EDITORIAL 30.09.10

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Editorial

month september 30, edition 000639, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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

For ENGLISH EDITORIAL http://editorialsamarth.blogspot.com

 

THE PIONEER

1. BROKERING PEACE
2. ISLAMISM TO THE FORE
3. SPORTS CAN'T BRIDGE GAP - G PARTHASARATHY
4. TOURISM AS A MIRROR OF HISTORY - PRIYADARSI DUTTA
5. LAST SALUTE TO ARJUN SENGUPTA - HIRANMAY KARLEKAR
6. ABBAS WANTS TO SPIKE PEACE TALKS - BARRY RUBIN

MAILTODAY

1. ACT ON THE LESSONS FROM NIYAMGIRI ELSEWHERE TOO
2. OBAMA MUST WALK THE TALK
3. BID TO MALIGN INDIA'S IMAGE
4. BABRI ISSUE HAS LOST ITS POLITICAL TRACTION - BY MANOJ JOSHI
5. EGG ON THE ACADEMIES'FACES OVER EGGPLANT - DINESH C. SHARMA

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. NO TOKENISM, PLEASE
2. THE WATCHMEN
3. HOME AND THE WORLD - RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL
4. REFURBISH TEAMS FOR BETTER COMPETITION
5. ALLOW THE TEAMS TO SETTLE - KAUTILYA KUMAR
6. THE CAN'T WIN GAMES? - BACHI KARKARIA 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. LET'S BUILD ON THE POSITIVES
2. PROMOTING OUR INTERESTS
3. SOME TURBULENCE
4. LET THE GAMES BEGIN - SAMAR HALARNKAR
5. NO PLACE FOR OUTSIDERS  - RUUD VAN WEERDENBURG

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. BUDGET 101
2. WHAT'S IN A NUMBER?
3. SUITING OURSELVES
4. TODAY, THERE IS HOPE FOR A MATURE REACTION TO AYODHYA VERDICT: MOILY - M VEERAPPA MOILY 
5. BRING ON THE OLYMPICS - JASSI KHANGURA 
6. THE TEA KETTLE MOVEMENT
7. HITTING JAPAN - C. RAJA MOHAN 
8. OBAMA'S WORRIES -DHRUVA JAISHANKAR 
9. AYODHYA D-DAY

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. MOILY VS LAW MINISTRY
2. RBI GETS REAL
3. HEAVY HAND OF THE LAW - MK VENU
4. BEGGARING-THY-NEIGHBOUR - DHIRAJ NAYYAR
5. EAVESDROPPER
6. MUSCOVITES
   

THE HINDU

1. LABOUR BREAKS WITH RECENT PAST
2. JOB CREATING GROWTH
3. RUSSIA'S U-TURN ON ARMS SALE - VLADIMIR RADYUHIN
4. WHY THE BJP CANNOT GO BACK TO ITS ' MANDIR WAHIN BANAYENGE' STANCE
5. NEENA VYAS
6. CIA INTENSIFIES DRONE STRIKES WITHIN PAKISTAN - MARK MAZZETTI AND ERIC SCHMITT
7. A THIRD OF 'EXTINCT' MAMMALS FOUND ALIVE - IAN SAMPLE
8. PAKISTANI SOLDIER SETS TREE PLANTING RECORD

THE ASIAN AGE

1. REGULATING THE NET:INDIA AND AMERICA
2. THE SEPTEMBER QUIZ - NIRMALA SITHARAMAN

DNA

1. SENSE OVER STATE IN RESOLVING MODERNITY
2. UID'S UNDERLYING POLITICS OF VISION
3. KIDS AT PLAY ARE SAFER THAN WIRED 24/7
4. DEATH CANNOT TOUCH THE HUMAN SPIRIT - N RAGHURAMAN
5. HINDU-MUSLIM AMITY CAN'T BE BUILT ON THE BASIS OF DENIAL - R JAGANNATHAN

THE KASHMIR TIMES

1. IMPLICATIONS OF AYODHYA VERDICT
2. NOT JUST TEETHING TROUBLES
3. EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE - NYLA ALI KHAN

DAILY EXCELSIOR

1. CRIME WATCH
2. NOT SURPRISING
3. AGONY OF INDIA - BY DR ASHWANI MAHAJAN
4. OBSTACLES IN PATH OF GREEN INDIA MISSION - BY JYOTSHNA PANDIT
5. CHALLENGES BEFORE INDIA HORTICULTURE - BY DR. MANOJ NAZIR

THE TRIBUNE

1. OBAMA'S IMPENDING VISIT
2. IDENTITY PROOF FOR ALL
3. TACKLING POVERTY
4. ATTRACTING FOREIGN INVESTMENT - BY JAYSHREE SENGUPTA
5. WHO WILL CALL THE PM 'MOHNA' AGAIN? - BY RASHMI TALWAR
6. FEARS ON INJECTED VEGETABLES, MILK UNFOUNDED - D.S.KHURANA AND KULBIR SINGH
7. SAFE METHODS OF FRUIT RIPENING - B.V.C. MAHAJAN AND B.S. GHUMAN

MUMBAI MIRROR

1. BLUNDER ON REGARDLESS

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. A VACANT AUTHORITY
2. BIG CITIES NEED SMALL PEOPLE
3. JAPAN'S LOOMING SAVINGS CRISIS - MARTIN FELDSTEIN
4. THE LANGUAGE OF PROGRESS - KANIKA DATTA
5. SAFEGUARDS AGAINST DOHA - T S VISHWANATH
6. JOINING THE RURAL DOTS - INDICUS ANALYTICS

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. FROM BC TO MODERN BANKING
2. FATHER KNOWS BEST
3. HRD IN BANKS IS MORE THAN JUST PAY - T T RAM MOHAN
4. GO COLD TURKEY, FOR GOD'S SAKE! - ULLEKH N P 
5. PARADIGM SHIFT TO COMBAT DISASTER - BHOLA R GURJAR 
6. RED TOOTH AND CLAW - VITHAL C NADKARNI 

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. REGULATING THE NET
2. SENSE & SENSIBILITIES - BY NIRMALA SITHARAMAN
3. THE TEA KETTLE MOVEMENT IS ALL STEAM - BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
4. ROZI, ROTI VS RELIGION
5. THE SHAKTI OF TANTRIC RITES - BY DR V. BALAKRISHNAN

 

THE STATESMAN

1. OUR LIST, THEIR LIST
2. POST-NEW LABOUR
3. DEATH IN THE PARK
4. TALKS HIT THE BUMPS - BY SALMAN HAIDAR
5. INDO-ISRAELI TIES WORRY CHINA?
6. FACE TO FACE WITH THE KING - A K OJHA
7. NORTH KOREA FINDS A FUTURE LEADER - DAVID MCNEILL

THE TELEGRAPH

1. SHUTTING DOWN
2. PAST IMPERFECT
3. INVISIBLE LIVES - ANOTHER INDIA
4. THE KERALA CONUNDRUM - ASHOK SANJAY GUHA
5. OPEN FORUM - NEHA SAHAY

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. SHADY SECRETS
2. A REPRIEVE FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH
3. GOV. CHRISTIE'S TUNNEL VISION
4. POLAR PONIES AND ICE DOGS
5. WAITING FOR SOMEBODY - BY GAIL COLLINS
6. CHRONICLE OF A GENOCIDE FORETOLD - BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
7. ELITE COLLEGES, OR COLLEGES FOR THE ELITE? - BY RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG
8. GET NEW YORK TO THE POLLS - BY RICHARD FIFE

USA TODAY

1. DEPARTING CONGRESS LEAVES PILES OF UNFINISHED BUSINESS
2. THE KATY PERRY-ELMO DUST-UP IS ABOUT SEXUALIZATION - BY RENATA KOBETTS MILLER
3. ISRAELI AMBASSADOR ON A NUCLEAR IRAN: 'NO WAY'
4. CARTER: 1970S SAW A TEA PARTY-LIKE WAVE - BY JIMMY CARTER

TIMES FREE PRESS

1. AN OUTRAGEOUS RATE HIKE
2. SIGNS OF CHANGE IN NORTH KOREA
3. U.S. WON'T SHUT DOWN, BUT ...
4. PRESIDENT OBAMA LECTURES HIS PARTY
5. ODD STANCE ON EDUCATION
6. NO TOURISM RECESSION HERE
7. U.N. NAMES GREETER FOR SPACE ALIENS

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

1. FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - BEWARE OF THE 'BULUT SWITCH'
2. ELECTRIC CARS VS. OIL ECONOMY
3. ERSU ABLAK
4. ON A LAND OF FEAR - YILDIRIM TÜRKER
5. SUDAN: WAR OF SECESSION - RICHARD REID
6. ROMA: THE OTHER EUROPEANS - NAVI PILLAY
7. HAKKARI: CAN THIS WOUND HEAL? - METİN MÜNİR
8. IT'S NOT FAIR TO PLAY WITH GÜL'S TERM - MEHMET ALİ BİRAND
9. TURBAN GAME BACK ON STAGE - YUSUF KANLI

THE NEWS

1. OUR FINANCIAL FRAGILITY
2. THE AAFIA AFFAIR
3. BACK TO BASICS - ASIF EZDI
4. WINTER: THE LOOMING CALAMITY - ZUBAIR TORWALI
5. STUXNET -- A CYBER "COLD START"? - IKRAM SEHGAL
6. DEMAGOGUES AND DEMOCRACY - WIDAD SHAHID
7. THE IMAGE GAME FOR AMERICA - KAMILA HYAT

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. NO DIALOGUE WITH INDIA SANS KASHMIR
2. NATO BREEDS MORE TERRORISM
3. WRITTEN-OFF LOANS MUST BE RECOVERED
4. ZARDARI, GILANI MUST SHUN CONFRONTATION WITH SC - M ASHRAF MIRZA
5. NOT TERRORISM, FLOODS; IT'S CORRUPTION - DR MANZOOR H KHATANA
6. DR AAFIA & US JUSTICE - ALI ASHRAF KHAN
7. DEMOCRACY IS NO EXCUSE - BURHANUDDIN HASAN
8. IT'S RIGHT TO BOYCOTT COMMONWEALTH GAMES - KAPIL KOMIREDDI

THE AUSTRALIYAN

1. INTEGRITY IN SHORT SUPPLY
2. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD
3. WHEN TRIBAL PUNISHMENT IS JUST AN EXCUSE FOR CRIME

THE GUARDIAN

1. EUROPE'S DAY OF PROTESTS: ODE TO WOE
2. LABOUR PARTY: BROTHERLY BREACH
3. IN PRAISE OF… THE USK VALLEY

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. IMPROVING LAW SCHOOL EDUCATION
2. ECONOMIC POLICIES THAT INSTILL HOPE
3. WHAT CHINA HAS JOINED TOGETHER - BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON
4. NO REASON TO THINK THAT 'BIBI' HAS CHANGED - BY GWYNNE DYER
5. EBB AND FLOW OF HEDGING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA - BY FRANK CHING
6. 'FRIENDLY DIPLOMACY' GAFFE - BY MINEO NAKAJIMA

THE JAKARTA POST

1. AFTER 45 YEARS, THE BACKLASH
2. NATIONAL POLICE CHIEF CANDIDATE IN THE HOT SEAT - T. HARI PRIHATONO
3. CONSTRUCTIVE COMMUNICATION FOR PAPUA - NELES TEBAY
4. REBALANCING US DOMINANCE - JUWONO SUDARSONO

CHINA DAILY

1. AID TO STUDENTS
2. GLOBAL WARMING
3. JAPAN MUST LOOK BEYOND ITS INTERNAL PROBLEMS - BY WANG PING (CHINA DAILY)
4. THE HEART SHOULD RULE TOURISM - BY HE BOLIN (CHINA DAILY)
5. NEW SCHOOLS RISING FROM QUAKE RUINS - BY LI XING (CHINA DAILY)
6. MILITARY COEXISTENCE IN NEW ERA - BY XU HUI (CHINA DAILY)

THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. PROLETARIATS AND POTATOES - BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY
2. THE END OF A POLITICAL ERA - BY NIKOLAI PETROV

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

BROKERING PEACE

LET US MIND ITS OWN BUSINESS

With US President Barack Obama's visit to India drawing near, an 'out-of-the-box' approach like accepting the Line of Control as the international border between India and Pakistan to resolve the Jammu & Kashmir issue is being talked of as a possible solution to be mooted by Washington, DC, even if informally. As solutions go, the idea of converting the LoC into an international border between the two countries to settle the festering dispute for good may be a tempting one, but it makes little sense because the rechristening of the LoC, even if agreed to by India, will not stop Pakistan from persisting with its hostile policy and India baiting. If Pakistan-based terrorist organisations, aided and abetted by the ISI, can train and infiltrate their cadre across the LoC, they can do the same even with an international border in place. Separatists in the Kashmir Valley will still cry azadi and run their insidious campaign by arousing passions with the assistance of their Pakistani benefactors. In fact, the situation could worsen: There could be a demand then for easier movement of Kashmiris from both the sides in the name of enhancing 'people-to-people contact', thus creating a porous border and providing even easier access to infiltrators. So, the issue is not one of nomenclature but that which involves the role of Pakistan in fomenting divisive activities in Jammu & Kashmir as well as other parts of India. In any case, converting the LoC into the international border is not a new idea; it was said to have been informally discussed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan's then President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Its impracticality in the current situation is evident from the fact that there has been no forward movement since then. But that should surprise no one, since the matter is not something an Indian leader can simply sit across the table and resolve with a friendly handshake. By accepting the LoC as an international border, India will also lose claim over those parts of Jammu & Kashmir that are under Pakistan's illegal occupation since the ceasefire of 1948.

Most important, there is an all-party resolution adopted by the Parliament that prohibits any settlement which harms the unity and integrity of the Union of India. Americans who believe they can push the Government of India into toeing their line tend to forget that Parliament matters in this country. No Government, irrespective of the party or alliance in power, will ever be able to negotiate peace with Pakistan by bartering Indian territory or sacrificing India's national interest. Strangely, this simple fact is often glossed over by the US which attaches little or no importance to Parliament in India. Perhaps that's because it is used to dealing with dictators, tyrants and puppets who are only to happy to do America's bidding for a fistful of dollars. India, the US must remember, is not a banana republic or a client state where Americans can decide for the people what is best for them. The convert-LoC-into-border suggestion deserves to be ignored. If that upsets Mr Obama, he can stay home.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

ISLAMISM TO THE FORE

CPM, CONGRESS PANDER TO FANATICS

With the dates for polling in the 1,227 panchayat, municipal and corporation council elections in Kerala fast approaching, the two main political fronts led by the CPI(M) and the Congress are adopting hypocritical methods to win this round of voting. Both the fronts have begun striking deals with the fundamentalist elements in the Muslim community, a time-tested method for ensuring electoral gains. Victory in majority of the local bodies is extremely important to both the CPI(M)-led ruling LDF and the Congress-headed Opposition UDF because the October civic polls are the full dress rehearsal for the Assembly elections in April-May next year. The Marxists are apprehensive of a replication of the West Bengal municipal polls experience in Kerala, while for the Congress, it is a now-or-never situation. Compelled by the urgency of the situation, the Marxists and the Congress have gone back to their traditionally trusted associates among Islamists. The CPI(M)'s association is with its Lok Sabha poll ally PDP of Abdul Nasser Madani. The Congress-led UDF has solicited the support of Popular Front of India, whose goons had cut off the right hand of a college professor in a Taliban-like attack. The other Islamist outfit, Jamaat-e-Islami, is yet to establish formal ties with any party, but that will happen soon. The hypocrisy is that both the sides are still continuing with their hollow declarations of being committed to fighting Islamists and upholding secularism! It would appear, though not for the first time, that the definition and values of secularism miraculously undergo a metamorphosis and turn into those associated with rank communalism whenever 'secular' parties like the CPI(M) and the Congress find themselves contesting an election. 

The Kerala Police, controlled by Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, a CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, has already frozen the probe into the Popular Front's terror attack on the college professor. Several of those arrested in this case are said to have connections with the Marxist outfit, DYFI. Leaders of Madani's PDP in Muslim-majority Malappuram district have admitted that they are in talks with the Left. The Congress has even had the audacity to ditch its trusted ally, the Muslim League, to strike a deal with the Popular Front in Idukki district where Islamism is most pronounced. While the whole goal of the power-crazy Marxists and Congress is electoral victory, the Islamists, who work under different organisational identities for their common aim, are making sure that their interests are safeguarded irrespective of which front emerges victorious. This is all the more dangerous in a State like Kerala where power decentralisation through the Panchyati Raj system is more effective than in any other State. The net result will be that a large majority of the new civic councils will function according to the Islamists' will. That will be like handing over Kerala's villages to clones of the Taliban. The CPI(M) and the Congress shall be equally to blame for this disastrous shift in Kerala's society and politics. And they would be guilty of launching a new brand of competitive communalism. 

 

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

SPORTS CAN'T BRIDGE GAP

G PARTHASARATHY

If a Pakistani player partnering an Indian player could bridge the trust deficit between India and Pakistan then life would have been a lot simpler

India's television channels went gaga on September 9, when news came that the India-Pakistan duo of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureishi staged an upset victory to enter the finals of the US Open. Sports buffs and professional bleeding hearts across the country were ecstatic, proclaiming that the young tennis stars were ushering in a new era of eternal friendship between India and Pakistan. Not to be outdone, our very own Sports Minister MS Gill, who is unlikely to get a Bharat Ratna for his Ministry's stewardship of the Commonwealth Games, jumped in to proclaim: "I have one question for everyone. If Bopanna and Qureishi can play together, why not India and Pakistan?" The Minister was obviously ignorant of the fact that over the past decade the cricket boards of South Asian countries had got together and, using Indian financial clout, had effectively shifted the centre of cricketing power from the Anglo-Saxon world to the sub-continent. The headquarters of the ICC moved from the hallowed precincts at Lords to a centre of sub-continental cricket, the Emirate of Dubai, in 2005.

While Mr Gill was waxing eloquent on how sportsmen had set an example for others to follow came the chilling news that three Indian soldiers had been killed by jihadisfrom across the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. Those talking about a "new era in India-Pakistan relations" seem to forget the realities of the present era, when terrorism sponsored by state agencies from across the border are taking lives across the country, from Kashmir to Kerala. One wonders if the families of the three soldiers or their compatriots would have been very pleased by the media hype over the US Open. This is not to suggest that we should underestimate the contributions that sportsmen, civil society groups, business houses and academic contacts play in promoting a better understanding between countries. And there are millions of people of goodwill in both India and Pakistan who yearn for a better future in the relationship. What we need to avoid, is hyping individual events to an unwarranted extent.

I was asked by then chairman of the BCCI NKP Salve in 1982, when I was India's Consul General in Karachi, to assist and look after the Indian cricket team visiting Pakistan. It was the series in which Imran Khan devastated the Indian batting line-up, with only Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Amarnath performing creditably and consistently. Indians were then still learning the art of dealing with reverse swing — an art perfected by the Pakistanis, though some in our team quietly noted that Imran seemed to swing the ball prodigiously only after the tea intervals. I then asked a Pakistani commentator what he thought of Imran's bowling. He replied that Imran had told him that when he played against India he thought of Kashmir and treated the encounter not as a cricket match, but as jihad. It is not surprising that when he took to politics and formed the Tehriq-e-Insaf party, Imran was joined by worthies like former ISI chief Lt-Gen Hamid Gul and the viscerally anti-Indian former Foreign Minister and High Commissioner to India, Mr Abdul Sattar.

The Pakistan Cricket Board, like its hockey and squash administrations, was run by its former Air Force Chief Air Marshal Nur Khan, a formidable individual, who even Gen Zia-ul Haq would not dare to take on. Air Chief Marshal Nur Khan did a remarkable job in changing the sociological composition of sport in Pakistan. He looked away from the traditional Karachi and Lahore elite and encouraged interest in sports in poorer neighbourhoods, apart from small towns and rural Pakistan. It was this approach that has led to Pakistan turning out a regular stream of world class fast bowlers and unorthodox, but gutsy batsmen.

It was Imran Khan who moulded this motley crowd into a formidable team, performing brilliantly, but erratically. But, it was impossible to ignore the underlying tensions that gripped any match Pakistan played against India. I asked the founder and first Editor of the Jang group of newspapers (of 'Aman ki Asha' fame), Mir Khalilur Rahman, why his countrymen were so fired up when playing cricket against India. He wryly responded: "Our problem is that we treat the cricket field as a battlefield and think the battlefield is a cricket field!" Sadly, Pakistan's hero of the 1965 conflict Air Chief Marshal Nur Khan is today a voice in the wilderness, championing the cause of India-Pakistan reconciliation.

Unlike the days when Air Chief Marshal Nur Khan was a towering figure in Pakistani cricket, standards of financial propriety and fair play have fallen in Pakistan, like in India. Cricket, as a former chairman of the BCCI is said to have remarked, is today, primarily a source of entertainment for fans and of personal enrichment for others. The Indian media adopted a moralistic posture in lampooning Pakistani cricketers for their involvement in 'spot fixing' in England, conveniently forgetting that four of our own erstwhile heroes, including a former captain, were banned for alleged involvement in 'match fixing'.

Neither India nor Pakistan can honestly claim today that their sports institutions observe high standards of financial propriety. But it is ridiculous to claim that sports can be totally divorced from international politics. The Moscow Olympics were boycotted by the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union returned the favour by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. South Africa was banned from international sport when apartheid prevailed and the Anglo-Saxon bloc refuses to play against Zimbabwe because they dislike its ruler, President Robert Mugabe. No Government could have defied outraged public opinion and invited Pakistani cricketers when wounds of the 26/11 terrorist attack were still raw. 

Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi is an exceptional Pakistani sportsman. At a time when the Pakistani cricket team is afflicted with excessive religiosity — a legacy of its former captain Inzamam ul Haq — Aisam has challenged conventional thinking in Pakistan by partnering an Israeli player in the international circuit. He won his first international tournament in 2008 partnering Prakash Amritraj, winning the South African Open with Rohan Bopanna earlier this year. Rather than expending energy on the complexities of the India-Pakistan relationship, Mr Gill would do well to ask his Cabinet colleague, the Home Minster, to ease some of the draconian rules now imposed on visas for Pakistani nationals, including their distinguished sportsmen, like the young Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

TOURISM AS A MIRROR OF HISTORY

PRIYADARSI DUTTA

The genesis and growth of the tourism industry is reflective of a shift in the world order where the West triumphed over Islam. The institution might become the first casualty of the forces trying to turn the clock back. Events like the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2000 Bali bombings are warning signs

The World Tourism Day was marked on September 27, the 31st in the series since the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (established 1974) instituted it in 1980. The changing annual themes of WTD — from "Tourism and Quality of Life" in 1981 and "Tourism, a Vital Force for World Peace" in 1986 to "Tourism and Biodiversity" in 2010 — are reflective of changing of global concerns from the days of Cold War to those of global warming. In 2008, the theme was actually 'Responding to Climate Change and Global Warming'.

The history of tourism has not been a regular subject with the historians. A comprehensive study about its genesis and growth would reflect changing dynamics of the world order. What, for instance, did the establishment of Cox & Kings in 1758, imply? The world's oldest extant travel company based in London with initial operations in India refers to a changed political topography in the aftermath of the War of Plassey. It marked the ascendancy of British power and gradual unfolding of modern concepts of life which included leisure tourism. What could we infer about history from the establishment of the International Congress of Official Tourist Traffic Associations in The Hague in 1925? It implied an inter-war attempt to forge a peaceful global diplomatic order the most recognisable icon of which was the League of Nations. 

Tourism had come a long way from its antiquarian origins in the institution of pilgrimage. The industry has moved beyond pleasure and business travels into the realms of medical and health tourism and that of Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. Yet the overwhelming influence of religious tourism was acknowledged when the first international conference on religious tourism was held at Nicosia, Cyprus, in October 2006. It was an admission that hype over modernity notwithstanding, religion continues to be a profound emotion. No wonder, we are also rediscovering religion as a potent force in global affairs.

