EDITORIAL 29.12.10

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Editorial

month december 29, edition 000715, 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. EMERGENCY REVISITED
2. PERSECUTED HINDUS
3. US CAN NEVER BE TRUE FRIEND - RAJIV DOGRA
4. JAITAPUR SAYS NO TO NUCLEAR PLANT - BHAGYASHREE PANDE
5. UPA ACTS OUT OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY - SHIKHA MUKERJEE
6. BRACING UP FOR THE ROUGH RIDE AHEAD - ANDREI FEDYASHIN

MAIL TODAY

1. DIGVIJAY MUST STOP POLITICS OVER SLAIN POLICE OFFICER
2. CHECK MINDLESS VIOLENCE
3. ECONOMY FACES A CHALLENGING YEAR - BY NARENDAR PANI      
4. POLITICOS VIE WITH EACH OTHERTOPULL A ' FAST' ONE - A SRINIVASA RAO

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. VISION 2011
2. IDIOT BOX, NO MORE
3. THE SMALLER, THE BETTER? - KINGSHUK NAG
4. 'INDIA'S HISTORY IS IN TWO PHASES, BEFORE AND AFTER RTI'
5.   HOW GREEN IS MY VALLEY - JANINA GOMES
6.  ALL INDIA RADIA - JUG SURAIYA 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. NOT A STATE SECRET
2. LET'S WEATHER THIS CRISIS
3. SILENCE AS SEDITION - GAUTAM BHAN
4. HE'S CHANGING THE RULES OF THE GAME - DN SAHAYA
5. A HIGH-FLIER IN THE MAKING - ASHOK BAWEJA

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. RELEARNING THE LESSON
2. AUTHORISED VERSION
3. BLACKMAIL JUSTICE - PRATAP BHANU MEHTA 
4. HIGH STAKES IN HYDERABAD - D K SINGH 
5. CLEAN THE CITY, USE THE GARBAGE - ISHER JUDGE AHLUWALIA 
6. ASSERTIVE AHMADINEJAD - C. RAJA MOHAN 
7. WEAR A SWEATER, IT'S GLOBAL WARMING
8. SHIELDING POWER - MANOJ C G 

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. NITISH SCORES AGAIN
2. INSURING SUCCESS
3. DIAL-A-MINISTER - MK VENU
4. FORGET ONIONS, THINK BRINJALS - NISTULA HEBBAR
5. EAVESDROPPER
6. NAME AND SHAME

THE HINDU

1. CONFLICTING INTERESTS
2. BEHIND THE NEW GOLD RUSH - T. BALAKRISHNAN
3. THE GREAT LAND GRAB IN MALI - MADELEINE BUNTING
4. CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECTING ASSAM TEA GROWERS - AMARJYOTI BORAH
5. UAE PUSHES ON WITH PLAN FOR FIRST NUCLEAR REACTORS
6. 'WE HOPE THAT INDIA WILL BE THE NUMBER ONE INVESTOR IN INDONESIA'

THE ASIAN AGE

1. AUSSIES' FALL FROM CRICKETING GRACE
2. A NEW WORLD ORDER? - SUMIT GANGULY
3. BENAZIR'S PROMISE, MURDER AND LEGACY - JAGMOHAN
4. ARMS AND THE MAN - SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY

DNA

1. BLAME GAME NO ANSWER TO FOOD INFLATION
2. PAKISTAN AND ITS HINDUS HAVE A PROBLEM
3. BEGIN THE NEW YEAR WITH A BANG - RAMESH MENON
4. SUSHMA TWEETS A POLITICAL STATEMENT
5. INDIA AND CHINA AGREE TO STEP UP MUTUAL ENGAGEMENT - HK DUA

DAILY EXCELSIOR

1. PLUG THE ROUTE
2. SOLVE THE PROBLEM
3. RINGING IN 2011 - BY KEDAR NATH PANDEY
4. CREATE HARVARDS AND OXFORDS IN INDIA - BY DR (MRS) VISHIESH VERMA
5. THE CHANGING FACE OF INDIAN SOCIETY - BY RAM RATTAN SHARMA

THE TRIBUNE

1. CHAOS AT AIRPORTS
2. HEIGHT OF INSECURITY
3. CLAMOUR FOR TELANGANA
4. ANTI-INDIANISM IN NEPAL - BY S.D. MUNI
5. TURBAN TALES - BY ROOPINDER SINGH
6. DEBT'S THE PROBLEM - BIKRAM SINGH VIRK

MUMBAI MIRROR

1. UNEASY LIES THE HEAD…

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. TECHNOLOGY ROLLS ON
2. JUDICIAL POPULISM
3. TURKEY AS AN EMERGING POWER
4. RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN
5. NORTH BLOCK'S REAL TEST - A K BHATTACHARYA
6. LAW AND DISORDER - M J ANTONY
7. HAS THE TIDE TURNED FOR COMMERCIAL REALTY? - SUNIL ROHOKALE

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. INNOVATE OR PERISH
2. PREMIUM ON LEADERSHIP
3. OLD WORDS WE DON'T WANT
4. MFIS: CONFUSION STILL REIGNS - ARVIND PANAGARIYA
5. WHY ARE MARGINS HIGH IN FOOD ITEMS? - P K JOSHI 
6. ON MAGIC REALISM AND GROWTH - JAIDEEP MISHRA 
7. RINGING IN THE NEW - VITHALC NADKARNI 

DECCAN  CHRONICALE

1. AUSSIES' FALL FROM CRICKETING GRACE
2. A NEW WORLD ORDER? - BY SUMIT GANGULY
3. BENAZIR'S PROMISE, MURDER AND LEGACY - BY JAGMOHAN
4. BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND - BY SWAMI TEJOMAYANANDA
5. SHAME, KISSINGER - BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
6. THE COURT'S NOT IN ORDER  - BY NANDITA RAO

THE STATESMAN

1. AIR INDIA'S WOES
2. THE OUTSIDER
3. WALK, DON'T RUN
4. PEACE IN AF-PAK- RAJINDER PURI
5. GOODBYE TO A YEAR OF CALAMITIES
6. WHERE HAVE ALL THE PAVEMENTS GONE? - SANTANU SINHA CHAUDHURI 
7. TEA WORKERS LOOK FOR A NEW DEAL - ASHOK GHOSH 

THE TELEGRAPH

1. HOME TRUTHS       
2. BROKEN PROMISES
3. SUMANTA SEN
4. COME CLEAN
5. THE HOARDING PLEDGE - KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN

DECCAN HERALD

1. FIND THE REASONS
2. SIX YEARS ON
3. SPECULATORS AT WORK - BY ALOK RAY
4. IN LOVE, WAR AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS   - BY PRABHAKAR KULKARNI
5. HIGH-TECH TORTURE - BY M S DWARAKINATH

CENTRAL CHRONICLE

1. 294 IPC
2. SHAME ON PAKISTAN
3. I THINK THESE ARE TRUE AND FUNNY
4. MAY PEACE, GOODWILL PREVAIL
5. RISK TO NATION'S HEALTH
6. LET REASON PREVAIL WITH GUJJARS
7. GETTING RID OF MALNUTRITION

THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. POTYOMKIN VILLAGE OF SKOLKOVO -  BY YULIA LATYNINA
2. A NEW DEMOCRATIC AGENDA - BY MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
3. THE TOP 7 WORDS OF THE YEAR - BY MICHELE A. BERDY

THE JERUSALEM  POST

1. AMSALEM'S REFRESHING PRESENCE
2. TERRA INCOGNITA: SHIFTING THE BLAME
3. BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN  
4. YALLA PEACE: SHUT OUT THE FANATICS - BY RAY HANANIA  
5. WHY SHOULD WE CARE  - BY YEHUDA BAUER  
6. IF WE DON'T ACT, THEY WILL - BY PAUL GROSS  

HAARETZ

1. IT'S OVER
2. BY ALUF BENN
3. LACKING A VISION - BY YAIR SHELEG
4. OUR QASSAMS - BY AMIRA HASS
5. STOP THE ESCALATION
6. TAKE TO THE STREETS, NOW - BY AVIRAMA GOLAN

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. AN IRAQI GOVERNMENT, FINALLY
2. WHAT RULE OF LAW?
3. A NEW DAY FOR WILDERNESS
4. NO-NO BOY - BY LAWRENCE DOWNES
5. THE SENATE'S NEXT TASK: RATIFYING THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY - BY MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

USA TODAY

1. OUR VIEW ON BP OIL SPILL: FOR GULF VICTIMS, CHECK IN HAND MAY BEAT
2. LITIGATION LOTTERY
3. OPPOSING VIEW ON BP OIL SPILL: FUND CHIEF CAN'T BE TRUSTED - BY TROY KING
4. BOB AND CAL'S PREDICTIONS FOR 2011 - BY BOB BECKEL AND CAL THOMAS

TIMES FREE PRESS

1. HARD TIMES IN DALTON
2. SO MUCH SENSELESS VIOLENCE
3. BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

1. FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - THE COMMON CURSE OF RUSSIA,
2. TURKEY
3. TURKEY IS UNAWARE ITS POLICIES ARE ABUSED BY IRAN - BARÇIN YİNANÇ
4. DAVUTOĞLU'S DANGEROUS IDEA - MUSTAFA AKYOL
5. TEACHING OF A MOTHER TONGUE, TEACHING IN A MOTHER TONGUE II - CÜNEYT ÜLSEVER
6. GOOD HOOLIGANS, BAD HOOLIGANS - BURAK BEKDİL
7. URKEY REVOLTS, IT WILL PRODUCE NUCLEAR FUEL - MEHMET ALI BIRAND
8. 324 airlines carry Turkish flag - UĞUR CEBECİ
9. WAGE HIKES AND THE NEW CLASS WAR - SERDAR DEVRİM
10. 'ENHANCED' FREEDOMS - YUSUF KANLI

THE NEWS

1. TIME TO THINK
2. DEVOID OF VISION
3. A WIDER NET
4. FALSE HOPES ABOUT THE CHINESE VISIT - ZAFAR HILALY
5. MOST INFLUENTIAL PAKHTUN - NASSER YOUSAF
6. THE SHROUDING ACT - RAOOF HASAN
7. BUDGET: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS - DR MUHAMMAD YAQUB
8. AND NOW, WOMEN SUICIDE BOMBERS
9. A NOTE OF CAUTION - TAYYAB SIDDIQUI

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. BB MIGHT HAVE ASKED 8TH QUESTION
2. ROBUST PAK-OMAN RELATIONS
3. THE HUMILIATED MQM REACTS
4. IMPACT OF GOOD GOVERNANCE ON POVERTY - SHAKEEL AHMED
5. PAKISTAN'S HISTORY OF UNHOLY ALLIANCES - DR MANZOOR H KHATANA
6. PRESIDENT OBAMA'S LATEST VICTORIES - SAEED QURESHI
7. INDIA PROMOTES ANTI-ISLAMISM IN SOUTH ASIA - DR ABDUL RUFF
8. SNOW! HIT THE PANIC BUTTON - ROGER COHEN

THE AUSTRALIYAN

1. THERE'S TOO MUCH AT STAKE FOR PAKISTAN TO FAIL THE TEST
2. TOO BUSY WATCHING THE CLIMATE

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. PROMISING PROSPECTS FOR 2011
2. PROROGUE, THEN INTIMIDATE
3. A COSTLY TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE
4. GROWING PAINS ARE NOT SOMETHING A CITY SIMPLY GETS OVER

THE GUARDIAN

1. BARACK OBAMA: THE REMAKE
2. IN PRAISE OF… MR JAMES
3. PETITIONS AND POLITICS: A LITTLE MORE REALITY

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. JAPAN'S 'HOT' YEAR
2. CARBON DIOXIDE IS THREATENING OUR FISHERIES - BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON
3. TROUBLING CHINA-INDIA TIES - BY BRAHMA CHELLANEY
4. DEATH SHOULD BE DIFFERENT           - BY DAVID T. JOHNSON

THE JAKARTA POST

1. UPHOLDING THE SMOKING BAN
2. HISTORY OF VIOLENCE KEPT INTACT IN INDONESIA - GEGER RIYANTO
3. SOCCER AND THE BUILDING OF NATIONAL UNITY - YAYAN GH MULYANA
4. CLIMATE TALKS AND CARBON SOLIDARITY - BUDI WIDIANARKO

CHINA DAILY            

1. PRO-WORKER FISCAL REFORM
2. URGENCY OF SAVING WATER
3. A GAME-CHANGING DECADE - BY DENG YUSHAN AND XU JIANMEI (CHINA DAILY)
4. ENGLISH ADOPTS MORE CHINESE PHRASES - BY XIAO XIAOYAN (CHINA DAILY)
5. MANAGERS NEED NEW STYLE FOR THE YOUTH - BY WANG SHAOHUI (CHINA DAILY)  

DAILY MIRROR

1. CORRUPTION BEHIND THE SCOREBOARD
2. SL TAMILS' ISSUE : SINGH'S EXIT, RAHUL'S ENTRYREHABILITATING TAMILS IN SRI LANKA
3. IT IS DEVOLUTION AND NOT DECENTRALIZATION THAT IS GOOD FOR SRI
4. LANKA - BY AUSTIN FERNANDO
5. PATRIOTISM AND EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

TEHRAN TIMES

1. WHY IS ISRAELI SPY JONATHAN POLLARD BACK IN THE NEWS? - BY JEFF GATES
2. IRAQ AND GOVERNMENT FORMATION - BY HASSAN HANIZADEH

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

EMERGENCY REVISITED

JUDICIARY, CONGRESS LOOK BACK AND REFLECT

It has taken more than three decades for the Supreme Court to revisit one of its most shameful majority judgements, delivered by a four-judge Constitution Bench in 1976, and rule that a grave error was committed which led to the denial of fundamental rights to millions of Indians during Mrs Indira Gandhi's infamous Emergency. The judgement that killed all hope in the judiciary standing by the people of the country during its darkest hour when democracy was sought to be replaced by totalitarian rule had struck down the power of the courts to issue writs to the Government on the basis of habeas corpus petitions. Only one judge had stood up to the regime of the day and that's why the nation still remembers, with respect and gratitude, Justice HR Khanna, while the three others on the Bench — Chief Justice AN Ray, Justice MH Beg and Justice YV Chandrachud — have been forgotten as they justly deserve to be. Mrs Gandhi believed in a 'committed' judiciary; to upturn the Allahabad High Court's judgement holding her guilty of electoral malpractice and declaring her election from Rae Bareli null and void, she packed the Supreme Court with 'committed' judges who delivered on what was expected of them. Not only was the Allahabad High Court judgement struck down, but subsequently her decision to crush the fundamental rights of the citizens was upheld. It is another matter that when the Janata Party came to power in 1977, Justice HR Khanna's ruling became the cornerstone of legislation to make it virtually impossible for anybody to repeat what Mrs Gandhi had done to the nation and its people. What the Supreme Court has now done is to put a closure to a dark chapter of the judiciary: It's both an admission of and an apology for the sanctity that was accorded to Mrs Gandhis' dark deed. 

 

Interestingly, the repudiation of the 1976 judgement coincides with the Congress looking back at its past and admitting mistakes made by the party and its leaders. In a publication to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the organisation, The Congress and the Making of the Indian Nation, edited by Mr Pranab Mukherjee, the party candidly admits that "unlimited state and party power" was concentrated in the hands of Mrs Indira Gandhi during the 1975-77 Emergency. The party also concedes that "The period of Emergency saw the suspension of normal political procedures and fundamental rights... Enforcement of Press censorship... Powers of judiciary were reduced drastically." There's nothing either new or startling in the book about the misuse of power by Mrs Gandhi, her family and the Emergency regime; there can't be because the Emergency story has been told a million times and every aspect of it has been written about and commented on extensively. Thirty-five years later, the Emergency excesses that almost obliterated democracy in India are of mere academic interest, if at all, and for most new generation Indians these are no more than trivia. Nonetheless, it is laudable that the Congress has sought to reflect on the Emergency without taking recourse to either laughable justification or seeking to defend the indefensible. More importantly, that the party should unhesitatingly admit and acknowledge the fact that the excesses followed from too much power being concentrated in Mrs Gandhi's hands is a pleasant departure. 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

PERSECUTED HINDUS

IN PAKISTAN, TO BE A MINORITY IS A CURSE

Pakistan, which does not let go of any opportunity to heckle India on perceived human rights violations, stands exposed as at least 27 Hindu families from Balochistan have approached the Indian High Commission in Islamabad seeking political asylum in this country. The drastic step taken by the Hindus, who have been living in the Province for centuries, shows their miserable plight and that they can no longer live in fear of abduction for ransom, armed robberies and murder. When a Pakistani official — Regional Director for the Federal Ministry of Human Rights Saeed Ahmed Khan — expresses great concern and urges the Pakistani Government to take immediate measures to improve the law and order situation, it serves to underscore that it has failed miserably in its duty to protect the religious minorities from growing Islamist violence. Most important, the Pakistani Government cannot even term it as a false allegation because statistics of its Ministry of Human Rights reveals an alarming rise in the cases of human rights violation in Balochistan. The situation in Sind, where 95 per cent of the Hindus in Pakistan live, is worse. A BBC report, published earlier this year, has cited several cases of abduction, torture, rape and murder to show how Hindus face an uncertain future in Pakistan due to its Government's failure to take action against Islamic groups hostile to minorities. 

Hindus in Pakistan seeking asylum in India is a stark reminder that minority Hindus continue to suffer apartheid in that country despite Gen Pervez Musharraf abolishing the separate electorate system as no political party fights for their cause or respects their aspirations. Therefore, it is extremely galling to see Pakistani leaders taking the moral high ground and indulging in self-righteous rhetoric — both Houses of Pakistan's National Assembly adopted resolutions in September condemning the 'violence' against Kashmiri people to 'sensitise' the international community — when discriminatory laws in their own land foster intolerance and compel the oppressed to suffer in silence. Certainly, it is the prerogative of every sovereign state to legislate the laws of its land, but at the same time, it does not merit reiteration that every Government is bound by its responsibility to protect the weak and the vulnerable. Pakistan has relentlessly pursued the Kashmir issue on every conceivable international forum, brazenly accusing India of imagined atrocities. But today, it stands accused of charges it levels against others. Its not Hindus alone who suffer indignity and worse in Pakistan; Christians are treated like criminals and charges of blasphemy are levelled against them on the flimsiest of excuses. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is anything but a republic; it's a hell for all. 

 

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

US CAN NEVER BE TRUE FRIEND

THE MANNER IN WHICH OUR OFFICIALS AND IMPORTANT PERSONALITIES ARE TREATED BY AMERICANS IN THE NAME OF SECURITY IS AN ACCURATE MEASURE OF HOW US SEES US

RAJIV DOGRA

It needs a long time for a civilisation to take root; but in the meanwhile it is good form to be civil. Americans, unfortunately, are selectively civil. Where it suits them they pull out all stops to please. A Saudi Royal or a Qatari tribal chief is unlikely ever to face harassment by US immigration authorities. No US security person would dare so much as touch the veil of an important female visitor from any of the Gulf states. 

Earlier this year, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was travelling to Washington, DC for a bilateral meeting. En route he had to change planes at an airport in the UK, where before taking the onward flight he would have had to go through security checks by American personnel. It was precisely to avoid even the hint of uncivil behaviour by its security staff posted there that the US State Department instructed its Ambassador based in London to drive for four hours, merely to ensure that Mr Qureshi was not inconvenienced in any manner by American security while boarding his connecting flight to Washington. 

The Pakistanis know how to keep the Americans in good behaviour; they have also developed great expertise in keeping Nato off balance by burning dozens of its supply trucks every now and then. Look also at the way a cunning Baloch shopkeeper impersonated a high Al Qaeda personage and fleeced vast amounts of money and confidence from both the British and the American intelligence agents in Afghanistan. The US, in particular, seems to take masochistic pleasure in being led by the leash by the Pakistanis. 

Compare this to the shabby treatment our people receive routinely at the US airports. Neither a former President nor a serving Defence Minister is spared the offensive body search. There is no courtesy shown to the age or the obviously frail body of a person like Mr APJ Abdul Kalam. That they would at least be courteous to a lady is the normal expectation anywhere, but it seems that this was too much to expect in the land of the free. 

They singled out, they say, our Ambassador because she was wearing a saree. Now that shows either gross ignorance or a strange confusion. The entire world identifies asaree with Indian women, so the American security people must be unique in confusing the wearer as being from a country that breeds terrorists. Moreover, it can only be a deeply ignorant person who mistakes a saree for a bomb hiding burqa. What is even worse is the American official reaction afterwards: India was bluntly told that it was a part of the American security regime.

Well the question to be asked then is what happens to the security regime when a Pakistani VIP goes visiting the US? What happens to the Americans' various security concerns then? Would any of the US security persons dare single out a sheikha from the Gulf for a pat-down, and that too in full public view? And will they dare frisk the French Finance Minister who is a woman? No, most certainly they would not dare do any such thing. 

Why do the Americans treat us so brazenly then? Well, the simple answer to that question is because we do nothing about such insults. We may protest at best, but even our protests are more in the form of entreaties rather than a threat of immediate reciprocity. The US's record since the last decade of the last millennium shows that the Americans have no respect for international norms where it concerns their interests, and as the incident with our Ambassador has proved, they do not feel they are bound by the internationally recognised and binding Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by which all states have committed themselves to the inviolability of the privileges of diplomatic representatives. 

What they did in the case of our Ambassador holds out many lessons. First, it confirms, once again to the outside world, that the docile Indians will put up with anything. Contrast this with the reputation of aggressively reciprocal Pakistanis who, as the WikiLeaks confirms, had made the life of American diplomats based in Pakistan miserable for some imagined slights. 

It holds out another lesson for us. What, for instance, was the need for us to block entire hotels for US President Barack Obama when in return the hospitality the Americans offer to our Prime Minister is frugal? And what indeed was the need for us to put up Mr Nicholas Sarkozy in a hotel suite costing a rumoured Rs 8 lakh a night? 

More importantly, we must begin to balance, on equal terms, our relations with the outside world. We might feel cheered by the fact that starting with the British Prime Minister earlier this year, the leader of almost every major power would have visited New Delhi by this winter. If we are satisfied by a parade of visitors then so be it. However, any serious minded-nation is bound to ask itself as to what have been its gains from such visits.

In this age of open diplomacy, our people, however, remain clueless about the tangible gains, if any. The British, the American and the French were quite open about the fact that they were seeking the Indian chequebook, and they went back with billions of dollars worth of deals. Some of these may have been good; others were perhaps of a contentious nature.

But we hardly seem to have got anything substantial in return; not even an assurance from the French on the long simmering turban issue, nor even the minimum diplomatic courtesy to our Ambassador from the Americans. Had it been some other nation, it would have wrung out a series of concessions before signing high value cheques. 

One principal lesson from all this is that we must cast our net wider; and we must not neglect old and tested friends like Russia. So far it alone has stood with us in times of need. Let us not forget that the recently released documents from the archives in Washington include two letters written in desperation by Jawaharlal Nehru during the Chinese invasion of 1962. The appeal for security assistance made in those letters by Nehru to President John F Kennedy went unheeded. 

To say that the Americans were hostile to us before and during the Bangladesh war would be an understatement. And if more recent proof were needed, let us turn to the cables from WikiLeaks in which the Americans are shown to be anxious that the Indian reaction to 26/11 should be so modulated that it does not reflect badly on the Pakistani security establishment, especially its ISI director-general.

When the Americans begin to show even a fraction of this sensitivity to our diplomatic representatives and note personalities that may then be the beginning of a civilised response to our concerns. 

The writer is a former Ambassador. 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

JAITAPUR SAYS NO TO NUCLEAR PLANT

THE COUNTRY'S FIRST NUCLEAR POWER PARK UNDER THE NEW CONTROL REGIME IS SUPPOSED TO COME UP IN MAHARASHTRA AT JAITAPUR. BUT THE PEOPLE OF JAITAPUR ARE RELUCTANT TO GIVE UP THEIR LAND FOR THE NUCLEAR REACTOR; THEY DON'T WANT THE POWER PLANT. THERE IS ALSO THE ISSUE OF ENVIRONMENT. BUT THE CONGRESS, WHICH RULES MAHARASHTRA, IS USING EVERY POSSIBLE MEANS TO ACQUIRE LAND FOR THE PLANT

BHAGYASHREE PANDE

If the rhetoric of Congress leaders for the common man, heard in the recent plenary session, is anything to go by then one must visit Jaitapur to see how the common man is being coerced to create space for India's first nuclear power park coming up in the region. 

Maharashtra, a Congress-ruled State, may boast of getting the first nuclear park to meet the energy needs but the tactic being used to get the land is something that is very questionable. 

This picturesque fishing hamlet of Jaitapur, situated 400 km south of Mumbai, is not prepared for the nuclear reactor. Much of the concerns ranging from inadequate compensation to environmental disruptions are valid. Instead of addressing the concerns, there are coercion, accident killing and threats being used against the agitating farmers and fisherman.

