite several appeals from civil society, refused to accommodate a provision for pre-grant opposition. Enlightened law-making in many parts of the world, including our own, now allows the public an opportunity to record its objections to the grant of certain legal rights like patents. Gene Campaign has been pushing for a pre-grant provision in the Seeds Bill so that if a seed company was wanting to register a seed which had used material from other, unauthorised sources, objections could be raised. But the government, anxious to please the seed industry, refuses to include a provision for pre-grant opposition.
Because the bill does not require the parentage of a variety to be declared, it allows misappropriation of materials belonging to others. The seed industry breeders could in principle have free access to all available genetic diversity of crop plants without having to go through prior informed consent or engaging in benefit sharing. All this amounts to legalising the piracy of valuable genetic materials like elite breeding lines.
Further cause for alarm are the provisions of the Seeds Bill that deal with price control. In the PPVFR, regulation of seed supply and seed price is to be managed through a process of compulsory licensing. This safeguards the interests of the farming community since it places the responsibility of ensuring an adequate seed supply at reasonable price, on the government. The Seeds Bill fails to provide any such protection to the farmer.
There is no mechanism to regulate seed supply or seed price. This could result in a high cost of seeds fixed arbitrarily by the seed companies, leaving the government with no means to control the price. It could also mean that seed providers are under no obligation to ensure a reasonable seed supply to farmers. This will defeat the very rationale that had kept seed production in the public sector so far.  The government's new mantra of allowing market forces to "rationalise" seed production could strike at the foundation of national food security and farmer livelihoods. Seed producers, whether in the public or private sector, must be compelled to ensure that seed is available to every farmer in every agro-ecological zone in the country.

The liability and compensation provisions of the PPVFR that allowed farmers to be compensated for spurious or poor quality seeds, has been dispensed with in the Seeds Bill. Instead a compensation committee has been constituted. A straightforward insurance package linked to the seed would be a system that would work far better for farmers. If the seeds did not perform, the insurance claim would become automatic.

The stringent punishment and large penalties for violating the law that was put in as a deterrent against bad seeds in the PPVFR, have been reduced to a token.The penalties for violation under the Seeds Bill are so low (Rs 5,000) that even if someone is caught stealing public sector material or that belonging to farmers, the punishment is practically non-existent. The current Seeds Bill, rather than protecting the farmers, opens up avenues allowing the seed industry to steal their material.

Dr Suman Sahai, a genetic scientist who has served on the faculty of the Universities of Chicago and Heidelberg, is convenor of the Gene Campaign

Suman Sahai

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

THE ELEPHANT'S LAST STAND

 

 "The further east one goes", wrote the chronicler, "the more elephants there are". Given how central the great beasts have been to warfare in this continent for two-and-a-half millennia, this was, to put it simply, an observation that mattered. That elephants thin out in numbers and dwindle down to nothing as the rainfall declines with the path of the monsoon in north India is widely known.

But its consequences are less apparent at first glance. The writer of the quote above was a prince in search of fame, territory and fortune. The lands east of the Indus gave him all and more. His name was one to reckon with, not only as conqueror but also as a naturalist: Zia ud din Muhammad Babar.

Elephants fascinated him: their power and prowess in fields of battle had to be seen to be believed. Villagers near Kalpi and Manikpur earned a living by catching and taming them. Here, Babur had revenues that would not be taken in cash or grain, but in captive elephants. Thirty-odd villages gained from this.
The India of Babur or for that matter his successors had room for elephants and much more. Recent estimates of populations of the Mughal Empire reckon about 114 million people in India. This meant less than one in four acres was permanently tilled or cultivated. Vast stretches of forest, savannah and scrub dominated much of central and north India. The central region was Gondwana and large areas were known to harbour elephants.
Jahangir in the 17th century's first two decades had as many as seven drives to catch elephants in Gujarat, in its southern reaches, where tigers were still extant till a few decades ago. The Timurid rulers (as they called themselves) were much enamoured of elephants. As many as five men looked after one and favourites like the magnificent tusker Gajraj were portrayed by ateliers.

No one needs reminding of the huge changes in the land in the last two centuries. Not only have forests shrunk in size, the animals have vanished from regions and places where they were well known as parts of the landscape. Yet, though so much is taken, much still abides.

India is among the few Asian countries where elephants might still have a chance of survival, provided enough habitat stays intact. Babur would have sympathised with its plight. "An elephant", he sagely observed, "eats as much as two strings of camels".

He may not have known its fate was worse in a country as rich and significant as India in the pre-modern era: China. The premier historian of that country's rich ecological pasts, Mark Elvin set out to write a millennium long account of change. He did what anyone with such a rich record of written sources would do. He covered not one but 4,000 years. The title is a giveaway: The Retreat of Elephants (Yale University press, 2004).
Whereas in India, the Mughals and their successors were heirs to a centuries-old tradition of elephant craft, the last instance of the use of the animals in warfare in China was in 1662. Classical texts speak of the delicacy of an elephant's trunk and describe how best to cook it, something unknown in mainland India (though not in the Northeast).

But the retreat had less to do with courtly gastronomy and more to do with the larger economic changes. Writing as early as 1087, a poet wrote of Jiangsu province, "In the southern hills, rest and return to life, wait the forests of chestnuts/Yet iron, stubborn ore from the hills to the north, will be no trouble to smelt". Iron ore mining versus forest ecologies: this could be a manual from our own century.