A subtext of this was discernible in the movement that made tourism possible as an industry. The rise of Islam in the seventh century had eventually cast its long shadow on the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea stonewalling Europe from India. The lucrative spice trade on the Indian Ocean was entirely in the hands of Muslims, Arabs and Gujaratis. The Hindu response was one of withdrawal into a shell by prohibiting sea voyages. Suvarnabhoomi or South East Asia, the longstanding bastion of Hindu-Buddhist culture, fell off the Indian mindscape. It could be revived in the 19th century after the British founded Singapore and annexed Malaya and Burma, while the Dutch conquered the East Indies (Indonesia). Today the region is a favourite destination for tourists from India. 

The steep ascendancy of Iberian maritime power in the late 15th century saw the Portuguese overrunning the Indian Ocean by 1510. The sea battle of Diu fought on February 3, 1509, between Portuguese, on one hand, and the Muslim confederacy of the Sultan of Gujarat, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Zamorin of Khozikhode with support of the Ottoman Empire, on the other, ended in victory for the European power. The great age of tourism was prefigured in this freeing of the sea routes.

The liberation of Greece from Turkish thralldom (1829), French annexation of Algeria (1830) and protectorate status for Tunisia (1881), cessation of Cyprus (1874) to Britain and the British 'occupation' of Egypt (1883) reconstructed a Roman empire in the European mind. Published travelogues as well as available 'Orientalist' paintings prove that more Europeans began visiting those regions. Trends were similar for India and South East Asia. 

The other two underpinnings of tourism were spin-offs from European innovations. First was the growth and application of archaeology which, in addition to boosting historiography, propped up monumental destinations on the world map. Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign to Egypt (1798) occasioned the rediscovery of the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman epoch forgotten under Arab and Turkish rules. Almost everybody who visits Egypt from Alexandria to Aswan come to see its pre-Arabic past. This highlighting of Egypt's idolatrous antiquity is abhorrent to Islamic fundamentalists. Incidents like massacre of tourists at ancient temple of Queen Hatsheput in Luxor on November 17, 1997 resulted from this malaise. 

Austen Henry Layard's visit to Syria, Asia Minor and Assyria in 1840 first brought to light the Assyro-Babylonian antiquity of Mesopotamia. Layard authored the book Discoveries at Nineveh. Layard's exact contemporary Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), founder of Archaeological Survey of India, unearthed a string of archeological remains, upon which our 'Buddhist circuit tourism' stands. But actually these developments were part of larger movement to restore the classical heritage.

Fuel-intensive modes of transport like the steam ship and the locomotive, distinctly British achievements, made inter-continental journeys rapid and commodious. Until 1960 (when The Beatles embarked on its famous world tour by airplanes), ships were most reliable modes of overseas travel. Not to be missed out was the Western concept of exhibitions. London hosted the first international exhibition in 1851. Thomas Cook, who set up his travel company in the same year, brought 1,65,000 people to London for the exhibition. 

Tourism is a corollary of an organic change in lifestyle and modes of production brought about by Western political and intellectual dominance. Even the Muslim countries adopted tourism as a natural fact of life. But the industry might become the first casualty of Islamic fundamentalism that is trying to reverse the world order. Acts like 26/11 Mumbai, Bali bombings (2000) are warning signs. 

In 2001, 'Tourism: A Toll for Peace and Dialogue amongst Civilisations' was the UNWTO theme. Hosted in Iran, it was part of a public relation exercise that the Khatami regime had embarked upon in 1998. But it was ironical that barely a fortnight before the conference, 9/11 happened. The global interest in the 'clash of civilisations', which ironically began in the UN-designated Year of Dialogue amongst Civilisations (2001) has not waned since then. 

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

LAST SALUTE TO ARJUN SENGUPTA

HIRANMAY KARLEKAR

A warm, widely-read, generous man with an exceptional mind, Arjun Sengupta's career trajectory took him to governance, economic planning and diplomacy. Last Sunday, he left for the hereafter

It was the morning of July 16, 1955. A feeling of thrill welled up inside as I walked through the gate of one of India's fabled educational institutions as a student. "Welcome to Presidency College" a voice boomed. A somewhat generously endowed person, bespectacled, slightly older than me, and wearing a pajama and a kurta (punjabi as we call it in Kolkata), came up, smiled broadly and said in Bengali what would read in rough English translation as, "I am Arjun Sengupta. I welcome you on behalf of the Students' Federation. As you know, it is an organisation of progressive students." He continued after a short pause, "Presidency College has been at the forefront of all revolutionary movements in India and we have a responsibility to perpetuate the tradition."

Being from a family with a political background, I knew that All-India Students' Federation, commonly referred to as SF, was a front organisation of the Communist Party of India, then undivided. Besides, I had cut my teeth in student politics while still in high school. I was wondering how to respond when Arjun was called away by one of his followers. He said before leaving, "We will keep in touch. We hope to see you active in the SF."

That hope was belied. I contested the college union election as an independent candidate and won, though the SF swept the polls. Gradually, the tide began to turn. The next year saw a hung union and our side, labelled 'Anti-SF', won a couple of key positions among the office-bearers. Other victories followed. The 'Anti-SF' became Presidency College Students' Organisation in 1959 and controlled the union until 1966 when the Naxalite tide began to surge.

Arjun and I, however, remained friends, not very close friends because he was three years' senior to me and belonged to a different political milieu, but friends nevertheless. In the 1950s, political opponents frequently remained personal friends. My most vociferous supporter on the cricket field was my class friend and a college SF stalwart, Pallab Sengupta. Ties with Samik Banerjee, who later became one of India's most scholarly theatre gurus, have remained warm though he was seldom present on the cricket field.

What explained it? Perhaps our long sessions at the College Street Coffee House across the road, where we often shared the same table, was a factor, as was perhaps our common interests. All of us read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Camus, Sartre, Kafka, listened to Tagore songs, debated the relevance of Gandhi and the contributions of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. We talked about the freedom struggle, of Nehru's socialism, of the convulsions shaking the international Communist movement in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and de-Stalinisation. We condemned, while SFites supported, Soviet interventions in Hungary and Poland in 1956. We all condemned the Anglo-French invasion of Suez in the same year. We recited poems of Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Bishnu De and Sudhin Datta. We saw the same kind of films — those by directors like Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, et al. 

Somewhere deep inside, all of us felt we belonged to a very special group, which included a whole galaxy of people from Henry Louis Vivian Derozio to Subhas Chandra Bose, who shaped the destiny of West Bengal and, to some extent, India. There was mutual respect and the shared belief that we lived for causes beyond ourselves. Long after our college days, we were happy to run into one another and share memories that made us decades younger. It was the same with Arjun, a warm, widely-read, generous man with an exceptional mind. My career trajectory took me to journalism, his to governance, economic planning and diplomacy. From Marxism, he moved to Nehruvian socialism. 

Whenever we met, I teasingly greeted him by saying, "Comrade Arjun Sengupta ke Lal Salam" (Red salute to Comrade Arjun Sengupta). He used to smile indulgently and say, "Jao, jao! Ja ichha bole jao," (Go, go on! Say whatever you want to). I won't be able to greet him any more. He left for the hereafter on Sunday. I can only say with sadness welling up inside, "Comrade Arjun Sengupta ke shesh salam" (Last salute to Comrade Arjun Sengupta).

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THE PIONEER

OPED

ABBAS WANTS TO SPIKE PEACE TALKS

BARRY RUBIN

The Palestinian Authority President knew that the freeze on settlements would end this month. So why is he threatening to abruptly end negotiations with Netanyahu?

It never ceases to amaze me how hysteria and mystification so clouds people's minds over the Arab-Israeli (or Israeli-Palestinian) conflict. Consider this simple point of logic which you may not see explained anywhere else. And see the point at the end about US President Barack Obama.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that he can't negotiate with Israel if Israel once again begins to construct buildings on existing settlements after a nine-month freeze on construction. 

Let's evaluate this statement. 

First, Mr Abbas knew that the freeze would last nine months and might not be renewed when it ended in September. If he wanted to give Israel an incentive to continue it — by showing that this Israeli concession, brought progress towards peace and some advantage for Israel — Mr Abbas could have acted. Instead, he stalled until the very last moment. For weeks, the US begged and pressed him to return to talks.

Second, if the Palestinians negotiate a two-state solution they will get — worst-case analysis — almost all of the West Bank. There will be no Jewish settlements in that territory. The settlements will be gone. All the roads and buildings Israel built (unless dismantled in the days before the agreement's implementation) will go to the Palestinians.

So if Mr Abbas and the Palestinians are horrified by Israeli construction, wouldn't it have made sense for them to negotiate real fast? But, on the contrary, they stretch out the process year after year after year, continually finding excuses for doing so.

Remember that the PA refused to negotiate for well over a year after January 2009. All that time Israel was building on settlements. Then for the last nine months when Israel wasn't building in the West Bank, the PA still refused to negotiate. 

Let's now provide a full timeline: 

Phase One: From 1992 until late in 2000, the PLO, and later the PA negotiated with Israel at a time when there were no limits on construction within settlements. They were, however, in no hurry to make a deal and, in fact, killed the talks in 2000. Incidentally, Israel made a huge concession from its previous positions to begin the process in 1993: No new settlements or territorial expansion of existing ones. It kept that commitment. The PLO and PA also made some "concessions": They would fight against terrorism. They didn't. They never raised as a bargaining point the idea of a freeze on construction in existing settlements.

Phase Two: Then from 2000 to 2009 — a decade — the PA refused direct any sustained peace negotiations at a time when there were no limits on construction within settlements. They never raised as a bargaining point the idea that they would end the violence (2000-2005) or that they would negotiate in exchange for a freeze on construction in existing settlements. That was President Obama's idea in mid-2009 and they rejected it.

Phase Three: After Israel did freeze construction, the PA wasted nine months — knowing the clock was ticking on the temporary freeze — without making any move to accelerate, or even hold, negotiations.

Thus, the PA has wasted almost 20 years, during which thousands of buildings have been added to Israeli settlements. 

Here is a fundamental flaw in the assumption that the Palestinians are desperately eager to get a state and end their suffering. They don't seem so eager at all. Why? Because the Palestinian leadership has long argued that it is more important to conquer all of Israel — or reach an agreement that didn't get in the way of pursuing that goal — than to make compromises and get a two-state solution.

What does the PA want? An independent Palestinian state given as a gift by the world rather than requiring mutual compromise with Israel. That doesn't require negotiations, it requires a lack of negotiations. 

If Mr Abbas walks away from talks he will not be crying that creation of a Palestinian state has been delayed. On the contrary, he will be smiling that he escaped from what most PA leaders — though not Prime Minister Salam Fayad — view as the peace trap.

Incidentally, note that when President Obama made his upbeat interpretation of the "peace process" one of the main themes in his September 23 UN speech, he was totally aware that the negotiations were probably on the verge of collapse due to the termination of the freeze. It could be argued that by playing up the issue he was trying to encourage everyone to keep going, but how can you stake your diplomatic reputation on a card that is about to bring down a house of cards? That's somewhere between being irresponsible and suicidal.

But perhaps Mr Obama has reason to think he can get away with such things. After all, people have forgotten what happened with his speech to the UN last year! He predicted high-level, intensive Israel-Palestinian talks within three months and it took him a year to get low-level, fragile, limited talks. His policy was a total failure yet try to find anyone in the mass media reporting that point.

-- The writer is director of the GLORIA Center, Tel Aviv, and editor of the MERIA Journal.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

ACT ON THE LESSONS FROM NIYAMGIRI ELSEWHERE TOO

 

ANDHRA Pradesh seems to be a blind spot in the Centre's policy on land acquisition and the environment. MAIL TODAY ' S story on the plan to make the port city of Krishnapatnam in Nellore district a ' power hub' shows the duplicity of the government's approach.

 

As many as 21 thermal power projects with a combined capacity of 21,284 MW are coming up in and around Krishnapatnam, which could turn it into an ecological time bomb. With 17,540 acres of land required for these projects, it is no surprise that farmers are up in arms.

 

It is difficult to believe that this is the same government which displayed sensitivity to environmental concerns and the interests of the local community by scrapping the Vedanta project in Niyamgiri. Clearly, it is under pressure from powerful elements in Andhra Pradesh's political class. This is evident from the selectively pro- active approach of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from the state.

 

The Andhra government's record on land acquisition has been particularly dubious with the power projects at Polavaram and Sompeta also coming under attack.

 

The argument that the projects in Krishnapatnam are central to the development of the state rings hollow as all of them except the AP Genco project, are merchant power plants which can sell their power anywhere. Interestingly, even the AP Genco project was initially scrapped by the then Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, allegedly to favour a project promoted by a Congress MP. Sadly, no lessons seem to have been learnt from Bhopal as vested interests rather than concern for people and the ecology continue to shape government policy.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

OBAMA MUST WALK THE TALK

 

IN investigative journalist Bob Woodward's latest book Obama's Wars , US President Obama is quoted as telling his top administration aides that, " We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan". Though this may not come as a big surprise to India, it underlines how the world views Islamabad in its role as an active supporter of international terrorism.

 

The revelations in the book should finally reveal America's true feelings towards Pakistan, and hopefully help in gathering international momentum to pressure the elected government in Islamabad to dismantle the terror havens that operate there.

 

When Obama assumed office, one of his first foreign policy initiatives was to redraft the Af- Pak policy, with specific emphasis on strengthening the Afghan democracy, and therefore pressure Pakistan to partially shift its army from its Indian front to the Afghanistan side. This never happened.

 

Now that the White House's Pakistan skeletons are out of the closet, it could be an opportune time to get the real power centre in Pakistan — Gen Ashfaq Kayani — to demolish the terror infrastructure once and for all.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

BID TO MALIGN INDIA'S IMAGE

 

AUSTRALIAN Channel 7' s ' expose' that apparently lay bare the poor security infrastructure in place for the Commonwealth Games by filming how its reporter went past the security checks at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium with a suitcase with explosives inside has been shown to be a tissue of lies.

 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Media Watch programme has now done a sensational story which exposes that the entire operation was an elaborate frame- up.

 

It should leave no one in doubt that the Channel 7 ' expose' was a dastardly stunt to gain cheap publicity and malign India's image internationally.

 

When the Delhi Police had punched holes in the Channel 7 story, the world thought it was just an attempt by a bumbling host to save face. But anyone who has seen the Media Watch video on YouTube ( http:// bit. ly/ bsK5jR) can clearly make out that neither was there a detonator or bomb in the suitcase nor did the reporter go past any security check. He just walked past a road block meant to control traffic wheeling an empty suitcase.

 

This is reason enough for the Games authorities and for the Delhi Police to take legal action against the reporter and the TV channel.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COLUMN

BABRI ISSUE HAS LOST ITS POLITICAL TRACTION

BY MANOJ JOSHI

 

INDIA stands once again at a watershed moment. By clearing the way for the High Court to deliver the judgment on the Babri Masjid title case, the Supreme Court has brought the issue — which has caused riots and mayhem and cost thousands of lives— to its penultimate stage.

 

The High Court bench will now deliver its verdict and the case is then likely to be kicked upstairs to the Supreme Court itself. But the substantive part of the verdict, which could be delivered as soon as this week, is not likely to change, considering the time and attention that the High Court has already given to the case. For most of the country, politicians, those party to the suit, indeed, the average citizen of the country, the overwhelming desire is for a closure to a terrible period in our history and to move on.

 

What the tensions, some of them mediadriven, have done in the past month or so as the verdict was anticipated, are to have compelled the country to confront the demons of the past. And some of those demons have indeed been terrible.

 

Beginning with the holocaust of the Partition, there was an almost continuous string of what were euphemistically called " communal riots" in the country.

 

The historian Paul R Brass has noted that between 1954 and 1982, there were 7,000 in which five hundred Hindus were killed and nearly three times as many Muslims. You do not have to be a mathematician to realise that disproportionate violence was visited on the minority Muslim community.

 

Violence

 

Since then, the intensity of riots became, if anything, worse. There were riots in Moradabad ( 1980), Biharsharif ( 1981), Nellie ( 1983), Bhiwandi and Hyderabad ( 1984), Ahmedabad ( 1985), Nawada and Allahabad ( 1986), Meerut- Maliana ( 1987), Bombay ( 1988), Bhagalpur ( 1989).

 

Beginning with Mr L. K. Advani's Rath Yatra in support of building a Ram Mandir in place of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1990, a new cycle of violence began— Kanpur ( April- May 1990), Lucknow ( October 1990), Agra ( November 1990), Benares ( May and November 1991) which culminated in another holocaust period in the wake of the mosque's destruction in December 1992 when riots rocked Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surat, Calcutta, Kanpur, Malegaon, Bhopal and Delhi. In the ensuing decade, there were some 150 smaller riots, in addition to some bigger ones at Coimbatore, Kanpur and Malegaon. The Gujarat massacre of 2002 must be included in this list because its ostensible cause was the burning to death in a train of 59 Hindu kar sevaks who were returning from Ayodhya.

 

The communal climate has since improved in incendiary places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but there are states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh where politics continues to fuel communal violence.

 

So are there still parties and individuals who would like to use the issue to stoke tension and provoke violence? We need to understand that by and large communal violence is an organised activity and it is only the apathy or active connivance of the administration and the police that makes it virulent.

 

The high- tide of emotions in support of a Ram Mandir that brought the Bharatiya Janata Party's Kalyan Singh to power in Uttar Pradesh in 1991 began to ebb almost immediately thereafter.

 

Though the party used the Mandir movement to enhance its position in Parliament, reaching the point where it was able to finally form a government there in 1998, it was never able to establish itself in the strategic state of UP. Though there may still be individuals in it who seek to use the verdict to further their own cause, most of the party now understands that the issue is unlikely to have much traction with the electorate and has, indeed, become a mill- stone around their necks.

 

The party almost certainly lost its chance to continue its rule at the Centre in 2004 because of the Gujarat killings.

 

There is a new generation of leadership in the party which finds that good governance is likely to deliver better long- term returns, than the short- term spikes that emotive issues like the Ram Mandir can provide— the comparison between Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his one- time predecessor, Uma Bharti could not be starker.

 

Demolition

 

The other set of people who could want to disturb the current flow of events are the radicals in the Muslim community.

 

For the Islamists, be they in outfits like the Popular Front, or the so- called Indian Mujahideen and the Students Islamic Movement of India, any step that leads to a cooling of communal tempers in the country goes against their game plan.

 

Fortunately, such people are in an extreme minority. The bulk of the Indian Muslims have realised that their numbers give them sufficient clout to influence the outcome of elections in the highly fractured Indian polity of today. Many observers claim that tactical voting to ensure the defeat of the BJP has become a feature of Muslim electoral behaviour.

 

History never repeats itself, either as a tragedy or a farce. That is the reason why the outcome of the Babri Masjid case is unlikely to cause the kind of mayhem that the destruction of the mosque did.

 

That event occurred when the country was already at an edge. The years 1989- 1991 were perhaps the worst in contemporary Indian history. There were four changes of government in a period of 18 months. Two states of the union— Punjab and Kashmir— were in a state of rebellion, India was insolvent to the extent that its gold reserves were transported to London because our creditors wanted iron- clad guarantees for further loans, and, tragically, in 1991, a former and possible future prime minister of the country was assassinated. The country itself was in turmoil as two political mountebanks sought to trump each other— one by announcing reservations for the Other Backward Classes and the other by declaring indirect war on the minority Muslims by demanding the destruction of the Babri Masjid.

 

2010

 

The country of 2010— is comprised of some 40 or so percent people who were born after the Babri Masjid demolition and its immediate aftermath— is decidedly different. It has had reasonably stable central governments since 1999, led by pragmatic and centrist prime ministers.

 

High economic growth for the past decade has dramatically improved the mood of the country. There is more money in people's pockets, there are expectations for the future. There is little purchase for ideas that seek to either transform the world, or, for that matter the Indian political landscape. Poverty and misery may still abound in the land, but there is also, after a long time, opportunity to move ahead, and people sense this and would not like anything to destabilise this period in their history.

 

There are bound to be rowdy elements who may seek to use the verdict to provoke violence, but they will find that it is not easy to gain traction today. It goes without saying that vigilance against such elements is a must. The lessons of the past decades are such that no party, be it the VHP- Bajrang Dal or the Islamist radicals, can take the response of the people of the country for granted. Indeed, any attempt to opportunistically use the verdict to aggravate the situation could well backfire on them.

 

That in itself is the best insurance for communal peace in the coming period which could well be a prelude to an era, foreseen by our founding fathers, when the people of the country begin to keep their religious beliefs in the private sphere.

 

manoj. joshi@ mailtoday. in

 

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MAIL TODAY

QUANTUM LEAP

EGG ON THE ACADEMIES'FACES OVER EGGPLANT

DINESH C. SHARMA

 

THE genetically modified brinjal has brought shame to Indian science. Top six science academies, which unanimously recommended lifting of the moratorium on Bt brinjal imposed by environment minister Jairam Ramesh in February, are in the dock for the worst crime a scientist can commit — intellectual cheating or plaigiarism. Individual scientists being accused of it is nothing new , but for the first time ever, all academies as a collective have been found guilty of plaigiarism.

 

The Indian National Science Academy ( INSA) President Dr M Vijayan has admitted to committing, what he calls, a ' slip'. But he is not willing to take the next logical step — withdrawal of the report. In any case withdrawal is irrelevant now because the man who commissioned it — Ramesh — has already consigned the report to its rightful place – the dustbin.

 

The slur on these prominent academies is a grave issue. The question is not merely about lack of attribution or citation of the copied material — as academies are trying to present it — but ' bad science' ( some critics have dubbed it ' gutter science') that the report epitomises.

 

Scientists who drafted the report did not care to examine data submitted by developers of Bt brinjal to the regulator based on which clearance was given.

 

Instead, they relied on the ' views' of an individual scientist — P Anand Kumar — expressed in a newsletter. Interestingly, it is a double whammy because Kumar in his article published in Biotech News drew liberally from report of a Monsanto and Mahyco- funded outfit — International Service for the Acquisition of Agri- biotech Applications ( ISAAA). So, in effect, the academies based their socalled recommendations on industry data.

 

And why shouldn't they do so ( copy or quote ISAAA data) when science and technology minister Prithivraj Chavan did the same in an official letter as did the Minister of State for Agriculture KV Thomas while replying to questions in the Parliament? On the same day when the disgraced report of academies was being circulated, another report on Bt brinjal — the Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Environment Risk Assessment ( ERA) — by Dr David A Andow of the University of Minnesota was released.

 

Andow was contacted by the US National Academy of Sciences for a scientific evaluation of the Expert Committee – II ( EC- II) report, based on which Genetic Engineering Approval Committee ( GEAC) cleared Bt brinjal.

 

This was done at the request of Ramesh.

 

Compared to the stink raised by the Indian academies, Andow's report comes like a breath of fresh air. It dissects the ERA data on Bt brinjal with the precision of a surgeon, with several pages of references.

 

Andow unequivocally concludes that the scope of ERA set by GEAC was too narrow and that EC- II did not perform an adequate ERA. Because of resistance, he predicts, Bt brinjal is projected to fail in 4 to 12 years.

 

Irrespective of the findings, the Andow report is a shining example of good science and I would strongly recommend Presidents of all six Indian academies to read it.technology did as for while the the academies another the the Risk Dr University released.

 

BIO- SAFETY OF BT BRINJAL IS AN ILLUSION

INDIAN science academies may be satisfied with biosafety of Bt brijal, but latest research on GM corn in the US has shown that foreign genes inserted in it can escape into the environment.

 

A study in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that streams throughout the GM corn belt in Midwestern America are contaminated with insecticidal proteins that originate from adjacent genetically modified crops. The study supports one of the major criticisms against GM crops — the genetic pollution they cause.

 

An assessment of 217 stream sites in Indiana revealed that dissolved Cry1Ab proteins from Bt corn was present in stream water at nearly a quarter of the sites. Nearly 86 percent sites contained corn leaves, husks, stalks in their channels and in 13 percent of the sites corn byproducts contained detectable Cry1Ab proteins.

 

The study was conducted six months after the harvest, indicating that the insecticidal proteins in crop byproducts can persist in the environment. All of the sites with detectable Cry1Ab proteins were located within 500 meters of a corn field. Cry1Ab is the same gene that is used in Bt brinjal in India.

 

SC'S TIMELY CORRECTIVE

WE HAVE not yet heard the last word on Bt brinjal. The Supreme Court — currently hearing a case filed by Aruna Rodrigues seeking a moratorium on open field trials of untested genetically modified organisms ( GMOs) — has directed setting up of a panel of scientists to advise it on risk assessment protocols for GM crops such as Bt brinjal.