This is ecologically the richest region with marine life, world famous Alphonso mango orchards and cashew growing trees. But the power plant, which will come up in nearly 1,000 hectares land, will cause serious damage to the ecologically fragile region. 

Apart from being displaced, the locals see bleak employment and income opportunities that are being given as an explanation for setting up the project. There will be about 300 jobs in the project but most of it will go to engineers, nuclear experts and scientists and may be a handful will go to the locals, says Shiv Sena MLA Subhash Desai, who is spearheading the campaign against the nuclear park. 

There has been little effort to convince villagers that the plant is for the public good, let alone explaining the computing of the compensation. But there are new coercing tactics used against agitating villagers. Few days back one of the leading activists Irfan Qazi was killed by a police jeep. The villagers have alleged that the accident was a deliberate attempt. Three months ago, 18-year-old Sanket Bhatkar was picked up for stone-pelting, even though he tried to explain that he was at college in Hativale when the stone-pelting took place. He even showed a punched bus ticket, but the police refused to believe him and put him in jail for seven days. 

State authorities have a dismissive attitude to the local community. According to them, adequate compensation will make sure that locals will agree to the project, besides soon the agitators will be minority. However, nobody knows how the compensation is being computed and how much is actually being delivered. 

As regards environmental concerns, the fishing village, which boasts of an annual fish catch worth `16 crore and exports to Japan and Europe, is concerned about its livelihood. Though the fishermen cannot anticipate today what losses they will face five-seven years from now when the plant starts, but the prospects of fishing are definitely bleak in the future. Incidentally, Areva, which is providing the technology for the plant, is being sued back home for contaminating French rivers. 

Besides, nuclear waste remains dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years and so far, no country has succeeded in building a permanent storage for high-level nuclear waste so that ground water does not get contaminated. 

To add to the concerns, the Jaitapur site falls in a seismic Zone-4 area and there have been around 87 seismic recordings from 1985 to 2005.

What is surprising is that Union Minsiter for Environment & Forests Jairam Ramesh, despite unanswered ecological concerns, has given speedy clearances to the project. In sharp contrast, the projects in other States, more often than not ruled by the NDA or its allies, are put on hold, in spite of having development prospects. It's for everyone to see that the development card is being dealt with only when the ruling party finds it convenient. 

Congress ally Mr Sharad Pawar has justified the project stating that it is essential for the development of the State, which is seriously lagging behind in industrial indices. Sure, the State does need mega projects for it to catapult to number one investment destination, but then why not set up the project in areas like Marathwada or north Maharastra, which are most backward regions. Why have such projects in the resource-rich region where the locals are already making a decent living?

 

However, the dictatorial tactics used by the State Government for land acquisition shows how it will carry forward development in the State. Besides, environmental concerns are becoming a political tool to block development and there are not very serious concerns about the issue. As regards the concern for the common man it is only in speeches for plenary session and elections. 

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

UPA ACTS OUT OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY

SHIKHA MUKERJEE

Succumbing to the threat of its ally, the UPA has adopted a specific perspective to deal with violence in West Bengal. Thus, it not only fails to recognise the dimensions of the politically nurtured local militias but also undermines democracy in the State

There is something smoky about the "letter bomb" controversy. The letter, written by the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram to the West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, uses "Harmad Vahini" and "Harmad cadres" to describe the presence of local militias, oblivious that the term "Harmad" is a smart political coinage by the Trinamool Congress for political purposes. 

Whether the letter is a bomb or not is debatable; that it is a smoking gun is all too obvious. The descent into slang by the Union Home Minister in addressing a serious concern of the Indian state about the violation of the democratic code that does not permit any other agency except the Government to possess the means to coerce the population suggests that the state has abandoned all pretence of being above the quotidian brawls that masquerade as political discourse. By lowering himself by using a term that was coined as ammunition by a specific political party — Harmad — Mr Chidambaram is signalling that his responsibility is first to serving the political goals of the coalition Government of which he is a part rather than serving the interests of the Indian state.

Mr Chidambaram is being led down a strange political path. His willingness, or rather the willingness of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance to be led down strange pathways is becoming a bad habit. Perhaps the threat from the Trinamool Congress that it would resign from the UPA if it was proved wrong about the presence of the Harmads in West Bengal triggered the use of the term and the letter. In other words, the capacity of the Union Government and the Home Minister is subject to the restrictions and conditions set by politics rather than governance. 

If the Congress is playing the game of follow the leader in West Bengal then the larger question that overshadows the letter bomb controversy is — will the Union Government capitulate on the demand by the Trinamool Congress for dismissal of the West Bengal Government under Article 356? 

This is not to argue that no political militias exist in West Bengal. This is not to argue that no militias are being deployed by political parties to intimidate and coerce whichever cluster of the population is deemed to be on the "other side". This is not to argue that raising these militias and using them is illegal and therefore needs to be stopped.

This is to argue that the Union Home Minister has damaged the credibility of the Indian state in dealing with the ugly presence of political militias that deprive the citizen of the freedom to choose, making them unequal and victims of injustice. By appropriating terms that are very specific — Harmad — the stature of the State has been lowered to a tool for use by a particular political party, because the use of the word is a loud and incontrovertible declaration that the State has no perspective on the problem other than that provided by the Trinamool Congress. This is to argue that if the Government of West Bengal and its Chief Minister is guilty of shielding the CPI(M)'s militia in Maoist infested Jangal Mahal, Bankura and Purulia.

Having preached to the Chief Minister about what is "acceptable" in a democracy, the Union Home Minister ought to have been cautious. Unlike the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who has described his conduct in office as similar to Caesar's wife, that is, above suspicion, Mr Chidambaram obviously prefers courting suspicion. The adoption of a specific perspective that fails to recognise the dimensions of the politically nurtured local militias that by their presence undermine the constitution and democracy diminishes the office and the role of all parties involved in the letter controversy. 

 

There can be no smoke without fire. The violence that has raged in West Bengal as part of its politics of confrontation between an ascendant Opposition, namely the Trinamool Congress and a regime in decline, namely the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is enough evidence that there is a fire. 

Mr Chidambaram, however, has stopped short of saying all the things that logically follow from his assessment that the Harmad cadres are the only really operationally effective force in West Bengal's Maoist infested and otherwise troubled areas. Instead he has delivered a non sequitur; contain the Harmads or demobilise the joint security operations against the Maoists. 

The Harmads are one kind of a problem for the Indian State, the constitution and democracy. The Maoists are a different problem for the Indian state, the constitution and democracy. The Maoists have been banned by Mr Chidambaram for their politics of waging war against the Indian state. The Harmads are a much smaller, entirely local law and order problem of a particular State within the Union of India. How can Mr Chidambaram shrug off his responsibility for dealing with the "greatest internal threat to India" just because he or his partners are miffed about what they chose to call the Harmads? Will this lead to the Government in New Delhi declaring that there are no Maoists in West Bengal? Will this lead Mr Chidambaram into denying that the jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force who have been killed in anti-Maoist operations in West Bengal were in fact not killed? 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

BRACING UP FOR THE ROUGH RIDE AHEAD

ANDREI FEDYASHIN

 

The US-Russia reset policy was certainly beefed up by the Senate's ratification of the New START Treaty on December 22. But does this injection of anabolic steroids actually serve to undermine it or to help it bulk up? This second outcome is by no means a done deal.

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the treaty in the Czech capital, Prague, last April and agreed that their respective parliaments would strive for simultaneous ratification. However, the Republicans were so obstructive that the process drew on virtually until Christmas, with the treaty finally ratified only during Congress's notorious "lame duck" session.

 

Had the departing Democrat-controlled Congress failed to ratify it, the process could have continued ad infinitum, because the next Congress, slated to meet on January 3, 2011 will only contain a handful of Democrats, and ratification needs at least two thirds of the vote.

The numerous problems plaguing its ratification have already been described in considerable detail. But the most interesting question is how often this sort of thing will happen and what documents will be similarly affected? 

Is Obama a reliable business partner?

Russia and the rest of Europe are desperate to see whether Mr Obama and Congress have adjusted to each other and what one can expect from them. All reasonable statesmen in Europe backed New START because a logical next step would be US-Russia talks on a tactical nuclear arms reduction treaty.

Tactical nuclear weapons are even more dangerous than their strategic counterparts because the temptation to use them is considerably stronger and in densely populated Europe there would be little difference between a 3-kiloton nuclear explosion and a 100-kiloton one.

Historically, ratification of US-Russia agreements has always been easier under a Republican administration, because Democrats were viewed as liberal (read: unreliable) and stood unfairly accused of betraying US national interests and risking its security.

The SALT-1 and ABM treaties, signed with the Nixon administration, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan, the START-1 treaty, signed by George HW Bush, and the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions treaty, better known as the Moscow Treaty, signed by George W Bush: All took place under Republican administrations. A considerably smaller number of comparable treaties have been signed by Democrat administrations.

All agreements initiated under the Democrats encountered strong resistance in Congress because the Republicans preferred to keep the glory for themselves. This is not a recent phenomenon, it did not come into being yesterday or even 50 years ago: Its origins lie much further back, and it is still going strong. The New START treaty is merely the most recent example of the Republicans' political egoism.

There would have been less cause for concern if this were limited to the United States. But it appears that US political traditions and parliamentary realities (at least during Republican administrations) not only run counter to global trends but are decidedly retrograde.

There is no single prevailing climate in the US Senate and across the broader political landscape, in the United States, as in Europe, nor should there be. This is only logical. Any such convergence of opinion would inevitably result in the erosion of the system of extensive checks and balances, thereby encouraging Governments to overstate their importance. But not only is obstructing the ratification of treaties under Democratic administrations anachronistic, it is sheer parliamentary irresponsibility.

Since the signing of New START, the Republicans have been filibustering and trying to undermine the treaty. They have not made a single pertinent remark, instead trying as hard as they can to approve a myriad of amendments to the agreed text of the treaty.

Moreover, these amendments did not concern the essence of the treaty. Some provided for cuts to the numbers of US and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, although the START-3 treaty was drafted as the first step toward talks on such reductions.

Paradoxically, New START has gained support from the entire US top brass, from Defence Secretary Robert Gates, a man Mr Obama "inherited" from Mr Bush, to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and former Republican State Secretaries such as Ms Condoleezza Rice and Mr Henry Kissinger, not to mention Democratic State Secretaries, as well as Mr Bush himself.

The previous US President personally encouraged the Republicans to ratify the treaty. This is probably why its ratification took so long: Mr Bush has a very low rating even in his party. 

Spoiled by the "Russian question"

The trouble is that internecine struggle in the US Congress has escalated to an inadmissible level and could become even more dramatic in the next Congress.

If New START is the first (and so far only) result of normalisation in US-Russia relations, how will the sides tackle other, more difficult issues on their agenda? Such as, for example, the balance of US and Russian interests in the world, regional problems in the countries adjacent to Russia, WTO accession, cooperation in the nuclear industry, on Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, NATO, and the ballistic missile shield in Europe.

Discussion about New START revealed a deep rift in the US Congress over the "Russian question" and that the reset policy stands little chance of yielding further fruits during Mr Obama's remaining term. The fact that the treaty has been ratified is of no consequence, because it is in any case purely symbolic, the first landmark on the long and winding road to nuclear disarmament.

The New START treaty is very modest across the board. If we are to make any progress along that road we will need to be more energetic in resetting our relations. But are we up to the task?

-- The writer ia a Moscow-based political affairs analyst. 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

DIGVIJAY MUST STOP POLITICS OVER SLAIN POLICE OFFICER

 

ONE fails to understand why Congress party general secretary Digvijay Singh is once again insisting that the slain former anti- terror squad chief Hemant Karkare was " like God" for the Muslim community.

 

There is no denying the fact that by exposing Hindutva terror, Karkare removed the synonymous association of terrorism with jihadi outfits — an approach that led to the harassment of Muslims after a terror attack. But Mr Singh's comments don't seem motivated by either an overwhelming admiration for the slain officer or a deep concern for Muslims.

 

By repeatedly talking about Karkare, he and his party leave themselves open to the charge that this may be more an attempt to woo Muslim voters ahead of next year's assembly elections, particularly in states like West Bengal and Assam where the community has a substantial presence. Moreover the Congress' fears of an erosion of its Muslim vote bank seem to have heightened after Muslim voters overwhelmingly threw their lot behind Nitish Kumar in the recent assembly polls in Bihar.

 

Unfortunately, the Congress seems to prefer exploiting the community's insecurities rather than work towards their development. It also seems unaware that Muslims choose to vote tactically these days rather than support a party on the basis of emotional appeals.

 

The Sachar committee report seems to be gathering dust as the government has not taken any steps to implement its recommendations.

 

The proposal to provide reservation to backward sections within the community has also proven to be a non- starter. The Union government couldn't even make the National Human Rights Commission go to the site of the infamous Batla House encounter, leave alone issue an objective report on it.

 

Mr Singh's comment also betrays ignorance of a major tenet of Islam— that no human being can be equated with God.

 

j

CONTROVERSIES refuse to leave former Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan alone even after he has demitted office. First was the report that he had deliberately played down the matter of a Union minister trying to influence a Madras high court judge.

 

And now, there are demands for an inquiry into the assets held by Justice Balakrishnan's kin, which allegedly grew substantially after he took over as CJI. The latest complaint must be taken seriously not just because it concerns a former constitutional authority. As relevant is the fact that Justice Balakrishnan's tenure as CJI was marred by controversies. Whether it was his stance on the disclosure of judges' assets and the applicability of the Right to Information Act to his office, or his reluctance to nix the tainted Justice P D Dinakaran's candidature for elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Balakrishnan left no one in doubt that he did not set great store by transparency.

 

This is also occasion to question again how such a controversial CJI was appointed the chairman of a purportedly vital institution like the National Human Rights Commission.

 

Allowing him to continue on this post will only dent the already poor credibility of the United Progressive Alliance government.

 

CHECK MINDLESS VIOLENCE

ON Monday night in the capital, a man opens a car door and accidentally knocks off a plate of chicken tikkas from a man's hand.

 

An altercation ensues, and the person who was hit pulls out a gun and shoots the 24- year- old whose only fault was to open the car door at the wrong time.

 

Two days ago, a lady admonishes her relative for firing a gun at a celebration. The man accosts the woman, puts a gun to her temple and shoots her dead.

 

Such remorseless actions can only be termed as pathological. But how are citizens to be protected against such mindless violence? For one thing, by deterring would- be killers.

 

First, by leaching away guns and weapons in the hands of those who should not be having them. The police need to institute random searches after sealing off in market places, buses and malls and throw the book at anyone possessing an illegal weapon. Second, by putting away pathological killers in jail for the rest of their natural life.

 

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            MAIL TODAY

COLUMN

ECONOMY FACES A CHALLENGING YEAR

BY NARENDAR PANI      

 

WITH the world economy showing some signs of turning the corner, the challenges facing the Indian economy in the coming year could be of a very different order. As American markets recorded the best growth in Christmas sales since 2006 there is some cautious optimism that President Obama's efforts to kick- start that economy may finally be working. The euro crisis too looks a lot more manageable than it did a few months ago. And if the US and European economies do revive, Indian policy will have to change quickly from the recession- fighting mode they have been in over the last two years.

 

At first glance this may seem an easy enough task. A revival in Western markets can be expected to provide a much needed boost to exports. More than the quantum of increase it would also offer greater balance to the structure of our exports. The Look East policy has had its impact on Indian trade, with China emerging as the country's largest trading partner.

 

China

 

But trading with China is a doubleedged weapon, with that country using its state control to manage its currency and other factors in a way that distorts trade.

 

This has contributed to a situation where India today imports three times as much as it exports to that country.

 

India is of course not the first country to face the impact of such trade imbalances with China. The United States too has been in a similar situation for quite a few years. But in the case of the US since the Chinese use their trade surplus to buy American bonds, the process helps maintain a strong dollar. In India's case on the other hand, the trade deficit is in addition to the fact that while Indian exports are dominated by iron ore, the imports from China are finished goods.

 

The composition of trade with China could easily slip into a pattern similar to the old unequal relationship between the developed and the developing world, with India playing the latter role. Ironically enough, it is now the Western markets that could help the export of Indian finished goods and services, including information technology services.

 

The revival of the Western markets, if it does happen, would however not be an unmixed blessing. It could cause some of the foreign institutional investment in Indian stock markets to work their way back to the West. This would generate a downward pressure on the rupee. While exporters would welcome a devalued rupee, it would push up the costs of oil imports. And in a policy regime where the emphasis is on getting the prices of petroleum products to reflect their actual cost, this could have a wide- ranging impact on domestic prices. The management of inflation could then emerge next year as a bigger challenge than it already is.

 

What has made this task daunting is that the inflationary pressures are led by food prices. And this is the result of a much deeper structural malady. Even as we celebrate the high growth rates that the country has managed to generate over the last two decades, it has been accompanied by a dramatic drop in the share of agriculture in GDP to well below the 20 percent mark. The policy response to this sharp decline in the share of agriculture has been to import the deficit, or at least ban exports.

 

Agriculture

 

But both these options have themselves come under considerable strain. With speculation playing a significant role in global grain markets as well, prices in the global markets have not always been lower than the prices at home. And if India succeeds in its efforts in the WTO to get the West to remove their subsidies on agriculture, these prices can be expected to shoot up further.

 

There are also items in the Indian diet, particularly pulses, that are not always available in the quantities that India would like to import without adding its own pressure to global prices. Indian policy makers would have to soon find policy options to improve the supply of food that are less dependent on imports.

 

The policy response to food prices could also be blunted by the hesitancy of the political class to bring down the prices that farmers can earn. This could be dismissed as giving in to the farm lobby. But such a dismissal ignores a second dimension of the declining share of agriculture in GDP. This decline has not been accompanied by a reduction of a similar magnitude in the proportion of the population dependent on agriculture.

 

Since the net area cultivated has remained constant for decades now, and the population has continued to grow, the limited decline in the agricultural population has resulted in an increase in the number of persons dependent on each acre of land. Thus, even if incomes per acre increase, the income per individual could well decline. And in an overall situation of rapid growth rates, declining real incomes would be difficult for a proud, and vote- rich, farming community to take.

 

Structure

 

Oddly enough, over the last two years the global recession has helped the government respond to this challenge. With a strong case to use deficits to generate demand, the government could go in for massive spending programmes that helped alleviate the pressure on the farming community.

 

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme played this role quite effectively. It created a large number of jobs in the rural economy across the country. As the recession recedes, though, there will be pressure to curtail the deficit. This could make it more difficult to find the funds needed for government spending to make up for the limited growth of the rural economy.

 

Policy makers could then find the coming year an intimidating one. After a well deserved pat on the back for demonstrating the resilience of the post- liberalisation growth rate, they would have to come to terms with the fact that this growth hides a number of serious structural weaknesses.

 

As inflationary pressures make it more difficult to sustain a large deficit, the easy option of spending their way out of trouble in the rural economy may no longer exist. It will become even more difficult to ignore the structural problems in the rural economy.

 

The failure to do so could well lead to food insecurity and the resultant political consequences. And it would indeed be ironic if there is a political price to pay for economic mismanagement at a time when growth rates remain high.

 

The writer is professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore

 

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MAIL TODAY

DECCAN BUZZ

POLITICOS VIE WITH EACH OTHERTOPULL A ' FAST' ONE

A SRINIVASA RAO

 

FOR the last couple of weeks, it has been a high voltage political drama in the state over the heavy crop loss caused due the unexpected and untimely heavy rains that lashed coastal Andhra Pradesh and parts of Telangana and Rayalaseema in the first week of December. The near total damage to food and commercial crops just at the time of harvesting led to a spate of suicides by farmers.

 

The plight of farmers has become a major political issue, that is being fully exploited by the Opposition parties. The issue which rocked the winter session of state assembly in the third week of December, extended for another couple of weeks, as the opposition parties launched a scathing attack on the Congress government headed by newly appointed chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy for the inadequate relief package announced for the farmers.

 

Kiran faced stinging criticism from two persons in particular — Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu and former Kadapa MP YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who recently resigned from the Congress and is all set to float a new regional party. While touring the rain- ravaged areas of coastal Andhra, Jagan announced that he would undertake a 48- hour fast, which he christened as " Lakshya Deeksha" ( Fasting for a specific objective), to demand a better relief package for the affected farmers.

 

Not to be outdone, the TDP president came out with his own master- stroke — an indefinite fast for the same cause.

 

While Jagan put up a big show on the banks of the Krishna river at Vijayawada by mobilising nearly one lakh people, Naidu opted for a simpler way — putting up his hunger strike camp on the premises of the New MLA Quarters, nearer to the Secretariat.

 

Both the hunger strikes are obviously part of a war of political one- upmanship. Naidu was desperate to erase the anti- farmer stigma attached to him during his nine- year regime and there couldn't have been a better occasion for him to do so. Incidentally, it was for the first time that Naidu has chosen hunger strike as a form of protest during his 32- year old political career and naturally, there was a tremendous response.

 

National leaders from all political parties called on him during his week- long fast, which continued even after he was forcibly shifted to Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences.

 

Finally, the doctors had to force- feed him with the police's help. Ironically, Naidu's fast could not get any better package for farmers, but it definitely boosted his image at the national level and opened the channel for yet to revive the third front. In a way, it is a big boost for Naidu to stage a comeback as a champion of farmers.

 

For Jagan, it was more of a political game rather than a real struggle for farmers. His massive show of strength at Vijayawada, where he could muster the support of nearly 30 MLAs and MLCs was only aimed at throwing a challenge at the Congress high command that he had the support of not only the people but also the MLAs, with whose help he can pull down the Congress government in the state any time.

 

That way, it was a big success for Jagan, too.

 

And for Kiran Kumar Reddy, tackling his rivals, rather than solving the farmers' issue, was the big challenge. In fact, it was his first major political battle. And the Congress leaders say Kiran had the last laugh in the battle by putting up a stubborn attitude in refusing to succumb to Naidu and Jagan by amending the relief package.

 

KUCHIPUDI NEVER GOT THIS MAJESTIC

LAST Sunday, Hyderabad witnessed a spectacular cultural show that earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. More than 2,800 dancers performed Kuchipudi on a single platform.

 

It was held on the last day of the second International Kuchipudi Dance Convention at the GMC Balayogi Stadium, Gachibowli. The convention was jointly organised by Californiabased organisation Silicon Andhra and the state government. The programme had artists from 16 countries, performing the " Maha Brunda Natyam" ( Great Group Dance) of Kuchipudi, the centuries- old dance form created by Sidhendra Yogi of Kuchipudi village in Krishna district. The programme left the audience spell bound.

 

An official of Guinness World Records, who was present on the occasion, handed over a certificate to Silicon Andhra. According to the organisers, the event aims to promote Kuchipudi and inspire the youth to know more about the dance form. The highlight of the event was the dance performed by Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development D Purandeshwari.

 

Draped in a silk saree, Purandeshwari displayed her dancing skills for about 15 minutes, as the audience gave her loud applause.

 

President Pratibha Patil, Andhra Pradesh Governor ESL Narasimhan, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and hundreds of others enjoyed the splendid show.

 

STATE READIES FOR T- TROUBLEON NEW YEAR'S EVE

COME December 31, it will be celebration time for people all over the world to bid adieu to the outgoing year and welcome the New Year. But, for the people of Andhra Pradesh, it is going to a day of great tension and suspense.

 

For, the Justice BN Srikrishna Committee, constituted to look into the demand for a separate Telangana state to be carved out of the northern districts of Andhra Pradesh, will submit its report to the Union Home Ministry on December 31.

 

The committee is expected to recommend a range of solutions to the contentious issue.

 

These will, in turn, form the basis for the centre's decision on whether the state has to be bifurcated or kept united.

 

Already, there is a palpable tension in the state, with pro- Telangana forces gearing up for a big agitation if the committee does not favour bifurcation or the Centre does not take a decision on statehood for Telangana state based on the committee's recommendations.

 

Telangna Rasthra Samithi president K Chandrashekhara Rao said that the Centre would be given three weeks time to decide on Telangana irrespective of whether the Srikrishna Committee favours bifurcation or not.

 

Following intelligence reports about possible outbreak of violence after the submission of report, the state government has sought at least 125 companies of central paramilitary forces.

 

The Centre has already dispatched about 50 companies, or about 4,500 personnel from various central forces,

including the Central Industrial Security Force and the Border Security Force, to Hyderabad.

 

The government has already begun keeping tabs on potential trouble- makers, particularly student leaders.

 

Dozens of students from the Osmania University were taken into custody, while several others have been languishing in jails for the last one month.

 

One will have to wait and see what is in store for the people of Andhra Pradesh in the New Year.

 

 Red' alert in a time of uncertainty

 

THE Maoists are trying to stage a comeback in Andhra. They kidnapped some persons in Adilabad and Karimnagar districts and thrashed them for being police informers.

 

They had killed a public representative in Karimnagar earlier this month on the same pretext. Also, they took a team of media persons from Visakhpatnam to the agency areas to witness their activity in the coffee plantations.