But more than that there was the growth of Han peasant agriculture. There has been a 3,000-year war of humans versus the animals. The latter's retreat is inversely proportional to the advance of the rice-based Han peasant agriculture. Chinese farmers and elephants do not mix.

Of course, trapping vast numbers for captive use was a drain on the herds in India. India too has seen a great expansion of cultivated arable at the expense of forest.

Human struggles in the past were a matter of life and death. China's riches rested on the extinction of wild lands, while Indian rulers saw such lands as a source of strategically valuable assets: war elephants. This even influenced the British who in the 1870s enacted laws to protect them in British India for sound imperial reasons.
These dilemmas are not only from yesteryears. Nearly half-a-millennium after Babur, how and whether Asia reconciles human existence with nature's survival is a question that stares us in the face.

Peasant agriculture at the forest's margins in much of India and some times well beyond has to contend with the mobile mega-herbivores. Elephants in China are a "ghost  species", so few are left that the memory of them is wider than their actual presence. Zhou Se in 3rd century Sichuan wrote of "rhinoceros striving with elephant — to determine who canters more swiftly", but the animals are gone. Only verse remains.

India fared better than China in this respect in the past, but will it continue to do so? The world's eyes may be on Asia for its phenomenal rise in economic terms, but much of the challenge is on how we reconcile this vast creation of wealth with a new and stable peace with nature.

What better place to begin than with the continent's largest land mammal so "huge and intelligent" that its fate might well mirror our own?

Mahesh Rangarajan is an environmental historian and co-editor of the book Making Conservation Work

Mahesh Rangarajan

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

THE ELEPHANT'S LAST STAND

 

 "The further east one goes", wrote the chronicler, "the more elephants there are". Given how central the great beasts have been to warfare in this continent for two-and-a-half millennia, this was, to put it simply, an observation that mattered. That elephants thin out in numbers and dwindle down to nothing as the rainfall declines with the path of the monsoon in north India is widely known.

But its consequences are less apparent at first glance. The writer of the quote above was a prince in search of fame, territory and fortune. The lands east of the Indus gave him all and more. His name was one to reckon with, not only as conqueror but also as a naturalist: Zia ud din Muhammad Babar.
Elephants fascinated him: their power and prowess in fields of battle had to be seen to be believed. Villagers near Kalpi and Manikpur earned a living by catching and taming them. Here, Babur had revenues that would not be taken in cash or grain, but in captive elephants. Thirty-odd villages gained from this.
The India of Babur or for that matter his successors had room for elephants and much more. Recent estimates of populations of the Mughal Empire reckon about 114 million people in India. This meant less than one in four acres was permanently tilled or cultivated. Vast stretches of forest, savannah and scrub dominated much of central and north India. The central region was Gondwana and large areas were known to harbour elephants.
Jahangir in the 17th century's first two decades had as many as seven drives to catch elephants in Gujarat, in its southern reaches, where tigers were still extant till a few decades ago. The Timurid rulers (as they called themselves) were much enamoured of elephants. As many as five men looked after one and favourites like the magnificent tusker Gajraj were portrayed by ateliers.

No one needs reminding of the huge changes in the land in the last two centuries. Not only have forests shrunk in size, the animals have vanished from regions and places where they were well known as parts of the landscape. Yet, though so much is taken, much still abides.

India is among the few Asian countries where elephants might still have a chance of survival, provided enough habitat stays intact. Babur would have sympathised with its plight. "An elephant", he sagely observed, "eats as much as two strings of camels".

He may not have known its fate was worse in a country as rich and significant as India in the pre-modern era: China. The premier historian of that country's rich ecological pasts, Mark Elvin set out to write a millennium long account of change. He did what anyone with such a rich record of written sources would do. He covered not one but 4,000 years. The title is a giveaway: The Retreat of Elephants (Yale University press, 2004).
Whereas in India, the Mughals and their successors were heirs to a centuries-old tradition of elephant craft, the last instance of the use of the animals in warfare in China was in 1662. Classical texts speak of the delicacy of an elephant's trunk and describe how best to cook it, something unknown in mainland India (though not in the Northeast).

But the retreat had less to do with courtly gastronomy and more to do with the larger economic changes. Writing as early as 1087, a poet wrote of Jiangsu province, "In the southern hills, rest and return to life, wait the forests of chestnuts/Yet iron, stubborn ore from the hills to the north, will be no trouble to smelt". Iron ore mining versus forest ecologies: this could be a manual from our own century.

But more than that there was the growth of Han peasant agriculture. There has been a 3,000-year war of humans versus the animals. The latter's retreat is inversely proportional to the advance of the rice-based Han peasant agriculture. Chinese farmers and elephants do not mix.

Of course, trapping vast numbers for captive use was a drain on the herds in India. India too has seen a great expansion of cultivated arable at the expense of forest.

Human struggles in the past were a matter of life and death. China's riches rested on the extinction of wild lands, while Indian rulers saw such lands as a source of strategically valuable assets: war elephants. This even influenced the British who in the 1870s enacted laws to protect them in British India for sound imperial reasons.
These dilemmas are not only from yesteryears. Nearly half-a-millennium after Babur, how and whether Asia reconciles human existence with nature's survival is a question that stares us in the face.