 

This panel will examine the dossier provided by the developers. It will also look at " the sequencing of risk assessment protocols to determine when they can be tested under field conditions" so as to ensure safe release into the environment of tested GMOs.

 

They will suggest a protocol for testing of GM plants for contamination at internationally certified labs that can test to a minimum ' level of detection' of at least 0.01 percent

 

SCIENTISTS NOT ABOVE CONFLICTING INTERESTS

THE way the inter- academy report has been prepared is giving rise to doubts on the intentions behind it.

 

Of the six academies involved, at least one — The Indian National Academy of Engineering — has nothing to do with genetically engineered crops, unless they say that the definition of ' engineering' is so wide that it covers genetic engineering as well.

 

Presidents of at least two other academies — The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences ( India) — had a direct conflict of interest with the issue at stake.

 

Both of them have been vocal supporters and recipients of funds for development of GM crops.

 

Dr Mangala Rai, who heads the agricultural academy, has co- chaired a multi- million dollar funding mechanism called Indo- US Agriculture Knowledge Initiative set up to promote GM crops in India. Board members of AKI include representatives of Monsanto, Walmart and ITC. Dr Asis Datta, President of the National Academy of Sciences, has developed GM potato and tomato with liberal grants from the Department of Biotechnology during the past two decades.

 

Like the citations and references, our top scientists perhaps also forgot that they need to declare ' conflict of interest' as well, particularly when decisions relating to billions of dollars of investments hinge on their report. Was this also a slip, Dr Vijayan?

dineshc. sharma@ mailtoday. in

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

NO TOKENISM, PLEASE

 

Quotas as an instrument of social justice necessarily have to be self-limiting, but that is not so in the imagination of quota proponents who relentlessly want to push it into newer domains. There is no clearly discernible rationale in the government proposal to push a 5 per cent job quota for SCs and STs in the private sector. Ficci, CII and Assocham have rightly argued that merit would be the biggest casualty once reservation schemes for politically favoured categories become the norm in the private sector. Given that the latter has emerged as the engine of India's economic growth, any measure that hampers the competitiveness and viability of firms must be thwarted. 

As things stand, Indian labour laws in the country are inflexible, standing in the way of creation of large-scale formal sector employment. With a growing youth bulge, the country will face massive social unrest if it cannot create jobs for young people. If one looks at Kashmir or the Maoist problem, some would say such unrest has already begun. In that context, imposing additional burdens that straightjacket the private sector operating within a ferociously competitive global economy would be truly unfortunate. Far from achieving the socio-economic equality that it had envisaged, the reservation policy has only managed to create a creamy layer who continue to game the system and corner its benefits, while politicians use it as a convenient tool to nurture vote-banks. 

We need to break away from the quota mentality and employ means that ensure inclusive growth. A CII survey published earlier this year revealed that despite the absence of reservations, SCs/STs (16.2 per cent) and OBCs (51.8 per cent) are well represented in private firms in the southern states. This has been possible because of voluntary private sector initiatives to increase employability, education and entrepreneurship among disadvantaged groups. It has also been proved that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has far greater impact in terms of effecting qualitative changes at the grassroots than reservations. The government would do well to enact comprehensive tax benefits and similar instruments to incentivise CSR initiatives. 

Besides, government itself needs to step up to the plate and provide opportunities for all. The demand for quotas is driven by the lack of adequate infrastructure. Widening the scope of reservations will not solve this fundamental problem. The answer lies in focussing on growth to increase the opportunities available so that no group gets left behind. Jobs in the private sector shouldn't be politicised, instead the culture of meritocracy needs to be promoted.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

THE WATCHMEN

 

The debate over national security versus an individual or organisation's right to privacy is set to heat up in the US over the coming months, with law enforcement officials pushing for new regulation that would enable them to tap electronic communication. Given the Indian government's ongoing tussle with R.I.M. the makers of BlackBerry phones over access to encrypted data transferred via its services, it is an issue that has resonance here. The importance of intercepting and tracking communications both as an element of dealing with situations such as 26/11 and as a preventive mechanism is self-evident. With the evolution of communication modes to encompass online service providers such as Google and Skype, it was only a matter of time before such concerns were raised. However, New Delhi has to be aware that it is walking a very fine line. 

One aspect that has to be taken into account is not compromising the Indian business environment, particularly given the IT sector's high profile. Back-end services cannot be marketed when no assurance can be given that the data being processed is secure. Providing the government with the means to decrypt communication via Google, Skype, Facebook or any of a dozen other services and that might not even always be possible means the sort of government oversight, active or not, of confidential information that companies will naturally be wary of. Another issue is that building a backdoor into these systems for the government's benefit creates a weak point that can then be exploited by third parties whether individual hackers or sponsored by other governments. These are issues that require careful examination. New Delhi must refrain from using a blunt instrument approach that causes enormous collateral damage.

 

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 THE TIMES OF INDIA

 TOP ARTICLE

HOME AND THE WORLD

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL

 

A sense of humour can be a funny thing handy when it comes to dissipating fear, less useful when trying to counter collective distaste of filth. Sections of the Indian diaspora know this to be unwinkingly true right now, when the world is wrinkling its collective nose at 21st century India's apparent "filthiness". 

Humour cannot mitigate the situation. This is not five years ago, right after the London bombings, which were perpetrated mainly by Anglo-Pakistanis. All brown people on London's public transport suddenly seemed fearfully suspect. A few dozen Indians in London understood the power of humour and had T-shirts printed with the words "Don't freak, I'm a Sikh". It didn't change a great deal; no one was rolling with mirth in the aisles, but it did melt the edges of a very palpable tension on the trains they rode. 

Could people of Indian origin around the world do something similar now? Yes, goes the joke, they could say they were Sri Lankan and deny all connection with the country that gave an "unlivable" Games Village to Commonwealth athletes. 

That is unlikely. In the 1950s, V S Naipaul won no plaudits and much condemnation in India for his clear-eyed view of defecating Indians. "Indians defecate everywhere...they never look for cover...it is well that Indians are unable to look at their country directly, for the distress they would see would drive them mad," he observed in 'An Area of Darkness'. 

So it continues, 60 years on. Today, as before, much of the 22 million strong diaspora - barring possibly the South African and West Indian - is stuck with the dividend and the downside of being identifiably Indian and overseas. Till yesterday, it could enjoy the 'new India' narrative, assume the moral high ground over Pakistan and weld itself to mighty China sans hyphens (Chindia). Today, it must accept the ignominy of knowing that press and public opinion right the way round the world is frankly appalled by Indian standards and horrified by its hubris. Indians in Britain, the US and parts ofEurope are privately confessing to friends and family back 'home' that they walk with their heads down and avoid eye contact on public transport. To some others, it is humiliating to be considered on a par now with the "Pakis", i.e. those who seem prone to serial match-fixing and dishonesty. One man says it reminds him of the axiom his Indian-bred grandmother was taught here fully 90 years ago: "Teach a man in India to read, and he will not teach the other illiterates to read, rather he will charge them to read their letters." Another, profoundly embarrassed young woman said she felt "violated" by the photographs of filthy loos on front pages all over the world, "like it was my bathroom, even though it wasn't". 

If this sounds overwrought and over the top, it isn't. Sociologist James Clifford famously described "the empowering paradox of diaspora", namely that "dwelling here (overseas) assumes solidarity and connection there." It can be convenient when the going is good, but a curse when the 'ancestral homeland' is in the international doghouse. Time was when every Manish who went to the US became "Max" as fast as he could and cultivated a lifestyle and affectations as far removed from India as possible. Then came the 'India Rising' phase and the percussive drumbeat of global success balti food, Bollywood, bright graduates for call centres. Suddenly, it was cool to confess to being "very Indian at heart". Will that outlive the world's distaste at something the The Times, London, uncompromisingly calls "not the inevitable failings of messy democracy...(but) of bad democracy"? 

'National pride' is arguably easiest to entertain if living within the borders of a country. For the diaspora, any diaspora, it is doubly hard justifiably to cultivate patriotism, the emotion that W Somerset Maugham memorably called "prejudice". Being too manifestly an Englishman in New York, in the words of the Sting song, made him a "legal alien". As also being too obviously Indian in the international village square. It is all very well to theorise that diasporas are "travelling cultures" with individuals physically dwelling in one country and existing in an astral or spiritual 'elsewhere'. But it can compound the world's perception problem with the motherland as when British Indian billionaire Gopichand Hinduja repeated Union sports minister M S Gill's "monsoon wedding analogy" to the British media as a perfectly reasonable, if exotic, explanation for execrable Games preparations. "It's only in Europe and America where weddings are planned three or four months ahead, the bride's dress is ready and the guest list finalised," he said. 

It can also elicit, say, the following affronted outpouring from a British Indian journalist: "And yet, long before an abiding fealty to the land of my birth kicks in, I detect something a little distasteful in the ceremonial wringing of hands that has accompanied its travails, as well as ignorance of the Indian sensibility. The interpretation of this crisis as a metaphor for the irrepressibility of the old India corrupt, dirty, poor, with dodgy infrastructure and unable to match China is wilfully myopic about the new India, home to extraordinary economic growth and social development, albeit too exclusively so." In those caveats lie that terrible diasporic space the gap between physical reality and a visual or imagined one from far away.

 

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                                                                THE TIMES OF INDIA

TIMES VIEW

REFURBISH TEAMS FOR BETTER COMPETITION

 

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is unjustifiably facing opposition from players and team owners over its decision to re-auction players in the ensuing edition in 2011. Players like Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni have expressed their disappointment with the auction rule that allows the franchises to retain only four of their current players, including three Indian players. They argue that it takes time and hard work to put together a winning combination. Such reasoning ignores the fact that cricket has now transformed. 

Today, players display the highest degree of professionalism to perform better in a competitive environment. There is no better example than Dhoni himself. The Indian captain has shown the adaptability to lead by example in different formats of the game. In the case of IPL, it is also difficult to ascertain which factor overwhelmingly affects or ensures team loyalty. Irrespective of their teams, players like Sachin, Ganguly, Dhoni, Sehwag and Yuvraj enjoy fans' support across the country. In any case, if keeping players together is important for a team, that can be factored into the re-bids. 

A re-auctioning of players is desirable to establish fair practices in the scam-tainted IPL. With the entry of two new teams - Pune and Kochi - a fresh level playing field to ensure better competition in the fourth edition is imperative. They must be given an equal opportunity to bid for the best players to build a team. Moreover, the auction will be akin to a performance appraisal of all players based on the previous three editions. It would be natural and fair that the better performing players get better contracts. That will enhance the incentives and push players to give their best. And the ultimate beneficiary will be the fans of the game. 

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

ALLOW THE TEAMS TO SETTLE

KAUTILYA KUMAR

 

Seasoned cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni have a point when they argue against fresh auction of IPL players. IPL has been around only for the last three years. It's been a novel experiment in the history of cricket where franchises were invited to build teams around cities and iconic players. At the start of the first IPL season, player auctions were held and teams bid for them, following their priorities. A fresh auction would mean going through the process again and rebuilding teams all over. That's best avoided. 

Cricket is a team game. A well-knit team has a better chance of playing to potential than a bunch of randomly assembled stars. It takes time to build a team, especially when players are drawn from different regional, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. After his team won the recently held Champions League, Dhoni said he wished to keep his flock together. Dhoni knows that his team, Chennai Super Kings, is a winner only because the players clicked as a team. 

Similarly, building a fan base for the team takes time, especially when the format itself is new. Teams have been co-branded with cities. But fans identify more with the players, especially the core players, and not with the brand name of the team or the franchise. This poses a tricky problem. Except for a handful, most of the team is drawn from various parts of the world. It takes time for fans to identify these players as part of the city team and bond with them. 

Any juggling of teams at this juncture is likely to upset efforts that has helped build team loyalty and fan following. That's bound to impact the fortunes of the IPL itself. A middle path could be thought of. As in international football leagues, teams could be allowed to transfer a limited number of players though auctions every year. That would help teams to make changes in their line-ups and drop non-performers. It'll also give players options. 

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

THE CAN'T WIN GAMES?

BACHI KARKARIA 

 

'It's the slanging that's important, not the taking part.' This must be the revised motto of the Commonwealth Games. Each day brings a fresh lashing and clashing, with the resultant slashing of India's newly-minted image. But, instead of the smug rush to pull down the CWG like a trans-Yamuna tenement, we should award a gold medal to the run-up to the Games. It is one more proof of India's ability to infuse everything with its own distinctive aura. We did it to the British colonials (and their language). We did it with the McAloo Tiki. And now the Dilli tamasha is a uniquely Dilli tamasha. Our hosted CWG are like us only. Mind them. 

 

Sorry, Mani, Chetan, and your growing league of followers, i don't think the Games are an unmitigated disaster. In fact, rather than your whine-whine, i see them as a win-win. They have shown that we aren't some hopeless, hygiene-less, humble acceptor of standards thrust upon us by the supercilious first world; we have the self-confidence to do it our way. The message has gone out as loud as a crashing overbridge, as clear as a paan-stain in a wash basin. 

 

In fact, i am surprised and disappointed that the capital's NDMC and PWD did not promptly do to the foreign CWG bosses and TV channels what every Dilliwalla does when confronted with anyone who tries to throw authority at him. They should have stuck their chest out and snarled menacingly, 'Don't you know who my aunty-ji is?' and proceeded to pull out four cellphones to call Madam No. 2. 

 

So many times we are telling-shelling, and still they are not listening that in all Indian show-sha, the last touches continue even as the first guests show up with their recycled wedding presents. We are laying on the full Monty, and they are only grumbling like Montoo Mama who never finds anything right with the arrangements, however much money has been spent on the murg do pyaza or the ghoos do zyada. 

 

We keep showing-showing and still they are not seeing that we are giving them the entire Indian experience not just some hurdles and unsynchronised events. Everyone from Great Britain to no-such-delusions Botswana has turned up its nose at the accommodation in the Games Village. Can't these bandas understand that instead of some cold five-star, they are getting all the warmth of an authentic village stay, from crappy loos to Pintoo and his pack of pie dogs? Why, like perfect hosts, we also pandered to their land-of-snake-charmers stereotype, and provided a cobra appearance at a tennis stadium. 

 

Far from hitting back, we have even turned the other cheque. We have even graciously given that CW-ji Hooper some crucial lessons in politically useful behaviour. Must say he learnt phataphat, and showed he can now deflect, deride and deny as swiftly as native netas. Accused of failing in his own duty to keep the arrangements on track, the CEO of the CWG federation brought in the totally irrelevant point about Delhi's huge population; then he promptly ate his words without the slightest evidence of swallowing his pride. He even coopted Fennel, his fellow Mike, to shout down the desi bosses. 

 

And speaking of whom, why did this Fed head feel the need to deny having said that he wanted 24-hr dedicated traffic lanes for the CWG? Doesn't he know that a 'VIP-route'-immune Delhi would be completely unfazed by such an inconvenience? 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

OUR TAKE

LET'S BUILD ON THE POSITIVES

 

Good schemes, like technology, are never future-proof. They need to be tweaked as and when required so that they stay effective. Unfortunately, many feel, this tweaking of the UPA's flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), is not happening and slowly but surely we are losing the advances that had been made till now. At a press meet recently, rights activists Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy, Nikhil De, Annie Raja and Reetika Khera, people who helped the government design the scheme, listed the points of discord: first, the government had declared that the Minimum Wage Act will not be linked to the MGNREGS wages and has also frozen the minimum wage paid under MGNREGS at Rs 100; second, a 2008 order that said that only gram sabhas — not outsiders — can conduct social audits of the MGNREGS; and, third, the activists felt that the rural development ministry doesn't listen to the National Employment Guarantee Council that is meant to be a scheme watchdog.

 

Recently, former Congress MP from Gujarat, Madhusudan Mistry, commented that some activists think the scheme is their "fiefdom" and that "they are the architects of the Act". This unfortunate war of words is unwarranted and will only delay or stop the improvements that the Act needs. Having said that, there's definitely a case for independent social audits. From the time the MGNREGS came into force, there have been many instances of corruption. The cases have come from all parts of the country, more from states where the delivery mechanism is faulty. The scheme, as a report of the Lal Bahadur Institute of Management, said is individual-driven — if officials are committed enough, only then would it move forward. Yet, there is no lack of penalty in case public officials fail to deliver to the people what is due to them. In such a scenario, a civil society audit, will not only ensure that corruption is tackled but also help understand the shortcomings of the job plan.

 

The effectiveness of the scheme has also been apparent in many areas, curbing distress migration and also drought-proofing the country. The question is now whether we want to build on these positives and fix the shortcomings. If the squabbling over its merits and demerits continues, there really is no guarantee that the scheme will deliver on its initial life-changing potential for millions in this country.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE PUNDIT

PROMOTING OUR INTERESTS

 

What North Korea does today, the world may not necessarily do tomorrow. And more's the pity. The country's leader Kim Jong Il has just given his elusive son Kim Jong Un a promotion to four-star general. That's the way to go. Many may ask what the young lad has done to deserve this. This would be to split hairs. What is wrong with all these people who feel that even the children of powerful and rich people should earn their keep?

 

Look at our info-tsar Narayana Murthy. The dear man keeps harping on about how the iconic company is not for his children unless they work their way up. We go with Kim on this. If Infosys belonged to people who share our thoughts, the children would have been born in special retrofitted boardrooms and, before you could say Jack Robinson, would be cracking the whip around the corridors so that the faithful know just how much deference to show. Kim senior's father set the trend. When his portly little son was born, he put it out that a star hovered over a log cabin in the mountain portending the divine qualities the child would come to have. And was he wrong? Not at all. Kim Jong Il showed a remarkable affinity for cigars, cognac and nubile lasses at an early age.

 

We ourselves are not averse to sudden promotions though they have been few and far between. But how rewarding it would be if one could loll around on some beach and on returning find the management on its knees begging us to take on the post of editor-in-chief. Of course, in keeping with our ingrained sense of ethics, we would refuse. But Kim has shown us that these qualms are totally misplaced. It is not that we are work shirkers, perish the thought. But like Kim, we feel that we are to the manner born. Well, we are off to get our new calling cards complete with new and improvised titles, just in case.

 

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.                                                                  HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

SOME TURBULENCE

 

Excuse me. Why are you detaining this gentleman here? Is there something wrong with his papers?

 

No sir, but he needs to be stopped and questioned. I have orders from the top.

 

So who is this gentleman? A terrorist? A smuggler? Former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson?

 

No, sir. He is the US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The Government of India is stopping and questioning him at this airport to maintain reciprocity after Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel was detained on Monday at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

 

Was Patel carrying a shoe-bomb or perhaps a top secret document for Boeing CEO Jim McNarney?

 

No. It turns out that the Americans stopped him because another guy called Praful Patel is on their watchlist.

 

So what do you intend to do with LaHood?

 

We were going to let him go after a few silly questions. But now it turns out that his father was of Lebanese origin, so...

 

Lebanese? My god! Pass him on to R&AW and he'll sing like a canary. Don't let him go until Praful Patel gets a full apology and a load of frequent flyer miles.

 

Yessir!

 

Do say: Too many Patels, too few flights.

 

Don't say: We have an 'al-Qaeda operative' Obama on our watchlist. The guy insists it's a typo. Well?

 

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.                                                                  HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

SAMAR HALARNKAR

 

In the Indian national football team, they call 26-year-old Mehrajuddin Wadoo 'The Truck' for his strength. When he plays, his parents in Srinagar are proud. So too are his friends, many part of the Kashmiri 'intifada'. His team-mates — from Bengal, Kerala, Manipur, Sikkim — do not dwell on his religion, his origins or his inner conflict. As a Kashmiri Muslim with obvious sympathies for the anger on his home streets, Wadoo is certainly conflicted. But when he takes the field for the Commonwealth Games, his brothers in arms will spur him to rise above that conflict.

 

Geeta, 21, and Babita Kumari, 20, have lived through another, far older, Indian conflict. Burly yet elegant, the sisters faced jibes and open hostility when their father, Mahabir, trained them as wrestlers in a corner of India where oppression of women is as common as breathing. Their grandfather called their passion for wrestling shameful, the villagers of Ballali, their Haryana hometown, said no man would want them and their muscles. Today, Geeta is an Indian champion; Babita a junior world champion runner-up.

 

With his Harvard degree, hard body and steely nerves, 25-year-old Siddarth Suchde is India's second highest-ranking player in squash, a game that puts immense strain on the joints and mind. Suchde grew up in Mumbai, lives and trains in England, has friends across the globe, and he plays for India. He could have been an economist but he would rather hone the art of smashing a ball against a wall.

 

With less than 72 hours to go for the inauguration of the 19th Commonwealth Games, it really is time to get to know India's new athletes; to explain how a sporting meet first held in 1930 as the British Empire Games to celebrate a now-lost dominion is relevant to the rise of new India; to explain why you must cheer the men and women who will make it so.

 

We know thousands of irate, frustrated Commonwealth Games volunteers still don't know what's expected of them, that sundry members of the Games' organising committee signed on their own relatives, that many dubious contracts need to be investigated, not forgotten, after October 14.

 

We also know most of the Games' venues are world class — even if they lost a few tiles now and then. We also know that after much last-minute stumbling and shouting, the Games village is not as disastrous as we and everyone around the world thought it might be.

 

So, focus now on the glories of sport. This is particularly important to India. We are not a sporting nation, but in the stories of the emerging generation of Indian sportsmen and women you will find a common thread: a previously un-Indian determination, which defines today their individual character and that of their emerging nation.

 

Since the splendour of the Spartans, the arrogance of Nazism and the triumphalism of the modern Confucians, sport has always been a test and reflection of national character.

 

The Indian sports fan has always revealed that character through cricket, an obsession that mirrors our larger, lopsided approach to progress and passion. We celebrate our IT, Bollywood, business and cricket prowess. We revere a handful of icons, celebrating who they are, not how they got there. For most of us, that's good enough. It shouldn't be.

 

Cricket itself has revealed the epochal change upon us. Once India idolised its Pataudis and Gavaskars, from elite and middle-class India. Now, as India changes, it is learning to celebrate its Dhonis and Pathans, from lower-middle-class India. And so, it is time to learn and appreciate how, beyond cricket, the Wadoos, the Kumaris and Suchdes reflect their rise from conflict zones, repressive societies or globalised elite — the diverse realities and possibilities of emerging India.

 

Indian sport, like everything else, isn't even strictly a national enterprise. A crusty Briton coaches Wadoo and his football team. Geeta and Babita are coached by a Georgian, who knows no English or Hindi but speaks to them in sign language and old Raj Kapoor songs. A Spaniard coaches the national hockey team. An Egyptian coaches squash hope Dipika Pallikal. The list goes on.

 

Do not expect India to sweep these Games. In the swimming trials, for example, only three swimmers qualified. The benchmark: the eighth place finish at the last Games. The qualifying norms were relaxed to accommodate 11 more swimmers. Old failings will persist for many years.

 

But pay attention to the stories, and you will discern another quality that propels the new generation of athletes, and India, forward: fearlessness.

 

That is how an assembly line of boxers and wrestlers — mostly small towners or village boys and girls who stumble over English, even Hindi — strides today over walls of adversity and boldly faces up to world champions. They know they may lose, but they do not think of it.

 

A boxer explains how he often saw fear in the eyes of his compatriots when they faced international opponents. He hasn't seen that fear in a while. When I was a boy, I watched a lot of wrestling. I remember often seeing hesitancy in the eyes of our national champion, Satpal Singh. Today, he's the coach of Sushil Kumar, the cauliflower-eared, tree-trunk-like Olympic bronze medallist. Like his mentor, Kumar learnt his craft in North India's mud-wrestling pits. Like his mentor, he worships the same ancient deity of Indian wrestlers, Hanuman. Unlike his mentor, Kumar successfully made the transition from mud to mat, from fear to fearlessness, from the old India to the new.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

NO PLACE FOR OUTSIDERS

RUUD VAN WEERDENBURG

 

It took Judge Susanne Lehr 11 hours in Vienna's 'Landesgericht' — the most important court in Central Europe — to decide that the 36-year-old Jaspal S. will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Four of his assistants have been imprisoned for 17-18 years for killing the head of a Sikh sect, Dera Sach Khand, Sant Rama Nand in the capital of Austria in May 2009. Though, for over 100 years, Vienna has been a melting pot for people from east, south, north and west Europe, there is still a strong resistance to outside influences. As soon as the Habsburger dynasty's influence and power diminished, Austria was reduced to a small country. Today it's even difficult to find a typical Austrian name in a telephone directory. And since it's a 'diplomatic city', it doubles as a paradise for spies too.