 

This has put the state intelligence department on high alert, forcing the Greyhounds and special party police to take up massive combing of forests.

 

According to intelligence inputs, the Maoists are trying to take advantage of the political uncertainty in the state. The absence of a strong leadership, slackness on the part of the police and growing opposition among tribals in the border areas against illegal mining are said to have helped the Maoists to take control of these areas.

 

Above all, they are also planning to take advantage of the pro- Telangana agitation to recruit cadres and recoup their strength in the border areas.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

VISION 2011

 

At year-end, India can pat its back on rebounding from the post-2008 slowdown. An enviable 9% growth rate looks doable soon. But if crisis management up to 2010 impresses, UPA-II needed to use its enhanced political mandate of 2009 to resolutely walk the reforms road, more so since the Left is no longer around to play spoiler. But aside from okaying disinvestment in timid bursts, it's still to execute a big-ticket reforms menu. Without this, clocking and sustaining double-digit growth and fulfilling social sector pledges won't happen. A midpoint in UPA's second stint, 2011 is a good time to press the accelerator. 

High food prices will persist into the new year, a reminder of the farm sector's structural anomalies. Liberalising multibrand retail will bring assured benefits to agriculture by creating infrastructure and jobs. Raising farm productivity - and agriculture's GDP input - is urgent. For that, farmers need fair price discovery through access to diversified markets. The Planning Commission is said to want farming's technological upgrade together with the trimming of food and fertiliser subsidies soon. Neither is possible without reform, which should go along with PDS revamp. Let's experiment more boldly with alternative delivery mechanisms - backed by the UID and financial inclusion projects - to give food security to both farm and non-farm poor. 

We need a common market, unhindered by too many inter-state barriers, market intermediaries or taxes. In this context 2011 needs to see the debut of GST, an indirect tax reform that, along with a new, streamlined direct tax code, can transform the economy. With Centre-state fiscal burdens pared via boosted tax compliance, bigger spends can go to social and physical infrastructure: schools and hospitals, roads, ports and power projects. Both are areas the plan panel rightly marks out for the 12th Plan's special focus. Raising funds via reforms - including through spurred disinvestment - is top priority, because yawning fiscal deficits dent investor feelgood. In fact, FDI's recent worrying dip should prompt us to open up, besides retail, other closeted sectors like insurance, defence and education. 

In 2011, let's treat speeded-up industrialisation as non-negotiable. For too long, we've tripped ourselves by sticking with antiquated labour laws that hamper business viability, impede organised labour's expansion and skills upgrade, and doom casual workers to low wages and insecurity. Farm livelihoods can't sustain all our youthful, productive hands. And schemes like NREG can't substitute for factory jobs of the kind helping China fight poverty so successfully. Nor should industry's advance and the building of infrastructure keep being blockaded by land-related agitations. Let 2011 produce a definitive and revamped blueprint for transparent, market-driven property transactions. That'll make buyer and seller both stakeholders in inclusive growth.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

IDIOT BOX, NO MORE

 

With technology advancing at breakneck speed, 2011 is all set to witness a revolution in television viewing. Thanks to progressive reduction in prices and increasing quality of technology available, access to home theatre systems and supplementary appliances has become an affordable proposition for a large number of people. Predictions are that prices of flat panel television sets could drop by at least 10% in the new year. With high-definition digital entertainment options available at the click of a button, watching a movie at home will be as good as visiting the multiplex. Add to the mix the versatility of the internet, and what we have is complete convergence of all the components that make up the personal entertainment space. Everything from YouTube to Skype is set to be available on TV screens, transforming the so-called idiot box into a one-stop entertainment hub. 

What all of this represents is a welcome increase in choice for the consumer, both in terms of hardware and services. With 3G players eyeing the personal entertainment space, the line between telephony and television is ready to disappear. Internet Protocol Television is a good example. Competing platforms and service providers will not only push down prices further but also make available packages and pay-per-view options that give customers greater control. Such technology would also necessitate creative revenue models as service providers look to capture the entire spectrum of personal entertainment accessories. In turn, advertisers and content producers will be forced to focus on niche segments to maximise returns. Not only will this transform television media as we know it but also change the way we interface with society and the outside world.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

THE SMALLER, THE BETTER?

KINGSHUK NAG

 

It is that part of the year when there are celebrations all round. But in Hyderabad plans for the new year have been downscaled this year and an air of uncertainty prevails. Will 2011 usher in increased violence? Will this lead to prolonged closure of schools and colleges? Will the investment scenario be marred? These are the questions being asked by the man on the street, professionals and top honchos alike. 

The apprehensions have been fuelled by the prospects of the report of the committee, led by former Supreme Court judge B N Srikrishna, that will submit its recommendations on December 30. It is public knowledge that the report will not contain concrete recommendations but will merely chart out alternative solutions for the Telangana tango. But what is causing concern is that the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) - after holding its horses - is all set to take to the streets to press for its demand for a separate state with renewed vigour. Though the Telangana members of the Congress have been playing safe till now, they too are expected to join agitations. 

 

The Andhra Pradesh government, led by a chief minister who is stridently anti-Telangana, has already requisitioned additional central forces to quell anticipated violence and the director general of police hinting at strong police action is on record saying that peace will not be allowed to be broken. This is expected to lead to a face-off and, to complicate matters, trouble can break out in the Andhra area of the state where the general sentiment is against the creation of Telangana. With Maoists waiting on the wings to jump in and extreme right Hindu elements also ready to fish in troubled waters, expectations are that there will be a merry mess. Unless the Centre steps in fast with a workable political solution. But the ham-handed way the central government has dealt with Telangana issues in the past does not inspire much faith in its ability to do so. 

In a way the central government is responsible for the mess in the state. On December 9, 2009, swayed by intelligence reports that lakhs of Telangana agitators were preparing to gherao the legislative assembly and medical reports that a fasting Chandrasekhar Rao could slip into a coma, the home minister hurriedly announced that the process of creating a separate Telangana would be initiated immediately. This exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic proponents of a separate state. But strident opposition from the non-Telangana part of Andhra Pradesh and also the realisation that the intelligence reports were not accurate made the central government take a U-turn barely a fortnight later. 

 

Shortly thereafter, the Srikrishna committee was set up. The wily Chandrasekhar Rao kept mum, working silently with other groups to deepen the separatist sentiment. Eleven months later, sentiments are so strong that it will now be more difficult for any government to deal with the matter. The TRS chief now says the agitations will reach a crescendo in February even as counter forces are readying themselves in Andhra region. 

In the face of such opposing demands, is a rational solution possible? Anybody who has knowledge of the argument against Telangana knows that the people of Andhra are not opposed intractably to the creation of a new state but to the inclusion of Hyderabad in that entity. Their argument is that Hyderabad has been raised to the status of a global city not because of the enterprise of people of Telangana but as a result of hardcore investments in business and the social sector by the settlers from Andhra region. So they should be allowed to have a say in how Hyderabad is run. But Hyderabad is the heart of Telangana and historically precedes the formation of Andhra Pradesh. Thus there can be no question of Telangana sans Hyderabad, especially because the rest of Telangana is very backward. 

So how to reconcile these contradictory demands? Some suggest that Hyderabad should be made into a Union territory, serving as the capital of both Telangana and Andhra. But this is akin to a situation where two brothers are fighting for their share in the house bequeathed to them and a mediator comes along and occupies the drawing room permanently. 

A better solution would be to take a leaf out of Hong Kong's book. When the British left Hong Kong in 1997 after 150 years of occupation, there was apprehension about its future as a global financial centre. To allay such doubts, the Chinese created a special administrative region of Hong Kong, incorporating it into their country but allowing it to run as before. One system, two countries they called it, and the model has run successfully. A similar dispensation can be created in Hyderabad - letting it be part of Telangana, yet providing it with a separate city government which can have representation from the local population of Andhra origin. 

Many argue that the creation of Telangana will generate pressure to create many other states like Vidarbha and knock down the linguistic basis (other than Hindi-speaking states) on which India was reorganised in 1956. But the counter-argument is that the Republic of India is now over 60 years old and therefore the time may be ripe to look at alternative structures of governance and usher in a Second Republic. Since small is beautiful, having many more states could be part of the Second Republic idea.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

Q&A

'INDIA'S HISTORY IS IN TWO PHASES, BEFORE AND AFTER RTI'

 

How did you begin campaigning, does it support you financially? 

The work supports me emotionally and intellectually! My trade is textiles. All my RTI Act work is done in the mornings and late evenings. I only attend Central Information Commission (CIC) meetings during the day. This is a hobby, but not a self-indulgent hobby because it helps other people by opening avenues for investigation. 

All this began 43 years ago with my writing a letter. At university, i saw there was collusion between the bus conductor and the students and so i sent a letter to a newspaper. The next day the bus company came to my campus, and i was so frightened that they were going to do something to me that i ran away. Actually, they had brought the conductor to apologise. It was a potent lesson, that a small individual could be the harbinger of change. From these humble beginnings, i graduated to filing RTI petitions. 

What do think of the RTI Act? 

Quite simply historians who speak of 'India after Gandhi' are wrong. If we are to compartmentalise, then India's history is in two phases, before and after RTI. The watershed is the Act which current popular historians miss. The Act is the most significant post-independence legislation. RTI's significance lies in that it bestows the common citizen with the powers of the legislator to question. 

There is more. A parliamentarian has only one chance to get a written reply to a starred question. We have two more bodies, first the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), then the CPIO department head and finally the CIC. The Act is good and though it functions well because most CPIOs are user-friendly, there is always room to improve the procedural side of things. 

What improvements can be made? 

I'll limit myself to a few suggestions! Sections 27 and 28 of the Act give powers to public authorities and the state governments to draft their own rules. On occasion they contradict the Act. For instance, the Delhi high court imposed fees of Rs 500 for a request, whereas the normal fee is Rs 10. The fee is still five times more than the norm and this is a financial bar. Interlinked is cumbersome procedure. People have to go to the post office, get postal orders, post them, wait for a reply and then post again with postal orders since we usually ask for documents. Part of the purpose of imposing charges is to sift the wheat from the chaff, to get genuine well thought out requests. 

This means a balance has to be struck between clarity and quality. However, this long-winded process could be shortened considerably with a reusable RTI stamp and sold at the post office. This would also save money. To process a Rs 10 postal order in 2005, it cost Rs 23. It must be more now. Another example is that the letter they send you telling you that you have to pay Rs 2 per page to get some photocopies, costs Rs 27 to post. 

A simple solution is to increase the basic fee to Rs 20 and give the first 10 photocopied pages for free. This would save money and shorten the process. At the macro level, there has to be better education about the Act because most people still don't know about it while others don't realise that they have appellate authorities to go to.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

HOW GREEN IS MY VALLEY

JANINA GOMES

 

Looking forward rather than looking backwards, we find that maturity consists in focusing on the positive aspects of our lives and then dealing with the negative aspects in an effective manner. 

In order to remain evergreen like the evergreen tree, we can choose the good, avoid what is evil and distance ourselves from what is not helpful. Looking back at our life experiences, we will find that our lives, whenever they have remained evergreen, was so precisely because of the difficulties and trials we have overcame and the spiritual strength that we gained. 

For those of us who have learned to live with a positive attitude, our valleys have remained green because we have translated our experiences, built on our weaknesses and converted them into strengths, nurtured our souls and watered them with the life-giving water of compassion and wisdom. 

With the passage of time we learn to be less harsh and judgmental with ourselves and others. We look at ourselves not through the prism of a demanding master, but through the prism of a loving, faithful and compassionate God. 

As we grow older, we become more content and satisfied with what we have done so far and ready to take on other tasks and responsibilities. The wisdom and understanding that comes with age is not automatic. We have to grow intellectually, emotionally and spiritually so that we can develop a discerning mind and spirit. 

Like fruit that has ripened, we mature and with the water of our imagination and enlightened soul we create for ourselves evergreen valleys. We sometimes ask ourselves the question: How green is my valley? We do not wait the moment of death to do that; we try to know the answers now. 

Where does the inspiration come from? Prayer now becomes a life-giving force. In prayer we connect with the infinite and also with the community. Meditative living not only brings us face-to-face with the Divine; it permeates all aspects of our lives. 

When we follow nature's course, not fighting our destiny, we are like the perennial spring that waters the earth. Then we tend to transform and transcend our diminishments, frailties, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. However, self-condemnation is so common. The guilt trips and the regrets tend to pull you down. But for those who can ask: "How green is my valley?"—there is opportunity to learn from and rectify misconceptions. We would be able to recognize several occasions when we were kind and helpful, considerate and empathetic. And the other times when we were quite withdrawn and self-centred

As we traverse the spiritual path, there will always be crags, nooks and crannies, uneven turf and barriers, but there are also life-giving waters and springs, foliage and greenery that are ever present in the soul. 

Every situation and circumstance in our life calls for an appropriate response. It is with our lifetime choices that we create either fecundity or barrenness and aridity of spirit. Struggles and hardships will perforce come our way, but they could be transformed to become instruments of peace and success. 

The end of a calendar year is a good time to look back as well as prepare to look ahead, and resolve to transform past negativities to future positive opportunity that would make life more meaningful and cheerful rather than full of guilt, regrets and resentments. 

A new beginning brings with it a freshness that's hard to ignore as it brings with it fresh hope and the promise of bright days ahead. 

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

ALL INDIA RADIA

JUG SURAIYA 

 

Radia should be given the Padma Shrimati next year. As each new tranche of the leaked tapes of Radiagate are made public it becomes increasingly clear that, far from sabotaging India's democracy, the lobbyist was actually furthering its cause.

 

Though Radia's method of operation - which reportedly involves large-scale hawala transactions - was often dubious, there is nothing wrong with her broad strategy to influence public policy by inducing media people and other opinion makers to get A Raja the telecom portfolio. That his appointment - at least partly engineered by Radia - led to the 2G scam is another matter.

 

Lobbying - or what is often called public advocacy - is a perfectly legitimate, and indeed necessary, component of any democracy. In the US, for example, it is considered to be a high-profile and respectable profession made use of by everyone who would like to have a say in the framing of official policy. New Delhi has often employed US lobbyists to try and influence Washington's policies vis-a-vis Pakistan and Kashmir, among other things. In the US, there are accredited lobbyists for all manner of issues and individuals, from the right to bear arms to candidates for Senate seats.

 

If looked at in its broadest sense, what does lobbying boil down to? Nothing more, or less, than trying to get people to see your, or your client's view. All public relations exercises - be they for business interests or causes like animal welfare or AIDS prevention - are examples of lobbying: they are attempts to get the members of the public to change their ways of thought and action in particular spheres of interest or concern.

 

Similarly, all forms of advertising - and no media product, including this newspaper, could remain economically viable were it not for advertisements - are lobbying by another name. Advertisements try to persuade you to buy a particular product or service. A successful ad, a lobbying exercise that has worked, is one that makes the maximum amount of money for the advertiser, the client of the lobbyist, in this case the advertising agency. The most successful ads - the ones that have been most persuasive in changing public behaviour and thinking - are annually honoured by receiving awards given by the industry.

 

All politics, and not just at election time, is nothing but lobbying in its most blatant form. In a democracy, it is expected of all political parties to shape or transform public policy through competitive lobbying of the electorate via election manifestos and professed agendas. The voter is seduced, persuaded, bribed by all sorts of promised inducements, often in the form of cash subsidies or tax breaks, to support this or that party or candidate. There is the Election Commission to see there is no hanky-panky or rigging at the time of polling. But no Election Commission can compel a political party or candidate to make good on election promises - i.e., bribes in one form or another - once the balloting is over.

 

If politics is unadulterated lobbying, and it is, so is the media. All reporters and commentators - in the press, or on TV or radio, even those considered too insignificant to have been approached by Radia - try to shape public opinion, and through that try to influence official policy by having public pressure put on it, according to their own views, opinions and interests, or those of the organisations that employ them.

 

Indeed, democracy with all its components - media, market and elective politics - is a vast enterprise in lobbying, a never-ending argument between competing interest groups to change public policy to suit their own ends.

 

Radia's only fault was getting caught. But for having forced us, however unwittingly, to take a long hard look at our democracy and what it really means, she needs a commendation. Padma Shrimati? Heck, make her Woman of the Year. She deserves it. Or rather, we deserve her.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

OUR TAKE

NOT A STATE SECRET

 

Now we never said that our postal services should function like greased lightning. We are quite used to letters taking an inordinately long time to reach their destination, if at all. And in case you thought that you had to suffer such delays because you are a minor cog in the wheel, be assured that our postal services are an equal opportunities discriminator.

 

Yes, even the highest in the land are not accorded any special privileges as the astounded home minister P Chidambaram found when a letter from him on a matter of grave import addressed to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reached Kolkata five days after it had been posted. Why, you might ask, are official communications sent by post and not on the electronic mail. It is because, according to some antiquated law, official classified documents have to be sent by Speed Post, which as we have seen is anything but that. H ow we wish that communications of less import were to follow this route. Then those wishing to sell you land, villas, water purifiers and insurance would have to nip down to the post office and cough up a nifty amount to send their information by Speed Post. Which, if all goes well, we will never get. What bliss that would be.

 

Worry warts among you might fret that important communications could fall into the wrong hands if they were sent by Speed Post. Clearly, you have never visited a post office. If anyone has the patience and dedication to sift through the millions of letters supervised by the work-averse postal staff, then he or she deserves to get their hands on State secrets. But chances are that you will never get anything worth a Wikileak. Will this latest incident speed things up in our postal services? We'll keep you posted.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE PUNDIT

LET'S WEATHER THIS CRISIS

 

At the best of times, the weather is unpredictable. But not so much so that one could not predict that it will invariably cast a dampener every year over the season of good cheer. As winter tightens its icy grip on north India, we are met with the usual chaos of rail, road and air disruptions in the certain knowledge that next year will be no different. While the meteorological department claims that it gives out enough information on weather conditions and that others like the airlines do not disseminate this, it also acknowledges that it is still two years away from installing modern technologies like automatic aviation weather decision support systems which are in use in other international airports. It can be little comfort to those whose plans have been thrown out of whack that the funds of Rs 150 crore for this technology are available but that the Met office is yet to find a supplier.

 

Technology aside, much of the sufferings of passengers could have been minimised had the authorities concerned, whether air or rail, ensured that information on delays and cancellations reached the consumer in time. But anyone who has tried to elicit information from either the railways or the various airlines will testify that it is akin to wringing blood out of a stone. If passengers are informed in time, surely they would not turn up bag and baggage only to wait, in some cases, over 30 hours only to go back home dejected. Those who have gone in for non-refundable fares and holiday packages will find themselves seriously out of pocket and those trying to reach their destinations for crucial functions like marriages or medical help cannot be blamed for venting their rage on the officials concerned. Technology is meant to make lives easier for people, so what stops the authorities from updating their websites or sending out SMSes in time for people to deal with delays and cancellations in a more comfortable manner?

 

Every year, we hear that fog lights will be put up on thoroughfares to prevent accidents, but we are yet to see a glimmer of these. Those who are traveling by air or rail with small children, are aged or have medical conditions like diabetes have nothing but hope to fall back on. It is not enough to digitise the railway system and construct tony terminals at airports. Each incremental step ought to be aimed at making travel that much easier. But all we have seen so far is the usual blame game. This is a gloomy forecast, but if this goes on we cannot expect that the foggy vision which has clouded all travel plans this year will lift by the next.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

SILENCE AS SEDITION

GAUTAM BHAN

 

A true measure of being democratic is not the cycles of elections — it is the dignity given to disagreement, to dissent. Why must we dignify dissent? There are the arguments that we hear everyday: so that the views of the majority cannot silence the voices of a few; so that no one view or institution may become so dominant as to become authoritarian; and the value of freedom of speech and expression in and of themselves. Any memory of the Emergency in 1975-77 is testimony to why any of these are important. Yet there is a more fundamental reason why dissent is the cornerstone of a democracy: it is the action of a free citizen.

 

Speech is an action. An action within a democratic framework — an action that simultaneously shows a continuous faith in the polity, the State and the people even as one (often virulently) disagrees with it. An action that keeps a democratic system alive. You dissent as a citizen, in the name of your Constitution. You dissent because you have the freedom to do so — not a freedom you have been 'given' but one that you possess because you, as part of the people, are sovereign. This is more important than what we are taught in our textbooks — being able to voice our disagreement is as central as the ability to walk to a ballot box and cast our vote. This is a freedom we give to each other as democratic citizens and that we must protect, especially when we disagree.

 

There is no more fundamental understanding of what makes and sustains a democracy. Speech and engagement are the antithesis of apathy, of a people that have lost their sensitivity and ethical compass. You don't have to like what people say — indeed it is when what they say makes your blood boil that you must defend their right to speak even as you exercise your right to vocally and fiercely disagree with them.

 

Binayak Sen speaks. Through his actions and words, he protests, he engages, he dissents, he disagrees. His weapons are words, ideas, and actions. Everything he does represents a strained, challenged but surviving faith and commitment to non-violent, democratic dissent though everything he sees around him should and must have given him so many reasons to lose that faith. His actions represent what makes India democratic, and his conviction shows the deep fragility of our democracy today. If you wish to protect the nation-State, it is Sen you must protect.

 

Sen could have remained silent. Like so many of us, he could have been 'safe' and not facing a life term in prison today. All he had to do was to shirk his duties as a citizen and an ethical human being and choose the easier way of remaining silent. The rest of us do so everyday in a country that is home to some of the most-entrenched and deepening inequality in the world. In our everyday lives, we stand by multiple exclusions and everyday acts of violence, homelessness, hunger, the removal of social benefits, and a new India that measures its growth by its richest rather than its poorest. Why the poor do not revolt in arms is anyone's guess. They have no reason not to wage war against the rest of us who tolerate, sanction and reproduce their exclusion. So when those excluded and those that speak in their favour choose still to speak and to engage democratically despite these violent exclusions, there can be nothing more important for our democracy than to listen.

 

Those who (ab)use sedition often claim that the actions of people like Sen and Arundhati Roy are 'anti-India'. Let's agree to this claim for a moment and think in terms of 'defending India'. When we are silent in the face of rampant press censorship and collusion, when thousands die of hunger though grain rots in granaries, when the country celebrates its miracle growth even as agriculture stagnates and even contracts, when farmers commit suicide, when our own leaders make the word 'scandal' an everyday joke, are we not 'anti-India'? Is our silence not the greatest betrayal of every idea of India worth defending? If sedition is such a crime, is our silence not the greatest enactment of it? Binayak Sen's conviction represents a crossroads for our democracy. It will no doubt be challenged in court and hopefully overturned but no legal victory can or will be enough. The conviction must be challenged by us as citizens. We must refuse to be silent. We must act — through protests, conversations, petitions, writing, and pushing the government, our elected representatives and the media to take a stand. Whether we agree or disagree with Sen's world-view or his politics, we must speak up to defend not just his freedom to dissent but, crucially, our own right to be democratic.

 

Gautam Bhan is a Delhi-based writer and works on urban policy The views expressed by the author are personal.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

HE'S CHANGING THE RULES OF THE GAME

DN SAHAYA

 

The Bihar assembly poll verdict reinvented the state's political text: there was a sharp turn from the traditional caste politics to a development-oriented agenda. Like a skilled craftsman, JD(U) chief and NDA leader Nitish Kumar engineered this route change.

 

During his first term, Kumar remolded many political equations and weaved new ones around the identity, pride, aspirations and dreams of the people of the state. Along with this, he focused on the people, governance, security, development and communal harmony.

 

Along the way, he did some smart social engineering and also made his programmes inclusive. The process of expanding the party's social base sucked the numerically smaller, deprived and unmobilised EBCs (32%) and Mahadalits. They discovered their identity, pride and voice and proved to be a formidable votebank for Kumar.

 

Political mobilisation, awakening and empowerment of women also reaped Kumar rich dividends in the elections. Nearly 55% of women voters including young girls (a rise of 10% over the previous election) turned up to vote and this tilted the scales in favour of the coalition.

 

Kumar also won the hearts of the Muslims (17%), especially the extremely backward Pasmanda Muslims thanks to a slew of welfare measures: vocational training for girl students, appointment of Urdu teachers, fencing of cemeteries and speedy trials in the Bhagalpur riot cases.

 

His development agenda was no doubt the main reason behind his spectacular return, but it was also the expansive and aggregated vote spread across all castes and communities that paved the way for the NDA win. The rising popularity graph of Kumar is directly proportional to the development work he has done: building an extensive network of roads and bridges, improving health services, renovation of schools, good governance, and an improved security environment.

 

The mandate proves that rhetoric and polemics will not work anymore. Perform or perish is the crystal clear message from the voters. Bihar's electoral mandate will impact the political contours of the country and the electorate will be much more demanding from now on.

 

DN Sahaya is former governor of Tripura and Chhattisgarh. The views expressed by the author are personal.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

A HIGH-FLIER IN THE MAKING

ASHOK BAWEJA

 

The aerospace industry has undergone tremendous structural and economic changes over the past few decades. The commercial aerospace sector has witnessed a reduction in revenue per passenger mile, whereas the costs have continued to move upwards. This has led to an increased focus on technological innovation and cost competitiveness. Companies in the aerospace industry spend billions of dollars every year to ensure that their technology infrastructure remains current and reflects the latest developments in aviation technology.