Peasant agriculture at the forest's margins in much of India and some times well beyond has to contend with the mobile mega-herbivores. Elephants in China are a "ghost  species", so few are left that the memory of them is wider than their actual presence. Zhou Se in 3rd century Sichuan wrote of "rhinoceros striving with elephant — to determine who canters more swiftly", but the animals are gone. Only verse remains.

India fared better than China in this respect in the past, but will it continue to do so? The world's eyes may be on Asia for its phenomenal rise in economic terms, but much of the challenge is on how we reconcile this vast creation of wealth with a new and stable peace with nature.

What better place to begin than with the continent's largest land mammal so "huge and intelligent" that its fate might well mirror our own?

Mahesh Rangarajan is an environmental historian and co-editor of the book Making Conservation Work

Mahesh Rangarajan

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

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

HOUSE OF SCANDALS

 

 It looks like India is turning into a house of scandals. Last week, several skeletons tumbled out of the country's closet as allegations were being made of how in the Indian Premier League (IPL) money-laundering took place in the name of cricket and under the garb of "global entertainment". The question today is not who all were involved, but who among the celebrities are not involved. As the curtain rose on the financiers behind the painted faces, we got a sneak peek at some dubious (Dubai-based) personalities. The drama is just beginning to unfold. But the IPL is not alone. Huge scams break out with every changing season. Last year we had the Satyam scandal. Its chairman B. Ramalinga Raju, who had received many awards for best entrepreneur, best management practitioner etc, turned out to be a crook who had defrauded the government and public of several thousand crores of rupees.

With the Satyam founder in jail, the focus turned to the very institution of auditors. The institution has taken action against the auditors who were alleged to have colluded in the fraud, but what about the institution itself? The shadow of suspicion falls on it too when several cases of auditors not revealing the truth about corporate accounts surface.

Media reports say that other regulatory institutions have also been exposed. During the reign of senior Congress leader Arjun Singh as Union human resources development minister, over 33 private institutions were recognised as "deemed universities". Now the curtain on this series of recognitions has been removed and the resulting exposure of muck has resulted in the University Grants Commission itself coming under the scanner. The regulator for technology institutions, the All-India Council of Technical Education, has already seen chairman Ram Avtar Yadav and secretary Narayan Rao guillotined for their role in awarding recognition to suspect or sub-standard institutions and departments. Rao was caught demanding money to give recognition to an engineering college in Hyderabad.

Every day new fraudsters and scamsters are exposed by the media. The most recent one is the architectural regulator, the Council of Architecture. According to news reports, as many as 28 architects working with the world-famous Charles Correa have petitioned the government against this regulator of architectural education and practice. Apparently, the rot is far more widespread than we thought. The trail of sleaze and subterfuge is widening and reaches the government's altar. The government was revealed to be misusing the recently-installed technology for security agencies to tap the telephone lines of various politicians, including some United Progressive Alliance (UPA) members.

One newspaper reported that the role of telecom minister A. Raja in the high bids for 3G spectrum puts the focus on him once again. Last year he was accused of selling fresh telecom licenses at prices that were determined in 2001 when the mobile phone network was just expanding. The allegation against Mr Raja was that by deciding to sell 2G spectrum at a paltry Rs 1,651 crores to eight operators, he caused a loss of Rs 60,000 crores to the exchequer. But Mr Raja, who comes from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a coalition partner of the UPA-2, is stated to have used his political clout to sit pretty and safe in his chair despite the scandal.
The Congress-led UPA-2 government has let loose the income-tax sleuths on the IPL promoters. But this display of virtue is marred by the fact that all these IPL auctions had been going on for quite some months but the I-T authorities ignored the mystery — Who are they? From where do they bring so much money? Only when the Congress' blue-eyed minister was touched by the dispute were the I-T sleuths unleashed. This leads us to the core of the rot. It is a part of the economic policy that is a wholesale adoption of the American model of growth.
Look at the current controversies in the US involving financial companies like Goldman Sachs and Wall Street stock manipulators and the biggest fraudsters of them all, GM, who is said to have swallowed up to $52 billion of investors' money. US President Barack Obama is fighting Wall Street operators to bring some probity to the American financial markets. Goldman Sachs chief, India-born Rajat Gupta, is alleged to have been accused by US investigators of using insider information to benefit certain people. Financial scandals, sexual shenanigans and corporate rape surface day after day in the US, some even touching the US Congress.

It is significant that from the day the Congress' Bofors scandal hit the headlines, successive Congress or Congress-led governments have all been blackened by scandals. Bofors, Harshad Mehta's market operations, the Bharat Shah scandal, the Sukh Ram residence-turned-treasure house of ill-gotten money, the bribing of some tribal MPs for votes under the Rao government, the deal of its senior leader Natwar Singh's relatives with the Iraqi dictator in the oil-for-dollar scheme and now revelations about favouritism during the days of Arjun Singh as HRD minister and the rot that festered in the educational regulators under him — the list seems endless.
During Jawaharlal Nehru's regime, the first instance of misuse of office occurred with then finance minister T.T. Krishnamachari. This led the Prime Minister to demand Krishnamachari's resignation. But his daughter Indira Gandhi promoted corruption in the name of socialism and secularism. We recall how the Pondicherry licence scandal report implicating the then money-spinner of the Congress government, L.N. Mishra, was kept under wraps despite Opposition pressure to let people know the truth.
The Congress fought tooth and nail to buy time on the Bofors scandal but even the joint parliamentary committee farce did not save it from the people's wrath. However, the time gained enabled some of the accused to transfer their money from one account to another, from one country to another, and finally when after a decade the account was zeroed in on, strange things started emanating from the government in New Delhi that helped the chief accused to cock a snook at the government. The Congress' saga of scams and sleaze is endless. By the time this column appears, the country may have moved on to yet another scam.