 

Coming back to the murder of the religious head, 12 days of questioning too failed to get answers. Nobody was willing to find out — or be seen finding out — the reasons that led up to his murder. For both sides, it was a matter of shame to have presented Sikh culture in a bad light. No Guru Nanak, no Golden Temple; only deaf ears and dead-ends in Landesgericht. Worse, even the will to get to the root of the case was lacking. Not to forget that many children and women were present at the site when Sant Dass was murdered.

 

Most of the original Viennese inhabitants of a small street called Pelzgasse didn't even know that a Sikh temple existed in their quiet part of town. It's hard to imagine but it's true. It's located in a 'quarter' close to the West Station (there are only two railway stations in Vienna) and on the other side of the 'Ring', a long road to the centre of the city in the middle of Central Europe.

 

Most newspapers tried to blame the Asylanten — the so-called questionable political refugees — for Sant Nand's murder. It is not very complicated for them to analyse the 'fight between the castes'. The main reason is that most Austrians find it tough to accept 'outsiders'. Some intellectuals even wonder if Indians are following in the footsteps of their former colonists, the English, and stirring up trouble, like this one, in other nations. Today, Austria, most of Europe, in fact, has been neglecting its own extreme right wing and neo-Nazi influences. The government, artistes and teachers are clueless on what to do with them. It's once again coming too close to repeating the faults that led up to World War II.

 

Vienna is also the capital of classical music and a big attraction for the rest of the world, to which it has given some of the most famous European composers, who, according to Christian principles, form 'the crown of creation'. But a majority of people fail to understand the reason for others to level off their caste differences in their world-class city.

 

Ruud van Weerdenburg is a journalist based in Vienna, Austria. The views expressed by the author are personal

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

BUDGET 101

 

The domain of economic policy-making is more often than not unintelligible to the lay person. It should, of course, not be that way given that most economic policies have an impact on the average person's daily life. At the very least, an effort must be made by the government to reach out to the interested lay person. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has taken one step towards that end by releasing a "Budget Manual" that outlines and explains the various components of the government's singlemost important, annual, economic policy exercise. Interestingly, it is the annual budget that is shrouded in more mystery than most policy exercises of the government, something the finance minister admitted while releasing the manual.

 

The mystery that shrouds the budget exercise is peculiar because the budget isn't a matter of national security, the usual motive for keeping things behind wraps in government. Two decades after trade liberalisation and industrial deregulation, it isn't even about revealing the government's decisions on quotas and tariffs which could potentially benefit some parties more than others. Even the tax regime is now stable and less prone to sudden change. Still, the budget is important because it is a statement of the government's revenues and expenditures and ordinary citizens have a right to intelligible interpretation, something the newly released manual should facilitate.

 

This is important because it will only increase transparency in policy-making. In recent times, finance ministers have held wide-ranging pre-budget consultations with different stakeholders: industry and economists for example. Perhaps it is time to also arrange open consultations with interested aam citizens, who will now be better versed with the budget exercise after reading the Budget Manual.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WHAT'S IN A NUMBER?

 

On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi handed out unique identity numbers to 10 tribals in Tembhli village, Maharashtra. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) hopes to eventually give a unique 12-digit ID number to as many of India's 1.2 billion people that want it: so far, signing up is voluntary. Understandably, much of the political rhetoric has been about how it will revolutionise life for India's poorest who have few, if any, means to prove their identity, a most basic requirement for even accessing state-funded entitlements.

 

But the UID is about much more than enabling the poor to access government programmes and more even than cutting corruption and waste in government. The UID can be leveraged for use in a number of other applications, something UIDAI boss, Nandan Nilekani, is well aware of. The agenda for financial inclusion, for example. Along with a 12-digit number, people signing up for the programme can also opt to get a bank account number. Banks may not have the incentive to reach out to people with only limited financial resources on an individual basis: the transactions costs would be too high. But the UIDAI can cut costs by offering banks multiple potential customers with proven IDs and account numbers in a single window. The next step would be to combine the UID's database with the outreach of mobile service providers to enable secure mobile banking that will act as substitute for the costly process of setting up more bank branches. Channelling the savings of the unbanked into the financial system can yield enormous gains for GDP.

 

There's much in it for the educated urban classes as well. Consider the time, effort and transactions costs involved in getting a passport, a driving licence or even a new bank account. Most of the documentation needed, and processing time, is simply about establishing whether who you say is really who you are. The UID number could eliminate these cumbersome processes and delays: no long wait for a police verification on a passport application, for example. Just one 12-digit number can make the life of every Indian more efficient.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SUITING OURSELVES

 

Looking at the Ayodhya dispute as just another dry legal matter, if one with possibly explosive real-world consequence, might come across to some as a limited perspective. After all, you might say, there are questions of faith involved, of political mobilisation and of community identity; how can legal processes solve everything? There is, of course, a certain grain of truth in this. And yet the legal process due to reach a culmination today at 3.30 pm is crucial, even if you think that "talks" or "reconciliation" are the only answer to this long-festering dispute. The simple fact is this: in the absence of any finding of fact, any initial assignation of rights, the give-and-take of negotiation is impossible — and similarly small is the possibility of satisfaction or of closure. Throughout the '80s and '90s — and even as recently as a few years ago — several attempts have been made to get "disputants" talking. But, with so little facts to grasp, so small the overlap of assumptions, such attempts were naturally doomed to failure.

 

A glance at the number of questions under litigation reveals the degree to which there is nothing on which to construct the framework of a widely acceptable agreement. Courts are being asked to decide whether the Babri Masjid was where a temple had been; how precisely the idols associated with the site appeared in December 1949; the exact extent of the Babri Masjid's property; and whether the lack of namaz for some years meant the mosque was legally "abandoned". Each one of these is a point of disagreement; and with so many conflicting assumptions to deal with, it appears difficult to imagine that any reasoned discussion will not be at cross-purposes. And, so, even if you believe this dispute goes beyond the legalities of site ownership, you must nevertheless also accept how essential is the legal process if this conduit for resentment is to be turned into a soluble problem.

 

Here is what the legal process could conceivably provide. All parties — as citizens of India — are required to accept the court's rulings, whether or not they think them actually correct; and, suddenly, we have ground beneath our feet, a point of agreement. This fundamentally changes the earlier dynamic: that nobody knew what was "theirs" in any discussion. Earlier political and community-based processes had no findings of fact and law to work with — just resentments, expectations, and anger.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

TODAY, THERE IS HOPE FOR A MATURE REACTION TO AYODHYA VERDICT: MOILY

M VEERAPPA MOILY 

 

The longest-running legal battle in India is a dispute over the 60 ft by 40 ft land in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid stood till December 6, 1992. Since 1950, five title suits have been in the Allahabad High Court, staking claim to the title of the plot of land of the Babri Masjid. Of these, four are to be decided by the Lucknow bench of the high court.

 

I feel that leaders of all communities, political parties and social groups should start planning to meet the situation because the matter requires the involvement of people at the grassroots level and it does not brook any delay.

 

The high court verdict will not necessarily settle the issue. Either side could go to the Supreme Court. It is only the first step in the judicial process. Even otherwise, matters of faith are not legally determined.

 

We have heard in loud voices words like lawful, constitutional and democratic. Analysts agree that the idiom and the paradigm used by either section of the leadership in the late '80s and early '90s to spread their victimhood can no longer serve them. The issue is no longer as inflammable for the youth, from all sections, who say preventing fresh unrest is more important.

 

Aspirations and hopes of the new generation have changed dramatically from the '90s to 2010. The youth of today are concerned more with bread-and-butter issues than rabble-rousing rhetoric. In these circumstances, the broad-based hope for a mature reaction to the Babri verdict is expedited.

 

We live in and by the law. In taking rights seriously we offer arguments against legal positivism that judges characteristically feel an obligation to give what we call "gravitational force" to past decisions, and that this felt obligation contradicts the positivists' doctrine of judicial discretion. We insisted that in most cases of hatred there are right answers to be hunted by reason and imagination.

 

From the Koran: Verses 12: And when it is said to them: Create not disorder on the earth, they say:

 

We are only promoters of peace. Verses 13: Beware! It is surely they who create disorder, but they do not perceive it. Hence, the sacred Koran believes in universal peace and there is no space for violence.

 

Law exists as a plain fact. In other words, the law in no way depends on what it should be. Why then do lawyers and judges sometimes appear to be having a theoretical disagreement about the law? Because when they appear to be disagreeing in the theoretical way about what the law is, they are really disagreeing about what it should be. Their disagreement is really over issues of morality and fidelity, not law.

 

In this way, the empire of the law is defined by attitude, not territory or power or process. Law's attitude is constructive: it aims, in the interpretive spirit, to lay principle over practice to show the best route to a better future. It is a fraternal attitude, an expression of how we are united in community though divided in project, interest, and conviction. Finally, it is a reflection of the kind of people we want to be and the community we aim to have.

 

Our society has been characterised by the quest for this inner truth, for a better future and of the triumph of the community over the individual.

 

Despite being the ruler of a huge kingdom, Ravana couldn't rule over his inner world. As opposed to him, in the beginning, Rama couldn't become the king of even a small province like Ayodhya; but he was able to rule over his inner self. Unravelling the different phases of dharma, voluntarily retreating into the forest in order to obey his father's word, subduing the demons in order to protect the sages, killing Vali and Ravana — all these constitute the triumph of dharma. This is what the Ramayana is about; it is a chronicle of the triumph of dharma. In an individual-centred age, scores of ideals come into being and disappear after some time without leaving any trace behind. But the Ramayana is characterised not by individualistic qualities but the ones of a community, of a whole culture.

 

Rama, Buddha, Gandhi and such others do not belong to any race, religion or region; they are eternal symbols of those principles that guide us in the evolutionary path. We approach the concept of law as follows: where there is law, human conduct is made in some sense non-optional or obligatory. Thus, the idea of obligation is at the core of a rule. The reason is one has an obligation only by virtue of rule.

 

Professor G.L. Williams pointed it out very clearly: "The word 'law' stimulates in us the attitude of obedience to authoritative rules that we have come through our upbringing to associate with the ideas of municipal law. Change the word for some other and the magic evaporated. Accordingly these writers felt obliged to embark upon the unprofitable discussion as to the proper meaning of the term 'law'. Where laws do not rule, there is no constitution."

 

An early — and famous — formulation of the dictates of Natural Law was offered by Cicero. True law is right reason in agreement with Nature, it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting, it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws in different places, countries or different men.

 

Lord Donaldson stated: "The efficacy and maintenance of the rule of law, which is the foundation of any parliamentary democracy, has at least two pre-requisites. First, people must understand that it is in their interests, as well as in that of the community as a whole, that they should live their lives in accordance with rules and all the rules. Second, they must know what those rules are."

 

Absence of clarity is destructive of the rule of law and is unfair to those who wish to preserve the rule of law. It encourages those who wish to undermine it. The Majesty of the Law beacons us to the righteous path of Indian minds.

 

My six-year-old grandson, Kabir Adkoli, sent me an e-mail depicting a children's park in the middle with sand pits, seesaw, ladder, etc, and a mosque and temple on both sides. It was a response to the present conflict. This is a message of peace from the young mind. This is the mind of the nation which binds us together.

 

The writer is Union law minister express@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

BRING ON THE OLYMPICS

JASSI KHANGURA 

 

While watching news reports of the Commonwealth Games debacle with friends a few days ago, I was shocked when one of them dismissed the critical comments by the "two Mikes" (Fennell and Hooper) as "jealousy of India". That personifies our delusional, and often jingoistic assessment of our place in the world economic order.

 

At the same time, many of us dismiss the considerable developmental progress of China as a totalitarian blip where the underlying rural-urban divide will lead to unmanageable social problems, civil strife and partition of that country.

 

The unfolding CWG saga has served a timely reminder: perhaps we were getting a little ahead of ourselves. In reality we might still be a relatively poor nation, with huge contradictions, disparities and challenges, even if growing strongly from a low economic base.

 

Many lessons will hopefully be learned from this sordid mess. There will be investigations, accusations of cover-ups, proposals for new legislation, promises of a new dawn for Indian sports with enhanced funding and possibly an era of sports being run by sportspersons and not politicians and bureaucrats.

 

The likelihood though is that things may not change much.

 

Timely preparation of the CWG facilities would have earned India plaudits, greater international respect as an emerging market, and would have lead to the inevitable chant to "bring on the Olympics!"

 

Instead, we are now more uncertain of when we shall be credibly able to bid for the Olympics.

 

Few Indians understand how our country is viewed abroad. Far too readily we fall for political rhetoric that claims that we are returning full compliments with interest to former colonial powers. Few of us are prepared to accept that much of our supposed economic might arises from the simple fact that we are a populous country.

 

As Indians we know that China is racing ahead, but we remain optimistic that we can catch up and one day overtake China. Yet we must accept that at the current juncture in our economic progress we are behind, although many of us somehow think that we are within touching distance of China's achievement. So, how far behind are we?

 

China lost its 1993 bid for the 2000 Olympics to Sydney and had to wait till 2001 for the successful Beijing bid. After London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the 2020 Olympics rightly belong to either Africa or Asia. South Africa's stunningly successful hosting of the football World Cup would make it a strong candidate.

 

Recent events make it more likely that India will not bid in 2013, with 2017 the likely time of our first bid. Assuming that, like China, we are successful with our second bid possibly in 2025, India may host the Olympics in 2032, 24 years after China, a "sporting" assessment of how far behind China we are.

 

Maybe a 24-year lag is too harsh an indictment on India. So, let's look at per capita GDP data. On a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, China's per capita GDP was about 50 per cent that of India's in 1978, rising to about 200 per cent by 2008. Growing at 8.5 per cent, it will take India just under nine years to reach where the Chinese are today in per capita GDP terms.

 

So in terms of the development lag we have two measures, one fiscal, the other based on sport, that give us assessments of nine and 24 years respectively. The truth may lie somewhere in between.

 

Today, India can match the $33 billion or so that China is estimated to have spent on its own Olympics. But money is not the problem; the ability to deliver is.

 

Delhi, with its confusing administrative set-up, was always going to be challenged to get things right. Our private sector and perhaps some of our more capable chief ministers (in their own states) would have produced better, on-time, infrastructure with quality support services to match.

 

India does have its success stories: the Delhi Metro and our gleaming new airports among them. The government now needs to extend private public partnership (PPP) initiatives to the sports infrastructure sector.

 

To ensure that the lessons of the CWG fiasco are actually learned immediately after these Games, the government needs to appoint a commission of inquiry, review and recommendation to report in no more than six months, followed by the creation of a statutory authority that would become responsible for India's future Olympic bid. And thereafter for creating the facilities and managing the event itself.

 

India needs to host the Olympics sooner rather than later. It is a test for the political leadership.

 

The writer is the Congress MLA from Qila Raipur, Punjab express@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE TEA KETTLE MOVEMENT

 

There are actually two Tea Party movements in America today: one you've read about that is not that important and one you've not read about that could become really important if the right politician understood how to tap into it.

 

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I'd actually call the "Tea Kettle movement" — because all it's doing is letting off steam.

 

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won't be electorally impactful (it clearly might be). But affecting elections and affecting America's future are two different things. Based on all I've heard from this movement, it feels to me like it's all steam and no engine. It has no plan to restore America to greatness.

 

The Tea Kettle movement can't have a positive impact on the country because it has both misdiagnosed America's main problem and hasn't even offered a credible solution for the problem it has identified. How can you take a movement seriously that says it wants to cut government spending by billions of dollars but won't identify the specific defence programmes, Social Security, Medicare or other services it's ready to cut — let alone explain how this will make us more competitive and grow the economy?

 

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won't take it anymore — from President Obama? Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?

 

The issues that upset the Tea Kettle movement — debt and bloated government — are actually symptoms of our real problem, not causes. They are symptoms of a country in a state of incremental decline and losing its competitive edge, because our politics has become just another form of sports entertainment, our Congress a forum for legalised bribery and our main lawmaking institutions divided by toxic partisanship to the point of paralysis.

 

The important Tea Party movement, which stretches from centrist Republicans to independents right through to centrist Democrats, understands this at a gut level and is looking for a leader with three characteristics. First, a patriot: a leader who is more interested in fighting for his country than his party. Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again. And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls.

 

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg told me that when he does focus groups today this is what he hears: "People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don't. They will follow someone who convinces them that they have a plan to make America great again. That is what they want to hear. It cuts across Republicans and Democrats."

 

To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America's core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people's lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.

 

Leadership today is about how the US government attracts and educates more of that talent and then enacts the laws, regulations and budgets that empower that talent to take its products and services to scale, sell them around the world — and create good jobs here in the process. Without that, we can't afford the health care or defence we need.

 

This is the plan the real Tea Party wants from its president. To implement it would require us to actually raise some taxes — on, say, petrol — and cut others — like payroll taxes and corporate taxes. It would require us to overhaul our immigration laws so we can better control our borders, let in more knowledge workers and retain those skilled foreigners going to college here. And it would require us to reduce some services — like Social Security — while expanding others, like education and research for a 21st-century economy.

 

In other words, it will require a very smart, subtle and focused plan to use our now diminishing resources in the most efficient way possible to get back to our core competency. That is the only long-term solution to our problem — to grow our way out of debt with American workers who are more empowered and educated to compete.

 

Any Tea Party that says the simple answer is just shrinking government and slashing taxes might be able to tip the midterm elections in its direction. But it can't tip America in the right direction. There is a Tea Party for that, but it's still waiting for a leader. THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

HITTING JAPAN

C. RAJA MOHAN 

 

Until last week, the talk about China's power was rather abstract. After it compelled Tokyo to release, unconditionally, the captain of a Chinese fishing trawler that collided with a Japanese coast guard vessel earlier this month, the consequences of Beijing's rise have been palpable.

 

Power is about persuading other nations to do one's bidding. Big nations, with their expansive economic and military clout, do it all the time. Beijing's successful application of pressure against Tokyo will be long remembered as a classic case of coercive diplomacy from a great power. When Beijing began to protest through diplomatic channels against Japan's detention of the boat, its crew and captain, Tokyo released the boat and crew, while declaring that the captain would be held while he was tried for obstructing the activities of its coast guard.

 

If Japan's decision was uncharacteristically bold, Beijing came down like a ton of bricks. When Tokyo refused and insisted that the law would take its course, Beijing called off the talks on energy development in disputed waters and cancelled the invitation for 1000 Japanese high school students who were to visit the Shanghai Expo. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao then stepped in demanding that Japan release the captain "immediately and unconditionally." Global Times made a chilling case for hitting Japan where it hurts: "The pain has to be piercing. Japanese politicians need to understand the consequences — votes will be lost. Japanese companies have to be made aware of the loss of business involved. Japanese citizens will feel the burden due to the downturn in their economy... China's domestic law, business regulations and consumers can all be manoeuvred."

 

Tokyo's soft spots were soon exposed, when Beijing slowed down the export of rare earth materials critical for so many modern industries, and arrested three Japanese citizens working in China. As pressure mounted from business houses in Japan to call truce with China, Tokyo stepped back by releasing the captain in the name of preserving a good neighbourly relationship. Once the captain was back in China, Beijing demanded an apology. Both Tokyo and Beijing now say the ball is in the other's court to take the first step towards restoring status quo ante. The story is far from over.

 

India's Lessons

 

India is not a stranger to China's exercise of power. After all the 1962 war was about Beijing administering a political lesson to Jawaharlal Nehru. Unlike in the 1960s when Beijing was isolated in Asia and the world, China is now a great power, with levers that were unimaginable four decades ago. The small rocky and uninhabited islands in dispute between China and Japan are nothing compared to the size of Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh, contested by Delhi and Beijing. About 130,000 sq km of territory is under dispute.

 

The defence ministry would be well-advised to study the manner in which Beijing put Tokyo down, and learn the appropriate lessons from it. Defence Minister A. K. Antony might want to assess what humiliation at the hands of China, of the type suffered by Tokyo last week, could mean for the Congress party and the UPA government. Antony should know that weakness invites bullying and strength is the only basis for a mutually beneficial engagement with China.

 

Asian defence

Besides building one's own strength, our defence establishment must pay more attention to the unfolding dynamic in the western Pacific, and deepen India's military cooperation with leading East Asian nations. For the rise of China breaks down the distinctions between East and South Asia.

 

While the frequency and intensity of Indian contacts with Japan, South Korea, ASEAN and Australia have steadily grown in recent years, the defence ministry is a long way from thinking strategically about the link between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The IAS mandarins at the defence ministry tend to sneer at military diplomacy and have been quite cavalier about responding to the many calls from our Asian neighbours for defence cooperation. They have also avoided building institutional capacity to deal with the rapidly evolving Asian power balance. The longer the ministry's learning curve, the greater is the possibility that India will be caught on the wrong military foot with China.

 

raja.mohan@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

OBAMA'S WORRIES

DHRUVA JAISHANKAR 

 

George W. Bush may no longer occupy the White House, but that has not stemmed veteran journalist Bob Woodward's remarkable ability to document the wartime travails of a serving US president. After his quartet of books on the Bush administration's prosecution of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama's Wars, released on Monday, provides a layer of detail to the inner deliberations concerning the key decision last year to sanction a troop surge in Afghanistan. Woodward's account provides little good news. The false allure and single-minded pursuit of domestic political popularity, it appears, has contributed to setbacks in Afghanistan, an increasingly unstable South Asia, a resentful US military, and growing dissatisfaction at home with the president.

 

The issue likely to receive the most attention in Washington is Obama's relations with his senior military advisors and their backers within the civilian leadership, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta. Although two lengthy reviews were conducted on what was required for the United States to win in Afghanistan — resulting in an interagency white paper released in March 2009 and an assessment overseen by US and NATO commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal last summer — it appears that the president was dissatisfied with their results, seeking more options than the 40,000-strong troop deployment most of his top military aides were recommending.

 

His praetorian guard of close political advisors — Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, and Senior Advisor David Axelrod, among others — repeatedly counselled the president against an open-ended war, earning the ire of McChrystal, then-head of Central Command General David Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and National Security Advisor James Jones. But the military was also not entirely forthright in the way it went about convincing Obama, staging, in Woodward's account, a rigged war game last October code-named Poignant Vision to demonstrate that a smaller force would be inadequate.

 

Woodward's narrative does the international community good service by clarifying many details about the administration's deliberations. But for several reasons, their implications are damning.

 

First, administration infighting, even now it has spilled into the public domain, is not likely to abate. Some of the harsh words said by senior officials about colleagues suggest deep personal rifts, even between individuals who are allied on policy specifics. Second, Obama's relationship with the military can be expected to sour even further. While he was acting perfectly within his rights as commander-in-chief to reject the military's proposals, the implications of this decision are profound. As Panetta warns, "No Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it." Third, the political consequences of Obama's decision on Afghanistan will not work in his favour domestically, despite US politics being his overriding concern. He will not have a success to show an already dissatisfied electorate; and in the event of a withdrawal, he will be associated permanently with a major foreign policy failure.

 

Finally, the sense of an imminent US exit from Afghanistan, made explicit in Woodward's narrative, sends all the wrong signals to the region's capitals from Kabul and Islamabad to Tehran and New Delhi. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, faced with the prospect of weakened US military support, has already sought to engage elements of the Taliban independent of Washington. The Pakistani state security apparatus has stepped up its support for cross-border militants in an effort to fill the expected power vacuum in Afghanistan, despite high-level warnings by US officials. Iran and India, meanwhile, are considering renewing their cooperation in support of the erstwhile Northern Alliance in an effort to prevent Taliban dominance in Afghanistan. The very scenario the United States had been hoping to avoid in Afghanistan — a return to the chaos of the 1990s in which al-Qaeda and other like-minded groups were allowed to incubate — has instead become a distinct probability.

 

If there is one lesson to draw, it is perhaps a precautionary one: against the unhealthy priority given narrow domestic political considerations in the conduct of foreign policy. The spectre of another Vietnam War, it appears, led to important national security decisions taken with midterm and presidential elections in mind. But this gamble has backfired. Splitting the difference between the larger US presence in Afghanistan advocated by the military and the smaller presence that Obama would have ideally liked has produced the worst of both worlds: mounting US casualties and costs but few, if any, palpable improvements to Afghan stability and security. A middle path, it appears, is no way to exit.