 

India is certainly a fast growing market for the commercial aviation industry. There will be significant investments by Indian operators and corresponding offset obligations. This represents a business opportunity for Indian players both in the manufacturing and services space that is hard to ignore. The government policy on offsets will give a boost to this sector in India. The Indian economy is growing at 8 to 10% every year. This rate is expected to translate into air traffic growth over the next 20 years. The number of potential airfields and the economic growth rates are expected to translate into a demand for over 1,200 aircraft in India, of which 240 are expected to be in the regional category.

 

Combining the projected military and paramilitary requirements, the total Indian requirement is projected as 400. Cashing in on the boom in the civil aviation sector and recognising the need for the establishment of Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA), the Central government assigned the project to National Aeronautical Laboratories (NAL) to meet the national aspiration of building a commercial aircraft. The chemistry is just right with a substantial Indian demand for an RTA, knowledge and capabilities build-up in light fixed wing and rotor wing craft, the technological and economic benefits, the aspirations to be a global player, along with policy makers citing Brazil's Embraer as an example to be emulated. If successfully implemented, significant foreign sales could also be expected apart from the national market. Private sector companies such as HCL Technologies have acquired capabilities in aerospace engineering and manufacturing to a great extent. An interesting aspect of this capability build-up is that Indian companies have supported the two biggest commercial aircraft programmes in history — A380 and Boeing 787 — with services like structural and mechanical engineering, embedded systems software development, hardware engineering, verification and validation and Information Technology including development simulation tools and design and analysis tools.

 

The RTA will be in the 22-tonne class, a civil commercial platform with over a billion dollars worth of investments riding on it.A civil aircraft in the 22-tonne class has not been made in this country and two other programmes on the anvil — the 60-tonne Multi Role Transport Aircraft and the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft — are being done in partnership with the Russians, already experienced players in these categories. Thus, to achieve success in this project, the RTA will need to develop within the stated time frame of six years; acquire certification by Indian and foreign agencies; feature all the stated technologies and design targets to give it a competitive edge against  well-entrenched players such as Embraer, Bombardier, ATR and relatively new entrants like the Russian Super Jet, Chinese ARJ 21 and Mitsubishi.

 

Being on its own, the Indian RTA would call for an exceptionally high order of programme management skills, flexibility in selection decisions of equipment and partners and much more. Embraer is a valuable case study to be emulated if aspirations, design targets, look, finishes, costs, support, market and producability are to be achieved.

 

However, the private sector players who have gained considerable experience in engineering have limited manufacturing expertise of this scale. Acquiring necessary manufacturing skills to attract top foreign airlines' attention is only the first step and perhaps the easiest. Learning the fine art of integrating fuselage assemblies, engines, avionics and other components efficiently and cost effectively is a far bigger one. Even the experts can stumble in assembly — witness Boeing's 787 and Airbus's woes. But surmounting the third barrier — establishing a service culture in which airlines have confidence — takes time. There is constant innovation in services as also in design and materials. And yet challenges have to be undertaken.

 

It remains to be seen whether some of the leading players will involve themselves in NAL's RTA as they did in Embraer's programmes to establish a regional hold.

 

Ashok Baweja is senior technology adviser, HCL Technologies and ex-chairman, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited The views expressed by the author are personal.

 

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T tion c wo Indian scientists -- Ajay Anil Gurjar and Siddhartha A. Ladhake -- are wielding sophisticated mathematics to dissect and analyse the traditional medita- chanting sound `Om'. The `Om team' has published six tion chanting sound `Om'. The `Om team' has published six monographs in academic journals, which plumb certain acoustic subtlety of Om that they say is "the divine sound".

Om has many variations. In a study published in the Inter- national Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, the researchers explain: "It may be very fast, several cycles per second. Or it may be slower, several seconds for each cycling of [the] Om mantra. Or it might become extremely slow, with the mmmmmm sound continuing in the mind for much longer periods but still pulsing at that slow rate." The important technical fact is that no matter what form of Om one chants at whatever speed, there's always a basic `Omness' to it. Both Gurjar, principal at Amravati's Sipna College of Engineering and Technology, and Ladhake, an assistant professor in the same institution, specialise in electronic signal processing. They now sub-specialise in analysing the one very special signal. In the introductoy paper, Gurjar and Ladhake explain that, "Om is a spiritual mantra, out- standing to fetch peace and calm."

No one has explained the biophysi- cal processes that underlie the `fetch- ing of calm' and taking away of thoughts. Gurjar and Ladhake's time-fre- quency analysis is a tiny step along that hitherto little-taken branch of the path of enlightenment. They apply a mathematical tool called wavelet transforms to a digital recording of a person chanting `Om'. Even people with no mathematical back- ground can appreciate, on some level, one of the blue-on- white graphs included in the monograph. This graph, the authors say, "depicts the chanting of `Om' by a normal per- son after some days of chanting". The image looks like a pile of nearly identical, slightly lopsided pancakes held together with a skewer, the whole stack lying sideways on a table. To behold it is to see, if nothing else, repetition.

Much as people chant the sound `Om' over and over again, Gurjar and Ladhake repeat much of the same analy- sis in their other five studies, managing each time to chip away at some slightly different mathematico-acoustical fine point. The Guardian

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

RELEARNING THE LESSON

 

Teaching is one of the most idealised professions in the world. We've all seen movies where a teacher transforms a rowdy and self-absorbed bunch of kids into well-behaved and self-actualised creatures. We've also seen grim news stories about brutal disciplining methods and open exploitation and shaming that occur in the classroom. Now, in an attempt to bridge the gap and restore "dignity and integrity" to the job, a four-member panel of the National Council for Teacher Education has recommended a 23-point code for teachers across public and private schools. Like doctors and lawyers, educators will also be subject to a set of ethical do's and don'ts which will span contentious areas like private tuitions and corporal punishment. New teachers will be administered an oath to abide by, and schools will set up ethics committees to deal with violations, which could face serious consequences like revoking the licence to teach. Teachers are the first figure of public authority one ever encounters, and it makes sense not to let that authority be untrammelled. Their every action makes a strong impress, and their behaviour is a powerful determinant of a child's cast of mind. They can't afford to appear arbitrary or self-interested.As the Right to Education Act becomes reality, we will have to explore ways of making teachers accountable. Internal regulation is a good idea, but has often foundered in practice — the Bar Council of India and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India have been conspicuously tardy in identifying and punishing professional and ethical breaches, and the Medical Council of India was a whole sorry saga by itself. These bodies have also tended to distort higher education in their res-pective fields, often twisting the process of accreditation and recognition for personal profit. The ambit of the educator's code may not be that wide, but it covers important ground — for instance, not using the classroom as a pulpit for any personal belief or propaganda, not accepting any kind of gift from students, parents or educational publishers, and maintaining the confidentiality of student information. Whatever final shape the teachers' code takes, it is bound to be a step forward.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

AUTHORISED VERSION

 

What, precisely, does the Congress party stand for? This is a question that has been asked many, many times since Independence, and the Congress's metamorphosis into an electoral platform. The answers have been many — and have often been deliberately left ambiguous, aiding the party's claim to represent many, sometimes conflicting, streams of thought. Yet this inability and unwillingness to define itself has traditionally weakened its power to articulate a vision for its future, as well as paradoxically increasing the incidence of back-biting and indiscipline. Which is why the release, on its 125th anniversary, of an authorised history of the party is something that deserves the closest possible attention. The book is titled Congress and the Making of the Indian Nation, which is an indication of its central conceit, that any history of the Congress will be a reasonable history of modern India. But it will be read and re-read for smaller details: how does the panel of friendly historians, supervised by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, present Indira Gandhi's attitude to factionalism? What's their summary of the reconciliation, under P.V. Narasimha Rao, of liberal economic reform with fidelity to the language of old-style Nehruvian socialism? How are non-Nehru-Gandhi Congressmen, especially those who rose in revolt against the Family, dealt with? The answers are sometimes surprising: the first Congress split is dealt with dispassionately, Kamaraj and Sanjeeva Reddy even finding a place on the cover of the book (in a visual sequence that features Subhas Chandra Bose and Acharya Kripalani, also men who left the Nehru-Gandhi Congress, and which, fascinatingly, concludes with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh). Narasimha Rao is not on the cover, but his government's achievements are ungrudgingly highlighted. It's possible to believe that the Congress is willing to embrace a history of itself that accepts and highlights the contributions even of those seen, subsequently, as disloyal. But that belief shouldn't be taken too far. The very writing of the book, by historians close to the Congress's current leadership who are comfortably ensconced in positions of influence, reveals the incompleteness of inclusiveness. The beginnings of openness in authorised histories are all very well; but this is also a reminder that the party's stranglehold over the telling of modern India's history is far from weakening. A genuinely modern party would be willing to open archives, to let a thousand unauthorised histories bloom. And that would, in turn, force it to define what was "wrong" with such histories — and clarify what it, in the end, stands for.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

BLACKMAIL JUSTICE

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA 

 

The Gurjjar agitation in Rajasthan is a microcosm of the absurdities of the Indian state. The state has been, for years, wishing this crisis away. But the agitation keeps recurring with dependable regularity. The simple explanation for the crisis is as a predictable product of the fatal conjunction of identity politics and distributive justice that the Indian state has been promoting. This politics is premised on the fact that caste remains the salient mechanism through which concessions are extracted from the state. The ability of groups to extract such mechanisms no longer rests on claims of justice, but on the sheer flexing of muscle power. It is on this basis that Jats got reservations. And the only legitimate lesson for the Gurjjars to draw was that, for the state to take them seriously, they had to compensate for their lack of political power with a politics of violent disruption. Powerful groups like the Jats and the Meenas, who already have a stranglehold on state power, are loath to share it with other more marginalised groups. A raw assertion of community power is wearing the mask of justice, and violence is the result. But there are even deeper absurdities that we refuse to recognise. Just think of the various formulas that have been used to placate the Gurjjars. One was offering them five per cent reservation, which under existing law puts the total reservation in Rajasthan over 50 per cent. This was struck down by the high court. Rajasthan's politics is typically weak-kneed: it has not yet exhibited the brazenness of Tamil Nadu, by using the Ninth Schedule as a cover for exceeding 50 per cent. The Supreme Court, in turn, by not staying Tamil Nadu's reservation policy has raised the expectations on the ground that the 50 per cent reservation limit is about to be relaxed, opening new demands for reservation. This is a new frontier we will have to contend with.The story gets even more absurd. Rajasthan proposes a bizarre scheme that is neither fish nor fowl. Fourteen per cent reservation will be done on so-called economic criteria, ostensibly so that upper castes can also be brought under the banner of reservation. The rest of the quota would be divided amongst a number of caste communities based on backwardness, again muddying the objectives of reservation. Another possible proposal was to give Gurjjars a sub-quota within existing quotas, but Jats will not tolerate this for OBCs and Meenas for STs. So, finally, this community — that, ironically, at the turn of the century had campaigned for Kshatriya status — is given a one per cent quota; the one per cent being all the space left under the 50 per cent ceiling. This is not the arithmetic of justice. It is arbitrariness. Meanwhile, the broader political acceptance of the caste census has legitimised two ideas: that caste remains an identity in perpetuity, and that state jobs should be distributed along the caste arithmetic. The blunt truth is there is no solution to the Gurjjar problem within the current framework of reservations; and more cases like this will come up.But the story gets even more bizarre. The state government will not hesitate to promise anything, no matter how absurd and unimplementable. The Gurjjars in turn, with each successive negotiation, come to trust the state even less. The current agitation has been given new life by the fact that there is going to be a massive expansion in state recruitment in Rajasthan. This should be a wake-up call to those who had naïvely assumed that state jobs no longer matter for our politics. Even the momentum behind the Telangana movement comes, in part, from a desire to a greater share of state jobs. But the Gurjjars are finding that even the one per cent quota they have been promised is being variously interpreted and implemented. What is the unit of analysis within which this one per cent is to be implemented? The categories and sub-categories of jobs have been spliced up in ways that have sown suspicion amongst them about exactly what this one per cent would entail. Meanwhile, the larger political vacuum continues. At an ideological level, Rajasthan has had the misfortune of being caught between two forms of politics. The Vasundhara Raje regime was brazen and perceived to be corrupt; the Ashok Gehlot regime insipid and lacking any form of dynamism. Rajasthan has not had a new political discourse for decades. In the past its politics was sustained by leaders, both amongst Rajputs and Jats, whose sense of civility and confidence in their own political base allowed them to act as pacifiers of conflict with some degree of authority. The next generation has combined the narcissism of caste with leaders who cannot think beyond their noses. The result is a politics of monu-mental pettiness. But this moral vacuum is symptomatic of a larger national crisis. The central question for the coming decade is going to be this. Which states are going to be able to unleash a politics of aspiration? And which are going to remain trapped in a politics of raw community power? In Rajasthan, both the Congress and the BJP wilfully decimated the politics of aspiration. There is no greater proof of that than their systematic destruction of higher education in the state. They turned a potential knowledge hub into an exemplar of what happens when your public universities are in ruin. The cadre of young people coming out have nothing to look forward to but fight over the crumbs the state has to offer.The Gurjjar leadership, for their part, have perfected a political technique. If you blockade rail lines and roads and hold the country to ransom, the state has no response. Last time, such acts provoked firing, in which dozens were killed. This time the state seems to want to avoid confrontation. But the net result is simply that the Gurjjars have proved how easy it is to bring transport to a standstill. Their technique of causing disruption makes the Naxal strategy look convoluted and silly. It is frighteningly easy to disrupt the state. The second lesson they have learnt is that you have to have nuisance value to wrest concessions from the state. Last time round they managed to extract some concessions in the form of scholarships and largesse for Bainsla's extended kin. The community recognises that their leadership is as compromised as the state against which they are protesting. But it is the tragedy of modern Indian politics that the grammar of justice is now irrevocably tied to the grammar of anarchy and blackmail.

 

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

 

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

HIGH STAKES IN HYDERABAD

D K SINGH 

 

In February, when the Centre set up the Srikrishna Committee on the Telangana issue, it was seen as a politically expedient move, one that would give the Congress enough time to make up its mind on an issue that has been festering for decades. Eleven months on, as the committee braces up to submit a report that is unlikely to come out with a single-point recommendation or solution, the ruling dispensation in New Delhi appears to be as ambivalent as ever. There was thus no attempt to rein in fasting party legislators from the region, who had chosen demand, of their own government in Hyderabad, the withdrawal of cases against students involved in last year's agitation for a separate state. The Congress MP from Nizamabad, Madhu Goud Yaskhi, has said that Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy are "dead against Telangana". They have obviously adopted aggressive tactics, believing their party may not be ready to bite the bullet, regardless of the panel's recommendations. Shortly after the Congress's plenary session in Delhi last week, which was silent on Telangana, a senior Congress functionary and Union minister who has been dabbling in Andhra affairs of late called a party MP from the Telangana region for discussion. The minister asked: "Who will benefit? KCR (K. Chandrasekhar Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi)? What will we get?" He dismissed the MP's plea that KCR was ready to merge the TRS with the Congress. The MP then flew to Hyderabad and apprised KCR of the thinking in Delhi. The TRS chief offered to meet Sonia or Rahul Gandhi to give his word about a merger. Soon after, KCR declared publicly that he was ready to dissolve his party if a separate state of Telangana were to be created. The Congress did not take the bait. The ruling party is examining the political dividend, but the UPA government has some other concerns. A top government functionary recently told another MP from Telangana that granting statehood would mean a revival of Naxalism, and the Centre was not inclined to open a new front. These factors apart, what is also troubling the Congress leadership is the feedback from Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema that bifurcation would be tantamount to writing the party's epitaph there, especially given the way former Kadapa MP Jaganmohan Reddy has been gaining ground. Had the Congress sent an observer to Vijayawada during his 48-hour fast on December 21-22, they would have seen a "young man in a hurry", celebrating his 38th birthday by fasting in front of a huge gathering of slogan-shouting young men and women who were streaming in morning and evening. Young girls and women were seen crying, jostling to touch him or tie bands on his wrists, or have him bless their babies. The Congress leaders in Delhi believe that money played a key role in mobilising crowds for Jagan's Odarpu Yatra. He would have had to be a great producer-director-actor to stage-manage the Vijayawada show. The 300-km drive on National Highway 9 from Vijayawada to Hyderabad explains it all. Jagan has succeeded where the Congress has failed: in claiming the political legacy of the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. In trying to repudiate Jagan, the Congress also disowned YSR's legacy — thanks also to the fact that his successor K. Rosaiah suddenly woke up to the fiscal profligacy behind YSR's populist schemes, which he himself had sponsored as finance minister. Chances are, anyone you meet along NH 9 will be a beneficiary of one of YSR's schemes. Dayakar from Nandigaoma village, about 70 km from Vijayawada, will tell you how his father had met with an accident and he could get treatment worth Rs 60,000 "only because of Arogyasri (the health insurance scheme)"; K. Sudhakar, a 23-year-old MBA at Cherukumupalan village, will list friends who could not have attended professional colleges without YSR's subsidies. And there were so many of these schemes — from subsidised rice to free electricity. Just how the Congress is trying to counter the sympathy factor for Jagan was evident last Thursday when the CM declared to this newspaper, in response to a question about Jagan's Vijayawada show, that "I can attract bigger crowds. I also had over 50,000 people in my rally." Congressmen from the Telangana region have been trying to impress on the central leadership that the party would at least get 17 Lok Sabha seats in a new Telangana state — after the TRS's merger with the Congress — but if it is not created, the party has to start counting its losses. While the Congress has suddenly remembered the contribution of its former prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, one hopes it does not think that no decision on Telangana is also a decision. Only the Congress coming clean on this issue can end the atmosphere of uncertainty in the state.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

CLEAN THE CITY, USE THE GARBAGE

ISHER JUDGE AHLUWALIA 

 

 Garbage in open dumpsites on the streets of Indian cities is a common sight and a huge health hazard. The solution has not only to do with "solid waste management" but a lot to do with residents understanding the value of keeping public places clean and its link with health. Hygiene, like charity, begins at home.The Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) has done it. They have launched a dual campaign to raise public awareness of the menace as well as improve the coverage and quality of their service to collect solid waste from the households and manage its scientific disposal through public-private partnership. This along with building "pay and use" toilets in different parts of the city, has made Rajkot a clean city, earning it a place among the 10 cleanest cities in the country. The corporation received Rs 8.7 crore for solid waste management from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Of this, Rs 5 crore was used in the purchase of equipment and vehicles for collection and transportation of solid waste, eg, wheelbarrows, cycle rickshaws, bins, hydraulic dumpers and JCBs (excavators). Until three years ago, only 25 per cent of the households had their garbage collected from their homes by the municipal corporation. Today, close to 90 per cent are covered by hiring 1000 women from Sakhi Mandals (self-help groups) who are paid Rs 10 per household per month for a three-hour service (7 am to 10 am) of door-to-door collection using wheelbarrows with separate compartments for dry and wet waste.Dressed in their uniform with whistles hanging round their necks, the Sakhis looked every bit their part. They are free to sell any recyclable material from the waste to supplement their income, which adds up to about Rs 3,500 per month. The rest of the garbage is delivered by them in covered bins at specified locations in the city. The households are not being charged for the service to help them form the habit of segregating dry and wet waste before collection. The corporation set up two transfer stations in 2007 from where the waste is transported to the disposal site (22 kms away from the city) by two private contractors who were awarded the contract through competitive bids. This ended the practice of dumping at two open sites, each about 10 kms away from the city. The waste is taken from covered bins to the transfer stations using municipal staff and private contractors. No litter on streets/public places and no use of plastic bags were the other themes of the clean city campaign. RMC has gifted 6,000 dustbins to shopkeepers and 4,500 bins have been located on the main roads for spot collection. Mobile vans ply the city throughout the day for residual collection. Since April 2008, there is also a penalty for littering in public places and for using plastic bags, and also for not segregating garbage. This has yielded Rs 50 lakh to the municipal corporation, as of November 2010. Under a "one day one ward campaign", concerned officers from all departments of the corporation visit the same ward once every 23 days (the city has 23 wards) to review and fix any interdepartmental problem of coordination. The municipal commissioner, Dr Dinesh Brahmbhatt personally oversees the cleanliness drive in the city. On certain days of the month, school students are given the authority to determine the "dand" (penalty) for dirtying the city. In the vegetable market at the newly set up hawkers' zone, the customers were proudly showing off their colourful fabric bags and declaring how they were shunning plastic bags. The floor of the open market certainly looked very clean. The hawkers were taken off the streets and located in a four-walled open plot for a monthly payment of Rs 25 per thela (cart). The hawkers were relieved not to have to pay bribes to operate from the streets and pavements. Attached to the open market is a "pay and use" toilet for public use. Typically, the charge was 50 paise and it has now been raised to Re 1; the toilets are free for women and children. In all, 150 "pay and use" toilets have been constructed, of which nearly 90 are in slums, with special arrangements for children. The corporation is also building seven "high-end" toilets on a BOT basis, charging in the range of Rs 2 to Rs 5 for each use, and generating revenue through sale of advertisement rights. Processing and disposal of solid waste is being handled through a public-private partnership with Hanjer Biotech Energies Pvt. Ltd. Hanjer was awarded a Build-Operate-Own contract through a negotiated bid in 2003 to set up a waste processing plant, the first of its kind in the country. The corporation gave 30 acres of waste-land on lease at Re 1 per square metre to Hanjer in Nakarawadi village, 22 kms away from the city. It has agreed to deliver 300 metric tonnes of garbage to the plant every day and also committed to supply upto two lakh litres of water per day and electricity for the plant's operations. Construction started in June 2005 and the plant was commissioned in April 2006. Hanjer makes its money by processing the waste. The segregation at the plant into dry, waste and inert materials is largely automated. Daily, Hanjer produces about 40 tons of organic compost, 70 tonnes of green or slow burning coal and 2.5 tonnes of plastic lumps from the 300 metric tons of waste. The wet waste (20-30 per cent of the total) is used for making organic compost, which is sold in the domestic market as well as exported to Oman and Pakistan. The dry waste (30-40 per cent of the total) is used for making green coal, which is sold to nearby ceramic factories and also to the cement industry. Plastic lumps made from plastic waste are sold for manufacturing irrigation pipes. The recyclable waste (about 3 to 5 per cent of the total) is segregated and also sold. A scientific landfill site adjacent to the waste processing plant is under construction by Hanjer and is being paid for by the RMC through funds from JNNURM. The site is expected to be completed by March 2011. It includes development of bunds, layers of geo-textile and clay, and lechate drains.Only about 10-15 per cent of the total waste in the form of inert material will go into the landfill site. RMC shall pay Hanjer Rs 220 per tonne of inert waste going into the site, subject to a maximum of 20 per cent of the total waste, in line with guidelines under the Municipal Solid Waste Rules 2000. The corporation has paid an advance installment of Rs 30 lakh to Hanjer, which will be adjusted against the filling of the site with the inert material, once the site is functional beginning March, 2011.Indeed the system of waste disposal can be improved. If lease rental could be determined through open competitive bidding, then it should be possible to cover situations even with negative lease rental if the revenue stream does not cover the costs.Rajkot has shown that remaining clean is a win-win situation.

 

Ahluwalia is chair of Icrier and of the high-powered expert committee on urban infrastructure. Nair is a consultant to the committee. Views are personal, postcardsofchange@expressindia.com

 

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

ASSERTIVE AHMADINEJAD

C. RAJA MOHAN 

 

Assertive Ahmadinejad

If the much-anticipated internal change in Tehran did not take place in the wake of the disputed presidential elections in 2009, there is some churning underway in Iran, led by none other than its controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As he runs rings around Washington on the nuclear question, Ahmadinejad is also making bold political moves at home.

 

Earlier this month, Ahmadinejad summarily dismissed foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and appointed Ali Akbar Salehi, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Council, to the post. The dismissal of Mottaki, who has been Iran's chief diplomat for nearly five years, came when he was on an official trip to Senegal. Salehi, a nuclear scientist with a PhD from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been designated as the "acting foreign minister" and can't stay in office longer than three months without parliament's approval.

 

Observers of Iran see the inconclusive change of leadership at Tehran's foreign office as a reflection of the unending tussle within Iran's system of parallel governance between the elected presidency and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who heads the paramount clerical establishment.

 

In another move last week,

 

Ahmadinejad scrapped longstanding subsidies on food and fuel. Prices of petroleum products have jumped nearly five times since then. Ahmadinejad wants to phase out all subsidies in the next five years. Annual subsidies now amount to nearly $100 billion.

 

While the removal of subsidies is unpopular, Ahmadinejad has chosen to bite the bullet amidst the growing impact of international sanctions on the Iranian economy. US officials say Iran's imports of refined petroleum has gone down from 130,000 barrels a day to 19,000 barrels a day in October.