Balbir K. Punj can be contacted at punjbalbir@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Balbir K. Punj

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DNA

EDITORIAL

SAARC REALITIES

 

The request by Maldives president Mohammed Nasheed, that India and Pakistan sort out their differences, provides some points for the two countries to ponder. The remarks were made at the opening of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Bhutan on Wednesday, where bilateral issues are not normally discussed. But evidently other member countries feel that the big two and their endless problems are detrimental to the progress of the neighbourhood economy. It was enough for them to speak out.

 

Certainly, the development of South Asia and its search for a stronger voice on the world stage rests on the India-Pakistan dynamic. And since the terror attacks of November, 2008, the relationship has stalled, if not suffered. But when several regions in the rest of the world are working towards setting aside their regional differences so that they can grow together, it is perhaps time for India and Pakistan to at least attempt greater regional cooperation, as implied by Saarc.

 

On India's part, while its neighbours are dependent on it, its sheer size creates a mental block for them. Even without actually behaving like the neighbourhood bully, India is seen as one. Perhaps, India has to work on its appearances. As for Pakistan, this may be a wake-up call. Its obsession with India, due to which it foments and supports terrorist activities on our soil, is a danger to the entire region. Thanks to the Afghan conflict, and the US efforts to enlist Pakistan in its larger war against the Taliban and the al Qaeda, all the nations in the region feel vulnerable.

 

No one would be naïveenough to suggest that India-Pakistan problems will be sorted out just because this suits the smaller members of Saarc. But the fact that our neighbours have spoken out shows that the concern about safety and security in the region is paramount. If Saarc is to achieve its full potential, it has to become a serious contender with significant bargaining powers — like Asean. That is unachievable as long as its two largest members are involved in internecine warfare.

 

While the core Indo-Pak relationship will take some time to mend, it may not be a bad idea for India to offer its neighbours a greater share of the Indian market by preferential tariffs. If nothing else, it will create a larger constituency for economic cooperation — which is what Saarc is about anyway.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

GREEK LESSONS

 

The debt crisis that has engulfed Greece, and which is now spreading to Spain and Portugal, has been confirmed officially by the downgrade of the sovereign bonds of these countries by credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P). It's been a year in the making, but the downgrade is evidence that the financial squall that hit the US markets in the autumn of 2008 is now gathering momentum across the Atlantic.

 

The difference between the two crises is this: the US meltdown occurred because of irresponsible risk-taking by private sector banks and financial institutions.

 

In southern Europe, it is the governments which have been caught in the whirlpool of public debt. In the US, once Lehman Brothers went under, the American government acted quickly and brought the situation under control. Will Europe have to do the same with Greece?

 

The $41 billion loan offered by European leaders and the $20 billion expected from the IMF will see Greece through 2010. But an estimate by The Economist suggests that another $90 billion of long-term official loans will be required over the next few years to help it get over the debt hump in 2014. That's a lot of money, but just as some banks are too big to fail, countries have no option but to be rescued. The money will have to be found.

 

The crisis could lead to a larger debate on the effectiveness of the European Union and its common currency, the euro. But that is not the immediate issue. The European crisis will weaken the economic recovery that seemed to flicker on the horizon towards the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. The sluggishness in the European markets would mean that global economic woes will persist longer.

 

There are lessons in this for governments elsewhere, including India and the US. Unfettered public spending, whether it is for saving private players, as in the US, or to prop up social spending in India, leads to serious problems unless it is seen as a temporary, emergency measure.

 

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is acutely aware of this. What is needed is real economic growth in terms of a rise in industrial and agricultural production, creation of jobs and increase in earnings at the corporate and individual levels. The other major warning from Greece is that fudging deficit figures will lead to a catastrophe.

 

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DNA

ADVANTAGE CONGRESS

MAHESH RANGARAJAN

 

The ability of the Manmohan Singh government to survive the cut motion in the Lok Sabha this budget session was never in doubt. What is significant is the dynamics behind the scale of the margin when it came to a vote.

 

This is both a measure of the strengths and limitations of the government and, as the summer unfolds, it will become clearer which of these — the apparent advantages or the deeper infirmities — will prevail.

 

There is little doubt that it was the Women's Bill and its passage in the Rajya Sabha that was the catalyst for the attempt of north India centered parties to exert their muscle. Even after the government assured all that the Bill would not be brought before the Lok Sabha in this session, the Yadav duo decided to try exerting pressure on it.

 

Yet, they are now a shadow of their presence from, say, a decade-and-a-half ago. Then, they had the social justice platform and also the advantage of the support of minorities disenchanted with the Congress. The picture is radically different now and neither is in control of a state government.

 

They also proved more amenable to pressure on the various tax and disproportionate asset cases lodged against them. These gave Congress party managers just the leeway they needed to prise apart the Mandal-based parties from their rekindled relationship with the Left.