 

The writer is programme officer for Asia at the German Marshall Fund of the United States

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

AYODHYA D-DAY

 

With the Ayodhya verdict now due, the RSS' journals are full of reports arguing that Hindus are the rightful claimants to the site. Organiser carried an article by a former director-general of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), B.B. Lal, on archaeological evidence that "proves" that the site was the birthplace of Lord Ram. It even reproduces a statement made by one K.K. Mohammad, an ASI official who participated in the Ayodhya excavations in the late 1970s, that Ayodhya is as holy to the Hindus as Mecca is to the Muslims, and so Muslims should respect the sentiments of their Hindu brethren and voluntarily hand over the site.

 

The edition also carries articles tracing the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and the six-decade legal battle. Panchjanya claims it was time to reverse the "injustice" done to the "Indian nation" by the "destruction" of the Janmabhoomi temple by a "foreign invader." The lead editorial argues that the Hindu community is eager to carry out the much-needed course correction. Another article dwells on the history of the site and, citing the reconstruction of the temple at Somnath, argues that legislation should be enacted for a Ram temple at Ayodhya.

 

Another article sees a Congress conspiracy in the attempt by R.C. Tripathi to defer the judicial verdict.

 

Atal speaks

 

BJP patriarch A.B. Vajpayee has been out of the public eye for a long time because of ill-health. The latest issue of party fortnightly Kamal Sandesh carries an article in his name that marks the birth anniversary of Jan Sangh stalwart Deendayal Upadhyaya. Vajpayee says Upadhyaya never hankered for office either; politics was the means and not an end in itself. Vajpayee recalls that he wanted to inject spiritualism in politics.

 

Behind Munda

 

There is a strong perception that many in the BJP top brass were not really aware, or were informed at the last minute, of the party's moves to form a government in Jharkhand with the JMM led by Arjun Munda. An editorial in Kamal Sandesh says that by becoming CM, Munda has proved that he is not only a natural tribal leader but also a political leader of the entire state. Perhaps reflecting factional feuding in the state unit, it says that the state leadership will have to stand united behind the CM.

 

Churches and AFSPA

 

Panchjanya sees Christian-backed conspiracies in Manipur, where it claims that nationalist forces were being restrained from carrying out their work in the name of protection of human rights. It says more than 30 insurgent groups are operating in the state and they selectively kill only the Hindi-speaking population. Claiming that human rights outfits or church-sponsored groups never criticise insurgents, but target only the armed forces, the article says if AFSPA is fully withdrawn from the state, then only the terrorist groups could rule there, and the entire country's security would be jeopardised.

 

Compiled by Manoj C.G.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

MOILY VS LAW MINISTRY

 

There seems a major communication gap between law minister Veerappa Moily and his ministry, for they are speaking at complete cross-purposes on the scandal involving communications minister A Raja. The question is whether Moily is being kept in the dark or whether he is aware of the double talk. A little over a month ago, officials from Raja's ministry moved a note asking the law ministry whether bodies like the CAG and the CVC had the right to probe into decisions taken by the ministry. Why they moved the note is obvious since, though the CBI's investigations into the 2G licence allocations had cooled off (that's why the Supreme Court asked the CBI, a few weeks ago, to explain why it was taking so long with the investigation), the CVC and the CAG were asking uncomfortable questions. Indeed, it was the CAG's questions that really went to the heart of the scam since the CAG even detailed the time at which various press releases were loaded on the ministry's Web sites, asked why decisions taken so long ago were not made public for months, and so on—basically, they alleged information had been leaked out to select firms. A note was prepared by a telecom ministry babu (who had, ironically, advised Raja on the telecom licences) and submitted to the law secretary, saying that while the CAG could look into government accounts, the CAG Act "nowhere provides that he has any duty or power to question the wisdom of the policy/lawmakers as policy decisions may involve trial and error theory". In case of the CVC, the note said, "as per Section 8 of the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003, CVC has not been assigned any functions or powers to issue directives relating to any policy matters." That is, CAG/CVC does not have the right to question the government, provided the decision is wrapped up in the garb of policy.

 

This note, the new telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar has now disclosed, was cleared by the law secretary on the 7th of this month. Chandrashekhar was replying to the CAG, saying the law ministry had "opined that the CAG had no duty or power to challenge policy decisions taken by the Government." This is shocking since it essentially takes away the very rationale for having a CVC/CAG. Less than a week after his ministry's opinion, Moily blasted the CAG for failing to make timely interventions, to prevent crimes from taking place before they happened ("postmortems are good but they can be conducted only when a patient is dead"). So Moily wants the CAG to not just investigate old scandals, he wants it to prevent new ones. His ministry wants the exact opposite. Who's in charge?

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

RBI GETS REAL

 

The RBI decision to permit banks to engage companies registered under the Indian Companies Act, 1956, as business correspondents (BC) or retail agents, is a major step that has the potential to bring banking services to a vast majority of the people. Though non-banking financial companies remain currently excluded from the move, probably on account of the conflict of interests, it still opens up the doors to a large number of companies in the telecom, retail and other sectors to take deposits and provide loans on behalf of the banks. The concept of extending banking services through BCs have been mooted since the middle of the decade. But the initial progress of the scheme was tardy as the choice of the BCs was initially restricted to NGOs, mutual funds, trusts, cooperative societies, post offices and the non-profit Section 25 companies. And to prevent big businesses from entering the BC network, RBI even issued a notification two years later in 2008 excluding those Section 25 companies where NBFCs, banks and telecom companies had more than a 10% holdings from the BC network.

 

To make matters worse, the emphasis then shifted to extending the BC network through smaller entities like retired bank employees, teachers, ex-service men, government employees, PCO operators, shopowners and insurance agents. But the gains were negligible. The numbers released last year showed that only 26 of the 50 major public and private sector banks had adopted the BC concept. And even here the gains were very uneven. While the 22 public sector banks appointed 85 BCs to open 80 lakh accounts, the 4 private sector banks could open only 8 lakh accounts through 44 BCs. And the evidence clearly showed that the biggest gains were made by banks that engaged BCs with the maximum reach. For instance, Axis Bank, which engaged just one BC, accounted for more than 80% of the bank accounts opened under the scheme in the private sector. In the public sector, Union Bank of India could open more than 16 lakh accounts with just 3 BCs. So, finally, RBI seems to have learnt the right lessons from the experience of the last 4 years and has now decided to utilise the services of the large corporate groups to extend the BC network and ensure the maximum possible gains.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

HEAVY HAND OF THE LAW

MK VENU

 

There is currently a sort of "low level equilibrium" in the relations between the Centre and some key regulators in the country. The term "low level equilibrium" was recently used by the government to describe the choppy relationship between India and China, marked as it is by frequent disruptions. Relations between finance minister and some important financial markets regulators are also similarly strained and possibly at the lowest equilibrium seen in recent years. This even prompted finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to remark recently that regulators did not come from heaven. The sub-text of this statement, of course, is that regulators must subordinate themselves to North Block's wisdom. After all it is the finance ministry that is "finally answerable to Parliament."

 

The problem began with the totally avoidable battle between Sebi and Irda over who should regulate Unit Linked Insurance Plans (Ulips), which left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. It was this episode which gave Pranab Mukherjee enough reason to assert himself in a manner that is now hurting every regulator, including RBI, which had nothing much to do with the Ulip fracas.

 

The real low point for Sebi and Irda came when the finance minister told Parliament that he had no option but to resort to an Ordinance when key regulators fought like petulant children, thereby disrupting the markets. Both Sebi and Irda were squarely responsible for giving the finance minister the handle to intervene, and how! It created a chain of events that strained relations between the finance ministry and RBI also. RBI spoke against the need for an Ordinance and a special Committee to resolve inter-regulatory disputes. Earlier, RBI also criticised the budget proposal for setting up a Financial Stability Development Council (FSDC) to oversee stability in the financial markets. Both RBI and Sebi saw this as impinging on their autonomy. Pranab Mukherjee is an old school politician, and much like a benevolent patriarch he doesn't like to be questioned by regulators. Of course, he chose to address some of RBI's concerns by amending the Ordinance in Parliament that gave the central bank the status of vice-Chair on the Committee. This was only a minor victory for RBI.

 

The ministers' antipathy towards the key regulators is now seen in the way North Block not giving extensions to deputy governors at RBI who are close to retirement. In the past, at least one extension would be given if only to recognise their lasting contribution to RBI. Thankfully, on other critical issues of monetary policy management, the RBI governor is on the same page as the finance minister. In fact, Pranab Mukherjee and Subbarao have coordinated well on macro-economic management of the economy.

 

Sebi chairman Bhave is also due to retire by February and the search for a new candidate has already begun.

 

The finance minister is not happy with Sebi's conduct on many issues, starting with the way Bhave passed the Ulip ban order, setting a chain reaction. Bhave's move to reduce the agent's commission to near zero on the sale of mutual funds was also seen as a move that was tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And now he wants to control the pricing of public issues by merchant bankers so that enough is left on the table for the small investor! Suddenly, Bhave seems to be seized by a desire to play the white knight for the small investor. Is he trying to blaze a trail of glory as he exits?

 

Pranab Mukherjee does not appear to have taken kindly to the latest public spat between Sebi and MCX, which is seeking a licence to set up a stock exchange in competition with the NSE. Sebi has rejected MCX's application, and MCX will appeal against Sebi's order.

 

Overall, there is a strong perception, even at the finance minister's office, that the stock market regulator is biased against MCX and its actions are willy-nilly perpetuating the monopoly of the NSE, a private entity. In fact, MCX has directly accused Sebi of "conflict of interest" as some of its members have worked with the NSE in the past.

 

Unfortunately, the financial markets regulatory environment may have got further vitiated by a recent discovery that the capital markets division of the finance ministry had mooted a formal proposal towards the end of UPA-1's tenure to "help NSE recover its dramatic loss of market share in commodities trading against MCX". Recently, the agriculture minister Sharad Pawar wrote to Pranab Mukherjee questioning the capital market division's desire to help one private entity, i.e. NSE, against another, which is MCX! This, indeed, is unprecedented. Pranab Mukherjee himself is a bit puzzled by this episode.

 

In a way, Sharad Pawar was also protesting against the attempt by the Capital Markets division of finance ministry to interfere in the affairs of the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), which regulates commodities trading. The FMC is generally very suspicious of Sebi as there had been talk in the past of bringing the regulation of derivative trading in commodities under Sebi. In principle, this makes sense but, given Sebi's perceived bias towards NSE, any such move now will be seen with even greater suspicion. The chairman of FMC, PC Khatua, has also publicly spoken against the idea of merging FMC with Sebi. Incidentally, he is the only regulator to have got a one year extension recently!

 

Overall, the lack of harmony among regulators gets compounded when the relationship between the government and some regulators is marked by acrimony. There is a need to bring back the goodwill and the subtle balance of power exercised by the government and regulators in the larger interests of governance.

 

mk.venu@expressindia.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

BEGGARING-THY-NEIGHBOUR

DHIRAJ NAYYAR

 

One of the most striking features of policy coordination in the post-financial crisis period was the manner in which most major countries desisted from engaging in serious forms of trade protectionism, even when faced with rising unemployment domestically. That consensus which staved off a potential race to the bottom, however, seems now to be fading rapidly as the world descends into what Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega has quite rightly termed "international currency wars." A series of major and relatively minor economies, including the US, Japan, Thailand and Colombia, have taken deliberate steps to weaken their currencies in order to boost growth. The question, of course, is why now?

 

For one, the recovery of economic growth in a number of countries, including the US and Japan and also certain emerging economies, has been far from robust. That sort of scenario worries politicians and policymakers and deliberately undervaluing the currency is an old-fashioned way to boost growth via exports. The problem, of course, is that growth engineered in this fashion comes at another country's expense (beggar-thy-neighbour). And sooner, rather than later, other countries will engage in competitive devaluations that will wipe out the gains, and inflict a cost, significantly in terms of inflation.

 

Needless to say policymakers in the US, Japan, Thailand, etc, are perfectly aware of this. But they would argue that their response is being forced by China's continued insistence on keeping the yuan undervalued. Of course, the undervaluation of the yuan preceded the global crisis, and is therefore not something that the Chinese have resorted to as a crisis strategy. However, a policy that other countries could tolerate in the time of global boom has become intolerable in the bust—there is a strong feeling that China cannot be allowed to take all the gains from exports at the cost of others. The estimates of how much of the yuan is undervalued vary but in real exchange rate terms, it could be anything between 25% and 40%.

 

The curious thing is why the US and other countries are not willing and able to force China into revaluing its exchange rate. After all, Japan was "persuaded" to let the yen appreciate in the 1980s when its current account surplus peaked at between 4-5% (compared to China's peak of 10% in 2008) and when growth was around just 5% (China's is almost in double digits). Surjit Bhalla's forthcoming book Devaluing to Prosperity has a brilliant chapter explaining this irony. Bhalla makes the argument that it just may be in the interest of

 

US business (particularly I-banks) to let China continue its distorted policies because they do not directly compete with Chinese firms in the way they did with Japanese firms two decades ago. On the contrary, they prosper when China does.

 

There may also be another reason why some countries would rather devalue themselves than force China to revalue. The US and Japan, in particular, may be using devaluation (through lower interest rates and printing money) as a method to engineer some inflation. A carefully engineered inflation (if that's indeed possible) would help cut both private and public debt rapidly in these highly indebted countries. Of course, that involves a massive transfer away from savers to borrowers, and risks creating an inflationary spiral that may be difficult to control.

 

Amidst these misguided policy interventions by some countries, other economies are facing adverse consequences. Ironically, these are the countries that have recovered smartly from the crisis. Brazil is a prime example. One of the consequences of the low interest rate-easy cash regime in the US and other advanced economies is that capital is pouring into countries like Brazil (and indeed India) because of the higher interest rates (and better returns offered in high growth economies) which is putting upward pressure on the exchange rate of these countries. That is rendering their exports uncompetitive. Countries like Brazil may, therefore, be forced into making their own interventions, including restrictions on capital flows, which aren't necessarily good for them.

 

The currency wars are set to be a serious test for the much celebrated G-20 when it meets in South Korea in November. Coordinating stimulus was the easy bit, but can coordination work when interests conflict?

 

dhiraj.nayyar@expressindia.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

EAVESDROPPER

 

WE'VE COME A LONG WAY

While releasing the Budget Manual, a document explaining the entire budget-making process, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said the 2010-11 Budget had a size of over Rs 10 lakh crore while the first Budget, presented in 1947 by RK Shanmukham Chetty, had gross receipts of just Rs 231 crore. The 1947 Budget, he said, had only two tax heads: income tax and customs duty, and the expenditure comprised only civil and military expenditure. The deficit in 1947 was only Rs 26 crore, Mukherjee added, saying many senior officers in the government today issue exemptions of more than Rs 26 crore in a day.

 

WATCH THAT CALL

We've all heard of the e-mail prize scams that try to get users to divulge personal details like bank account numbers. Given that more people use phones than those who use e-mail, it was only a matter of time before the scam migrated to phones. One such victim was promised a great reward and given a number to call in case he wished to get any clarifications. The number was a mobile based in Pakistan but in his enthusiasm the person didn't notice. What was surprising was the SMS that followed, from his telephone operator, Airtel. It read, "You have made a call to ISD CODE 0092. We urge you to exercise caution while calling unknown number and sharing personal details as it can be misused." Big Brother is hearing? Or was it because the call was to Pakistan?

 

GET SET TRAVEL

So far, you've heard just bad news on the Goods and Services Tax, on how various state finance ministers were opposing it, how they were not happy with the single rate, and so on. There's good news now. The finance ministry has decided the next meeting of state finance ministers will now be held in Goa. Hopefully, the feni and the beaches will put the state finance ministers in a better frame of mind. And possibly the journalists covering it may not be that keen to look for a story either.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

MUSCOVITES

AFTER 18 YEARS AS MOSCOW'S MAYOR, YURI LUZHKOV GETS THE BOOT

Boris Yeltsin, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev now (not to mention six Parliaments and 10 PMs)—that's how the Russian presidency transformed while Yuri Luzhkov held on to the Moscow fief as its mayor. Before taking on this job in 1992, he was chairman of the state committee responsible for Moscow's state supply. One of the world's safest cities had transformed into a crime capital; everything from cheese to detergent was running short, with even the black market larders becoming bare. As McDonald's trundled in, Luzhkov rebranded the Russian capital. It generates a fifth of the country's income and conduits 80% of its transactions today. It's swimming in Mercs. Also corruption. Luzhkov's wife is Russia's richest woman. He has just got fired from his job.

 

In his complicated career, the man has entertained visions of replacing Yeltsin, then Putin. That he survived all that perhaps made him complacent. With a newspaper article this time around, he tried to get between Putin and Medvedev, questioning the latter's authority and suggesting a return to presidency for Putin. While Luzhkov's chequered career doesn't lend itself to romanticisation, the brusque way in which he was fired confirms how Kremlin authoritarianism still runs the roost in Russia.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

LABOUR BREAKS WITH RECENT PAST

 

It is often said about Britain's Labour Party that it is at its best when it is bold and adventurous. In electing Ed Miliband to replace Gordon Brown as its leader, it has certainly shown an extraordinary streak of boldness. The choice of a young, left-of-centre leader in the face of a strong challenge from right-of-centre Blairites represents a decisive break with the past as the party begins the long march back to power. It also signals the arrival of a younger generation of leadership not tainted by the excesses and fatal blunders of the 'New Labour' era. Using his maiden speech intelligently to distance himself from the "old" ways of doing things, Mr. Miliband proclaimed: "I lead a new generation not bound by old thinking." Part of his diagnosis was that New Labour had "lost its way" and stopped listening to people. He courageously denounced the Iraq invasion, saying it was "wrong, wrong, and wrong." In a sign that the party is desperate to move on, every time he mentioned the word "young" and called for a new direction, he was loudly cheered. At 40, Mr. Miliband — non-Marxist son of a noted Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband — is the youngest leader in the party's modern history, overtaking Tony Blair by a few months. He was elected an MP only in 2005 but quickly rose to ministerial ranks and became a Cabinet Minister in 2008.

 

Ed Miliband, a surprise late entrant to the leadership contest, was widely regarded as an underdog against David Miliband, his more experienced and high-profile brother. There were three other contenders: Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, and Diane Abbott. But from the moment the younger Miliband entered the fray, it effectively turned into a two-horse race, with the elder Miliband seen as the favourite. As the contest tightened, it took on aspects of a psychodrama. While David appears to have taken his victory for granted and readied a Blairite speech that would have been totally out of sync with the mood within the party, Ed approached the contest with the relaxed air of someone who had nothing to lose. What tilted the balance in his favour was the solid backing of Labour-affiliated union members who were impressed by his passionate defence of the role of the unions and his attacks on the savage cuts in public spending. Mr. Miliband has contemptuously rejected the 'Red Ed' tag sought to be foisted by the Tories and the right-wing media. To the unions, his message was that while he sympathised with their cause, he would not support "irresponsible" actions. He is seen to have made a good start with a speech that, as The Guardian noted editorially, Labour "needed, a pointed break with the worst of the recent past but a strong reaffirmation of its best."

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

JOB CREATING GROWTH

 

The UNCTAD's analysis of the relevance of export-led growth strategies in the post-crisis global economy, in its Trade Development Report (2010), provides valuable lessons for countries like India. These strategies have served many countries well, and China, South Korea and Japan, among others, have relied heavily on external demand to achieve spectacular growth. However, there is a flip side. Going by the experience over a 30-year period, the TDR says economic growth, however strong, does not by itself generate decent jobs to absorb the labour surpluses typical of developing countries. This became apparent recently when the global financial and economic crisis was seen to push unemployment to unprecedented levels in many countries. Of special concern is the situation in the United States, where there is no sign of improvement on the job front. The U.S. may no longer remain so huge a market for exports. Since other major economies are unlikely to take its place as a dominant market in the near future, the size of the global export market may shrink.

 

There is something inherently wrong with the agenda of boosting exports pursued by countries that depend almost entirely on keeping domestic wages low so as to gain a competitive edge in global markets. Persistently high unemployment is attributable to labour market rigidities that kept wages from falling to levels low enough to increase the demand for labour. UNCTAD points out that such reasoning ignores the important role of wage increases in spurring domestic demand, and boosting employment to meet that demand. Moreover, it is the expectation of rising demand and favourable financing conditions rather than a reduction in unit labour costs that drives investment in productive capacities. More employment can be generated if the productivity gains from investments are distributed equitably between labour and capital in a way that lifts domestic demand. Secondly, macroeconomic policies should aim at ensuring that real incomes of the people keep pace with productivity growth. Thirdly, countercyclical fiscal policies that proved a great success during the crisis in stabilising demand will be useful even in normal times. Fourthly, adjusting wages with productivity gains will check both production costs and demand growth from rising above supply potential. It will also pave the way for an employment friendly monetary policy. Institutional arrangements such as collective bargaining will help in framing a suitable incomes policy. Finally, in many developing countries, public employment schemes are found to have had cascading effects on the rest of the economy.

 

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

RUSSIA'S U-TURN ON ARMS SALE

MOSCOW HAS BANNED SUPPLY OF S-300 AIR-DEFENCE SYSTEMS TO TEHRAN EVEN THOUGH THEY DO NOT FALL UNDER THE CATEGORY OF OFFENSIVE WEAPONS BANNED BY THE U.N. RESOLUTION.

VLADIMIR RADYUHIN

 

Russia has thrown its defence ties with Iran on the altar of its "reset" with the United States. President Dmitry Medvedev last week imposed a sweeping ban on defence sales that goes beyond even the international sanctions on Iran and is likely to have a long-term negative impact on Moscow-Tehran relations.

 

The decree "On Measures to Implement the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929 of June 9, 2010" Mr. Medvedev signed bans supplies of Russian tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, ships, heavy artillery systems and missiles, including the S-300 air defence systems, to Iran. Russia will also stop supplying spares and components for the weapons sold earlier, and ban the transit of arms bound for Iran through its territory. The decree contains a list of Iranian officials involved in the country's nuclear programme, who will henceforth be prohibited from entering Russia.

 

By and large, the Russian sanctions are in line with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1929, which Moscow backed, except for one crucial point: the S-300 missiles do not fall under the category of offensive weapons banned by the U.N. resolution. The move added another puzzling zigzag to Moscow's back-and-forth policy on Iran.

 

Resolution 1929 states: "All states shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to Iran […] of any […] missiles or missile systems as defined for the purpose of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms." Meanwhile, the Register clearly states that its definition of missiles or missile systems " does not include ground-to-air missiles" (emphasis added.)

 

In justifying Mr. Medvedev's cancellation of the S-300 deal, Russian officials refer to the U.N. resolution's call on all states "to exercise vigilance and restraint over the supply, sale, transfer, provision, manufacture and use of all other arms and related materiel."

 

That said, Resolution 1929 contained no explicit ban on air defence systems and Mr. Medvedev's decree went a step too far. Ironically, defending Moscow's ban on S-300, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in the same breath, lambasted unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran as being "ethically and morally wrong" and a "violation" of the U.N. resolution.

 

The $800-million contract for supply of five batteries of S-300 air-defence complexes to Iran was signed in 2007. (A typical S-300 battery contains 48 missiles on 12 mobile launchers.) If delivered to Iran, the S-300 would change the rules of the game in the region. In combination with Tor-M1 short-range air-defence missiles Russia supplied to Iran in 2008, the long-range S-300s would have deterred any aerial attack on Iran.

 

In December 2008, the Russian government news agency, RIA-Novosti, quoting defence sources, reported that Moscow had begun "implementing" the S-300 contract. The report was later denied but Moscow continued to affirm its commitment to supply S-300 missile systems to Iran. "We have a contract to deliver these systems and we will honour it. Delays have been caused by technical problems in tuning up the systems," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stated as recently as February. Even after Resolution 1929 was approved, Russian lawmakers and arms exporters maintained that the new sanctions would not affect the delivery of S-300.