 

While sanctions have begun to hurt, there is nothing to suggest Tehran is ready to yield on the nuclear question. Far more important over the medium term might be the fragmenting political consensus within Tehran's ruling elite.

 

Idea of Iran

 

Iran or Islam? That is one of the issues animating Iranians at home and abroad these days. On its own, the proposition that Iran has an identity beyond Islam is not shocking from an academic point of view. After all, modern Iran is the legatee of the great Persian civilisation.

 

Nor can anyone ignore the extraordinary contributions of Persia to the world long before it embraced Islam. If Iran's civilisational heritage is 2500 years old, the current Islamic Republic is barely 30 years old. The question, however, generates much political heat when the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran is seen as promoting a civilisational identity in opposition to the theocratic establishment. At the head of the new "Iran school" is Efsandiar Rahim Mashaei, who is the main political adviser to Ahmadinejad. He is also personally close to Ahmadinejad. Mashaei's daughter is married to Ahmadinejad's son. Mashaei was initially appointed as vice president by Ahmadinejad. After strong protests, Ahmadinejad made him the "cabinet director". The change in designation has not seen any reduction of Mashaei's influence on Ahmadinejad.

 

Speaking in Tehran a few months ago to hundreds of specially invited Iranian expatriates (like the Indian "Pravasi Divas") last August, Mashaei gave a speech that extolled the virtues of the Persian civilisation rather than the merits of the Islamic republic. He urged the invitees to go back to their exiled homes and preach the "Iranian message".

 

"Iran needs to remove the mullahs from power once for all," Mashaei has been quoted as saying elsewhere,

"and return to a great civilisation without the Arab-style clerics who have tainted and destroyed the country for the past 31 years."

 

Mashaei also talked about the importance of separation between "din" (religion) and "dowla" (state) contradicting the principle "Velayat-e-Faqih", or the rule of the clerics, the very ideological foundation of the current regime that has governed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

 

Creation myths

 

Ahmadinejad is also trying to revive the memory of Cyrus the Great, who founded the Persian empire in the sixth century BC. The Iranian president directed the negotiations with the British Museum to bring on a temporary basis the "Cyrus Cylinder", which lays out the great emperor's rules of just governance.

 

In a ceremony at the unveiling of the Cylinder in Tehran last

 

September, Ahmadinejad organised a professional performance of events from Cyrus's life. Copies of Cyrus's declaration are

 

being widely distributed by the government.

 

As Ahmadinejad mobilises Persian nationalism, Supreme Leader Khamenei is not keeping quiet. In a recent speech at a conference convened to discuss the "Iran-Islam" paradigm, Khamenei declared that "use of the two concepts of 'Islamic' and 'Iranian' does not imply a rejection of the achievements and rightful experiences of either concept".

 

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

WEAR A SWEATER, IT'S GLOBAL WARMING

 

The earth continues to get warmer, yet it's feeling a lot colder outside. Over the past few weeks, subzero temperatures in Poland claimed 66 lives; snow arrived in Seattle well before the winter solstice, and fell heavily enough in Minneapolis to make the roof of the Metrodome stadium collapse; and last week blizzards closed Europe's busiest airports in London and Frankfurt for days, stranding holiday travellers.

 

All of this cold was met with perfect comic timing by the release of a World Meteorological Organisation report showing that 2010 will probably be among the three warmest years on record, and 2001 through 2010 the warmest decade on record.

 

How can we reconcile this? The not-so-obvious short answer is that the overall warming of the atmosphere is actually creating cold-weather extremes. Last winter, too, was exceptionally snowy and cold across the eastern US and Eurasia, as were seven of the previous nine winters. For a more detailed explanation, we must turn our attention to the snow in Siberia.

 

Annual cycles like El Niño-Southern Oscillation, solar variability and global ocean currents cannot account for recent winter cooling. And though it is well documented that the earth's frozen areas are in retreat, evidence of thinning Arctic sea ice does not explain why the world's major cities are having colder winters.

 

But one phenomenon that may be significant is the way in which seasonal snow cover has continued to increase even as other frozen areas are shrinking. In the past two decades, snow cover has expanded across the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Siberia, just north of a series of exceptionally high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, the Tien Shan and the Altai.

 

The high topography of Asia influences the atmosphere in profound ways. The jet stream, a river of fast-flowing air five to seven miles above sea level, bends around Asia's mountains in a wavelike pattern, much as water in a stream flows around a rock or boulder. The energy from these atmospheric waves, like the energy from a sound wave, propagates both horizontally and vertically.

 

As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two-and-a-half decades, more moisture has become available to fall as snow. So the snow cover across Siberia in the fall has steadily increased.

 

The sun's energy reflects off the bright white snow and escapes back out to space. As a result, the temperature cools. When snow cover is more abundant in Siberia, it creates an unusually large dome of cold air next to the mountains, and this amplifies the standing waves in the atmosphere, just as a bigger rock in a stream increases the size of the waves of water flowing by.

 

The increased wave energy in the air spreads both horizontally, around the Northern Hemisphere, and vertically, up into the stratosphere and down toward the earth's surface. In response, the jet stream, instead of flowing predominantly west to east as usual, meanders more north and south. In winter, this change in flow sends warm air north from the subtropical oceans into Alaska and Greenland, but it also pushes cold air south from the Arctic on the east side of the Rockies. Meanwhile, across Eurasia, cold air from Siberia spills south into east Asia and even southwestward into Europe.

 

That is why the eastern United States, northern Europe and east Asia have experienced extraordinarily snowy and cold winters since the turn of this century. Most forecasts have failed to predict these colder winters, however, because the primary drivers in their models are the oceans, which have been warming even as winters have grown chillier. It's all a snow job by nature. The reality is, we're freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

SHIELDING POWER

MANOJ C G 

 

 Shielding power

 

An article in the CPI's New Age discusses bureaucratic corruption, which it says has taken deep roots with the tacit support of the powerful political class. In this context, it notes that the delay in sanction of permission to prosecute officials is proving to be a major hurdle.There are more than 157 corrupt bureaucrats against whom various government departments have delayed action by not giving sanctions. The CBI, it notes, needs the prior permission of the Centre to lodge even an FIR against officials above the level of a joint secretary. After the probe, the CBI has to seek prosecution sanction from the Union government.

 

It says the CVC received 5,783 complaints of corruption in 330 government institutions but action was taken against 2,429 officials only. "The government organisations simply ignored the advice of CVC to penalise the corrupt... Major penalties like dismissal, removal and compulsory retirement from service were taken only in selective cases." Not even a single corrupt officer out of 331 in the finance ministry — headed by Pranab Mukherjee — was punished. "In the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the Central Board of Excise and Customs, 422 corrupt babus were let off."

 

Rudderless Congress

 

As the JPC-PAC debate continued, the lead editorial in the CPM's People's Democracy says there is no sign of realisation within the Congress that it has become steeped in corruption due to the nexus of big business and government that has developed under its dispensation.

 

It says "the Congress leadership sees nothing wrong in having its ministers in government promoting the interests of big corporates and getting favours in return" and says that the refusal to have a JPC inquiry into the 2G spectrum scandal stands out as an example of the Congress's refusal to come to terms with the rot that has set in the higher echelons of the government. It hits back at the Congress for allegations of corruption in Left-ruled states: "The Congress party knows very well that not a single minister in the Left-led governments is facing a corruption charge."

 

Conviction and doubt

 

On Binayak Sen's conviction, CPI(ML) weekly ML Update says the Raipur sessions court disregarded the paucity of evidence, the glaring holes, contradictions and unmistakable signs of planted evidence in the prosecution's case, and delivered a political verdict. "However, this verdict itself... has landed itself in the people's court. In particular, the Chhattisgarh police exposed itself to public ridicule for its attempts to link Sen's wife Ilina Sen with terrorism based on her email to the well-known Indian Social Institute of Delhi, which the prosecution mistook for Pakistan's (ISI)," it says.

 

It notes that the Chhattisgarh police's testimony in the sessions court contradicted its earlier statement in the Supreme Court, another crucial fact which the verdict ignored. With Sen's conviction, it appears as if concocted evidence and farcical trials, like fake encounters, are becoming the Indian state's weapons of mass intimidation. But the travesty of justice in Sen's case, however inadvertently, added fuel to the fire of protest and all-out rejection of the state's policy of silencing and criminalising dissent, it notes.

 

Referring to Ratan Tata's statement that if the Radia tapes were made public, it would make India a "banana republic" where people go to jail without evidence, it says in reality, the verdict indicated that India is turning into a "banana republic for the likes of Sen who expose and challenge corporate loot and state repression, while the governments protect the right of Tatas and Ambanis to loot in privacy."

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 NITISH SCORES AGAIN

 

The Bihar government's move to mandate quality accreditation for all primary and secondary government schools and those schools receiving aid from the government by tying up with the Quality Council of India will help improve the quality of education in the state. The earlier steps to improve access to education, through incentives like free bicycles to girl students passing the eighth standard, have helped reduce dropout rates of girls from 18% in 2006 to just 6% in 2009. Enrolment has also improved, with the share of students receiving mid-day meals in schools now touching 49%, as indicated in the most recent education survey of the NSSO (for 2007-08). This is marginally higher than the 43% students who received meals at the all-India level. The reach of the new quality improvement initiative is quite extensive as government-run schools account for 91% of the primary schools, 92% of the middle schools and 90% of the secondary and high schools. The shift in focus to the quality of education is well overdue as the NSSO report shows that Bihar has the necessary basic infrastructure with about 98% of the urban and rural populations having a primary school within a distance of 2 km. The government has also ensured that 87% of the primary school students in the state get free education as compared to just 71.2% at the all-India level. Only in the case of secondary schools in the rural areas is Bihar still disadvantaged, with almost half the students having to travel a distance of 2-5 km to reach the school as compared to the 36% share at the all-India level.

 

The gradual improvement in the quality of education in the state is evident from the latest ACER report for 2009, which shows that although the share of rural children who can recognise numbers in the lower classes is less than the national average, it is better than that of neighbouring UP. Indeed, the share of children in Bihar who can do subtraction in standard three and four and division in standard five are even better than the national average. However, the same cannot be said of reading skills where the Bihar numbers still lag the national average. The major problem in school education identified in the NSSO survey is the poor attendance ratios, of 74% in the classes I-VII in Bihar as against 96% in Himachal Pradesh and over 80% in all other states. Improving quality of education will only further enhance the human resource potential and further accelerate growth rates in Bihar.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 INSURING SUCCESS

 

That the communication satellite GSLV-5P should fail—this is the second in six months—is undoubtedly a setback to India's indigenous space programme as well as to the areas the satellite was to be utilised for, in telemedicine, telecom, weather services and TV. It should, however, be kept in mind that such failures are pretty routine in this business, and have to be treated as a learning experience—indeed, India's satellite programme is reckoned to be one of the lowest-cost in the world. What is unacceptable, however, is the fact that the satellite was not insured. While confirming this to FE, the head of PSU insurance firm New India Assurance pointed out that the government refused to buy any insurance cover as it thought the success ratio of the indigenous space programme was very high! That's like not buying house insurance just because there hasn't been a burglary or a fire in years, or discontinuing medical insurance just because you haven't been hospitalised in the last 20 years. Paradoxically, the insurance chief argued the crash was good news from his point of view as it would now be possible to get the government to buy accident cover. Had an insurance cover of this sort not been taken in a private organisation, it's safe to say the person in charge would have been fired immediately.

 

Instead of opposing buying of insurance for the satellite programme, the government should be trying to use more instruments like insurance to reduce its risk expenditure, and not just in this area. So, for instance, you'd think the government would be working with various insurance companies, both PSU as well as private, to develop models for crop insurance—while it is obviously the government's job to provide physical relief in the event of calamities like floods and droughts, the availability of insurance funds for the affected would be a great help. There have been enough pilots done, so it is curious there has been no large-scale rollout so far. Nor is this restricted to insurance. Using financial instruments like futures and options to supplement the procurement programme, for instance, will lower costs dramatically and can even help moderate price spikes in a far more efficient manner than the current procurement-cum-ration shop system does. Since the finance ministry has to foot the bill for all of this, perhaps it needs to take a leadership role in this one.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

 DIAL-A-MINISTER

MK VENU

 

Here is one great paradox. The telecom sector has been India's biggest success story and yet it has been the most controversial and corruption-ridden. Telecom policy making has proved to be a graveyard for ministers, both honest and not so honest. The most upright telecom minister in the NDA regime, Jagmohan, barely survived more than a year and a half.

 

Jagmohan fell foul of all telecom players when he had insisted that the migration from a purely licence fee regime to a revenue sharing one could not be done as telecom operators had a contractual obligation to pay up the amounts they had bid before acquiring licences. Jagmohan had made a correct legal argument. The telecom operators dubbed Jagmohan anti-industry and he was gone in the next Cabinet reshuffle. The NDA regime saw six telecom ministers in five years—Buta Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Jagmohan, Ram Vilas Paswan, Pramod Mahajan and Arun Shourie. Each one was surrounded by one controversy or the other.

 

Kapil Sibal is today trying to examine the notional losses caused by policy actions in the telecom sector over the past decade. This larger exercise is probably aimed at proving that there is really no point calculating notional losses in this sector. To understand this in a wider perspective, one needs to go back to the first principles of what exactly does a policy seek to achieve.

 

Theoretically, any sectoral policy using national resource seeks to achieve the right balance between creating consumer surplus, producer surplus and government revenues. Simply put, the producer must get enough profits to want to remain in business, the consumer must get enough so that the market expands and the government gains by auctioning resources and receiving sundry tax revenues. Telecom minister A Raja got into trouble because he did not auction resources, in the name of creating greater consumer surplus. He argued that he was transferring potential government revenues to the consumer through a policy instrument. That, however, did not happen. He actually ended up creating undue rents for the producer as some businesses appropriated the surplus that was meant to go to the consumer.

 

In some ways, Kapil Sibal's exercise of going back to the origins of the New Telecom Policy in 1999 is an interesting one. With the benefit of hindsight, one can possibly conclude that telecom operators completely misread the Indian market and made a huge miscalculation when they desperately sought migration to a revenue-sharing regime from one in which they had committed a certain licence fee to be paid over 10 years for mobile phones and 15 years for landlines.

 

The telecom operators were desperate to move to revenue-sharing with the government because it would be easy on their cash flows. You share revenue only when you have it, right? But licence fee had to be paid on an annual basis, whether you had revenues or not. This was the guiding logic for the telecom operators to seek a migration from licence fees committed via auctions to a revenue-sharing arrangement with the government in 1999. Although there was a massive hue and cry at that time over the government tweaking its policies to suit business interests and sacrificing its own revenues, the outcome of the revenue-sharing arrangement was just the opposite. Though unintended, telecom operators have actually ended up paying the government far more because of unexpectedly high revenues accruing from the veritable explosion of the mobile market.

 

Kapil Sibal has done a rough calculation that the government lost around Rs 1,43,000 crore by allowing operators to shift from their fixed commitments to revenue-share ones in 1999. However, after they shifted to a revenue sharing arrangement, the operators have ended up paying more than that amount, say analysts.

 

Indeed, if the telecom operators had stuck to the licence fee regime in 1999 and had somehow managed their temporary cash flow problem for about three to four years, they would have been sitting on bigger profits today! Businesses totally misread the market as no one even remotely anticipated the mobile market expansion in the way it eventually happened.

 

The mobile subscriber market grew exponentially from about 4 million in 2001 to 40 million in 2004 to 400

million in 2009. The telecom operators who had committed licence fee in the late 1990s had projected teledensity to reach merely 15% of the population by 2010! Actually penetration has been more than 50% of the population.

 

So the government, even if unintendedly, gained by agreeing to shift to a revenue-sharing arrangement with the telecom operators in 1999. Sibal is probably harping on the notional losses caused by the migration to revenue sharing in 1999 to prove a different point. Being an astute lawyer that he is, the minister will try to prove that just as the losses were purely notional in 1999, so it is today as the CAG has calculated. He may even try to work out some revenue-sharing arrangement to make up for the notional losses, as had happened in 1999. He may be justified in doing that, but it should not at all take away from the alleged criminality involved in many of Raja's highly manipulative policy actions. Of course, those are separate issues that the CBI is looking at under the Supreme Court's close supervision.

 

Sibal, however, will do well to make this entire exercise non-partisan. He will be treading on dicey ground if he refers to the policy mess during the NDA regime. For the mother of all controversies was created by the Congress's telecom minister Sukh Ram, who gave away eight licences in four metros, the most juicy markets, totally free in 1993. Later Sukh Ram also changed policy post-bidding to favour HFCL, which had placed bids worth Rs 85,000 crore. He gave them a way out by imposing a cap on the amount bid, a condition that did not exist when the tenders were called. In retrospect, HFCL may even have run a successful business even by paying a licence fee Rs 85,000 crore over 15 years. The crux of the matter is no one read correctly the unfolding of the great Indian telecom story!

 

—mk.venu@expressindia.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

FORGET ONIONS, THINK BRINJALS

NISTULA HEBBAR

 

Onions have, over the years, acquired a fearsome reputation as not only being the barometer of power politics but also as an indicator of just how bad things are as far as food inflation goes. Every few years, prices of onions go up irrationally, and doomsday theorists cry the death knell for the government of the day. The onion is, after all, the poor man's condiment of choice and convenience, and if he cannot have it with his dry chapati, what use is any government?

 

The recent reported spike in vegetable prices has again focused specifically on onions, and with the UPA government shaky after a spate of corruption scandals, this was the last layer of skin off the government's veneer of competence.

 

A closer look at the competitive prices of vegetables in the November-December period this year and in the same period last year, however, will show that onion prices are, in fact, not the main drivers of this spike in prices. That distinction apparently belongs to brinjal. In fact, onion prices showed more of a spike between mid-November and December 2009 (around 30%) than this year for the same period (around 14%). Brinjal, on the other hand, was down 8% last year and showed an astounding 66% spike this year. Therefore, onion's contribution to the total increase in food prices is 27%, compared to brinjal's at 51%, potato's at 11%, cauliflower's at 6% and tomato, the other bogey being raised, shows a negative growth at -9% (figures of mandi prices in various states got from the Planning Commission).

 

What's more astounding is that there is a huge variation in the prices of brinjal across the country. In states like Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, where it forms an important part of the cuisine, it is priced at Rs 25 to Rs 35 per kg at wholesale rates. While in states like Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and even Delhi, it varies between Rs 8 and Rs 16 per kg. So, specifically then, high demand areas are driving prices high. The cause for this spike in prices cannot be attributed to the vagaries of the weather alone.

 

There are always good years and bad years in agriculture. What this points to is the real need for overhauling the system through which fruits and vegetables in the country are moved, stored and traded. While the National Horticulture Mission has done a good job in the areas of increasing yield and quality of fruits and vegetables, what has not been done is the setting up of a system of procurement, transport and storage. Trade in fruits and vegetables are still in the hands of middlemen, and goods are moved through traditional channels, speculation and seasonal and regional demands varying prices throughout.

 

A cold storage chain would eliminate some seasonal variations in yield, while a fixed procurement by organised modern retail outlets will not only provide security of business to storage owners but also keep prices down and ensure fair remuneration to farmers. The spectre of rotting vegetables in one part of the country while another pays for the same in gold equivalents could well become a thing of the past.

 

Organised modern retail will be catalytic to a more stable price regime. For those afraid that this would mean the entry of big foreign retailers like Walmart, there are enough domestic players who can fill the breach, without the bogey of foreign players taking over Indian farms and invading Indian kitchens being raised.

 

Of course, what it would do is eliminate the periodic fun of relating the fall of governments to the price of onions. But, as they say about politics, if isn't onions, something else will drive you to tears.

 

—nistula.hebbar@expressindia.com

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EAVESDROPPER

Communication gap

There's a huge communication gap at the telecom ministry, between minister Kapil Sibal and secretary R Chandrasekhar. The minister told NDTV that the new telecom policy in 1999 caused a loss of Rs 1,43,000 crore. NTP 1999 allowed firms who had bid to pay fixed amounts of licence fees each year (regardless of whether they had any subscribers or not) to move to a revenue-sharing agreement where they paid the government a fixed share of what they earned each year. When asked to explain how Sibal arrived at the figure, the secretary said he wasn't aware the minister had made such a statement, much less how he had arrived at the calculation.

 

United in spirit

Nizamabad MP Madhu Goud Yaskhi is pro-Telangana and was supposed to join in a hunger strike. The poor Congress MP, sadly, got stuck at the New York airport for 14 hours and had to content himself with giving phonos from the airport there. Still, he managed to get on the front pages despite not being on a hunger strike. It's the thought that counts, we suppose.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

NAME AND SHAME

 

Ever since the paid news controversy hit the stands following the Maharashtra assembly elections, followed by the the journalistic profession has been under tremendous pressure. After all, if newspapers were masquerading advertisements as news, or if top journalists didn't have a problem crossing the lakshman rekha, how were people to view the profession? None of this was new, in the sense it has been happening for a long time, but the scale was frightening. Naturally enough, journalists looked to bodies like the Press Council of India and the Editors Guild. The PCI, in turn, set up a sub-committee to investigate the matter and when the sub-committee's report gave several instances of newspapers publishing paid news, it simply blanked out the names in the final report! It said the original report could remain on record as the reference document, but it never even attached it to the final report. Which is why, when the PCI said Section 15(4) of the Press Council Act should be amended to make its directions binding, no one took it seriously.

 

The Editors Guild, according to a news report, seems to have taken a different line, not quite name-and-shame, but a subtle variant of it—keep in mind the price paid by some journalists who figure in the Radia tapes. It appears the Guild had sent out pledges to 200 editors asking them to undertake they would not publish paid news—around two dozen have accepted this, and these names will be published on its Website. It's a start.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

CONFLICTING INTERESTS

 

That the Reserve Bank of India's discussion paper on licensing of new private banks has invited widely divergent comments is not surprising. The document, which stopped short of laying down guidelines, only indicated possible approaches and spelt out the pros and cons of each of them, after reviewing the domestic and international experience. The six key issues that have elicited good response are: minimum capital requirement; promoters' contribution; cap on promoters' shareholding; foreign shareholding; role for industrial houses and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs); and business models for the new banks. The feedback and suggestions have varied, depending on the interests they represented. For instance, industry associations and trade have favoured a higher initial capital of Rs.1,000 crore, which could be raised further over a period. Only with a large capital can the new banks invest in technology, goes their argument. The NBFCs and the microfinance institutions, on the other hand, want a lower level of capital so that more banks can be licensed in a short period.

 

More than every other issue, it is the possible role of industrial houses in promoting new banks that has elicited sharply contrasting responses. Banks have opposed the idea, citing, among others reasons, the less-than stellar record of big business in managing banks, a point that prompted nationalisation in 1969. In many countries, combining banking and commerce has not been a happy experience. The ownership structure of large industrial groups may open up opportunities for regulatory arbitrage. Large conglomerates will exacerbate the concentration of economic power and political influence. Some others have suggested granting licences to industrial groups but with safeguards, ranging from tight regulation to barring the promoters from having business relationship with the entities promoted by them. The feedback on the role of NBFCs shows less of discordance. One section would require the NBFCs to wind down activities that overlap with those of banks. This would eliminate the scope of regulatory arbitrage that might accrue to the lightly regulated NBFCs. Finally, many respondents who favour the entry of new banks would like them to be given general banking licences and not restricted to specific geographical area or function such as financial inclusion. Ten months after the Finance Minister mooted the idea, the subject of licensing new banks seems to be as divisive as ever, and it might take some time for specific proposals to crystallise.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

BEHIND THE NEW GOLD RUSH

IS THE NEXT PERFECT BUBBLE BUILDING UP AROUND THE YELLOW METAL?

T. BALAKRISHNAN

 

The price of gold has gone up from $256 an ounce in 2001 to $1,424. Meanwhile, price levels have struggled or crashed with respect to almost all other asset classes. Central banks have slashed interest rates. Yet, gold prices, it has been predicted, may go up and up. The many reasons for this renewed love are convincing. Interestingly, not long ago pundits had predicted the end of gold as the world's default asset class and were clubbing it with commodities. It appears that the yellow metal is making a comeback to reassert the pre-eminence it has enjoyed for 5,000 years of history.

 

Its supply is falling. No new mines have been discovered. The existing ones are getting exhausted, and miners are digging as deep as 5 km. Gold content in ore has come down from almost 12 gm a tonne to 2 gm. And it costs more and more to take that out.

 

Environmental concerns have also contributed to mine-owners' problems. The wages of miners are going up; so is the cost of providing them safety and security.

 

Emerging economies such as China and India are accumulating gold in order to reduce their dependence on the dollar. While the U.S. has a reserve of 9,200 tonnes of gold, China has 1,054 tonnes and India 565 tonnes. No wonder, as emerging economic superpowers China and India want to add to their reserves. Industrial use of gold is on the rise the world over. With the U.S. economy still drifting with the threat of the dollar losing its undisputed position of reserve currency, the rush to gold is increasing. The zero-interest regime in the U.S. is driving more private individuals to go for gold.