 

The Yadav duo's dilemma is shared by other political formations, most of which had never been in power at the Centre till just over 30 years ago. Since then all major parties have either been integral to government formation or support and, in the process, many have picked up what were earlier seen as traits of the Congress alone.

 

But the spotlight has not been on the Mandal-based forces as much as the premier Dalit-led party, the BSP. Mayawati's 21 MPs were crucial to the survival of the government. As in the other cases, the Union government going soft on her cases in court may well have had a role in softening her up.

 

But there is a second major factor at work here. Rahul Gandhi's campaign launched with some fanfare on Ambedkar Divas on April 14 has not had the kind of response that had been hoped for.

 

Mayawati, in turn, has shrewdly exploited the Congress' inability to mount an offensive on all fronts. The alliance has only a wafer-thin majority in the Lok Sabha in contrast to the Bahujan Samaj Party's majority in the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh. Further, successive by-elections have shown her continued hold on the popular vote even though the kind of cross-class appeal she once had may well have got diluted.

 

Her situation is also unusual in more than one sense. She has a certain aura that makes specific tactical moves that she or her party makes irrelevant to the base on the ground. So attacking her for letting down the anti-Congress camp makes little headway. The BSP after all is the only major national party that was formed after the Emergency of 1975-77 and has no specific view on this critical watershed in Indian politics.

 

Further, on the issue of the Women's Bill, which many ruling party managers had seen as a game changer, Mayawati, as much as other opponents, has fought the government to a crawl, if not a standstill. The idea that gender-based mobilisation would unleash fresh forces the way caste-based reservation once did has not died down. But it needs to be attuned better to other divides in society and the body politic.

 

In turn, the BSP too has been shown up to lack the kind of appeal outside Uttar Pradesh and pockets of neighbouring states that it has in the heartland. In common with many regional parties, it loses its political antennae once it moves outside its core region of support. The inability to cultivate regional leaders or define a larger programme have made its strategy centered on one state, which however populous, is not synonymous with India.

 

For the Congress and the ruling alliance, what has been the great blessing is the inability of the premier opposition party to find its feet. Despite impressive mobilisation on the issue of prices, the BJP did not choose its ground carefully on the floor of the house. Its direct attack on the prime minister has shown that it has not outgrown the strategy it followed, with unhappy consequences in the last general elections.

 

Where does that leave the polity at large? The ruling alliance has its challenges cut out. Rising prices will undercut the mass appeal it has and pose a continuing challenge. But unless there is a clear and sustained Opposition mobilisation, this discontent will not amount to a direct challenge. It showed that the dice for now is still loaded in Congress' favour

 

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DNA

BETTING'S LEGAL, AND I'M IN JAIL

FARRUKH DHONDY

 

Cell No. 743

Cyber-offenders Wing

Her Majesty's Prison

The Isle of Wight,

UK

 

Dear Friends, I was to go to Germany last week to speak at a University but, with millions of others, was prevented from travelling by the twin disasters of the explosion of volcanic ash over Europe's airspace and a French railway strike which prevented one travelling beyond Calais — if of course, one could get to that place across a very booked up English Channel.

 

One takes these little hitches in life with equanimity. I personally console myself that the plight of others, stuck in Rawalpindi, for instance and unable to take any flight except one to Lagos and take one's chances by boat, after paying twenty thousand pounds to the non-existent shipping company... is infinitely worse than mine. One counts one's blessings or remembers the parable my great grandmother taught me at her knee:

 

"I cried because I had no shoes

Then I saw a man with Jimmy Choos.... "

 

Apart from this mantra, I found that the best way to ward off the blues occasioned by the forced postponements in my professional timetable was to run a lucrative competition, related to the volcanic disaster, on the Internet. With the help of an Icelandic friend I devised a web page which challenged anyone stranded by the volcanic eruption anywhere in the world to enter the competition for a small fee and take away a huge prize if they won.

 

The competition couldn't have been simpler. Contestants, using their computer microphones and Skype cameras had to correctly pronounce the name of the volcano that had erupted in Iceland and caused the closure of European and African airports.

 

The word, the elusive name of this mischievous volcano, as the world knows, but hasn't yet successfully pronounced is Eyjafjallajoekull. The competition, my website announced, would be judged by a scientific voice-comparison of each competitor's offering with the authentic Icelandic pronunciation of the word. Winners were promised huge rewards for a small stake.

 

What my website didn't reveal to potential competitors was that just as Eskimos have a thousand words for snow and each of these has its own unique pronunciation, and just as there are a thousand-and-one names for God and no human can authoritatively say that 'Yaveh' or 'Allah' is a better way to address the almighty than 'Ahura Mazda', 'Jehova', 'Our Father' or 'Ishwar', so Eyjafjallajoekull has as many pronunciations as there are people in Iceland. There is no one unique pronunciation — and there's the rub!

 

I was not to know that under British law, while it is completely accepted that bookies deprive punters of millions of pounds a week through betting on horse races, dog races and the results of football matches; and while the government itself runs a number lottery with a billion-to-one odds stacked against entrants, it is illegal to formulate an unwinnable competition. So, for instance, I can with complete freedom, ensured by the constitutional right to free speech, ask the next man, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" or "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" — but I can't charge them money to attempt to solve these riddles.

 

The food is not bad here. But, my friends, UK lawyers are very expensive and so if any reader can see his or her way to contribute to the legal expenses entailed in proving my innocence they should send contributions to: PO Box number 420, Lagos, Nigeria.