 

"The S-300 systems are not covered by the sanctions and work on the contract is going forward," Mikhail Dmitriyev, Director, Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said in June. U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley also conceded at the time that Washington had failed to secure a clear-cut ban on the supply of S-300.

 

However, Russian diplomats' valiant efforts to save the S-300 deal from being axed under the U.N. resolution were in vain. The Kremlin used it as a bargaining chip with the White House. The fate of the S-300 contract was apparently sealed when Mr. Medvedev paid an official visit to the U.S. in June and secured President Obama's promise to help Russia modernise its economy. On his return, Mr. Medvedev called for allying Russia with the West. "We need to build modernisation alliances with our main foreign partners … above all with Germany, Italy, the European Union and the United States of America," he said in a keynote speech to Russian diplomats in July.

 

The formal ban on Russian arms exports to Iran came three months later, timed for the U.S. Congress debate on the New START, a Russian-American nuclear arms pact Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Obama signed in April.

 

Moscow attaches paramount importance to START ratification, seeing it as a turning point in its relations with Washington that would pave the way for other deals — U.S. endorsement of a long-pending civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries and Washington's support for Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organisation.

 

The S-300 ban was designed to facilitate the START's passage through the U.S. Senate. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee in mid-September approved the U.S.-Russian treaty and sent it to the Senate floor, but its ratification is still hanging in the balance. The administration would like the Senate to vote on the treaty before it breaks for the November elections on October 8 because the Democrats may see their majority reduced in the new Senate. Mr. Medvedev clearly sought to impress the American public opinion and sway hesitant U.S. Senators in favour of backing the START.

 

The White House "strongly" welcomed the "faithful and robust implementation" by Moscow of the U.N. sanctions resolution. "We believe President Medvedev has demonstrated leadership on holding Iran accountable to its international obligations from start to finish," said National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer.

 

Mr. Medvedev's Iran arms ban is a big gift to the embattled Obama, who can now argue that his policy of "reset" with Russia is bringing tangible dividends. Moscow hopes a grateful Obama will lift the ban on high technology transfers to Russia. Time will tell whether these hopes are justified.

 

Sceptics point out that Russia halted its defence ties with Iran once in the past also, in the vain hope of getting U.S. aid and investments. Under a secret agreement brokered in 1995 by the then Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and U.S. Vice-President Albert Gore, Russia agreed to stop selling weapons to Iran. The deal dealt a hard blow to Russia's struggling defence industry, depriving it of what was emerging as the third largest market for Russian arms after India and China. The U.S. "thanked" Russia by pushing NATO to its doorstep and bombing out its traditional ally, Yugoslavia. In 2000, Russia pulled out of the Gore-Chernomyrdin deal and resumed arms supplies to Iran.

 

The new ban on weapon sales to Iran will have dire consequences for Russia, critics say. Direct financial losses from the scrapping of the S-300 contract could exceed $1 billion. According to the Russian Centre for Analysis of World Arms Trade, Russia will lose at least $11 billion in weapon supplies to Iran through 2025. "Iran will never forgive Russia for this second sell-out in the past 15 years," says defence expert Konstantin Makienko of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST). "Russia may lose forever the Iranian market of not only defence but also civilian technologies."

 

Aviation industry sources said Iran had already stopped negotiations to acquire Russia's Tu-204SM passenger aircraft. Russia's refusal to supply S-300 systems has put a big question mark on a wide-ranging energy cooperation road map Moscow signed with Tehran just a couple of months ago.

 

Geopolitical costs for Russia could be even higher. "The cancellation of the S-300 contract undermines its reputation as a reliable defence partner among its current and potential customers," Mr. Makienko said. "China will only be too happy to fill the vacuum left by Russia."

 

Tehran's recent announcement that it had begun work on its own missile system, analogue of the Russian S-300, Russian experts said, was an indication that the Chinese came to Iranians' help, offering expertise gained in cloning the S-300 Russia had earlier sold to China.

 

As for rewards from Washington, U.S. officials warn Moscow not to expect too many. "The objective is not actually to develop a good relationship with Russia. The goal here is to advance our national security and economic interests and to promote universal values," a senior White House official said commenting on the Russian arms ban to Iran. In fact, the Russian concession has encouraged U.S. strategists to put higher demands on Moscow. "Some Russia sceptics aren't so sure that Moscow has yet made the strategic decision to turn away from Iran and towards the United States," Josh Rogin wrote in his blog on The Foreign Policy website.

 

To convince these sceptics, Russia should stop cooperation with Iran on the Bushehr nuclear reactor, tear up energy deals and support tougher economic sanctions on Tehran. To quote a relevant Russian saying: "Put a finger in his mouth and he will bite your arm off."

 

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THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS 

WHY THE BJP CANNOT GO BACK TO ITS ' MANDIR WAHIN BANAYENGE' STANCE

IT IS BOTH WARY OF REPEATING THE SLOGAN THAT GAVE THE PARTY ITS POLITICAL IDENTITY AND SHY OF TAKING THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION IT SHOULD.

NEENA VYAS

 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today is troubled by the possibility of Ayodhya once again taking centre-stage after tomorrow's verdict by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. Its commitment to the issue is in doubt after it publicly abandoned it during the six years it was in power at the Centre. This discredited it with the people it had mobilised for the Ram temple agitation as also with members of the sangh parivar within the "family" of organisations headed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

 

Unlike in the 1980s and 1990s, it is wary of repeating the intimidating " mandir wahin banayenge" slogan that gave the party its political identity 20 years ago. It is equally shy of taking the constitutional position it should — that a court verdict is binding on all and it will humbly accept the court's Ayodhya pronouncement no matter which way it goes.

 

The dilemma that it faces is this: the older face of the BJP and the face of its Ram temple movement L.K. Advani stands discredited on this issue; others like Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti are out of its fold. As for the new generation of leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, they are conscious of their "constitutional positions" as leaders of opposition and have not been associated with the Ayodhya agitation earlier. They may not have the taste or the stomach for sharing a platform with an assorted group of 'sants' and the extremist fringe in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal.

 

Then there are other notables — BJP president Nitin Gadkari and former presidents Rajnath Singh and Murli Manohar Joshi — who continue to flaunt their "commitment" to building a Ram temple at the disputed site but are unsure how the issue will now play out at the ground level. Moreover, the RSS has already issued a virtual gag order on the BJP asking it to keep mum on the subject and not let it be politicised once again. In keeping with this order, BJP statements on what was once its pet subject are few and far between and surprisingly restrained.

 

'Some gain cannot be ruled out'

 

Yet, it would be wrong to say the BJP is not looking at the verdict as a possible opportunity that may help it once again rebuild the base it once had in the country's most populous State Uttar Pradesh. As of today the ground situation does not favour the BJP resurrecting its image on the basis of the Ram temple card, but we will wait and watch to see how the situation develops. Some gain for the BJP in U.P. as a result of the Ayodhya verdict cannot be ruled out, was the opinion of a member of the party's national executive committee.

 

In 1992 when top party leaders descended on Ayodhya to lead a crowd that brought down the 16th Century Babri Mosque, the party did not think it would ever occupy the seat of power in Delhi. In 2010, having been in power for six years from 1998 to 2004 (not counting 13 days in 1996), the BJP sees itself as a party of governance that could be voted back to power. It can ill afford to be seen acting totally unconstitutionally or making the claim it did earlier, that the Ayodhya issue is just a matter of faith, not a subject for the courts to decide. If it were to once again adopt that stance, new India would surely see it as taking an illegal, unconstitutional and thoroughly irresponsible position.

 

The cleverly worded resolution adopted by the party's core committee on September 24 throws some light on its dilemma: "The BJP is of the considered opinion that judicial delays over the last 61 years have contributed to the failure of the resolution of the issue of construction of Ram temple at Ayodhya. We hope that the resolution of this issue is not delayed any further." It did not say it will or it will not accept the verdict, but pointed to a resolution of the issue that would end with the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. It glossed over the fact that the conflict arose because the demand was for building a temple at the disputed site where the Babri Masjid was brought down, and not anywhere in Ayodhya. Finally, it quite directly blamed judicial delays as "contributing" to the "failure" to build a Ram temple, as if it was the business of the judiciary to ensure that a temple comes up at a disputed site and the claims of the other party do not matter at all.

 

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THE HINDU

CIA INTENSIFIES DRONE STRIKES WITHIN PAKISTAN

MARK MAZZETTI AND ERIC SCHMITT

 

1. The move comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of U.S. casualties before
2. the Obama administration's comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy.

 

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, U.S. officials said, strikes that are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

 

As part of its covert war in the region, the CIA has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of U.S. casualties before the Obama administration's comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December.

 

American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.

 

The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan's government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country's western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.

 

Other attacks

 

Beyond the CIA drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, U.S. military helicopters have launched three air strikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against U.S. troops.

 

Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said on September 27 that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defence after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and the Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while U.S. "surge" forces are in Afghanistan.

 

Pakistani officials have criticised the helicopter attacks, saying that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.

 

As evidence of the growing frustration of U.S. officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to U.S. officials.

 

"Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens," said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. "He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more."

 

STRONG CAMPAIGN: Beyond the drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. (Top) A 'Predator' drone over Kandahar, and smoke from the impact of mortar shells during an operation in Surobi district.

 

European terror plot

 

Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Barack Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send U.S. troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.

 

But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. U.S. and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and they have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.

 

"We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said before a Senate panel last week.

 

The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan's tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe.

 

"The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity," the official said.

 

The 20 CIA drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the CIA carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.

 

'Taliban leaders have fled'

 

According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the CIA drone campaign.

 

Overall, the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the website "The Long War Journal", which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.

 

The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the CIA's drone programme, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by U.S. spies. According to "The Long War Journal", the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.

 

One U.S. official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to "keep the pressure on as long as we can."

 

But the CIA's campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fuelling anger in the Muslim world.

 

The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in New York's Times Square told a judge that the CIA drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.

 

In a meeting with reporters on September 27, Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.

 

In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hideouts thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

 

The intelligence technology, Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas. — © New York Times News Service

 

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THE HINDU

 

A THIRD OF 'EXTINCT' MAMMALS FOUND ALIVE

IT'S GOOD NEWS FOR THE GUADALUPE FUR SEAL, THE BAHIAN TREE RAT AND THE BRIDLED NAILTAIL WALLABY, BUT ANIMALS ARE STILL DYING OUT IN A 'SIXTH GREAT EXTINCTION'.

IAN SAMPLE

 

The Guadalupe fur seal was feared extinct, gone the way of the dodo after being slaughtered by Russian and American hunters for their skins. None could be found at breeding grounds and as sightings elsewhere tailed off the species was consigned to history.

 

So why are there thousands of Guadalupe fur seals swimming off the coast of Mexico now? As naturalists gladly admit, reports of the species' demise at the end of the 19th Century were premature. Small numbers of the animals clung on in island caves and were rediscovered only decades later. The population is now thriving, with the latest estimate putting their number at 15,000 or more.

 

But the case of the Guadalupe fur seal is far from unique — and more animals feared extinct could be waiting to be rediscovered. A survey of the world's mammals published on September 29 reveals that more than a third of species once feared extinct have since been spotted in the wild, in one case 180 years after the last confirmed sighting. Rare mammals that were considered dead but later rediscovered were typically missing for 52 years.

 

The Guadalupe seal was hunted to apparent extinction by 1892, but a tiny colony was spotted on the island by two fishermen in 1926. After a failed attempt to sell two of the animals to San Diego zoo, one of the fishermen went back to slaughter the colony out of spite. He later turned up in Panama to sell the skins, but was killed in a bar brawl. The seals were only rediscovered and protected when a zoologist tracked down the second fisherman, who revealed their location on his deathbed in 1950.

 

One rodent, the Bahian tree rat, which lives in forests on the Brazilian coast, went missing in 1824. Despite efforts by conservationists, the animal was not rediscovered until 2004. The bridled nailtail wallaby was once common in eastern Australia but seemed to die out in the 1930s. It was spotted in 1973 by a contractor who was preparing to clear an area of land. After he raised the alarm, the habitat was bought by the local parks service to save the animal. Another creature, a small marsupial called Gilbert's potoroo, was missing for 115 years before it was rediscovered in the south of Western Australia in 1994.

 

Diana Fisher, who led the survey at the University of Queensland, said the number of mammals going extinct was still accelerating despite large numbers of lost animals being found.

 

'In the grip of sixth extinction'

 

Conservation experts have already warned that the world is in the grip of the "sixth great extinction", as imported species and diseases, hunting and the destruction of natural habitats deal a fatal blow to plants and animals.

 

Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Fisher lists 180 mammals reported as extinct, feared extinct, or missing since the year 1500. Of these, 67 were later found to be alive and well. Animals that were picked off by new predators were rarely rediscovered, while those threatened by a loss of habitat or hunting by humans were more likely to be holding on in small colonies, she found.

 

The survey highlights the uncertainties in lists of extinct species, but Fisher said it should help conservationists target their searches for missing species by focusing on those most likely to be alive.

 

More than 25 large-scale searches have failed to find thylacines, the carnivorous, dog-like marsupials that have not been seen in Australia for nearly 80 years.

 

Fisher said her analysis puts the chance of the species surviving at "virtually zero". Mammals that were hunted to extinction before the 20th Century, such as the Steller's sea cow, the Falkland Islands wolf, the sea mink and the large Palau flying fox are also unlikely to be found now, Fisher said.

 

"Conservation resources are wasted searching for species that have no chance of rediscovery, while most missing species receive no attention," Fisher said. "Rather than searching ever more for charismatic missing species, such as thylacines in Australia, it would be a better use of resources to look for species that are most likely to be alive, find out where they are, and protect their habitats," she added.

 

According to Fisher's survey, the most likely missing mammals to be found alive are the Montane monkey-faced bat in the Solomon Islands, the Alcorn's pocket gopher, which was last seen in the high forests of Mexico, and the lesser stick-nest rat, a large, soft-furred desert animal from Australia.

 

 © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE HINDU

 

PAKISTANI SOLDIER SETS TREE PLANTING RECORD

 

A soldier of the Pakistani Army set a Guinness world record on September 29 by planting the most number of tress in a single day, the Pakistan media has reported.

 

According to reports, Muhammad Yousuf Jamil, Lance Naik in the Pakistani Army, successfully planted 20,101 saplings in 24 hours breaking the previous world record which was set by Ken Chaplin, a Canadian citizen in 2001. Chaplin planted 15,170 red pine seedlings in a day near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada on June 30, 2001.

 

Jamil broke the record in the time span of 18 hours and 40 minutes. He had a rest time of four hours.

 

He started planting the saplings on Tuesday at 2 p.m. local time after an inauguration ceremony in the presence of a representative of the Guinness Book of World Records in the Pakistani eastern city of Gujranwala.

 

Jamil travelled 35 kilometres to the spot before beginning work over 12 acres, the area of his project. Representatives of Guinness did not count 400 saplings that were "poorly planted".

 

Lieutenant General Muhammad Mustafa Khan, Core-Commander, Mangla cantonment awarded him a prize of Rs. 6,00,000 ($6,976). Jamil had also been promoted. In July 2009, Pakistan already received a certificate from the Guinness Book acknowledging the planting of as many as 5,41,176 mangrove tree saplings by a team of some 300 volunteers in a day on 800 acres of land at Keti Bunder, Thatta district, in Pakistan's southern province of Sindh.

 

 Xinhua

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

REGULATING THE NET:INDIA AND AMERICA

 

If you thought that the Indian government was being unnecessarily paranoid about insisting that BlackBerry and some others provide it with a master key to read encrypted emails and messages that they carried, now the United States government is also speaking in similar language. Indeed, the sweeping new regulations that US law enforcement and national security officials are asking Congress to enact go much, much further: these have the potential of bringing about a sea change in the way that the Internet has functioned till now. But the news of American officialdom seeking new regulations to "tap" Skype, BlackBerry and social networking sites such as Facebook still comes as a bit of a surprise considering the tremendous prowess in cryptography that its National Security Agency possesses — unmatched in the rest of the world. The NSA employs the largest number of cryptographers in the world and most encryption techniques are evolved in America, which only allows the rest of the world access to it after it has mastered the decryption techniques. Indeed, commercial production or availability of any encryption technology is permitted only after it has been decrypted by the NSA's experts. Much of the world functions on US encryption standards, and there are "haves" and "have nots" in this sphere. The Echelon project — the largest collaborative surveillance effort worldwide — has 18 member-countries; while the Wassenaar project includes 33 countries who exchange data on cryptography technical knowhow, dual-use export controls etc. India is not part of either. India has an Information Technology Act which requires any Internet service provider to supply the decryption in the event that any authorised security agency needs to read or unscramble any communication. The law is not the problem here, but India simply does not possess the technical capability or knowhow to decipher most encrypted messages or mails — which is why is keeps asking BlackBerry and others to provide it with the "keys" to enable this.

In the US, an NGO called Centre for Democracy and Technology has expressed fears that the proposed new American legislation might challenge the fundamental elements of the Internet revolution. It claims such a law will turn the clock back and eventually make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to in an earlier age. But given the NSA's tremendous capabilities in this area, the need for the US to have such legislation is truly puzzling. The NGO has claimed the proposed law will invade the individual's privacy — but the relevant point here is that such privacy was being invaded all along anyway, through programmes such as Magic Lantern and Carnivore. These are two major surveillance techniques used and perfected by the US, which have been around for some time, and against which cases have been filed in the US federal courts by privacy activists. The UK too had such a law allowing monitoring of emails, and so does India. One wonders what the fuss is all about!

But if America, which is so far advanced in this area, is worried about the threat of cyber warfare — possibly from China, also from countries like Iran and North Korea, then India should be truly petrified. Most of this country adheres to US encryption standards — our banks and financial services sector largely work with US products. The Data Security Council of India was established to promote security standards in the country, and IIT Kanpur has developed its own encryption standards — used only in defence for now. We should work harder to develop our own decryption techniques so that we don't become totally dependent on others in this sector — and aim for the day when we can enforce our laws with our own capabilities.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPINION

THE SEPTEMBER QUIZ

NIRMALA SITHARAMAN

 

The second fortnight of September has provided, by strange coincidence, three different platforms to introspect whether India really is a superpower waiting in the wings, the foremost being Commonwealth Games 2010.
Our handling of the Commonwealth Games (CWG), marked by greed, indifference and callousness of those in power, has made this nation's credibility wilt. A full six years, the back-up of the entire government machinery and a flexible kitty accommodating inflation and cost over-runs were simply not enough for us to host the international event in a way that would impress the sporting youth and reinforce our calibre. At every step we fell into the Western stereotype of the "Third World" — deep, large craters in the middle of busy roads in the capital, snakes in allegedly sterilised rooms of the Games Village, an over-bridge collapsing, leaking roofs and, of course, the infamous toilets. No, this was not a scene out of the television series Fawlty Towers. This was all happening in the national capital, with the media playing its role as the fourth pillar of this vibrant democracy.
Who is Aamir Khan pooh-poohing in the "Incredible India" advertisement? The poor boy is only sullying the road on a bridge because he just could not hold it any longer. The CWG organisers have sullied Mother India because they could not hold on to their greed or just couldn't care any less. Multi-layered corruption and compromises in the quality of work for the CWG are astonishing, even by our standards. "At one extreme, in India, it would seem we are beginning to take corruption in our stride. We no longer squirm at being ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world. We have come to accept corruption as our national character and hence we do not view it as a serious and alarming social malaise, as is evident from the popular support enjoyed by some of our scamsters in public life", writes V. Raghunathan in his book The Corruption Conundrum.

AFTER NEARLY 60 years, the hearing on a bunch of petitions related to ownership, issues of worship and praying rights of Hindus and Muslims in Ayodhya came to an end. All documentary, archaeological and historical evidence had been submitted and scrutinised and the Allahabad high court was ready to deliver its verdict. Speculation was rife on whether the country can hear the judgment with equanimity. Central and state governments responded differently — one appealed for calm and peace through advertisements while another accumulated paramilitary and police forces to prevent trouble. The intent here is not to doubt the bonafides of their actions. But a petition in the same court asking for the verdict to be deferred, under the guise of attempting an alternate route for dispute resolution, betrayed a certain degree of hypocrisy and insincerity. Let us hail the Supreme Court for clearing the way for the high court to deliver its verdict.

Fear of disturbance is for the governments to tackle. The judiciary cannot be made a prisoner of the consequences of its decisions; in this case of a verdict it was ready to deliver. After all, even after 60 years, the verdict now expected is not really the final word. The option of an appeal in the Supreme Court is still available to any aggrieved party. As a vibrant democracy and as a superpower in the making, we will be put to test this week again.

 

IN THE year 2000, the United Nations discussed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and a year later 192 member states and 23 international organisations agreed to achieve these goals by 2015. With only five years to go, a review conference was held in New York on September 20-22, 2010. There are eight MDGs for India (and for other countries as well) to achieve, through 21 quantifiable targets. These include eradicating extreme poverty, promoting gender equality and empowering women, improving maternal health and combating HIV, malaria and other diseases.

Based on the World Bank's definition of extreme poverty, the "UNDP India estimates, using the trend of reduction in poverty of 1.9 per cent, which is the rate of reduction between 1990 and 2005, for the years 2005-2015 indicate that population in extreme poverty is likely to decline to 34.31 per cent by 2015, which is higher than the target rate of 25.65 per cent in 2015. This means that India will not be on track to meet the MDG goal on poverty reduction" (K. Seeta Prabhu, UNDP, India).

One of the targets specified to be achieved for meeting the goal of empowering women is to increase the "proportion of seats held by women in the national Parliament". Since 1991, the number of women parliamentarians has declined from 9.7 per cent to 9.1 per cent of the total strength of Parliament. However, in the present House, after the 2009 election, their numbers have gone up slightly, taking their strength to 10.3 per cent.

The MDG relating to the maternal mortality rate (MMR) expects us to reduce MMR to 109 per 100,000 live births by 2015. The government, in its 2009 Mid-Term Statistical Appraisal, admitted, "At the historical pace of decrease, India tends to reach MMR of 135 per 100,000 live births by 2015, falling short by 26 points".
Malaria and tuberculosis account for the highest number of deaths in India. About 30 per cent of the world's TB patients are in India — the disease kills two persons every three minutes, that's nearly one thousand Indians every day.

While each of the eight MDGs is important, only a few have been flagged here as these relate to some very fundamental and elementary rights of citizens. Today, as MDGs are target-based, governments over-enthusiastically pour money into schemes to show their political will and commitment. But many of these schemes bypass the existing infrastructure, hitting at the very root of the welfare state, and most funds go unaudited. Our primary health indicators are shaming us. Is the road to achieving MDG targets going the CWG way?

Can we confront corruption and greed? Can we only appease but not face issues of faith? Will we allow our institutions to dry and decay because we want their resources? September seems a suitable to make sense.

 

Nirmala Sitharaman is spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The views expressed in this column are her own.

 

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DNA

            REPORT

SENSE OVER STATE IN RESOLVING MODERNITY

 

By refusing to give in to demands to make virginity tests mandatory for teenage girls, the Indonesian government has taken the country that much closer toboth modernity and a better understanding of human rights.

 

Fearing that the Internet and the changing world were leading to a rise in teenage pregnancies, or at least encouraging

 

premarital sex, conservative forces had asked that girls be submitted to virginity tests before they were allowed to enter state-funded high schools. Interestingly, the government feels that parents must play a greater role in managing their children's moral compasses than place such a burden on young girls.

 

That is in fact the answer for many areas of our private lives. Those frightened by change in all societies ask for government intervention when they cannot relate to shifting moral positions and the apparently threatening

 

values of young people. Indonesia — itself grappling with the challenges of modernisation in a conservative Muslim society — has decided to look forward and to use common sense to deal with a problem which is an

 

integral part of the human condition. It provides an example for all societies in similar predicaments.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

UID'S UNDERLYING POLITICS OF VISION

 

There is much significant symbolism, and on the flip side tokenism, in the launch of the unique identification cards andnumbers to 10 people in the tribal hamlet of Tembhil in Maharashtra on Wednesday by prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

 

It is not surprising then that Singh wanted to take credit for his government's effort to use technology as a means to achieve growth goals.

 

Of course, for Singh development means giving people, especially the poor, access to technology which they then can use to access government's many welfare schemes, but also to take society as a whole on the path of technology-driven progress.