 

Added to all this is the rekindled investor-preference for gold. Money is moving away from mutual funds and equities and the once fashionable and often discredited hedge funds are also getting into gold. Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are channelling ever more funds to gold. Some pension funds are increasing the proportion of gold in their basket of assets. Given all this, gold can go nowhere but up. That is the consensus.

 

Everyone seems to be joining the new gold rush. But is everything well with gold? Or is it a bubble building up?

 

Consider the conventional wisdom. Money generally gets distributed, though not in any fixed proportion, among assets such as real estate, stocks, cash, government securities, gold, commodities, and in new investments in factories and machinery. There is no state of equilibrium in a global economy. Money gets transferred across geographical boundaries and asset classes based on anticipated gains. As long as the flow is reasonable and generally in line with the increase in returns, this works well. But when everyone rushes to the same destination, we are looking for trouble. Excess demand, though often artificial, creates excess supply, as in the case of real estate. Excess supply leads to price crashes. But in the case of gold, the argument is that excess demand cannot create excess supply as the total world supply is limited. People have a short memory and the Black Septembers, dot-com busts, currency crashes and real estate collapses are forgotten. Everyone, as usual, rushes to the next mass destination, creating another bubble. In all these collapses and crashes, those who are early to get in and get out, make big money — and the last ones are left holding the baby.

 

Is something similar happening in gold? The general consensus is 'no.' Gold is different. It has never let anyone down in 5,000 years. It is indestructible. Its supply is limited. But this time it is different. Is it really so? Gold has also gone up and down in the past. It was $424 an ounce in 1990 before crashing to $255 in 2001. Still, it moves only within a range and huge fluctuations are not possible in gold, argue some people. Actually, gold gave much better returns in the 1980s, only to stagnate and lose those gains in the 1990s.

 

What can spoil the party? U.S. interest rates? Can the U.S. hold on forever to a near-zero per cent interest regime as Japan has done for almost two decades? Can the U.S. avoid the inflationary pressures created by all those green notes printed in the last few years and the money blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is gold the permanent safe bet, as we are led to believe?

 

In real estate, it was Japan's turn first. Throughout the 1980s, prices kept climbing on the back of a booming economy and stock market. The arguments were sound. Japan is short of land. Nobody makes land anymore! The Japanese need bigger buildings. The economy is booming and will continue to do so. Well, naturally the prices kept going up — till the crash occurred. That happened in the early-1990s, and prices are still half of what they were during the boom.

 

The story was slightly different in South-East Asia in the late-1990s, but the outcome was not. We heard it again in 2008. Housing is the backbone of society. The U.S. is made up of house-owning families. The U.S. is not Japan. Well, there are millions of houses looking for new owners in the U.S. even now.

 

It was different in Dubai. Dubai was not building for locals and expatriates alone. It was not for Emiratis alone, and not just for Arabia. It was for the whole world. Dubai cannot crash! Well, it did, and very badly.

 

What about the stock market? Nikkei was almost 40,000 in 1989. It is around 10,000 in 2010. The Dow Jones was already 10,000 in 1999 and the brokers were predicting it would go to 40,000. What happened to all the pension funds, trust money, 401k savings that went into the stock market at their peak in the U.S.?

 

We are in 2010, and the Dow is still around 10,000. Oil was $40 a barrel in 1973 before crashing to $13. It went up to $140 and was speculating to go to $200 before someone punched the barrel. It is still around $90.

 

A crash of gold prices could be the ultimate crash, nothing like we have seen. No one has managed to discredit the yellow metal in 5,000 years. But it appears that for the first time in history the ETFs, the hedge funds and the governments are about to do the undoable.

 

The fact that it has not already happened is no guarantee that it will not happen. Look at all the easy money coming into gold. All those who have shifted money from real estate, mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds and stocks are pouring it into gold. Gold ETFs are the fastest growing investment vehicles today. This is all real quick money, but can evaporate at the click of a key. Of course, governments such as China and India are also betting on gold and increasing their reserves. But then, whoever said governments can make no mistakes?

 

The intrinsic value of gold has not gone up from $255 to $1,424 in 10 years. Gold is not consumed heavily like oil or grain. Industrial use of gold is limited. Gold is the most recycled commodity. Of the annual production of 2,500 tonnes, about 50 per cent goes to make jewellery and it is almost entirely recycled. The rest goes to industrial and other uses, and even here the recycling rate is high. In other words, all that demand is artificial and can be deflated in no time. There is no need to have excess supply to lead to a price crash, unlike other products. The sheer fact that gold is only a hedge instrument and does not serve any practical use by itself, will negate the 'there-is-no-new-supply' theory. Someone somewhere is watching for the perfect moment to disgorge the hoard, to create sudden panic and buy up following a crash. We have heard the script before.

 

There is no sign that a crash is going to come tomorrow, or for that matter next year or the year after. It may still go up for two or five or even 10 years. But crash it will, if we are to go by the economic history of boom and bust. And the higher it goes and the longer it stays there, the more painful the crash is going to be, especially for India.

 

Indians sit on an estimated 18,000 tonnes. India has always had the largest gold reserve with individuals. Imagine what will happen to millions of Indians if gold were to crash. A crash of gold will be the crash of the Indian economy.

 

That should make us more responsible. That makes it imperative for our economists to track gold movement. That makes it important for our financial wizards to prevent a bubble in gold. That should force us to act before it happens.

 

Never in history have we had so much idle money chasing so little gold. Gold is losing its respect as the default and fail-safe asset class and becoming a speculative instrument. Mass hysteria is being built up. This shift of gold from being an item of passive wealth to an instrument of speculation is dangerous. It could be the beginning of the end of the faith in the last bastion of indestructible wealth. Gold is being talked up by crafty speculators and unsuspecting governments. Even Newsweek is predicting that gold could go up to $10,000. And these predictions are being made by those sitting on gold worth billions of dollars bought at yesterday's prices.

 

A Federal Reserve Chairman can bring calm to a tumultuous dollar. He could even control the irrational exuberance of the Dow Jones. A Chairman of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries can do the same for oil. Who can do that for gold? Shouldn't someone be worrying, especially in India?

 

(T. Balakrishnan is Additional Chief Secretary to the Government of Kerala. The views expressed here are his personal ones.)

 

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

THE GREAT LAND GRAB IN MALI

FOREIGN FIRMS ARE SNAPPING UP ALL THE BEST FERTILE LAND IN THIS WEST AFRICAN COUNTRY. BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR LOCAL FARMERS?

MADELEINE BUNTING

 

A new complex of government offices on the banks of the river Niger in Bamako, Mali, is like a wedding cake; pale pink, frosted with decorative detail, its plate glass winking in the sun. It's called the Administrative City and it was financed by the Libyan-backed Malibya development company. It is a powerful symbol of North African oil money and what it has to offer one of the poorest countries in the world.

 

Several hundred kilometres downstream there is more evidence of the petromillions pouring into Mali. In the dusty flat marshlands of Macina in the Segou region, enormous green metal sluice gates tower over a massive new canal built by Malibya. Forty kilometres long and 30 metres wide, it is one of the biggest canals in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Controversial and secretive

 

The Chinese contractors have just finished building it and it is eerily quiet, with only the slap of water against the new concrete walls and the chatter of occasional groups of schoolchildren heading home. The canal is destined to irrigate a vast area of land — 1,00,000 hectares in total — in one of the most controversial and secretive land deals in Africa, a continent that has become a target for a greedy and hungry world.

 

In the last six years, there has been a dramatic increase in foreign investment in land deals across Africa and the Malibya deal — a 50-year lease agreed by the Malian and Libyan Presidents — has become totemic of the fear that this new phenomenon of land grabbing will deprive subsistence farmers of their land and their food.

 

Mali is one of the countries most affected by the scramble for land, and Segou, the country's rice basket, is at the eye of the storm, with buyers from Senegal, South Africa, and Asia, as well as domestic companies snapping up leases on thousands of hectares. This is land already intensively used in a country with one of the highest population growth rates in the world and where 80 per cent of the people depend on farming for their livelihood.

 

As you stand by the sluice gates with the chalky brown water churning below, or you drive for the best part of an hour on the new road running alongside the vast canal, you get a sense of the dramatic scale and huge cost — estimated at $54.7m (£34.6m) — of the project.

 

Big ambitions are about to be unleashed on this land of small, mud walled villages, rice fields and grazing herds of cattle. Some villagers are hopeful that the new scheme will bring much needed irrigation and jobs to these desperately poor communities. Malibya has promoted its scheme as part of a bid to raise agricultural yields and improve food security in a country where many often go hungry.

 

"I'm not reassured by the promises," says Abduallai Kee, a member of the local farmers' union. "They tell the villagers that they will give compensation for land and that they will give jobs, but this is just to give villagers a feeling of having been 'consulted'" He has seen the maps of how the land will be parcelled out for mechanised rice production and fears that the dispossessed will have no choice but to work as day labourers.

 

Impact assessment unknown

No one knows if there has been an environmental impact assessment or what attempt has been made to map how many people are living on this land. Already, the canal has blocked several important cattle routes. What adds to the sense of insecurity is that Mali has almost no private land titles and land is owned ultimately by the state. Traditionally, this has been interpreted with respect for customary land use — both for grazing and agriculture. But it is far from clear that the rights of those currently living on the land will be protected. Already, more than 150 families have been forced off the land to make way for the canal, and campaigners worry that this is only the start.

 

Says Ibrahim Coulibaly, president of the Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes, which has been organising protests, "Even if the land does belong to the government, the people living on it still have rights, and we will do everything to fight against this injustice." The danger is that it will exacerbate food insecurity in a country where malnutrition is widespread and food production is already seriously threatened by climate change, argues Mark Butler, the country representative for the U.K. aid agency Tearfund.

 

Georgette Foure saw her house and garden flattened to make way for the canal. She was paid just £511 for her house and fields. A widow and mother of six children, her eyes well up as she tells her story. "I used to get a good harvest from my big garden and it helped me feed my family and pay for the children's education. Now we have nowhere to live. They gave us some compensation but it was not enough and the land they gave us is a big hole in the ground which we will have to fill before it can even be used to grow anything." She smooths down her dress; ironically, it is made of fabric celebrating Mali's recent 50th anniversary and emblazoned with the slogan "The Fiftieth is for You".

 

Tienty Tangaka stands on the baked earth and rubble where his home and garden once stood. Beside him is the massive stump of a neem tree that was cut down to make way for the heavy equipment needed for construction.

 

"The compensation they gave was not enough to build a new house," he says, his clothes ragged. "We are very deeply shocked. They took me to the tribunal and I was told that I had built on land where building was not allowed — and I lost my home."

 

Suspicion and conflict

 

Standing in the ruins of Tangaka's old home, two brand new phone masts are visible on the other side of the canal. There are also plans for an airstrip, which is fuelling suspicions that the rice produced is not destined for Mali but for export to Libya to meet the need for cheap food for its large migrant workforce. Like many Middle-Eastern countries, oil-rich Libya imports large quantities of food and it needs to ensure cheap and plentiful supplies.

 

A little further on, just beyond Kolongo, in the village of Bourant, the David and Goliath conflict between these villagers and Malibya came to a head a few months ago. During his nightshift, one construction worker noticed that the bulldozer was turning up human corpses. Without adequate maps, the construction team had stumbled into two adjacent cemeteries, one for Muslims and one for Christians. Uproar ensued with nearby villagers grabbing farm tools to form a blockade against the bulldozers. Work stopped for several weeks.

 

Diarra Seynei takes us to the area beside the canal. "Considering the culture and traditions of Mali, this is a big shame, an insult to our values. This was the resting place of our parents," he says.

 

We walk on the bare earth along the dyke in the baking heat, listening to his story of outrage. We stumble on a fragment of human skull.

 

"They could have avoided the graveyard but they wanted to do the job quickly and they wanted the straight route. Many people cried when the bodies were taken from the graves. It was a big shock," he adds.

 

Worst of all, he says, there was no way to identify the broken bodies or to work out which bones were Muslim and which Christian for reburial in the new sites.

 

As we are talking, a large truck draws up. A Malibya manager approaches us, asking us what we are doing and tells us that the land is private property. Our guides talk vaguely of research and the manager is suspicious, insisting that we should have asked permission from his office. The atmosphere is tense, and we leave.

 

Local farmers risk losing their land and their livelihood, but perhaps the greatest risk of this project is the loss of water. Malibya has boasted that the new canal has the capacity for 11m cubic metres a day, 4bn cubic metres a year. Campaigners claim that is twice the capacity of any other canal in the region. Their concern is that neighbouring land will be deprived of water when stocks run low; they have heard rumours that Malibya has negotiated priority access to the water.

 

In Mali, water is crucial

 

Water is everything in Mali: half the country is desert and the bulk of the population depends on the river Niger, which dominates the country's central belt and forms one of Africa's biggest inland swamps, an area crucial to Mali's rice production, fishing and nomadic cattleherding economy. Further downstream, another five countries depend on its waters before it finally empties into the Atlantic in Nigeria. The Malibya deal is making not just many Malians anxious, it is making its neighbours uneasy as well.— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE HINDU

OPED

CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECTING ASSAM TEA GROWERS

RISING TEMPERATURES ARE REDUCING YIELDS AND ALTERING THE DISTINCTIVE FLAVOUR OF A POPULAR BEVERAGE.

AMARJYOTI BORAH

 

Climate change is affecting the cultivation of Assam tea, with rising temperatures reducing yields and altering the distinctive flavour of India's most popular drink, researchers say.

 

High hills and abundant rainfall make the north-eastern state of Assam an ideal place to grow tea, with 850 gardens over 3,20,000 hectares (5,93,000 acres) producing the majority of the country's harvest. But in the last 60 years, rainfall has fallen by more than a fifth and minimum temperature has risen by a degree to 19.5°C.

 

"This is clearly climate change, and it is bound to have major impact on the tea industry," said Debakanta Handique, a climate scientist in Assam.

 

The Tea Board of India said it had recorded a steady decline in tea production in recent years. In 2007, Assam produced 5,12,000 tonnes of tea. By 2008 this had declined to 4,87,000 tonnes, with estimated production in 2009 down again to 4,45,000 tonnes. A further decrease is expected this year.

 

'Serious threat'

 

Mridul Hazarika, director of Tocklai Tea Research, the oldest tea research station in the world, said rainfall and minimum temperature were two of the most important factors affecting both quality and quantity of harvests.

 

"The decline has been taking place although there has been an increase in the area of tea cultivation as new gardens have come up, and many gardens have added new areas for tea plantation. This is an indication of the seriousness of the threat," said Hazarika. Efficient rainwater harvesting and new breeds of tea plants were needed to reverse the trend.

 

"Changes have already been observed in the flavour, but it is not possible to blame only climate change for this," he said. "Other factors like the fertilisers used and cultivation methods might also be partly responsible."

 

The changing taste of Assam tea is a serious concern for growers. Sudipta Nayan Goswami, an Assam-based planter, said subtle changes had already been observed: "The flavour has changed from what it was before. The creamy and strong flavour is no more. There is a huge demand for Assam tea abroad, and this is due to its strong, bright flavour. The changes will sharply hamper the demand for this variety of tea abroad."— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE HINDU

UAE PUSHES ON WITH PLAN FOR FIRST NUCLEAR REACTORS

 

The UAE's state nuclear company is moving ahead with plans to build its first nuclear power plant, saying it has filed a construction license application covering the project's first two reactors.

 

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced the filing of the roughly 9,000-page regulatory application on December 27, a year after it awarded a South Korean consortium led by Korea Electric Power Corporation the $20 billion contract for the project.

 

The application to the UAE's Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation is based largely on previous work done for reactors in South Korea that will serve as a reference for the Emirati plants.

ENEC plans to build the Gulf Arab state's first reactors at Braka, a sparsely populated site on the Persian Gulf coast near the border with Saudi Arabia. It aims to have the first reactor running in 2017.— AP

 

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THE HINDU

'WE HOPE THAT INDIA WILL BE THE NUMBER ONE INVESTOR IN INDONESIA'

INTERVIEW WITH MARI ELKA PANGESTU, INDONESIAN MINISTER OF TRADE.

 

With politics taking precedence over "economics and trade" and India entering into a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the ASEAN bloc, commerce has become the new buzz word in intra-regional relations. India's ties with Indonesia, one of the biggest Asian democracies along with India, have grown stronger over the years. The Indonesian Minister of Trade, Mari Elka Pangestu, recently in India, talked to Sujay Mehdudia, about trade relations, commonalities among the two countries and giving a new fillip to the relationship during next month's visit of Indonesian President H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to New Delhi.

 

How would you define the relationship between India and Indonesia?

 

India and Indonesia enjoy a very warm and "strategic partnership" in the region and this has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few years. The trade between the two nations has outgrown the set targets well before schedule showing the strong bond the two nations enjoy. In 2005, both the countries set a target of achieving $10 billion trade turnover by 2010 against $4 billion at that time. We have been able to achieve that target in 2008 and hope to end the 2010 fiscal with $12 billion trade turnover which speaks volumes about the complimentary nature of our people and economies.

 

How do you see this graph progressing in future and what in your opinion should be done to give a new dimension to this relationship?

 

As the global economy is still in the recovery stage and the Western countries are still grappling with various economic issues, this provides a huge opportunity to both India and Indonesia to capitalise on the situation. Both the nations need to have a more diversified basket of goods and services to take the economic partnership between both the countries to a new level. We need to set up more institutional mechanisms for Business to Business and Business to Government negotiations. As I mentioned, India-Indonesia trade has already touched $10 billion during January-October 2010 and could cross $12 billon by the year end. This target is likely to be doubled to $24 billion when President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visits India to be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade on January 26 and also holds talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

 

Although, the trade among the two economies has grown tremendously, people to people exchanges and international transport linkage remain an area of concern. What is your take on that?

 

There have been some issues pertaining to direct links between the two countries but negotiations are on with the Indian counterparts to link Jakarta directly with major Indian cities. Tourism is another major area where Indonesia has much to offer to the ever growing outgoing number of Indian tourists. Efforts are on to have direct flights from Jakarta to New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. It is important that with growing trade, both the nations should provide easy access to their people and the business community at large.

 

What are the potential areas of investment that Indonesia could offer to the Indian business community?

 

There is an exponential growth in inter-connectivity in Indonesia and this is a huge potential market for Indian investors in this sector. Indonesia offers huge potential and opportunity in the automobile sector, textiles, engineering products — heavy machinery being a good area for cooperation — electronics, consumer products, processed and manufactured goods, pharmaceuticals, creative industry, mining, agro-based products, oil and gas, mining support services, rubber goods, infrastructure and real estate. We hope that India will be the number one investor in Indonesia in the next few years.

 

How do view the visit of the Indonesian President to India?

 

My visit to India is aimed at a follow-up on a number of bilateral issues as part of efforts to improve trade between the two countries and to prepare for the visit of the Indonesian President to India in early 2011. Mr. Yudhoyono would be in India to enhance the two countries' economic partnership. The joint study group on the Indonesia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement has already submitted its report and a final view is likely to be taken during the visit of the Indonesian President. A number of important bilateral economic and strategic agreements are likely to be signed during Mr. Yudhoyono's visit. We need to take it further to have a far-reaching and wide spectrum agreement for giving a new thrust to future bilateral trade, economic development and investment cooperation between the two countries.

 

How does Indonesia view the global multilateral trade talks, also called the Doha Round, for the future of the global economic recovery?

 

There is little doubt that the multilateral trade links in developing countries will be a significant driver of economic recovery and growth. There is a very strong call to safeguard the world trade system. We need a strong political will for that. I cannot emphasise enough the risk of a failure in a multilateral trading system for a developing country. We firmly believe that for the global economic recovery, it is important that the Doha Round be completed without any further delay and an equitable trading regime is put in place.

 

What are your areas of concern where you feel that the Indian economy could open up?

 

We strongly feel that India should open up its retail sector where Indonesia has a lot to offer through its own marketing chains. Similarly, banking is an area of lot of opportunity and that needs to be addressed by the Indian counterparts. We are hopeful that the India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreement on services and goods would be put in place by March 2011 before the India-ASEAN summit. The ASEAN is in favour of 10 plus one formula whereas India wants a one plus 10 formula in this regard. We hope to convince India about the ASEAN stand which is unlikely to change. We hope India would see reason and is able to finalise the deal by March next year.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

AUSSIES' FALL FROM CRICKETING GRACE

 

Admirers of the Australian system of cricket may have to rapidly revise their opinion as a great team disintegrates before their very eyes. The cricket world used to believe that anything Australian was good for the willow game, including the aggression the famous Australian players used to bring to the field with their strong body languageand the aggravation they used to cause with their take-no-prisoners attitude. The team that dominated Test and limited-overs cricket for close to a decade and a half before losing the Test crown two years ago has lost major players and is a mere shadow of the juggernaut that twice won 16 Test matches in a row and the last three World Cups (50 overs) on the trot.

Captain Ricky Ponting's despair at the demise of his own, and his team's, greatness is becoming apparent in every pressure situation. His repeated questioning of umpiring decisions has assumed a sickly pattern. In the latest instance, in the controversy he whipped up over a catch referral to the television umpire, he was fined 40 per cent of his match fee for dissent. Presiding over a team in decline, Ponting seems to be losing it and popular opinion is building up Down Under too for looking beyond him when it comes to the captaincy. For the skipper who won more Tests and games than Allan Border, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh, successive Ashes series have become a kind of Waterloo.

For years they ruled the game and were least bothered about the "Ugly Aussie" image portrayed by their bullying and badgering of umpires and sledging, which is the loud, ugly, and even vulgar berating of opposition batsmen. So long as they were winning, the game seemed to accept their aggressive behaviour and other teams also tried to emulate the slanging of batsmen, which tactic the very successful captain Steve Waugh said was aimed towards "mental disintegration" of the opposition. As the Australians ruled the roost, the cricket pitch became a place where the combative nature of sportsmen was needlessly exaggerated and the finest arenas of the game were the lesser for it.

When the same aggression is shown, principally towards the umpires these days as the Australians are in free fall, it is the image of cricket that takes a hit. Ponting's heated arguments over an apparent fault of the referral system, which is still in its infancy and is evolving with the improvement of video and related technology, did nothing for his team or his own exalted standing as the only player in the world to have been a member of teams that have won close to 100 Test matches and three World Cups. A champion sportsman losing his temper in a high-pressure sporting situation may be forgiven, but not if he loses his dignity.

At a time when cricket is trying to move on from years of being embroiled in such unseemly shenanigans as match- and spot-fixing, all its players owe a duty to fixing the image deficit. When history passes its verdict on the greatness of the Australian teams, there should be no place for too many footnotes circumscribing the handsome victories achieved. Sport should not define life so much that winning becomes the only thing. There should be less of triumphalism and greater human qualities in sportsmen for them to be acknowledged as masters of the game and of life. An example springs readily to mind in the iconic Sachin Tendulkar. If prickly Ponting were humble enough he might acknowledge he has let his career spin off at a tangent while someone senior to him is demonstrating how a sportsman should be in triumph and adversity.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPINION

A NEW WORLD ORDER?

SUMIT GANGULY

 

The second decade of the 21st century is about to dawn. Since the end of the Cold War, nearly two decades ago, India's policymakers have deftly managed to cope with the significant changes in the global order. They crossed the nuclear Rubicon, ably dealt with its subsequent (and inevitable) fallout, opened the hidebound economy toforeign investment and improved relations with a host of countries ranging from the United States to Israel. These achievements were far from trivial and are indeed worthy of commendation.

That said, India's foreign policy is again at a turning point and its policymakers can ill-afford to rest on their laurels. The country is in dire need of a grand strategy but thus far no policymaker, regardless of political persuasion, has managed to sketch out the outlines thereof. In this context, it might be useful to recall that during much of the Cold War, India did have a grand strategy, namely, non-alignment. It is possible to argue that the strategy may have ill-served India after a particular moment or that it took on a chimerical quality after India's forging of a strategic partnership with the then Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the doctrine did provide India's policymakers an intellectual lodestar. Today, the most that India's policymakers can proffer is a foreign policy based on "enlightened self-interest".

 

Such a principle may be useful as a tactical guide but is hardly a substitute for a grand strategy. The challenges that India faces both in its immediate neighbourhood and beyond cannot be dealt with through a reliance on this concept that really does not rise beyond the level of a shibboleth. Instead the country's political and diplomatic leadership now needs to think of a wider and deeper set of guidelines and precepts to fashion India's foreign policy.

To that end they need to think of what kind of world order might India envisage that could best secure and enhance its national interests. Mere slogans will not serve as a substitute for political vision. For example, since the Cold War's end, on a number of occasions, key Indian policymakers have expressed a desire for a multi-polar world order. In effect, this plea has been little more than a euphemism for a world where the US does not emerge and remain as the sole, surviving superpower. The sources of the aversion to American dominance are well known. They stem, in most part, from India's fractious relationship with the US during much of the Cold War.