God bless you,

Farrukh Dhondy

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

TOWARDS INDO-PAK TALKS

BUT KEEP PRESSURE ON TO PUNISH 26/11 PLOTTERS

 

That India is not averse to holding talks with Pakistan for resolving the issues plaguing their relations has been highlighted again by New Delhi despite no credible action by Islamabad so far to punish all those behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told his Pakistani counterpart, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, during their one-on-talks on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit at Thimpu on Thursday, India-Pakistan cooperation in different areas was essential for faster socio-economic growth in South Asia. Nothing can be allowed to come in the way of progress in the region, home to a large chunk of the world's poor. It is, therefore, encouraging that the two sides have decided to hold talks at the levels of Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries as soon as possible. As Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao pointed out during her Press briefing after the Manmohan Singh-Gilani meeting, the two countries will not shy away from discussing all issues of concern despite their differences in approach and perception. Dialogue, after all, is the key to promoting peace in region.

 

The stand taken at Thimpu is no different from the one announced at Sharm-al-Sheikh (Egypt) on July 16, 2009, though there was no mention of delinking the fight against terrorism and the cause of dialogue. But India cannot afford to allow those behind the Mumbai terrorist strike to go scot-free in Pakistan. That is why Dr Manmohan Singh urged Mr Gilani to ensure that these culprits got adequate punishment for the heinous crime they committed on November 26, 2008. India wants to be updated on the proceedings in Pakistan to bring these culprits to justice.

 

If the Thimpu talks between the two Prime Ministers appear to have paved the way for the resumption of the stalled India-Pakistan dialogue process, this does not mean that India will reduce its pressure on Pakistan to abandon the policy of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Islamabad will have to change its approach towards the anti-India terrorist outfits based on the other side of the border. With a view to creating an atmosphere congenial to the success of any dialogue process, Pakistan will have to honour its past commitment that it will not allow any territory under its control to be used by terrorists of any persuasion.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

THE WATER CHALLENGE

SOLUTIONS ARE THERE, BUT NOT THE WILL

 

The deepening water shortage in Punjab and Haryana and in some areas residents getting dirty water should be a cause for concern to governments in both states. A growing population, consumption-driven growth, climate change, increased cultivation of paddy, over-exploitation of groundwater, non-recycling of used water and poor conservation habits are widening the gap between demand and supply. The water woes of Shimla, Chennai and Bangalore are well known. Delhi-ites will soon be forced to consume treated sewage water as they do in Singapore. In Rajasthan water resources are guarded and even animals are denied free access. A McKinsey report warns that Indian cities could turn into "dry, stinking holes" by 2030.

 

It is a matter of regret that in Punjab and Haryana the crisis is partly self-created. Farmers have abandoned traditional crops that consumed less water and switched to paddy, a water guzzler, lured by frequent Central hikes in the minimum support prices. If the cost of a sharp decline in the water table and installation of submersible pumps to extract water from deeper levels is factored in the MSPs, the paddy grown here will carry a prohibitive price tag. Farmers of Punjab and Haryana are actually subsidising rice consumed in other states. Free power has only helped them use and waste more water than required. No wonder, experts suggest either denying the land-owners the ownership rights of groundwater or levying a cess on its extraction.

 

Gujarat's Jyotigram scheme is widely appreciated for separating agricultural and non-agricultural feeders for supplying power in villages to cut water misuse. Check dams have been raised to harvest rainwater. Sprinklers are replacing flood irrigation. Village ponds have been levelled in this region. All such water bodies will have to be revived with community effort to ensure that groundwater gets replenished. Climate change, given its serious effect on water resources and agriculture, has to be contained before it is too late. Better water management at the individual, state and national levels is the need of the hour.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

UPHOLDING FREE EXPRESSION

SC DEFENDS ACTOR KHUSHBOO'S COMMENT

 

Wednesday's ruling by the Supreme Court quashing all cases filed against Tamil actor Khushboo for her views on pre-marital sex in metropolitan cities will come as a much-needed relief to her. The fact that 22 cases of defamation were slapped on her for her comments to an English fortnightly not only added to the courts' burden but also subjected her to avoidable harassment. The Madras High Court, instead of rejecting the complaints against Khushboo in April 2008, consolidated them and ordered a joint trial.

 

The ruling does not come as a surprise because the apex court held last month that no law prohibited pre-marital sex or live-in relationships. Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan aptly questioned, "when two adults live together, what is the offence and under which section of Indian law?" Apart from violating Khushboo's constitutional right to freedom of speech, the complainants have confused a pompous moralism with the law, leading the apex court judges to say that what was seen as unethical and indecent by certain sections of society could not be termed an offence.

 

Significantly, Justice Balakrishnan has now ruled that Khushboo's remarks amounted to "fair comment", protected by her fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. The Tamil actor had claimed in an interview that women who indulged in sex before their marriage should take care to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, but her words were taken out of context to suggest that she had urged women to be "immoral". The complaints of defamation by vested interests were frivolous and mala fide with the sole motive of getting political mileage and publicity, she contended. The apex court has at last quashed all cases filed against Khushboo, but who will compensate her for the mental torture she had to undergo for long?