 

This is very different from the socialist and populist goals of development that the Congress party has in mind. Gandhi harped exactly on this aspect. She spoke of how the UID or 'Aadhaar', its official soubriquet, will ensure 'inclusive growth'.

 

She did not lose the opportunity to remind the people of the party's Nehru-Gandhi legacy. She said that this measure was indeed the fulfillment of Rajiv Gandhi's dream of taking India into the 21st century.

Governments and political parties are justified in claiming credit for the little good they manage to accomplish and which is far outweighed by the innumerable blunders they make in implementing policies and programmes.

 

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DNA

REPORT

KIDS AT PLAY ARE SAFER THAN WIRED 24/7

 

Over the past five years, the amount of time that children spend online has increased by 63%. As internet connectivity has now included mobile phones in its reach, it is possible to stay connected to the cyber world 24/7.

 

While the Internet has its benefits, it also poses increasing danger to the innocent; the ease of connectivity has made monitoring by parents and guardians extremely difficult.

 

Predators like paedophiles are a constant worry.

 

Cyber bullying has become a menace and schools, parents and the law are all at a loss of how to deal with it. Bullying using non-conventional methods is easy and harder to detect than real-life bullying. This is leading to high levels of teen depression, even in India, especially in the big cities. Ethics and morality are also taking a beating here, feel psychologists.

 

The sharing of information is also changing the way we connect with the world and there are concerns that children and teenagers share too much. This again makes them and their families vulnerable to fraud, bullying and a number of potential crimes. It is hard enough with adults — who still fall for well-documented and publicised internet scams — but providing

 

protection for the young is another ball game.

 

The biggest problem perhaps is that children are better at being wired in than adults. This means that in the average family, it is they who are the experts. How then, does a parent keep track? The only answer is for adults to supervise their children's time and engage on as many social networking sites as possible.

 

A recent study suggests that as the Internet evolves, so will its protocols and laws and with that will come a better chance for monitoring.

 

This may well be true but it also makes it sound easier than it is. The lure of

 

constant connectivity afflicts us all.

 

The additional challenge is to get children away from the screens and out into the real world. Perhaps it comes down to re-introducing that old chant which parents have long used —try and force their children to go out and play!

 

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DNA

COLUMN

DEATH CANNOT TOUCH THE HUMAN SPIRIT

N RAGHURAMAN

 

The only certainty amid life's vicissitudes is uncertainty. As someone who escaped death by a whisker aboard the Gwalior Intercity Express that met with an accident in Badarwaas, Madhya Pradesh, on September 20, leaving 24 dead, no one would know that better.

 

4.45am: Asleep in one of the two-tier compartments, my head suddenly banged against the interiors of the train. I awoke as the train jolted to a halt. As I got down with a Gwalior-based real estate businessman, Babali Singh, I saw a horrific sight — a compartment had fallen off the track, while two others had telescoped into each other. Hands, limbs and mounds of flesh were strewn all around.

 

That's when I witnessed what they call 'people power'. The station master was missing and no official help was at hand. Almost all commuters got off to pitch in with rescue operations.

 

I tried to pull out an injured kid, but realised his left foot was stuck under the debris. A doctor among us attended to some of the grievously hurt. The relief train arrived only 90 minutes later. If not for the passengers, many more would have perished.

 

If there's anything that defies death it's the human spirit, which SwamiVivekananda said attains immortality in rising above the self. Life is ephemeral and the human spirit can deal with its evanescence with support from others.

 

To quote artist, Flora Edwards: "In helping others, we help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us."

 

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DNA

COLUMN

HINDU-MUSLIM AMITY CAN'T BE BUILT ON THE BASIS OF DENIAL

R JAGANNATHAN

 

By the end of today, India will face one of its toughest tests as a nation. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court will deliver its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, and whichever way it goes — pro-Hindu, pro-Muslim or a politically-correct middle path — the maturity of India's politicians, religious leaders and ordinary citizens will be on trial.

 

A few things can be surmised about what will follow. One, the mainline political parties,

 

including the BJP, will probably adopt a cautious stance. Two, the main parties to the

 

dispute may move their battle to the Supreme Court. Three, fringe elements in both the Sangh Parivar and the Muslim groups will be gearing up for trouble. Four, the tone and tenor of card-carrying secularists will determine the negativity of the Hindu response.

 

First, let's understand what the courts can never resolve: historical baggage. They can

 

decide on the Ayodhya title suit, but not on the partly flawed narratives Hindus and Muslims have chosen to believe about themselves.

 

The fundamental reality is that both Hindus and Muslims have different narratives about their past interaction. While Left historians want to gloss over this past and claim that

 

coexistence was the norm rather than strife, this is not what vocal Hindu leaders want to believe. Muslims have been less vocal about what they believe, but it is clear what they don't want to believe: that Muslims rulers went about destroying temples out of sheer iconoclasm.

 

This is where the Ram Janmabhoomi issue sits squarely in the midst of divergent communal memories. It is also why the courts cannot solve the dispute. Hindu zealots would like to pretend that a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya is a matter of faith, but that is not really true. While every Hindu believes that Ram was born in Ayodhya, it does not follow that he was born in one specific place.

 

Moreover, even if that were true, most Hindus would probably be willing to adjust their faith to modern reality provided there were sincere efforts to build a broader understanding with Muslims.

 

This is where our secularists have not only failed, but actually done damage. In the false

 

belief that Muslims are a helpless minority and need to be protected from any recollection of the past, they have tried to create a rose-tinted

 

version of Muslim rule, driving some moderate Hindus towards hard line positions.

 

A genuine secularist should be neutral on historical memories and the past. He or she

 

cannot wish away the truth by creating a false narrative of past amity — when the truth was somewhere in-between — occasional trust and distrust. They believe that they are serving the cause of secularism by shielding Muslims from the truth of Islamic iconoclasm and pretending all of it is Hindu communal narrative.

 

A modern example of this is the phony

 

secularist's approach to Gujarat and Kashmir. For him, Gujarat is the big communal event of independent India, not Kashmir's ethnic cleansing. So much so that moderate Hindus hesitate to mention the injustice meted out to the Pandits by Muslim separatists for fear of being branded communal. Result: the plight of the Pandits has been erased from the nation's conscience to protect Muslims from having to face this truth. The Congress will be allowed to forget its massacre of Sikhs in 1984, but Hindus will never be allowed to forget Gujarat by the secularists.

 

A new, stronger relationship cannot be built between Hindus and Muslims by working your way around the truth. But this is exactly what our secularists have been doing.

 

If the two communities have to work towards a new future, they have to start aligning their narratives by a genuine acknowledgement of the past.

 

This is not to say that present-day Muslims have feel guilty about an Aurangzeb or a Babur, but how can they move on without

 

acknowledging it? Can Hindus move on by

 

refusing to acknowledge the damage done by caste prejudices? Hindus are also in complete denial that Muslims are among the very poor, and that they have to be brought to the mainstream with policies of inclusive growth.

 

The failure of our secularists is staggering: by presuming that Muslims need to be shielded from history, they have helped create an

 

impression among Hindus that Muslims are a favoured lot.

 

While the Sangh Parivar talks of Muslim appeasement, ordinary Hindus are

 

unhappy about why secularists are always on the side of Muslims.

 

The crux of the matter is this: mature

 

Muslims need no protection from secularist

 

contortions of the truth and mature Hindus need no lectures from them on how Muslims are poor and need help today. The way to communal amity lies here: Muslims must not be in denial about the past and Hindus about the present (plight of Muslims).

 

The Ayodhya verdict will do little to drive home this message. But how we handle the post-Ayodhya fallout will change us forever. We can't move on by being in denial.

 

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THE KASHMIR TIMES

EDITORIAL

IMPLICATIONS OF AYODHYA VERDICT
FALLOUT WILL DETERMINE SUPREMACY OR INFIRMITY OF CONSTITUTION & RULE OF LAW

NEARLY 18 YEARS AFTER

the demolition of BabriMasjid at Ayodhya, judicialverdict on its basic title suitis awaited today with bated
breath across the country.Thanks to the Sangh Parivar,the issue has vitiated the atmosphereto such an extent that
Allahabad high court verdict isbeing feared as some kind ofnational calamity about to befallthis country, no matter in whosefavour the judiciary pronouncesits judgement. It was not fornothing, that LK Advani made
it a point to visit Somnath templeearlier this week to revivememories of his destructiveRathyatra in the 1990s that culminatedin wanton destructionof a place of worship belongingto India's last minority community.
Bloodshed that followedthe demolition of the centuriesold mosque has left permanentscars on India's body politic.Narendra Modi's Gujarat is justan example. With assembly electionsin the key state of Biharunderway and with the BJPlicking its wounds from theNDA's second successive electoraldefeat in 2009 Lok Sabha
elections, Advani's Somnathvisit is nothing but a carefullycalculated precursor to eventsthat could follow the September30 verdict, if the Sangh Parivarhas its way one more time. Fromthat angle, there is real danger
of the resurrection of the monsterof communalism. BJP'spolitical trajectory has shownthat the party in its presentavatar has no future in pursuingnon-communal politics. That theBJP's political fortunes had
pole-vaulted in the 1990s afterAdvani's Rathyatra explainswhy there is hunger for revivingthe dead ghosts.
Ideally such a contentiousissue eluding any settlementought to have been settled amicablybetween the contendingparties. But Sangh Parivar'sobstinate refusal to abide by anysettlement or comply with any
court verdict that goes againstits stated position on the RamJanambhoomi controversy doesnot leave any room for an easysolution. BJP has found it politicallyconvenient to hide itselfbehind rabid elements within
the Parivar who openly defy theconstitution and law of the countryby whose loyalty they swear.If this diabolic game has notsucceeded in fragmenting thecountry it is not for want ofeffort on the part of the BJP or
the Sangh Parivar but thesagacity of the people of thiscountry. BJP's marginalisationfrom the national-

mainstreampolitics is a testimony of the factthat neither the party nor itsparent Parivar represent the
true spirit of 'Bharat Mata' thatis India. However, the fearsabout attempts at reviving thefouling atmosphere cannot bewished away. It is in fitness ofthings that, unlike in 1992, theCongress-led government at the
centre is taking credible precautionarymeasures to cope withpossible adverse fallout of theSeptember 30 verdict.Looking back at the eventsleading to the demolition of theBabri Masjid in 1992 it is now
clear beyond doubt that therewas method in the madness ofthe then central governmentheaded by PV Narasimha Rao.The central government's inactionin the face of obvious threatto the authority of the Indian
state and its established institutionsretrospectively turns out tobe a deliberate 'failure'. WhetherRao's clandestine support to theSangh Parivar was an outcomeof the Congress party's internalfeud or the former prime minister'sown choice is immaterial atthis point in time. Records of thecrucial meeting of the union cabinetheld soon after the demolitionof the mosque on December6, 1992 show that there wasinexplicable inaction which Raowas unable to explain whenquestioned by some ministers,notably Makhan Lal Fotedar
who was punished and dismissedfrom the ministry for hisaudacity. These facts point tothe probability of the presentleadership of the Congress partyas well as the ruling UPA beingconfronted with Rao-type internal
sabotage. There is need totake care of this eventuality asmuch as the challenge posed byavowed communal forces.Irrespective of who wins andwho loses in the verdict to bepronounced today, the country
has come a long way from 1992and its aftermath. Today thereare powerful voices on both sidesfavouring amicable settlementthrough negotiations. Thiscourse has so far been allowed tobe hijacked by extremist fringe
on both sides. It is time tostrengthen voices of sanity andgetting rid of this pernicious dispute
without further loss. Thegovernment might like to adopta neutral position but there is
nothing to stop it from facilitatingnegotiations after the highcourt verdict is out. Best coursewould be to not let the issuehang fire by taking the case tothe apex court. Those fanningcommunal embers in the hope
of reaping its political dividendswill certainly not let thevolatile issue go away so soon.They must be confronted headon. The atmosphere in thecountry has never been moreconducive to resolve the issue
once and for all. However, onlytime can tell whether the UPA2has the moral courage and convictionto rid the nation of a festeringsore.

 

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THE KASHMIR TIMES

EDITORIAL

NOT JUST TEETHING TROUBLES
ACTION FOR REMEDY TO THE DE-RECOGNITION OF DENTAL COLLEGE MUST BE QUICKER

 

FORGET about the morepolitically orientedprotests, the state governmentis visibly unmoved evenby the agitating students ofJammu Dental College becauseof its recent de-recognition. Theagitation has entered fiftieth
day with its present phase of'fast unto death' and the onlyeffort of ministers trying to givethem assurances has not beenable to convince them enoughabout their future. The studentsdo have a genuinegrouse and question that thegovernment simply waited forthe de-recognition to comeeven though there were warningsand indications of thesame for years preceding this.The warning signals were firstsounded when Ghulam NabiAzad was heading Jammu andKashmir. The former chiefminister is now a union ministerin charge of the healthdepartment. Why is it that hedid not use his good offices tomake amends and arm thesagging Dental College ofJammu with the requisiteinfrastructure, staff and specialists?Even more importantly,why is it that the collegehas to wait for de-recognition,and agitation by studentsimpacted by this act, alone tomake people at the helm ofaffairs to finally sit up andponder about what to do andhow to go about mendingthings? Why is it that standardsof education at the higherlevel, that too in the field ofmedicine, where qualified professionalswould get thelicense to play with the lives ofpatients, are compromised dueto callousness or the oft quotedexcuse of paucity of funds?Unfortunately, the realizationof the impact of this derecognitionhasn't even dawned uponthe powers that be. Otherwise,
they wouldn't have waited forfifty long days to begin takingup the issue with the Centre.Brisk efforts are lacking andso are the steps to abide by theguidelines prescribed forrecognition of such colleges.Fifty days is enough time for thegovernment to take concretesteps. But apparently, it isn'tjust the hartals and curfews of
the Valley that have pushed itinto a limbo. It's basically anattitude of complacency andnon-performance.

 

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THE KASHMIR TIMES

COLUMN

EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
NYLA ALI KHAN

 

"Education is the passportto the future, fortomorrow belongs to thosewho prepare for it today""I have often reflectedupon the new vistas thatreading opened to me. Iknew right there in prisonthat reading had changed
forever the course of mylife. As I see it today, theability to read awoke in mesome long dormant craving
to be mentally alive." MALCOLM Xquotes (Americanblack militantleader who articulatedconcepts of race pride andblack nationalism in theearly 1960s)Education must producea vast populationthat is able to read and is
able to distinguish whatis worth reading; educationstretches the mindwith new ideas; educatedpeople cannot be
enslaved or lead like cattle;education makes itpossible to questionstructural inequities andto demand redressal.
Expression of concernabout backwardness,poverty, illiteracy; rise ofpeople's politics in thepolitical zeitgeist of
equality, liberty, anddemocracy; necessity ofaffirmative action to pullout the majority of thepeople; protesting
against state oppressionand police brutality;questioning the impunityenjoyed by paramilitarytroops in "disturbedareas"; holding an electedgovernment responsiblefor its unrepresentativecharacter; voicing legitimate
dissent within politicaldiscourses availableto the populace; questioningpolitical partisanship;highlighting people's narrativeswhich are marginalizedin official historiography;recognition ofthe infringement of people's
civil rights; recognitionof the attempt todemonize Kashmiris indominant political discourse;intelligence to
lead a people's movement---these abilities arecultivated through education.It was a long and hardstruggle for Kashmiris tocome out of the quagmireof illiteracy, politicalmarginalization, culturalsterility, and social
decrepitude into theenlightening institutionsof education, spaces ofdemocratic debate, politicalenfranchisement, culturalrevitalization, andsocial progressivism. Fora long time Kashmirremained a source ofcasual unskilled labour toPunjab, where they weretreated as beasts of burden.Kashmiris weregiven the derogatoryappellation of "hattoo,"close to "dirty nigger."When the first fewKashmiri Muslims tohave obtained degreesat institutions of highereducation, like theAligarh MuslimUniversity in BritishIndia, returned to thestate in the 1920s, they
were imbued with 'newfangled'ideas of nationalism,liberty anddemocracy.We, as a people, cannotafford to ignore theempowerment that criticalintelligence gives us;the credibility that articulateexpressions of our
discontent give us; theinternational forums thatare made available to usbecause of the intelligencethat we have
employed to create anational identity. Wehave witnessed the militarizationof the socio-culturalfabric of Kashmir;we watch with remorsethe clamping down ofintellectual freedoms inKashmir and the growing
influence of fanatical elementsin that polity; weare saddened by the shuttingdown of dissentingvoices; we mourn the erosionof women's activismin Kashmir by the reductionof their identities togrieving mother, martyr'smother, or rape victim;we grieve the relegationof sane voices in civil societyto the background; we
are pained by the scathedpsyches of women sufferingpsychosomatic illnessin conflict zones.W e l l - e d u c a t e dKashmiris can give theclarion call for a muchneeded social consciousness;for a socialism thatrecognizes the diseasedand crumbling edifices ofstagnant political andbureaucratic infrastructures;for a democracy
that would them to fullyparticipate in institutionsand the rule of law thatspecifies the limits ofjurisdiction and allocatespower between differentinstitutions. We, as a people,have recognized andavailed ourselves of the
myriad political, sociocultural,and economicforums that education,historically, has createdfor us. The assertion ofself-determination inKashmir and politicalself-awareness can bekept alive by a peoplewho have availed themselvesof the opportunitiesoffered by highereducation.In order to questioninequities---the alteration
of the political andcultural milieu by theforces of rampant corruption;state supportedinstitutions where young
boys are indoctrinated inreligious fundamentalismsof various hues;Pakistan's shift in strategythat revolution cannotbe exported but has to bebuilt in target areas byvarious means, includingindoctrination andinducements; the complacenceof the Indian governmentif the batons ofpolice and the guns of theCentral Reserve Police
Force make the politicalmilieu in J & K look calmon the surface ---werequire an education tobe able to counter theinstances of injustice andunfairness created bysuch institutions/ ideologies/doctrines. How canwe, as a people, developthe ability to organizeand mobilize for socialchange, which requiresthe creation of awareness
not just at the individuallevel but at the collectivelevel as well? How can wedevelop self-esteem forwhich some form of financialautonomy is a basis?How can we make strategiclife choices that arecritical for people to lead
the sort of lives they wantto lead? We require educationfor these mammothtasks.This is where we need
to bridge the dividebetween the civil societyof Kashmir and the civilsociety of Jammu in orderto pave the way for theeducation of our youngergeneration. Civil societynd political institutionsare closely interconnected.
In order to substantiatedemocracy, theremust be a minimum ofparticipation and adequatepluralism in a society.
A consolidateddemocracy has to be opento diverse opinions; dissentand conflict on specific
policies is an importantelement of everydemocratic system. Theremust, however, be someshared consent on fundamentalprinciples. One ofthe things that the civilsociety of Kashmir andthe civil society of Jammu
can agree upon is theindispensability of education.Democratic, social/educational institutionscannot function in
Kashmir without participationby citizens.Nurturing a civil societythat bridges regional andcommunal divides is aprerequisite for the effectiveand legitimate functioningof education institutions.(The author is
Visiting Professor,Department ofEnglish, University ofOklahoma)

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

CRIME WATCH

 

Two recent incidents drive home the grim reality about increasing gravity of the crime situation in this city. A girl is led into a trap in the local bus stand and her modesty is allegedly outraged. The venue of the heinous offence and the identity of its perpetrators would leave one and all further bewildered about the direction in which we are heading. It has been reported that two brothers, who happen to be students and sons of a police sub-inspector, spotted the 19-year old girl looking lost at the bus stand. Their inquiries revealed that she was all alone and had exhausted her money; she had fled from her house in the neighbouring Chandigarh following a tiff in the family and arrived here for darshan of Vaishno Devi. They managed to convince her that they were working for a travel agency. They held out the assurance of sending her back home the following morning. In the intervening night, they promised to lodge her in a gurdwara. Instead, they took her to their uninhabited quarter at the police colony at the Gulshan Ground and raped her. They put their victim in the bus for Chandigarh the next day. On reaching home she narrated her shocking experience to her father, who is a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official. The latter arrived in this city along with the daughter and lodged a complaint with the Gandhi Nagar police. The accused duo has since been arrested. Indeed, it is courageous of the girl and her father to approach the police for justice. There is no reason at all why the sufferers in such ghastly events should not be fighting for their honour. There can't be any ground either for looking down upon them. They can't be made to suffer twice; first as the prey of lust and then in the name of a ridiculous imaginary social sanction.

 

It is absolutely essential that they get justice. Any thought that the girl had left the safety of her house and could not have escaped her turmoil outside is silly. In any circumstances it is not at all relevant. What happened inside among family members is strictly their internal matter. On the other hand, a wicked happening in a public place concerns us all. It raises anxiety about our own safety. In the other episode, an attempt has been made to break upon three ATMs (automated teller machines) --- two in Sainik Colony and the one in the Gole Market in Gandhi Nagar. Three young persons --- each of them riding a motor cycle --- are said to have been involved in this operation. They did manage to break the glass component of the apparatus. However, they could not succeed in looting the cash. Does this in any way make their endeavour less audacious? The Gole Market is one of the busiest areas of our city. By now Sainik Colony is also fairly well populated. That anyone could think of striking terror in these localities shows us --- especially our law and order-enforcing agencies --- in a poor light.

 

Why could the CCTVs (close-circuit television) not record their photographs was not clear. It is not the first such instance in our city. There have been bids in the past as well to plunder the ATMs including on the national highway opposite a hotel near a police colony. Yet these point out that the criminals are becoming more aggressive in our milieu. If we want to ensure that the above two episodes don't cause us to lose our sleep we would have to get our act together. It is for us as the people to offer resistance. It would be worth considering to form crime watch groups in every street and colony. This does not mean that we have to take law into our hands. The idea should be to rally behind the police which on the current reckoning is not able to make its presence effectively felt, to say the least.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

NOT SURPRISING

 

Only the naïve will be surprised by a report about the sharp ideological differences between Tehreek-i-Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JK LF) chief Yasin Malik. It is already only too well known that they advocate different ideologies. In his latest utterance as well Mr Geelani has made it known that the State can't survive as a sovereign independent country. He has said that it "would have to" accede to either India or Pakistan. His own preference is for its merger with Pakistan. On the other hand, the JKLF is craving for a status that its name reflects. In a rejoinder to Mr Geelani, although without naming him, the JKLF has said that there are many countries smaller than the State in terms of resources, area and population and they do endure. Mr Malik himself has not spoken on the issue but fielded his senior associates including Mr Bashir Ahmad Bhat, to issue a statement. Possibly this statement is the only development which can be said to be new. Of late the JKLF has not been asserting itself strongly enough on the separatist spectrum in the Valley in particular. It had in fact played a second fiddle to Mr Geelani during the radical anti-land allotment stir in 2008. Most recently it has gone along with Mirwaiz Moulvi Umar Farooq of the moderate Hurriyat Conference in addressing an Eid congregation in the Summer Capital which deteriorated into virtually a free-for-all leading to large-scale arson and violence. Broadly, there is a consensus among them that the final choice should be allowed to be made by the people by paving the way for them to exercise their right to self-determination. Even Mr Geelani is for adopting this course regardless of his personal preference.

 

The strength of the Yasin Malik-led JKLF is that it has given up its adherence to violence as a tool of achieving its goal. It is still considered to be the dominant voice of the JKLF which has often been rocked by splits. There is little common ground not only between it and Mr Geelani but also between it and other separatist bodies. Whatever that may be the challenge now for all political organisations and individual leaders is to prove that they represent the ordinary citizens in the Valley. The people at large find themselves in a hopeless situation because of the killings in police firing in protest demonstrations on the one hand. On the other hand, they feel the pinch because largely their income has dried up and their children's education is a casualty.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

AGONY OF INDIA

BY DR ASHWANI MAHAJAN

 

An agency of the U.S, National Intelligence Council (NIC), released a study report, a few days back, which said that India has become world's third most powerful nation after U.S. and China. If we look at it in terms of blocks, India has become the world's fourth most powerful block after USA, China and the European Community. The agency also says that India's clout would grow even more by 2025. NIC says that currently 22 percent of the world power comes from the United States, China and the European Community each has 16 percent and India's share is 8 percent, while Japan, Russia and Brazil share 8 percent each.

 

Agency estimates that the scenario would change by 2025 and USA's share would be down to 18 per cent and that of European Community to 14 per cent. India and China will strengthen their respective positions. India's strength will be increased to 10 percent. While the ordering may remain the same but power balance would certainly change drastically.