Yet this unease with American global pre-eminence is misplaced. Would a multi-polar world order, with a number of powerful states which are either indifferent to or implacably hostile toward India's key national security interests, be necessarily preferable to American dominance? Obviously, there is no easy answer to this question. Nevertheless, it is precisely one that India's policymakers must confront and address.

 

What then might be the outlines of a new Indian grand strategy? Obviously, it must be aimed at preserving what India deems to be its core national values and interests. Given its multi-religious and poly-ethnic status, the country must preserve its commitment to secularism and cultural pluralism. Simultaneously, despite myriad challenges from both within and without, it needs to preserve its liberal democratic dispensation. An illiberal India is simply not a sustainable political order. Protecting democracy at home will also require maintaining a well-prepared but limited military capability. Finally, it must be able to sustain its path of economic growth while ensuring that it also succeeds in lifting untold numbers of its populace who remain mired in dire and abject poverty. If these four issues constitute India's critical interests it must accordingly seek to fashion a global order that best protects them.

To that end, the country needs to stand up to the myriad challenges to secular and liberal democratic regimes the world over from atavistic and obscurantist social forces which both states and non-state actors have nurtured and unleashed. This will require forging closer bonds with states that share these fundamental values while maintaining little more than transactional links with others that do not but are crucial to addressing various material concerns. For example, there is little need to extol India's putative "civilisational ties" to Iran when pursuing a relationship that is mostly based on the exigent need for cheap hydrocarbon resources. Nor, for that matter, should it be necessary to fete Burma/Myanmar's scrofulous rulers to ensure that their country does not become a People's Republic of China satellite.

 

Given India's troubled neighbourhood and the many uncertainties associated with the seemingly inexorable rise of India's behemoth neighbour, the PRC, the country will also need to maintain requisite military forces to ensure that its territorial integrity and its maritime resources are not at risk now or in the foreseeable future. Simultaneously, its policymakers will need to confront the prospect of using India's forces beyond its shores as the country's global profile continues to rise.

Finally, sustaining India's domestic economic growth path, which has made possible much-needed military modernisation, will also require it to play a greater and more imaginative role in the higher realms of international trade and finance. Accordingly, India needs to become a more assertive player in the G20 and speak up about under-valued currencies, structural trade barriers and the reliance upon dubious financial instruments.

This outline of a grand strategy is hardly a panacea for the challenges that a rising India faces. However, they do provide the rudiments of a grand strategy as the country enters a new and potentially exciting decade but one fraught with multiple challenges.

 

Sumit Ganguly is director of research at the Center on American and Global Security, Indiana University, Bloomington

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPINION

BENAZIR'S PROMISE, MURDER AND LEGACY

JAGMOHAN

 

Three years ago, on December 27, 2007, Benazir was tragically assassinated when she was attempting to turn a new leaf in her life and in the politics of Pakistan. The bloody deed was done at Rawalpindi's Liaquat Park, a park named after Pakistan's first Prime Minister who was shot dead at the same venue in 1951 in circumstances that have so far remained unclear.

 

In the conditions prevailing in Pakistan, it will, perhaps, never be possible to find out who conceived, ordered and executed the killing of Benazir Bhutto. But an underlying fact is clear. She had become a victim of those very forces of religious fundamentalism with which she had ingratiated herself during her years of power — from 1988-1990 and then from 1993-1996. Instead of checking these forces, which had acquired a great hold on the state and society during the regime of President Zia-ul-Haq, she exploited them for her own ends of power and used them without any scruple to cause terror and subversion in Kashmir.

 

It was during Benazir's rule that her Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ordered, in 1989-90, the killing of innocent Kashmiri Pandits and such noble persons as Kashmir University vice-chancellor Mushir-ul Haq and his aide Adul Ghani. When she found that her agents in the Valley were scattering under the impact of firm measures taken by me, then J&K governor, she herself came to Muzaffarabad and incited the Kashmiris against me. Made during the course of a televised speech, her shocking chopping gesture — striking her right hand on the palm of her left hand and ranting Jag-Jag-Mo-Mo-Han-Han — showed the extent to which she could go.
In the years that followed, the extremist forces, coupled with other negative developments in religion and politics, acquired much greater strength and made further inroads in Pakistan's power structure. Pakistan's landscape got littered with a bewildering variety of terrorist organisations which still remain as strong. Their number is so large, and their objectives and motivations overlap to such extent, that it is extremely difficult to clearly categorise them. Nevertheless, four broad categories are discernable. One, there is a set of "non-state associations", such as Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have the patronage of the ISI and are largely used by it to carry out terrorism-related activities in Kashmir and other parts of India. Second, there are quite a few outfits, such as Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizbe-Islami and Haqqani's network, which operate mainly against US and Nato forces in Afghanistan from their havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan and enjoy covert ISI support. Third, there is a formidable religious movement, Tehrik-e-Taliban, whose objective is to "Talibanise" the state and society of Pakistan and enforce strictly the Sharia. Fourth, there are a number of Sunni extremist organisations whose primary aim is to undermine or eliminate other sects of Islam, such as Shias, Sufis, Brelvis, Ahmaddiyas, Ismailis etc and ensure dominance of what, according to them, is a pure form of Islam. All these four categories of terrorist organisations have unleashed a wave of blood and brutality and made Pakistan the world's most unsafe country. They do not tolerate dissent and show no hesitation in killing their fellow-religionists even when they are at prayer.

 

It was in such a violence-ridden environment that Benazir returned to Pakistan, after about a decade of self-imposed exile in London/Dubai, under an agreement brokered between her and President Pervez Musharraf by American and British diplomats. By that time, Musharraf had become unpopular. He had come up against what were called "men in black" and "women in black" — the lawyers who agitated against him and the fanatical burqa-clad women of Lal Masjid in Islamabad.

Musharraf was forced to order commando action against the mosque when seven Chinese women were "arrested" by the female Taliban ("women in black") on the allegation of prostitution. In the bloody venture to clear the mosque, 88 occupants and nine commandos were killed.

 

The year of Benazir's return, 2007, saw the highest incidence of violence in Pakistan. On the very day of her arrival in Karachi, October 18, terrorists attacked her cavalcade, killing as many as 149 persons and injuring 402. About two months later, the conspirators succeeded in eliminating her.

President Musharraf's administration did not appear to be very serious in providing effective security cover to Benazir. This fact was underlined by the inquiry commission appointed by the UN at the request of the Pakistan government to ascertain the facts and circumstances of her assassination. In its report, the commission said: "A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigour all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack but also in its conception, planning and financing".

Benazir had made a serious mistake in returning to Pakistan without first securing a firm guarantee on her security from Musharraf and his mentors in the US and Britain. Her ambition, perhaps, drove her to an extremely risky venture.

Despite her unenviable record in office, Benazir's assassination at a time when she seemed determined to give a new direction to Pakistani polity was a grim tragedy. Though she had harangued against me, unjustifiably, I, and many other well-wishers of Pakistan, were saddened by her death. She was showing promising potential for freeing Pakistan from the stranglehold of religious extremism and terrorism. In her book, Reconciliation, published after her death, she has provided ample evidence of evolving a new agenda for Pakistan and for creating a pluralistic and modern Islamic society. But fate did not give her a chance to implement this.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPINION

ARMS AND THE MAN

SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY

 

If wars can be classified as good, bad or indifferent in terms of their impact on the national psyche, then Bangladesh 1971 was a very good war for India and the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 a very bad one indeed. In 1971, all relevant factors — political, diplomatic, and above all the Indian military — meshed together perfectly to fashion a triumph of classic proportions over a traditional enemy; 1962 was just the opposite. Apart from spirited individual performances, the Army and its political guidance was like a badly synchronised gearbox that soon stripped its pinions and crashed. The Indian armed forces remember 1962 with mortification, and 1971 with triumph, which they commemorate as Vijay Diwas on the 16th of December every year. The particular confluence of circumstances, happenstance and personalities that brought both 1962 and 1971 about, are unlikely to recur. So after celebrating Vijay Diwas 2010, the 39th commemoration of "Victory in Bangladesh", it would be appropriate to reflect on how far the Indian military has traveled since the Sela Pass in 1962 and Bangladesh in 1971, and its likely future azimuth.

Barring the first Kashmir War of 1947, China has been a constant background presence in all Indo-Pak matters, especially during India's other wars with Pakistan. These have so far all been single-front affairs (notwithstanding Chinese expressions of solidarity for Pakistan in 1965 and 1971), but India's worst case will always be the two-front scenario — a Pakistan-China combo, with an interlinked nuclear and now a cyber and internal security dimension as well, from covert operations sponsored by the Pakistan Army through its quasi-state jihadi stable. Such externally-sponsored conflicts are unlikely to be resolved by political dialogue or socio-economic initiatives alone. They will require hard and significant military measures to establish a stable environment for negotiated conflict resolution. This has been amply proven by the Indian experience in Jammu and Kashmir.

The role of India's armed forces, though never officially formalised, has crystallised through prolonged deployments in wars, proxy wars, counter terrorism and counter insurgency, into the strategically defensive one of territorial, maritime and aerospace defence of the homeland. India's armed forces are well trained and highly motivated professionals, who have performed outstandingly in every assignment in war or peace, both within as well as outside the country. But their military capabilities have not been kept in pace with the operational imperatives of their role, which demand a full two-and-a-half front operational capability across the entire spectrum of warfare. By that token, their current capabilities are definitely inadequate.

Morale is high, but weapons and equipment are obsolescent, and in many cases severely deficient and outmoded, leaving huge gaps in the performance envelope. Each individual service has its own tale of horrors, whether night vision devices, air defence weapons or artillery for the Army, submarines for the Navy, or the fast-depleting squadron strengths in the Air Force. The major reason for the wasting disease in India's defence capabilities is the scant attention paid to indigenous defence research, development and production. The armed forces naturally require a high state of readiness at all times, but successive governments have consistently chosen the easier option of imports rather than bite the bullet and develop an indigenous defence industry.
A typical case in point is the impending purchase of the 126 multi-role combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force at an estimated cost of `42,000 crore, which cannot be seen in isolation from the agreement with Russia to produce the future fifth-generation fighter for the Indian Air Force as a joint venture expected to ultimately cost an estimated `1.5 lakh crore. The preliminary step was the `1,500 crore pact with Russia finalised during the recent visit of President Dmitry Medvedev to India. The two processes cannot be mutually exclusive. The proposed acquisition of 126 new Multirole Combat Aircraft (MRCA) is of course an urgent necessity for the Air Force, but has to be planned as a lead in series for the PAKT-50. The implications for selection of the MRCA should be obvious.

But even more important is the future of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas and the Indian aerospace industry. Pakistan is co-producing the JF-17 (also an LCA) with China to induct it into the Pakistan Air Force. How confident is India, specifically the Indian Air Force, about Tejas? How does it stack up against the JF-17? The bottom line is, can the proposed MRCA acquisitions be off-set to a greater or lesser extent by producing additional Tejas? Can immediate operational requirements be balanced against long-term development of indigenous aerospace capabilities? Can Indian industrial capacity deliver?

Questions are endless — from small arms to main battle tanks. Why German Heckler and Koch, Israeli Tabor or even the now ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifles and not the indigenous Excalibur developed by small arms factory Ishapore? Why not the Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) produced at the Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi (near Chennai) instead of the T-90 Russian tank? And then the biggest question: If Indian military equipment is perceived by the users as unreliable, maintenance-heavy and defect-prone, what punitive accountability for this has been imposed for systemic failure in the ministry of defence, the prime government agency under whom fall the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the ordnance factory board?

 

India seems to have become addicted over the years to a high-calorie diet of imports, taking a strange and even perverse pride in the dubious honour of ranking amongst world's top 10 importers of weapons. Do such profligate imports reflect the true state of the country's scientific and engineering capabilities? These are hard questions which need to be asked and firm answers obtained.

The year 2010 has not been a good year for the country. Gloom, despondency and bitter cynicism pervade the national horizon. Under these overcast skies, the story of victory in Bangladesh in 1971 told on Vijay Diwas every year needs telling and retelling, as a reminder of what the nation can achieve, should it have the will to do so.

 

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament

 

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DNA

 

BLAME GAME NO ANSWER TO FOOD INFLATION

 

Ever since the UPA returned to power for a second term in the summer of 2009, food inflation has been haunting it. There was a bit of relief afterthe monsoon this year, but it did not last. It has now climbed to 12.13% for the week ended December 11.

 

It all began with the soaring prices of onions last fortnight. The government responded by banning onion exports and removing import duty. But inflation spread to tomatoes and other vegetables, and now covers the rest of the food basket. The government is perplexed and groping for an answer.

 

The usual suspects are the hoarders, which means it is not a supply problem, especially after a bountiful monsoon. But this needs to be established if action is to be taken against them. The government could have handled the supply side effectively through its grain procurement and public distribution channels.

 

The UPA government is so involved in fighting the many scams that have engulfed it in the last few months that it does not have the time to think of other issues, including the monitoring of food prices. This is something that could hurt the image of the UPA much more than charges of corruption, because it pinches the middle-class and the poor. It shows that the government is not keeping a tab on food prices and that it is not taking timely counter-measures, which could allay if not prevent the distress of the people.

 

The blame game is, of course, on. There is criticism of food and civil supplies minister Sharad Pawar, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and a senior ally of the Congress in the UPA government. Fixing blame might make the besieged Congress happy in the pyrrhic sense because the ultimate blame for the situation will have to be borne by the UPA, and not just one of its partners and one of its ministers.

 

What is lacking is a clear policy on the food and farm front. Higher prices are but a symptom of something that is wrong with the system as a whole. The Manmohan Singh government will have to think about the problem in broader terms instead of knee-jerk responses like tweaking the food export-import channel. As it sinks into the mire of corruption, this government seems incapable of addressing the larger issues.

 

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DNA

PAKISTAN AND ITS HINDUS HAVE A PROBLEM

 

Twenty-seven Hindu families from the troubled province of Balochistan in Pakistan have sought political asylum at the Indian high commission in Islamabad. These families have cited an increase in rapes, kidnappings, and murders of members of their community, and an unresponsive administration.

 

This could prove to be a test case for Indian diplomacy given the problematic relations between the two countries. In the 1950s, Pakistan government and leaders tried to play the guardian's role for the Muslims who chose to stay back in India. Then, in a strongly-worded memorandum led by luminaries like Zakir Husain, who served as vice-president and president of the country, New Delhi refuted this presumption. Following the same principle, India is not responsible for Hindus in other countries, including Pakistan. This does not, however, preclude granting asylum to these 27 families on humanitarian grounds, and not because they happen to be Hindus.

 

The distinction is important not only for the sake of bilateral relations but also because of India's definition of itself as a secular nation-state. Pakistan was ideologically an Islamic state though it did not commit itself constitutionally to the idea in the earlier decades.

 

The Islamic project began with the Zia-ul-Haq regime in the late 1970s, and Pakistan is paying the price for it today. The umpteen jihadi groups that have cropped up in that country are a direct consequence of Zia's Islamisation policy. In contrast, India never declared itself as a Hindu state, either officially or through its constitution. Of course, Pakistan would have loved India to be a Hindu state, but Indian leaders denied it that satisfaction.

 

It is true that Pakistan has not worked out a harmonious way of integrating its minorities, an issue that its leaders and people have to solve for themselves. Christians experience the same sense of insecurity that the affected Hindu and Sikh families have experienced in recent times.

 

Many of Pakistan's elite argue that minorities in Pakistan have special protection in the Islamic country in contrast to the vulnerable status of minorities in secular India. That can be a point of endless debate. What needs to be addressed is the situation on the ground, and the government in Islamabad should do what it can do to provide a sense of security to the minorities.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

BEGIN THE NEW YEAR WITH A BANG

RAMESH MENON

 

The coming of a New Year is always full of hopes, dreams and aspirations. That is why it is the best time of the year to make resolutions. Many of us make them only to break them. And then feel miserable for the rest of the year. Why? It is because most of them are unrealistic and make us bend, turn and twist too much with our lifestyles. So it is best to draw a list with lots of thinking behind. Life is full of options. It will also tell you what you need to do to make life a bit snazzier.

 

I made a humble list:

 

n Read Everyday. n Improve communication skills. n Eat only when hungry. n Start a new hobby. n Work on a new book. n Think differently. n Be courageous. n Pursue excellence in some areas. n Avoid Facebook and invest in real relationships. n Reconnect with old friends. n Bury all bitterness. n Exercise everyday. n Write five times a week. nExperiment with creativity.

 

n Buy books every month. n Listen to good music. n Spend more time with family. n Avoid negative people. n Learn new skills. n Be grateful everyday. n See how happiness, freedom, love and peace of mind bounce back when given to someone else.

 

Looks like a long list. But there is not a single thing that cannot be achieved. All it requires to make life changing resolutions is a little bit of determination. Let us start with a bang doing something that we always loved doing.

 

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DNA

COLUMN

SUSHMA TWEETS A POLITICAL STATEMENT

 

Sushma Swaraj, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and a senior member of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has made an important political statement on her Twitter account on Tuesday.

 

She said that the party's demand for a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) remains in spite of the Public Accounts Committee, headed by another BJP stalwart, Murli Manohar Joshi, vigorously probing the 2G spectrum scam and Joshi's evasive statement on prime minister Manmohan Singh's letter offering to appear before the PAC. Swaraj intervened with alacrity and demarcated the scope of the PAC and JPC respectively.

 

Politicians are generally perceived as technophobes because they are so involved in the hurly-burly of political life that they miss the many new things happening around them. Swaraj has sent out a gentle reminder that politicians can be geeks too and there is no contradiction. The serious person that she is, Swaraj is unlikely to share a light-hearted quip on Twitter. Of course, her mentor LK Advani writes a blog and he is a tech-junkie of sorts. She did not want to be left behind. Bravo!

 

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DNA

COLUMN

INDIA AND CHINA AGREE TO STEP UP MUTUAL ENGAGEMENT

HK DUA

 

 

The recent visits of the Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao to India and Pakistan during the same week went off on predictable lines.

 

In India, the visit has left behind somewhat better atmospherics leading habitual optimists to hope for better days ahead for the Sino-Indian relations; while experienced analysts tend to believe that another opportunity to sort out the vital issues that have marred the relations between the two Asian neighbours over the years has been lost.

 

Both optimists and the analysts with bitter memories of the past, however, are in agreement that it is better to keep the Chinese engaged and New Delhi should avail of every opportunity to make it clear that India is ready to discuss any issue across the table, but not at the cost of its national interest.

 

As it transpires, it is Wen Jiabao who told Dr Manmohan Singh at Hanoi a few weeks ago that he would like to visit India for talks and see whether some prickly irritants in the relations could be removed so that the two nations could have more comfortable relations with each other. There is enough space for them in this wide world.

 

Few had thought that big issues like the boundary dispute and India's serious reservations on relations between China and Pakistan would be resolved during the visit. No one believes that the boundary disputes, the worst of the divisive bilateral issues, can be pulled out from the back burner it has been consigned to by both countries. May be the status quo on the boundary questions suits both countries as neither is prepared for a give-and-take approach that a settlement requires.

 

India has a parliamentaryary resolution suggesting that the Indian territory under Chinese occupation has to be vacated.

 

The Chinese too could be having problems within the present Communist party leadership, which might be thinking it has no authority to part with any territory. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are going out of office in less than two years and no one knows how the succession issue will ultimately pan out towards the end of their tenure.

 

How relations between China and Pakistan have changed the security environment in South Asia figured at the talks. But judging from the statements the Chinese prime minister made in Islamabad, the relations between India's northern and western neighbours seem to have further deepened, leaving intact for India a two-front situation to contend with.

 

Pakistan has, in fact, become China's client state and not just an "all-weather friend", as the Chinese like to describe it. Over the years, Beijing has been liberally passing on nuclear and missile technology and military hardware to Pakistan and is now underwriting its failing economy.

 

China, as a part of larger scheme, is also using Pakistan for gaining access to the Arabian Sea, mineral resources in Afghanistan, and greater influence in Central Asia.

 

The Sino-Pakistan ties add another dimension to its stand on Jammu and Kashmir. Lately, there is a vagueness about its earlier position that it is a bilateral dispute to be sorted out by India and Pakistan themselves.

 

China's denial of visa to the Army's Northern Command chief and stapling of visas for the J& K residents amounted to questioning India's sovereignty over J&K. India had to make it clear at a meeting at Wuhan that China ought to be sensitive about India's concerns on J&K, just as India has been sensitive about Beijing's concern over Tibet.

 

Wen Jiabao might have thought of the visa question as just an "irritant" but for India it is too serious a matter to be brushed aside. Some rethinking may be taking place in Beijing on stapled visas.

 

Differences on political issues notwithstanding, the Wen Jiabao-Manmohan Singh talks focussed on economic relations. The two sides chose to step up annual trade to $100 billion in five years. China has agreed to find ways to buy more goods from India so that the balance of trade does not remain hugely against India.

 

The prospects that Wen Jiabao's last visit to India threw up in 2005 may have got blurred, but he must have gone back with greater awareness of Indian concerns about the emerging regional and international scenario.

 

This might turn out to be Wen Jiabao's last visit to India, although the two agreed to step up annual bilateral engagements between the two countries.

 

Competent analysts are of the view that primarily, the visit was aimed at arresting the decline in relationship that had taken place in the last two years, removing the "irritants", and to let the new leadership in China decide its foreign policy after two years.Essentially, India and China have come to agree that it is better to step up mutual engagement than make strident noises that add to mistrust.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

PLUG THE ROUTE

 

It is an evidently retrograde law which has led to a negative snowballing effect depriving us of our highly prized green gold. According to a report in this newspaper the permission to fell green trees on private land in the State is used as a camouflage to loot the actual forests. It has been stated that most of the wood from certain forests in this province is diverted to feed about 250 brick kilns in Kathua, Jammu and Samba districts. The operation is being carried out by timber smugglers allegedly in collusion with unscrupulous officials. Between 2500 and 3000 trucks and trolleys loaded with green firewood are transported every year from Kalidhar, Jammu, Bahu and Jindrah forest ranges to different destinations. More than 90 per cent of their load allegedly goes to brick kilns. The overall picture in the State as a whole is likely to be worse. The doubt that there may be a deeper nexus at the official level arises from a dual control. It is for local revenue authorities to give a go-ahead signal for felling of green trees on private land. The consent to transport the chopped wood, however, is given by forest officials. On the face of it this is purely an administrative arrangement. After all, it is for patwaris and tehsildars to exercise control over the land and the purpose for which it is used. By the same yardstick, the divisional forest officers and rangers have to keep a watch on the movement of trees to ensure that their jurisdiction is not being violated. Simultaneously, we can't overlook the need for plantations for building our homes and commercial establishments; there is heavy consumption of wood on this count in the Valley especially. The fault clearly lies with the manner in which the existing law is being implemented. 
Arguably the law itself leaves room for mischief. Now and then we keep hearing that land grabbers first encroach upon forests and then get them converted into revenue land. It makes it easier for them to loot and scoot. As a result, sometimes we are told that there is a mismatch between the records of the two departments or the relevant papers are missing. The temptation to grab land is high. It is a lucrative business. It is no wonder that even nazool land in and around this city has not been spared. This is a bigger challenge. In the instant case the least that can be done is to plug the lawful route that is available to plunder the forests. Trees in particular should be saved regardless of the ownership of the soil. A distinction can't be made between private parties and the Government so far as the task of protecting greenery is concerned.

 

The concerned minister admits that the world over a big thrust is being given to save forests and protect environs. At the same time he concedes that the people can cut trees from their land to not only utilise them for their own purpose including for carrying out constructions but also sell them to generate revenue. It is logical because, as stated earlier, wood is one of the major ingredients of our construction. However, this can't be the reason for us to permit the fine distinction with forest reserves to disappear. 

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

SOLVE THE PROBLEM

 

The death of a five-year old boy in Doda district for want of treatment by a specialist doctor once again brings into focus a serious problem. Our health administration continues to suffer from the shortage of specialists especially in far-flung areas. Indeed, it is surprising that a case of a boy swallowing a whistle by mistake should have climaxed into a massive tragedy. This is something which can happen to children, who are unsuspecting by nature, any time anywhere. Normally they are told by their elderly relatives not to put everything into their mouth. Children being children are innocent and to expect them to follow each and every instruction is wrong. They require a close watch till they grow up sufficiently to understand the difference between the wrong and the right. What is galling is that they should not have a treatment on hand as and when they run into trouble. It is not clear if the household remedies have been tried in this instance. There is no doubt, however, that the boy belonging to the Udrana village at the outskirts of Bhaderwah town was first rushed to the nearest sub-divisional hospital (SDH). He did not get the requisite treatment there. His family was told that there was no ENT (ear, nose, and throat) specialist available and they should try to reach the district hospital in Doda which is at some distance. The child was examined by some doctors at the Doda hospital. The medical advice then was to shift the boy to the Government Medical College and Hospital in this city to get the whistle removed. The helpless child died on the way --- a heart-breaking blow for the close relatives. All those who came to know of the tragedy expressed solidarity with the grieving family and staged a powerful demonstration in Bhaderwah town. One can't find fault with them. Their spontaneous reaction could not have been otherwise. They blocked the road and burnt tyres relenting only after a time-bound inquiry was ordered and instituted. There are conflicting versions about whether or not an ENT specialist examined the child at the district hospital before referring him to Jammu. It is like adding insult to the injury. 