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

ALL PHONE CALLS ARE VULNERABLE

BUT STATE MUST ACT RESPONSIBLY

BY INDER MALHOTRA

 

AS was only to be expected, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, barely audible in the midst of the Opposition's loud protests, has emphatically denied that the United Progressive Alliance government authorised the tapping of mobile phone calls of its political opponents as well as of a Congress leader. He has also stated that there was "no substance" in the cover story of the newsmagazine Outlook alleging large-scale misuse of its phone-tapping capacity by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). However, the Home Minister kept an escape hatch open. If there were any proof of unauthorized "eavesdropping on political leaders", he said, appropriate agencies would investigate it thoroughly.

 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should normally have made the statement on this delicate matter, if only because the NTRO is under him, not the Home Minister. But he was busy receiving Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and by the time he was ready to come to the House, it had been adjourned for the day because of bedlam. Unfortunately, he chose to speak on the subject outside the House though only to declare that there was no need for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the matter. But the BJP is now accusing him of breach of parliamentary privilege.

 

As for the Home Minister's statement, it absolves the UPA government of all blame. But by implication it does concede that the NTRO may have listened to the conversations of political leaders and other citizens without being asked to do so. As Stalin once said famously, secret agencies of all countries, including his own, were a law unto themselves. Even so, it is doubtful that Indian intelligence agencies can afford to be brazenly defiant of the political authority. Therefore, Mr Chidambaram would have been well advised frankly to tell the country that because of the highly advanced technology at its disposal, the NTRO sometimes overhears conversations it doesn't intend to. Rotating interceptors, called "Eagles", targeting areas in need of careful watch, pick up every phone call, fax or other communication within its range. What the agency does with the information thus gathered is a different matter.

 

Let me hasten to add that what the NTRO - formed around the communications intelligence apparatus of the foreign intelligence agency, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), after the Kargil War - is doing is nothing miraculous. America's National Security Agency (NSA) has been in a position to monitor all communications across the world since soon after World War II. Britain's GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters, and similar agencies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand have the same capability. Moreover, these five agencies work in tandem. It should, therefore, be obvious that almost every conversation over a mobile phone or any other communication channel is vulnerable, not only to agencies in this country but also foreign ones.

 

From the foregoing it does not follow that the citizens of India have no defence for their privacy or the powers that be can eavesdrop on their political opponents with impunity. On the other hand, in a country facing terrorism, both cross-border and indigenous, Maoist menace, other insurgencies, smuggling, organized crime and money laundering, intelligence agencies cannot be so bound down as to be made dysfunctional. There has to be a proper balance between the nation's need for security and stability and the privacy of the innocent citizen and propriety in politics. Regrettably, neither this country's politico-administrative system nor its civic society is such as to be able to sustain the requisite balance the way the mature democracies manage to do.

 

Yet, it must be added that despite our relatively limited resources, the relevant agencies have given an excellent account of themselves. During the Kargil War, RAW tapped the phone call between General Musharraf in Beijing and his chief of general staff, General Aziz, in Islamabad. This exposed the Pakistan Army's role in what Pakistani propaganda was making out to be the handiwork "entirely of the Mujahideen". Even more valuable was the recording by the NTRO during 26/11 of the conversations between the terrorists attacking Mumbai's five-star hotels and their handlers in Pakistan. This gave the lie to the initial Pakistani claim that it had nothing to do with the savage onslaught.

 

Organizations like the NTRO, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau have a lot more to do to become more effective and cohesive. Similarly, the heavily criminalised political order has to cleanse itself. Otherwise, someone will have to monitor the phone calls of even "prominent" politicians.

 

What follows is not intended to justify any wrongdoing by any intelligence agency with or without the government's approval. The idea is to underscore that complaints being voiced so angrily today are not new. Allegations of political opponents and even colleagues being under surveillance have been endemic in this country under all regimes over the last six decades. Nor are Western democracies wholly immune from this malaise.

 

Even in the time of the most liberal and democratic ruler of this country, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Cabinet colleague he liked, T. T. Krishnamachari, publicly complained that his phone was being tapped and he named the then Intelligence Czar, B. N. Mullik, as the culprit. Twelve years earlier, when bugging devices were rudimentary and scarce, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a Cabinet colleague totally trusted by Nehru and, therefore, entrusted with a delicate security mission, was confident, for good reason, that the formidable Sardar Patel would get his telephone tapped. He made no fuss. As Communications Minister he simply got the general telephone at the AICC office shifted to his residence. On the phone that Rafi Sahib normally used the IB only heard grocery orders, dinner menus and family chatter.

 

There are many other such instances. But let me skip them and get to the era when the nadir was reached. Sadly, this happened when Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister got all the phones of President Giani Zail Singh tapped. Of course, Gianiji, a past master in political intrigue, was then busy plotting Rajiv's dismissal despite the Prime Minister's four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha.

 

In V. P. Singh's time his rival, Chandra Shekhar, claimed that his phone was being tapped and VP's short-lived government stoutly denied this. So did another Prime Minister with a brief tenure, H. D. Deve Gowda, who was accused of snooping on several leaders, including former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. There is no need to go on and on.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

GREEN FINGERS

BY I.M. SONI

 

Many in Chandigarh, with hoe in hand, are finding joy in their home kitchen garden. Gardening gives them satisfaction of creating something. One may not give birth to a rose but one can grow one.

 

Many glad gardeners of Chandigarh have won applause and reward in flower shows. Their products and pictures have adorned newspapers pages. The "oxygen" of publicity generates in them a new vitality to hoe better. May their buds bloom!