 

As per the latest data provided by the World Bank, developed countries have been facing a worst ever set back in recent years and their incomes are going down by 2 percent per annum. India, China and other emerging economies have shown a consistently rising incomes by 7 to 9 percent per annum. Due to continued growth experience of the developing economies, international power equations have also changed. A backward nation twenty years back has registered an important position in the world. Strategic success in the building of Agni Missile, PSLV in the field of space technology, the growing medical tourism, software, telecommunications etc. speaks out the all round advances made by the country. India's growing clout in these areas is making even President of USA uncomfortable, who is exploring all options, to somehow curb India, ranging from putting sanctions on outsourcing and also the visa restrictions.

 

But this is only one side of the story. Nearly a month back the World Economic Forum released ranking of different countries based on Global Competitive Index for the year 2009-10. Based on that report, India is ranked 49 in the list of 133 nations. Though India has improved its position slightly and a moved a rank up from 50th to 49th, we find a dismal picture for India on various fronts of competitiveness.

 

The third most powerful, but ranked 49th in competitiveness looks paradoxical. Solution to this paradox is provided by the report of WEF itself. Global Competitiveness Index comprises of 12 sub-indices. There are some basic indices- such as institutions, infrastructure, Education and Health. Some other complex, but the key indices are the technological readiness, business sophistication, innovation etc.

 

For India which still is in the initial stage of development, basic indicators assume more importance to the extent of 60 percent in determining competitiveness. But dismal performance on basic factors has deteriorated India's competitive position internationally. World Economic Forum reports that India is ranked 101st in terms of health in 133 countries. Our sanitary system is very deplorable and is worse than even very backward sub- African countries. Our rank was 96th in terms of education. Even in case of energy and transport infrastructure, our rank was 76th. We come at 54th position in terms of Institutions.

 

Had we not ranked 16th in the world in terms of soundness of our financial system and 25th in terms of soundness of our banking system, our ranking in terms of Global Competitive Index would have been even worst. In terms of the size of our market we are in fourth place. We ranked 83rd in terms of labor market and again 83rd in terms of technical preparedness. Our rank in higher education is still better (66th). But the report expresses concern over the fact that higher education is limited to only a few rich people.

 

According to a study recently released in India, income tax assesses have been fast rising in urban India, so has been the situation with regard to wealth which has also been concentrating in Urban areas. Wealth is obviously getting concentrated in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. But big cities of even so called Bimaru states are also not behind in this trend. This implies benefits of growth are being cornered by few rich. Villages could not be included in the growth process. According to the Economic Survey 2009-10, contribution of agriculture sector was only 14.6 percent of GDP in 2009-10. This clearly implies non inclusive character of our growth, which though increases our GDP, but the fruits are cornered by urban rich. Farmers, workers and small scale entrepreneurs remain untouched to a great extent.

 

Because of this non-inclusive character of the growth, poor is unable to meet basic needs like education and health. Rich and upper middle class people enjoy all the facilities stemming from this lopsided development, as they only have the capacity to pay for the same. Though in terms of GDP on purchasing power parity basis, our country may be third most powerful country of the world, but the same is not getting translated into provision for basic necessities like education, health, drinking water supply, electricity and sanitation. Recent after the report of the Planning Commission's Expert Group headed by Prof. Tendulkar, the Government was forced to acknowledge that 41.8 percent population in country's rural areas and 25.7 percent in urban areas is living below poverty line. This means that in our country 2 out of 5 persons fail to fulfill their basic needs even today.

 

On the one hand production of expensive cars, air conditioners and other luxuries is on rise, while poor man is confronted with ever rising prices of essential commodities due to ever declining per capita availability of food grains.

 

When the news was flashed that India has become the world's third most powerful country, there was hardly any happiness or feelings of pride on the faces of the people. When the common man has been struggling for his existence; the farmers have been committing suicide, drowned under the debt burden; poverty stricken people in the country are being given guns in the name of naxalism; can there be any happiness or a feeling of pride?

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

OBSTACLES IN PATH OF GREEN INDIA MISSION

BY JYOTSHNA PANDIT

 

The draft mission document states the main objective as doubling the area for afforestation in next 10 years. This mission has a budgetary proposal of Rs 40,000 crore. As a novel initiative, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has sought comments from the public on the mission document.

While the main objective of the mission looks very noble, the ground realities prevailing in the country indicate that the mission's chances of bringing commensurate benefits to the society do not appear to be great. As has been happening since independence, large tracts of thick natural forests of very high ecological value all over the country are continuing to be diverted for non-forest purposes.

 

Even if the GIM succeeds in doubling the area for afforestation in next 10 years, the practice of diverting the existing natural forests for non-forestry applications will definitely negate the meagre benefits that may accrue from such additional afforestation. Unless this diversionary trend is discontinued or drastically reduced, the proposed expenditure will be of little use.

 

While the society has considered it essential to build large number of roads, railways, dams, airports, power plants, mining infrastructure, industries, resorts, townships etc at the expense of forest/green cover, the necessity to retain the natural forest cover is being ignored.

 

Whereas the National Forest Policy recommends that 33 per cent of the land mass should be covered by forests and trees for a healthy environment, our practice of continuing to divert forest lands for various 'developmental activities' will bring this percentage much below even the present low level of about 23 per cent in the country.

 

While there are many illegal activities which are resulting in depletion of forest cover, many legal activities such as monoculture of acacia, rubber plantations etc, forest resorts/jungle lodges, expansion of nearby human habitats into forest areas are hastening the depletion of forests.

 

Without effectively controlling such activities of forest destruction, GIM cannot have a meaningful role in protecting our environment.

 

A recent statement by MoEF has indicated that about 33 per cent of the coal reserve belts in the country are in 'no go' areas because they are below thick natural forests. But there are also reports of massive lobbying to permit coal mining in such areas too, in order to cater to a large number of additional coal power plants. Bending the relevant rules to permit coal mining in such areas will reduce the thick forest cover of highest ecological value, which can never be compensated by GIM.

 

World Charter for Nature was adopted by consensus by UN General Assembly in 1982, which has provided some guiding principles for protecting biodiversity. Some key principles so enunciated are: (i) Activities which are likely to cause irreversible damage to nature should be avoided; (ii) Activities which are likely to pose significant risk to nature shall be preceded by an exhaustive examination; their proponents shall demonstrate that the expected benefits far outweigh potential damage to nature; (iii) Environmental Impact Assessment should be thorough and be carried out in an open and transparent fashion. The international community under UNFCC also has considered 'Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)' as critical to contain the global warming.

 

Large size conventional power projects such as coal based or dam based or nuclear based power plants need large tracts of forest area to set up coal/nuclear mines, power plants, reservoirs, transmission lines, staff colonies etc. Pollutants, emissions and wastes from the power plants also have huge deleterious impacts on quality and size of the total forest area in the country. Strong opposition to the proposed Gundia hydel project in Western Ghats should be seen in this context.

 

It is also deplorable that the Integrated Energy Policy (IEP) without even discussing the impact on our forests and bio-diversity wealth has projected an increase of about 500 per cent in the total installed power capacity in the country by 2031-32.

 

While the huge impact on our natural resources because of the increase in installed power capacity from a level of about 1,500 mw in 1948 to about 160,000 mw in 2010 is clearly visible, further increase by 5 times in next 20 years is more than likely to devastate the fragile nature of our forests and bio-diversity.

 

A large number of dam based hydel power projects, which are being planned in many parts of the country will

also lead to massive destruction of forests, unacceptable levels of interference in the natural flow of rivers, and will also threaten critical bio-diversity, while also impacting the quality of life because of many social issues.

 

It is deplorable that IEP has not objectively considered the much benign alternatives available in order to meet the legitimate demand for electricity. In order to protect our forests, green cover and general environment, our society needs a different paradigm of 'development,' and the civil society has to take active participation in decision making processes.

 

If the estimated budgetary provision of Rs 40,000 Crore on GIM is to be well spent, the ministry of environment and forests will have to take effective steps in conjunction with other concerned ministries and state governments to minimise the destruction of the existing natural forests. (INAV)

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

CHALLENGES BEFORE INDIA HORTICULTURE

BY DR. MANOJ NAZIR

 

India has become a leading producer of several farm commodities in the world including food grains, fruits, vegetables, milk, fish, egg, meat, cotton, and jute, medicinal and aromatic plants. However, we need not to be satisfied about these statistics. There are many problems faced by agriculture sector that need to be solved on urgency, these include low productivity, high order of drudgery, heavy post harvest losses, non remunerative price structure and unfavorable terms of trade for farmers resulting in heavy debt burden on majority of the producers

 

Indian agriculture has made a rapid stride in achieving self sufficiency in food recording. Five times increase in production from the base line of 1950-1951, through green revolution. The efforts have resulted in achieving eight times increase in horticulture products. six times in milk and nine times in fish production. This has been possible due to technical interventions as evident from this fact that area has remained static to 142 million hectare for the last 40 years but production has remained manifold. Pressure on cultivatable land for agriculture continues to be high, looking into population growth, decline land and water coupled with challenges of climate change has become a threat to feed the growing population.

 

The challenges before us are much greater than before, and are to be addressed with strategic approaches utilizing innovations in science and technology

 

Climate change a cause of concern globally will have impact on horticultural crops, due to erratic rainfall, more demand for water and enhanced biotic and a biotic stresses. However the changes will not only be harmful as enhanced co2 concentration may enhance photosynthesis and increased temperature will have more effect on reproductive biology and reduced water may affect the productivity but adaptive mechanism like time adjustment and productive use of water shall reduce the negative impact and these challenges could be addressed through identification of the gene tolerant to high temperature, flooding and drought, development of nutrient rich cultivars and production system for efficient use of nutrients and water. Strategies have to address the enhanced water efficiency, cultural practices that conserve water and promote crop development of climate resistant crops tolerant to high temperature, moisture stress, salinity and climate proofing through genomics and biotechnology would be essentially required

 

India is the second largest producer of fruits (68.5 mt.) from 6.10M ha area and contributes 11.2 percent share in global fruit production. Vegetable crops which occupy 8.0Mha has the production of 129.3mt. Cucurbits like pointed guard, spine guard are gaining importance of commerce which has much more value for export for its medicinal and therapeutic uses.

 

Commercial floriculture sector has recorded fast pace of growth during the last decade and the export has grown manifold and area has expanded to 1, 67,000 ha with production of 9, 87,000MT of loose flower and 4.8 million cut flowers. Floriculture provides ample opportunity both for domestic market and export which includes cut flowers, loose flowers, potted plants, bedding plants, foliage and dry flowers.

 

Challenges to produce more from less land and water

 

There has been an impressive growth in horticulture and production has jumped to manifold since independence. But there is need to increase the productivity for meeting the ever increasing demand of nutritious food for increasing population, challenges to feed growing population from receding land and water resources.

 

The big challenge to attain the food and nutritional security for the increasing population can be met by the improvement in the productivity through genetic enhancement. Our country has germplasm of wide range of horticultural crops. India is endowed with large germplasm pool (72,000 germplasm accessions of cultivated, wild and related texa) with about6000 accession of fruits. 25,400 in vegetables, 15,700 in spices and 10,100 in plantation and tuber crops

 

Varietal improvement

 

Many high yielding varieties and hybrids of different horticulture crops have been developed for different regions. Till date 1600 improved high yielding, high quality disease and pest resistant varaties and hybrids have been released for cultivation in diverse agro climatic conditions of the country. Till date197 varieties in fruits; 520 varieties in vegetables: 200 varaties in

 

Floriculture; 158 in tuberose; 390 in spices and plantation crops: 126 varieties in medicinal and aromatic plants and 5 in mushrooms have been released.

 

Varieties are being bred for processing qualities such as Khufri Chipsona in potato for chips making, high TSS white onion in NRCOG W 448, grape varieties suitable for wine making, papaya variety for table and papin production are some of the successful research attempts.

 

The hybrid technology is in the progress of its utilization in several vegetable crops. Presently 0.5 million hectare is under hybrid vegetable cultivation. Keeping in view the dynamic needs, the research efforts in various institutes has focus on development of hybrids and in this direction Biotechnological tools have provided ample scope for the breeder to improve diverse traits, including yield, disease resistance, and a biotic stress tolerance and in this direction protoplast fusion in producing somatic hybrids for developing good root stock is in citrus use of Meristem culture and micro grafting is very successful in citrus for elimination of viruses. Androgenesis is being successfully used in Brinjal, pepper, cabbage, cauliflower, potato, asparagus and carrot and gynogenesis has been successful in onion.

 

Efforts are in progress at various institutions in India to tackle the issues of managing disease resistance, resistance to insect pest, nutritional quality improvement and to extend shelf life of fruits and vegetables through development of transgenics. Nutritionally improved transgenic potatoes have been obtained by transferring the amaranth seed albumin gene (AmA1) from Amaranathus hypochondriacus in to potato and also succeeded in reversing the sweeting process in potato by using invertase inhibitor gene from tobacco.

 

Hi-tech. Horticulture

 

Hi- tech horticulture is deployment of modern technology which is capital intensive, less environment dependent having capacity to improve the productivity and quality of produce. Hi- tech horticulture encompasses a variety of interventions such as micro irrigation, fertigation, protected\ |green house cultivation mulching for in-situ moisture conservation, micro propagation, genetically modified crops, use of vermiculture, high density planting and soil less culture.

 

Despite achievements in horticulture sector the challenges confronting are still many.

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

OBAMA'S IMPENDING VISIT

WELCOME STEP TOWARDS STRONGER TIES

 

THE visit of US President Barack Obama to India scheduled this November must be seen as an opportunity to cement ties between the two countries and to iron out some irritants that are dampening the spirit of the relationship. To necessarily expect any dramatic announcements to be made during the visit would be unrealistic. That President Obama has chosen to come in his first term in office is itself an index of the importance he attaches to the bilateral relationship. Significantly, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was the first world leader to be received in White House after Obama assumed charge as President. However, there have been straws in the wind and be it the Pakistan factor or Obama's views on blocking outsourcing of jobs by American firms or apprehensions over the civil nuclear liability bill as passed by India's Parliament or the move to hike H1B and L1 visa fees, Indian and US views have not converged.

 

India would understandably be looking for a forthright American statement calling upon Pakistan to eschew cross-border terrorism. With the Obama administration continuing to play a balancing game, it is a moot point whether President Obama will go far out on this. On outsourcing, with the Republicans having blocked a bill in the Senate seeking to ban government contractors from moving jobs offshore, the point of contention has narrowed down. Any concession by the US on the hiked visa fees would earn the Manmohan Singh government some kudos. Failing that, the negotiation of a possible bilateral investment treaty that could be signed during Obama's trip, could be a damp squib. India would watch keenly whether the US extends unambiguous and unequivocal support for India's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. Recent reports that Obama may link the offer of strong support to India on a Security Council seat to finding a solution to the Kashmir issue are hardly reassuring.

 

All in all, the US President's visit is a welcome development. Even if no dramatic breakthroughs are achieved, such bilateral exchanges are important for the two countries to appreciate each other's viewpoints and move forward in their relationship.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

IDENTITY PROOF FOR ALL

"AADHAR" CAN SPUR BETTER GOVERNANCE

 

WITH Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi releasing the first set of unique identification numbers ("Aadhar") in Tembhli village of Nandurbar district of Maharashtra on Wednesday, the most ambitious project of the UPA so far has finally started rolling. The site of the launch is significant. Nandurbar is a largely tribal, poor district inhabited mostly by the kind of marginalised people that the project strives to empower the most. It will give them a unique identity proof which will come in handy in everything from getting rations to utilising the rural employment schemes. At the same time, the 12-digit number will be useful in avoiding rigging in elections and embezzlement of government funds meant for the people.

 

Providing such biometric-based cards to 1.2 billion people will be a gigantic task. The Nandan Nilekani-led UID Authority of India, which has now been renamed "Aadhar", has not only to make sure that none of those for whom the card is meant is deprived of it, but also that no unauthorised person manages to procure one. The card has multiple uses and for that very reason, the chances of misuse are also greater. So, there is need for having a foolproof system in place before going full steam ahead.

 

The project can transform health, education, public distribution and employment sectors by plugging leakages which are legion. Since the project is novel, it has many critics also who fear that it will allow the government to play Big Brother. Their objections are mainly two-fold: that it infringes on an individual's right to privacy and that it is a national security project in the garb of a social policy initiative. With strict restrictions to eliminate the possibility of the profiling of minorities and Dalits and the misuse of UID data in place, the benefits that this radical change can bring about far outweigh the projected negative fallouts. 

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

TACKLING POVERTY

INDIA MUST STEP UP EFFORTS

 

POVERTY, a global reality, is no stranger to India. Thus, a decade ago, it was in the fitness of things that India was one of the nearly 190 member states of the UN that had set eight ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to tackle poverty around the world. As the world leaders met again recently in New York, the UN's admission that most of the MDGs are likely to be missed in most regions is disheartening, in context of India too. With five years left to meet the ambitious goals, India's track record on most of the targets, be it health, gender equality, poverty, hunger or environment sustainability, is far from satisfactory.

 

It is indeed a sad state of affairs that a country with a robust growth rate is home to 50 per cent of the world's hungry people. Worse still, 46 per cent of its children remain undernourished. On other development indicators like infant mortality rate, what with over 1.5 million children dying before their first birthday too, it has a long way to go. India where the growth has at best been uneven must pay more attention to states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where the proportion of poor is not only more but likely to increase as well by 2015.

 

India cannot take refuge under the convoluted argument as propounded by some experts that First World standards can't be applied to it. Instead, it must bear in mind Kofi Annan, former UN secretary general's assertion that the achievement of the goals is not optional bur an essential investment in a fairer, safer and more prosperous world. If the nation has to emerge as a global power the government's commitment to meeting the MDGs must translate into more concerted action. Indeed. MDGs that vow to reduce extreme poverty by half, maternal mortality by three quarters and child mortality by two thirds are not an end in itself. Yet these provide a well-illumined road map to social and economic development.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

ATTRACTING FOREIGN INVESTMENT

LOOK BEYOND RETAIL AND DEFENCE

BY JAYSHREE SENGUPTA

 

THE continuing need for industrialisation and foreign investment was emphasised by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently for rapid poverty reduction. While it is true that export growth with the help of foreign investment has helped reduce poverty quickly in many countries, its role in India has been ambiguous. While India's domestic rate of investment is rather high at 33 per cent of the GDP at $430 billion, the importance of FDI has been stressed by our leaders and many changes in the FDI policy have been introduced in recent years to make India an attractive foreign investment destination. The idea of establishing special economic zones (SEZs) for attracting FDI has also gained in importance, especially since the SEZ Act of 2005, which guarantees exemption from the payment of tax on book profit and exemption from the dividend distribution tax for developers.

 

As pointed out by Sonia Gandhi, SEZs should not be established on prime fertile agricultural land. Alongside industrialisation, a nation of over a billion people needs a robust domestic agricultural production. Enhancing agricultural growth through technology, water management, better land use, land reforms as well as building rural roads is going to remain important for any strategy aimed at rural poverty reduction.

 

In the SEZs FDI plays an important role as it brings not only foreign exchange but also technical knowhow, intellectual property rights and efficient organisational and managerial practices. In a span of a few years China's poverty was reduced to 2 per cent (ours is 37 per cent) in which FDI played an important role as it went to exporting industries that were mainly labour intensive.

 

All big American companies opened their subsidiaries in China since its opening up in 1979. This created jobs and boosted exports. But unlike China, in India FDI has not gone into the labour-intensive export sector. It has remained in capital-intensive sectors like cars, consumer durables and electronics — catering mostly to domestic demand. FDI has not been able to absorb a big proportion of India's labour force. Most workers ( 92 per cent of the 523.5 million workforce) still remain in the unorganised sector. They are semi-skilled and semi-literate.

 

Foreign investors have always sought out prosperous states in which there is a good supply of skilled labour, which is educated and this preference for FDI to go to some states and not to others has not helped in poverty reduction much.

 

Yet India's policy-makers have been in an overdrive to facilitate the opening up of various sectors for FDI. The result so far has been encouraging and more foreign investors have come in the last few years than before but FDI has not increased the number of jobs. In fact, India has been witnessing jobless growth. The invested FDI was 12.9 per cent of the GDP in India and 10.1 per cent in China last year. India gets around $34.6 billion a year and China gets $108 billion a year.

 

The government has been trying to open up multi-brand retail and defence to FDI. Already India allows 51 per cent in single-brand retail and 100 per cent in multi-brand retail but only in 'cash-and-carry' outlets. By opening up the muti-brand retail sector fully, the government hopes to attract bigger amounts of FDI.

 

The prospects of India being an attractive FDI destination seem good because of the high rate of economic growth that India has been experiencing lately. A recent UNCTAD survey reveals that India will be the sixth most-favoured FDI destination and China will be the second most attractive destination after the US in 2010-2012.

 

However, if the government wants to reduce poverty through FDI then some fine-tuning in policies will have to be undertaken. FDI will have to be directed to sectors using workers from the unorganised sector. To make labour-intensive industries attractive, the government will have to improve infrastructure and invest in training labour. In Bangladesh much of the FDI has gone to the garment sector which has enriched workers and reduced poverty.

 

But in opening up the multi-brand retail sector there is the issue of rendering jobless people engaged in petty trading. It is a serious matter as there are 10 crore small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and traders in the retail sector whose growth has been 15 per cent. If retail is opened up fully then Walmart and European retail giants like Metro and Macro would walk in and capture a sizeable market of $450 billion because the Indian middle class would shop for everything available under one roof.

 

Of course, many of the poor would not go to Walmart-type stores because they could feel intimidated by the grand façade etc. and would probably still buy from small "kiryana shops". The main argument in favour of opening up retail is that big multinational firms would source their products from small producers within the country and hence help in creating jobs. But what guarantee is there that they would not outsource their products from cheaper producers like China, Thailand and the Philippines?

 

Similarly, defence is a capital-intensive sector which would not be inclined to employ a semi-literate and semi-skilled workforce. The government is contemplating tripling the cap on FDI going into that sector to 74 per cent.

 

Making FDI more hassle-free and giving approvals quickly would also help attract more FDI but the main reason why India is not able to attract a big quantum today is also the general recession in the countries from where FDI originates. There has been a decline in the FDI flows in 2010 as compared to 2009.

 

India is also emerging as an important country from which FDI originates. While the outward flow of FDI from India is 6.1 per cent of the GDP, it is 4.9 per cent of the GDP in the case of China. India and China can be important global investors in future and not just recipients of FDI. It will strengthen their role as global powers and India can assist industrialisation in Africa like China is doing. Why not emphasise on that role more and leave industrialisation of the country to well-planned domestic investment strategies instead of reliance on FDI? Moreover, domestic investment in local industries that are labour intensive could be assisted with poverty-alleviation programmes in the poorest regions.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

ARTICLE

WHO WILL CALL THE PM 'MOHNA' AGAIN?

BY RASHMI TALWAR

 

I look at the golden shower cassia tree in my garden and I am reminded of two such cassias growing in far-off Gah village in Pakistan,  that I had presented to the late Raja Mohammed Ali, a childhood classmate of Prime Minister  Manmohan Singh.

 

"Meinu mere Mohne nal milva do! Meinu Hindustan da visa mil gaya hai!" was one call I received in May of 2008 from Rajaji alias Babaji. I was aghast! 'Mohna' was the nickname he used for the Prime Minister. In March that year I had met Babaji the second time in Katasraj (Pakistan) and carried copies of an article by me in The Tribune about him and his friend 'Mohna'. I gave a copy to a senior officer of the Indian High Commission at the Katasraj shrine, urging him to issue Babaji a visa.

 

After four rejections, three months later, Babaji was ready to come to India and elated in anticipation of a meeting with his illustrious classmate – albeit without any appointment!

 

I looked for ways to fix that seemingly 'elusive' appointment, on the Net. I wrote on the PM's website, even found an IAS officer, seemingly by divine intervention, who helped script a letter and fax to the Prime Minister, but to no avail.

 

Meantime, a thrilled Babaji, unaware of the 'trials and tribulations', called everyday and we agreed on 'priceless gifts' for the Prime Minister comprising 'soil and water' of the PM's school and ancestral home in Gah besides 'till