 

This bud-brigade has a considerable strength. They hail from all walks of life. There are doctors, engineers, lawyers, university and college teachers, contractors, and other engaged in the hoe hobby. The most notable are senior citizens. Many often grow grapes in their backyard to make wine at their house. One I know has grown up a sort of hanging garden for his heady hobby.

 

When these green fingers cluster, they discuss their prize possessions, and promise to swap saplings. They talk about roots and stems, leaves and branches, petals and pollen. Questions like, why are leaves becoming yellow, why are petals falling are floated and flouted.

 

Ladies' fingers, brinjals (not the Bt variety), green chillies, mint, coriander are fondly sown, manured and lovingly harvested.

 

The very mention of their green crops swells their chest. Late Prof. R.C. Paul, Vice-Chancellor, Panjab University, once showed me a home-grown cabbage the size of a big water melon.

 

One gets emotionally attached to plants. When a fully blooming lime plant in our backyard was uprooted by labour during re-construction, I cried. The sad scene still haunts me. The tree fallen like a wounded soldier, refuses to be rubbed off my mental screen.

 

There are other plus points. When you are plucking roots, dead twigs or leaves, no fine fingers pluck at your nerves. You tame your tensions.

 

One is far from the cares of the world when one digs the earth, inhaling its musty flavour. There is a kick in it as typical as the one you get from opening a book after long years.

 

Small, green gardens grown and tended with loving care, lend nature's balming effect to the house, and in a small way, offset the menacing effect of jungles of concrete.

 

Soil your fingers, grow mini forests and green your home. You will have a wonderful feeling of peace and harmony.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

RAJASTHAN FACES HEAT

AGITATING GUJJARS INSIST ON QUOTA

BY PERNEET SINGH

 

Legal hurdles notwithstanding, the Gujjars are once again up in arms in Rajasthan, seeking a 5 per cent quota in government jobs. With the memories of violent Gujjar agitations still fresh, the government doesn't want any bloodshed and would like to redress the issue amicably.

 

However, unlike previous occasions, the present Congress regime has limited options in view of the legal hurdles the Bill providing 5 per cent reservation to the Gujjars is facing. Interestingly, the Gujjars too have no choice but to hold dialogue with the government, which is very much clear from their approach till now. In fact, having learnt their lessons from the past, both sides are cautious.

 

The state government is committed to providing a 5 per cent quota in government jobs to the Gujjars, but is wary of promising anything which it cannot deliver in future. Similarly, the Gujjars, after having lost over 80 lives in the previous agitations, are making sure that their agitation is peaceful and respond positively to offers for talks.

 

At the root of the legal tangle is the Bill, which was introduced in the Rajasthan Assembly on July 14, 2008, by the previous BJP regime. The Bill provided a 5 per cent reservation to the Gujjar, Banjara, Gadia Lohar and Raika communities under the Special Backward Class (SBC) category, besides a 14 per cent quota to the poor among the upper castes under the Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) category.

 

Though the House passed the Bill, the then Governor SK Singh sat on it for a year before signing it on July 31, 2009. However, the Rajasthan High Court stayed the Bill on October 13, 2009, on the ground that it exceeded the 50 per cent cap on reservations set by the Supreme Court.  The state already has a 21 per cent quota for the OBCs, 16 per cent for the SCs and 12 per cent for the STs, making it a total of 49 per cent. After the Bill the total reservations went up to 68 per cent.

 

The legal options the government has are: (1) separating the 5 per cent quota for the Gujjars under the SBC category from the 14 per cent reservation for the EBCs and (2) providing the community a 5 per cent quota within the limit of 50 per cent reservations. The state government is mulling a new Bill to end the stir. There is a proposal to rework the quota Bill without reservations to the Economically Backward Classes (EBCs).

 

The proposal suggests that the 14 per cent reservation to the EBCs clubbed with the 5 per cent quota to the Gujjars be separated from the existing law. This would bring the total reservations down to 54 per cent. The Gujjar leaders now insist that they be given the reservation under the 50 per cent cap so that it cannot be challenged in court. They feel that the government can achieve this by extending them the reservation through a sub-category within the existing quota for either the STs or the OBCs.

 

However, with the strong Meena community (ST), which is always at loggerheads with the Gujjars, making it amply clear that they would not share their reservation pie with anyone, the government is left with the only option of carving out a sub-category in the OBC quota. The government can take a 4 per cent share out of the 21 per cent for the OBC and add another 1 per cent to it, to give a 5 per cent quota to the SBCs within the upper limit of the 50 per cent reservation, but the move may prove to be politically tricky to the Congress government. 
A section of the Congress leaders allege that the Gujjar agitation is remote-controlled by the BJP. Bainsla had joined the BJP on the insistence of former CM Vasundhara Raje and unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Sawai Madhopur last year. He is also a special invitee to the National Executive of the BJP.

 

Interestingly, the Gujjars have found support from an unexpected quarter this time – the Meena community, which was at daggers drawn with the former during the previous stir. This is because the Gujjars are no more stressing on their inclusion in the ST category under which the Meena community falls. The Gujjars are currently focussing on the 5 per cent reservation, irrespective of the category. In the last agitation, the Gujjars were seeking ST status. However, the Meena community, which has ST status, was against the Gujjars being granted the same status.

 

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THE TRIBUNE