Why should be there confusion about an ordinary matter like this? It should be looked into and the responsibility for the lapse, if any, firmly established. At the same time there is necessity for finding specialists and deputing them in at least district hospitals. This is a lingering challenge. Our report says that there are 36 posts of assistant surgeons and specialists lying vacant in Doda district hospital and Bhaderwah SDH put together. It is a big number. Elsewhere in the State too the picture is not bright in this regard. It is hardly a secret. There are umpteen assertions by the Government about the shortage of specialists in ENT, radiology, pathology and anaesthesiology. Every time there is a road accident in a remote place --- hilly or otherwise --- those injured critically are either driven or flown to this city for cure. Why should we not be able to equip district hospitals at least with necessary facilities? The immediate action can prevent precious loss of blood and, as in the case of the unfortunate boy, life itself.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

RINGING IN 2011

BY KEDAR NATH PANDEY

 

Scamsters ruled the roost, and their misdeeds grew more boldly outrageous, delighting crooks and disheartening the common Indian citizen. With TV, radio and cable channels a dime-a-dozen screaming for attention, the best way to grab wayward eyeballs (lacking grey matter to back them up?) was to highlight the heights of unscrupulousness. The Adarsh idealists, the conmen allegedly out to make fast mega crores from the CWG, every crook and their nearest and dearest grabbed centre stage until some media darlings stole the show by getting themselves entangled in dubious tapes. Days before the opening of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, the nation's prestige tottered with the collapse of a vital footbridge. Accommodation for athletes from 71 countries was reportedly not ready, and UK inspectors turned up their noses saying the facilities were "unfit for human habitation". The preparations for India's largest ever sporting event raised doubts of mismanagement of crores of rupees for years. 

Cheering the hearts of every patriotic Indian, 2010 proved that the fine art and science of hera-pheri isn't restricted to our countrymen. The world over, basic human nature oozed through superficial veneers of principles and honesty, and people everywhere cheated and lied just like us. In the world of sports, Tiger Woods' alleged extra-marital shenanigans, cricket match fixing, use of banned performance enhancing drugs and other unsporting concerns overshadowed the ideals of fair play and sportsmanship. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks kicked up a ruckus by releasing a whopping avalanche of secret documents with details of incidents of corruption, friendly fire, civilian casualties and deaths relating to the war in Afghanistan. Among the biggest leaks in US military history, its aftershocks rocked even the White House. 

Controversial Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stood up to face flak with commendable bravado following allegations surrounding his weakness for teenaged belly dancers as well as by rumours of corruption. Our own netas and roadside Romeos alike can take heart from the 74-year-old Italian's attitude as he declared, "As always, I work without interruption and, if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay". 

Life around the world revolved around money. Throughout the year, a miniscule creamy layer of our citizenry indulged in the urge to splurge on palatial mansions, exotic gourmet delicacies, and bigger and more dazzlingly obese Indian weddings. They brushed aside signs of pervading poverty under their plush carpets and into our festering urban slums. Meanwhile, Indian farmers continued to commit suicide. Grave concerns were raised over the economic stability of several Western nations, where the state of affairs began to show striking resemblances to life in India. Thousands protested peacefully in Athens against the Greek government's austerity plans to lift the country out of a financial crisis that had rocked international markets and weakened the Euro. Our desi bandh-hartaal culture inspired the Greeks to call a one day national strike, which brought daily life to a halt.

The impact of imminent economic collapse threatened Europe and world economies. G-20 leaders met in Canada to take stock of the global economic crisis. The meet itself was conducted in lavish style, raising concerns in a time of global economic uncertainty. 

We had reasons to smile despite the year's disasters, wars and skulduggery. Spirited sportspersons such as Saina Nehwal and Ashwini Akkunji earned laurels for our country against all odds. Let's hope Indians will now cheer not just for cricketers, but for achievers in other sports too. Elsewhere in the world, Roger Federer won the Australian open, and while Spain won the World Cup, the crazy, noisy vuvuzelas stole the show. 
In Myanmar, pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released from house arrest. Prince William of the UK was engaged to Kate Middleton, making a picture-perfect couple. Brangelina made news by simply strutting their gorgeous selves. Lady Gaga walked away with awards at the British Phonographic Industry's annual prize-giving ceremony. She grabbed the world's attention by her avant-garde attire, particularly the fake meat dress to protest the slaughter of animals. 

The media in its burgeoning forms assaulted our senses 24x7. Apart from zillions of electronic channels, print media, books, especially the print-on-demand and self-published variety, vied for our attention. The media, especially TV, turned the usual anna-saaru news of disasters into our daily fare. Did it matter to us whether the latest images were of bombings in Iraq, India or Uganda? How could we keep track and tell one from the other as we stared at flickering images of riots in Northern Ireland, or was it the Ivory Coast crisis? Around 90,000 people were forced to abandon their homes during fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising fears of a new civil war. We forgot the Haiti earthquake as we watched news reports of floods in China, violence in Karachi, or a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We blithely watched all the troubles of the world without batting an eyelid, as we munched chips and gulped fizzy drinks. What really brought tears to our eyes was the shooting price of onions. 

In this mad, bad, sad world of 2010, Facebook reigned supreme. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was most appropriately named Time magazine's person of the year for changing the way people connected and communicated. With over 500 million users worldwide, Facebook is a multi-billion dollar phenomenon reflecting our times. Redefining new age friendship, everyone from adolescents to 103-year-old grannies indulged in meaningful interactions such as tossing sheep and 'pokes'. True to its free-for-all democratic nature, Facebook even includes a group whose members don't care about your farm, your fish, your park or your mafia. About 6,374, 530 people became fans because they hate these stupid posts. Instead, they posted momentous stuff like notes on the politics of St. Vincent and Grenadines, and advertised "financial management to make life secure and panic-free." Amen! (INAV)

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

CREATE HARVARDS AND OXFORDS IN INDIA

BY DR (MRS) VISHIESH VERMA

 

Indian students are a step closer to gaining access to foreign Universities on the home ground. The cabinet has approved a bill allowing overseas players to open campuses in India. If the things go according to the plan, once the foreign educational institutions (Regulation of entry and operations) Bill 2010 gets parliamentary approval, the first set of foreign educational institutions will start functioning by mid 2011.

India is the third largest higher Education system in the world after China and US in terms of enrolment, which is around 11.04 million(2005-06). In spite of impressive quantitative expansion it lags far behind the developed nations with regard to access to higher education. Nearly `45000 cr per year is repatriated out of India for 3, 00,000 Indian students studying abroad. There are several reasons for so many students going abroad for higher studies, the prominent being; only a small number of Indian Universities occupy a good position amongst the ambit of top class educational institutions to provide best quality higher education. These world ranking institutions are mainly restricted to IITs, IIMs and some universities.

More than 90 percent of the aspirants for admission to these institutions don't get selected not for want of qualifications of the applicants but for the capacity constraints in the institutions. In 2009, 4.5 lakh candidates appeared for JEE test for 10,000 seats. The Vice Chancellor of Kashmir University was sorry to admit only 4,000 students in various subjects out of 35,000 applicants. This year's qualifying marks for B.Com (Hons.) course in Delhi's SRCC was 98.75 percent. Nearly `3,000 crore per year is spent by nearly 6,00,000 students trying to arrange and learn for entrance examinations into IITs and top twenty management institutions. All world class institutions put together provide education to only one percent of the student population seeking higher education. Under such situations, foreign Universities provide safety valve for talented well off Indian students who can't find seats in their chosen fields in Indian Institutions. All these Indian World class institutions put together provide education to one percent of students seeking higher education. The remaining 99 percent students get enrolled in low ranking Universities and Colleges under compulsion.
The employability of students coming from such colleges is also in question especially in special fields like engineering. NASSACOM study states, 'only 25 percent of India's engineering graduates are fit for employment, the rest lack technical skills even knowledge of English'. There are reasons for decline of Indian higher education.

We fall short of educational institutions. During the last fifty years there has been 60 times increase in the college going population but the number of colleges haven't been increased according to that proportion. Financial support for higher education in terms of GDP decreased from .01% in 1971 onwards to 0.4% in 2001. Out of the funds available for education 95% are spent on the salaries of staff. The present higher education system is catering to the needs of less than 10% of aspirants. The dropout rate between the classes 1st to 12th is about 90%. 

No doubt, with all these internal weaknesses, India managed to survive with her increasingly mediocre higher education system. Now in 21st century we have no choice except to compete in a globalized economy in the areas that require highly trained professionals, thus the quality of higher education automatically assumes greater importance. 

India is a country bubbling with youth population. About 60 crore population is below the age of thirty years. According to India's report on unemployment the average Indian will be only 20 yrs in 2020 compared to 37 in China and US, 45 in west Europe and 46 in Japan and for a country so young it would be boon to a create a well trained work force.

Inviting foreign Universities in India is one of the strategies of Government to expand higher education system in terms of quantity and quality. It is supposed that it will curb the outflow of foreign exchange. Besides it will fill demand and supply gap, and make higher education globally competitive. 

Besides it is expected that with the establishment of foreign Universities over here three fourth of students exodus would end. Working of foreign Universities would have impact on the performance of domestic education providers. With global standards of teaching and infrastructure every local institute will need to compete, to attract students with improved pedagogy, internationally accepted courses and upgraded facilities. There will be a qualitative change in the educational institutes at national level. Good international Universities can help improve quality in Indian Universities not just through increased competition for students but from increased partnership and sharing of best practices in teaching and learning. To that extent, the foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill 2010 is welcome. 

Education Minister, Kapil Sibal has described the bill as "a milestone, which will enhance choices, increase competition between Indian and foreign Universities and bench-mark the quality." 

There are many debates on the issue of entry of foreign institutions in India. Prof Yashpaul said, there is no wisdom to be got from outside the country. Setting up a University isn't buying office space and furnishing it. There is more of it, something that comes from teacher and student interface. That can't be imported by teachers. To him "Foreign University Bill is only about signing agreement between Babus in India and abroad, it has little to do with education".

There is no denying that educational export are a promising source of foreign exchange, at present foreign students contribute US $11 billion to the US economy and over AUS $ 4.2 billion to Australian economy. In America Colleges, age population declined by 15% per decade since 1977, therefore the Universities in US survive on export of education.

So far three Universities have shown interest in India. American University ranked 84th on a scale of zero to 100, Virginia Technical University ranked 71st and Georgetown ranked 23rd. The ranking of first two Universities show that they are not preferred by American students. Georgetown University was basically founded by Catholics and Jesuit in 1789, with the aim of educating theology. There are still compulsory papers on theology that each student has to clear as apart of the curriculum. The Universities like Harvard, Oxford won't shift to India. A University is much more than a place of teaching, it also has a cultural ambience rooted in its traditions and geographical locations. But it is certainly possible to create educational centers of excellence in India which are world class and could successfully seek some sort of affiliation with world famous Universities. The government is in a hurry to start 1500 universities by 2015. Professor Yashpaul, Chairman of the committee on "Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education" recommends that India has about 26000 affiliated colleges, but some of these colleges are as big as some of the Universities in USA. A small number of good affiliated colleges, about 1500 may be converted into Universities. This will take care of our present need of adding more universities. It is possible to create such educational centers of excellence in India and get them affiliated to famous Universities. Let these College charge fees required to maintain excellent standards. Let there not be caste based reservations. These super colleges to be privately funded and would be insulated from political interferences. Money is available for education from private donors provided there is no political interference in running of these institutions.

We appreciate and invite foreign Universities to provide world class infrastructure, teachers, administrators, those who make the students work hard during their stay in the institution. Such institutions make out the program where students and teachers have to stay and work to the maximum. There is transparency in appointments and results. No political interference, no favors. The teachers have to earn their stay in the institutions based on the opinions of students and students have to pay for their stay in the institution.
(The writer is a former Reader Coordinator of University of Jammu)

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

THE CHANGING FACE OF INDIAN SOCIETY

BY RAM RATTAN SHARMA

 

Indian society traces its origin to the earliest times, going back to more than 4000 years. What has evolved is a society that is complex contradictory. Rooted in spirituality yet giving way to materialistic attitudes that are downright unethical. Voicing its commitment to scientific temper, yet ardently nourishing faith in miracles and the mystical, equality among the various groups of people being vouchsafed by the constitution and yet with the political set up itself exploiting the caste hierarchy. All these contradictions cannot be explained away easily but they can be seen in the perspective of a society in the process of change or flux or a society in transition as academics put it.

Change is inevitable, the structure and culture of a society do not remain static. No single cause can be identified with social change. Social change does not happen over night or suddenly, it is gradual process as people are generally not so ready to give up or even modify firmly established beliefs and notions. Social conflict and growth of knowledge give rise to social change. But there are diverse factors responsible for social change in India. Demographic factors include high population growth which leads to poverty, illiteracy, housing and health problems. All of which affect the social climate. Technology ushers significant changes with in the society. Rapid industrialization has brought economic development and urbanization but alongside has come the growth of slums in urban areas as well as great disparity in standards of living. Economic upliftment has been attempted through abolition of land lordism, this has reduced exploitation of the poor atleast in some regions and has thus been a step towards social equality. Technological innovations have changed even the common man's way of life. The general awareness of Indians has enlarged. The exposure to outside cultures though not always beneficial has served to open Indian minds to receive new ideas and views which have certainly influenced the way of life in many sections of the population.

Cultural factors have brought changes in the caste hierarchy, traditional attitudes and customs of the people. The law too, has acted as an instrument of social change with its measures to deal with social evils. Even political factors have heralded social change. Family, the backbone of the social structure, has under gone a transformation under the impact of industrialization, urbanization, education and migration in search of jobs. Nuclear families have been replacing joint families in towns and cities. Social in equalities like caste discrimination a part and parcel of the Indian culture - were discouraged by social reformers and freedom fighters in the pre-independence days, social problems like untouchability were sought to be eradicated. Today, untouchability is certainly on the wane, unfortunately, politicization of castes for election and other political interests is leading to a stronger demarcation between people of various castes. Today, the theme of education for all is being stressed. Adult education programmes in villages conducted by voluntary agencies and persons are being focused upon, free schools for children in rural areas are being opened in keeping with this theme. In the large towns and cities the cost of education has become a major problem for families. Good education in urban areas is coming to signify costly education. Money is becoming governing factor in education and there is growing corruption in the field. There has been a change in the attitude to work and the traditional male - female role. Today, women have begun stepping out of their homes to take up gainful employment even in areas traditionally regarded as male domains. Their role in the decision making process is assuming importance. The children are showing a apparent change. They show an awareness and intelligence, not evident in earlier generations at that age. They are more vocal, do not show unquestioning deference to their elders, take part in social work activities. They seem to mature much earlier. When we take up the caste issue stigma, untouchability may have been banned on paper, but there has been no real awakening in the minds of the masses regarding the system of caste.

The changing face of Indian society, has different expressions, different moods while the element of modernity in dress and behaviour are noticeable, traditional beliefs even if they are redundant refuse to give up their hold. Thus conflict is created. Inequality in development, loss of values, greed and growing corruption on the part of authorities and the elite have given rise to violent responses from the oppressed and down trodden, age old values of tolerance, hospitality and warmth of attachments, humility and patience are fast fading out. Change is inevitable in a dynamic society, but people have to be enlightened enough to direct that change towards a better future.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

CHAOS AT AIRPORTS

MISMANAGEMENT ADDS TO TRAVELLERS' WOES

 

IT is very convenient for Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel to blame the inclement weather for the delay, diversion and cancellation of a large number of flights at Delhi airport. Fog does play a crucial role in flight disruptions but the government and the airlines cannot escape responsibility for the utter chaos and mismanagement at the airports. They have not invested enough in the latest technology and training of pilots to beat the fog, which is an annual feature in North India. Passenger harassment can be minimised if information about changes in flight schedules are communicated well in advance. And that is not a tall order when almost everyone has a mobile.

 

The failure on the part of the government and airline authorities — quite evident in Delhi and elsewhere — should attract a severe penalty. It is true Delhi airport handles the largest number of flights in the country and the airport has been upgraded to global standards. But that is cold comfort to thousands of passengers whose travel plans go awry and who miss out on engagements apart from facing inconvenience in getting refunds or rebooking flights. All this happens at a time when they are in a holiday mood and have bought expensive packages. Should they not be compensated? The British government is already contemplating a law to penalise the airports for delays.

 

As for road and rail travel, Rajasthan's Gujjars could not have chosen a worse time to press their demand for reservations in jobs. By blocking railway tracks and highways they have displayed unusual insensitivity towards the travelling public. Here also the state government has abdicated its duty to ensure the smooth movement of vehicles and trains. Thousands of trucks carrying essential goods are held up, contributing to price rise. There is no reason why the unreasonable protesters should not be dealt with firmly. Natural calamities are perhaps unavoidable but facing them efficiently should be our collective endeavour.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

HEIGHT OF INSECURITY

HONOUR KILLING AFTERMATH CONTINUES

 

MANOJ and Babli were provided protection by the court after they married in the same gotra in 2007. Yet, that did not prevent the self-appointed protectors of morality from butchering them, while the police escort almost looked the other way. The same horrifying story is now being repeated, with Seema, sister of Manoj, being threatened by a criminal on parole that she and her family would be eliminated. This in spite of the fact that Seema happens to be a police constable herself. In fact, the way she has been let down by her department, it appears that the police is siding with the criminals this time also.

 

The criminal, Varinder alias Billu, dared to enter the Madhuban Police Academy, where Seema was posted, and threatened to kill her and her family. When she reported the matter to the Madhuban police, it refused to register a case on the plea that Varinder was undergoing imprisonment in a case that fell under the Panipat police jurisdiction. When she went to Panipat, she was told that since the threat was issued at Madhuban, the complaint would have to be registered by the Madhuban police. The common man is made to run from pillar to post this way, but one had thought the men in khaki would be a little more considerate towards someone from their own ranks, especially since her brother had already been murdered.

 

To make matters worse, instead of providing her security, the authorities transferred her post haste to Yamunanagar, where she is far more vulnerable. If this is what lies in store for a police constable, one can well imagine the sense of insecurity among the ordinary people. It is high time senior police officials realised that it should not be necessary for hapless citizens like Seema to beg for security. It is the paramount duty of the police to do so. They let down Manoj and Babli. Let the sordid tale not be repeated. 

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

CLAMOUR FOR TELANGANA

POLITICAL PARTIES MUST EXERCISE RESTRAINT

 

WITH just three days for the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee to submit its report to the Centre on the feasibility of carving out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, the situation in the state is turning aggressive day by day. If adequate measures are not taken by the government promptly and the political parties do not exercise restraint and rise above narrow partisan ends, law and order in the state will be jeopardised and development, too, will be adversely affected. What the state is witnessing today is competitive politics with the Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) indulging in theatrics and one-upmanship in espousing the cause of Telangana. The conduct of the Congress MPs and MLAs representing the Telangana region is shocking. Following a three-day hunger strike in Hyderabad, Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy was forced to bow to their demand for withdrawal of over 1600 criminal cases against student protesters. These students were arrested for indulging in arson and violence during the Telangana agitation last year.

 

The fast by the Congress legislators seemed to be a well-scripted drama. For, though the TRS, the Telugu Desam and the BJP have been demanding withdrawal of charges against the students for quite some time, the government did not yield, maintaining that the courts might object to the release of those charged with serious offences. Apparently, what prompted the government to make a U-turn now is the realisation in its camp that it should outsmart the TRS and project itself as a better champion of Telangana than the former.

 

One does not know what is up in the sleeves of Congressmen. But reports suggest that a substantial number of its MPs, MLAs and MLCs from the Telangana region have threatened to resign their posts if the Centre fails to announce the creation of Telangana state. Any such decision will only harm the interests of the state, destabilise the present government and give a rope to parties like the TRS and the Telugu Desam to disturb peace. The party leadership at the Centre and in the state would do well to rein in recalcitrant legislators. The new Chief Minister, who is yet to get a grip over the state, seems to be feeling the heat. Ironically, the ruling party itself is creating hurdles in the smooth functioning of his government just as the Opposition (including Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy) did to his predecessor, Mr K. Rosaiah.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

ANTI-INDIANISM IN NEPAL

NEED TO RELATE WITH POPULAR ASPIRATIONS

BY S.D. MUNI

 

SHOWING black flags to the Indian Ambassador in Nepal and hurling shoes and stones at him over the past couple of months has taken the expression of anti-Indianism in Nepal to new lows. This is unprecedented because no Indian Ambassador has been treated in Nepal so shabbily, though expression of resentment against India on one issue or the other has often chracterised the dynamics of bilateral relations between the two countries. While Indian policy has occasionally taken into account the specific incidents of anti-Indianism and responded to them, there has seldom been an in-depth and objective analysis of this phenomenon and a measured effort to eliminate it.

 

There are two levels to look at the phenomenon of anti-Indianism in Nepal — one at the level of the state and the other at that of the people. Ever since its establishment in 1769 by Prithvi Narayan Shah, the Nepali state has always been weary of its southern neighbour for the latter's overwhelming size and resources that made Nepal excessively dependent and subdued in bilateral engagements. To this essentially geopolitical sense of caution, natural between such two close but highly unequal neighbours, was added the sense of insecurity of the regime following India's independence.

 

The feudal autocratic oligarchy of the Ranas that had enjoyed British protection and patronage since 1847 could not sustain itself in the proximity of a resurgent democratic India. Their fall in 1951 transferred their sense of regime insecurity vis-à-vis India to the autocratic monarchy headed by King Mahendra, who thwarted the process of democratic evolution in Nepal by taking over power directly. The opponents of both the Ranas and King Mahendra drew active support from the Indian democratic state as well as its populist society.

 

The Ranas for a while during the early fifties and King Mahendra and his successors on a sustained basis until recently tried to nurse Nepali nationalism on anti-Indian diet primarily as a device to keep their hold on power. India's message to the feudal rulers has been that in view of the gradually awakening Nepali masses and the changing geo-political context of the Himalayas, between a democratic India and an assertive communist China, Nepali polity must democratise, even if without abandoning monarchy, as it was not viable. This message was welcomed by a liberal king like Tribhuwan but could not carry conviction with his assertive and autocratic successors.

 

To cushion itself against pressures from India, the feudal regimes exploited international and regional contradictions to mobilise external support. The US support since the Rana period was rooted into the Cold War calculations as India then stood on the other side of the global strategic divide. In the regional context, Nepali rulers found China and Pakistan more than willing to develop strategic stakes in Nepal at India's cost since the late fifites. Internally, the Nepali monarchy encouraged such political forces that worked for anti- democratic and anti-Indian mobilisation, such as the communist and the feudal groups. This facilitated the percolation of anti-Indian sentiments in political and social constituencies for decades. There is a whole generation of Nepalis brought up on the heavy diet of anti-Indian nationalism.

 

At the people's level, among some of the social groups, particularly the sections of tribal (Janjatis) and marginalised communities, the anti-India sentiment goes centuries back, to the time when they were conquered through force by Prithvi Narayan Shah, in the process of creating the present state of Nepal. The Shah King's lineage is traced to India in the perception of these hill-based communities, including the Kathmandu valley's original inhabitants, the Newars. The tribal and marginalised communities have also perceived India as a protector and promoter of the Nepalese monarchy, seen as the source of their long-standing marginalisation and discrimination. The Newars, besides their strong undercurrent of anti-monarchy (Shah kings) sentiment, also felt uneasy with India because as the principal trading community of the capital valley, they had to confront the Indian trading regime and face competition with the Marwari trading community having Indian roots. All these communities were mobilised by the Maoists in their confrontation with Nepal's feudal state. This confrontation turned into a people's movement (Jan-Andolan-II) with the mainstream parliamentary parties joining it in 2005-2006.

 

The success of the people's movement in Nepal created a huge window of opportunity to change the dynamics of anti-Indianism. This movement comprised the majority of those social groups that had been either apathetic or unfriendly towards India. India's complete and unflinching identification with the emerging forces of the people's movement and the aspirations of a secular, republican, inclusive and democratic new Nepal could go a long way in blunting India's traditional image of a patron of the feudal state. India extended critical support to this movement but with two caveats; inherent preference for constitutional monarchy and strong aversion to a Maoist-led Nepal. The preference for constitutional monarchy was exposed when India's Special Envoy, Dr Karan Singh, endorsed a partial royal retreat before the people's movement in the form of the first Royal proclamation of April 21, 2006.

 

India's top political leadership continues to keep close personal and political rapport with Nepal's discarded royals notwithstanding the fact that none of India's core national interests in Nepal was served under monarchy. The aversion towards the Maoists, often fuelled by exaggerated and knee-jerk strategic and ideological considerations, has led to the fragmentation of Nepali politics and the hurling of shoes and stones at the Indian Ambassador. Soon after the success of the people's movement, the Maoists had publicly proclaimed India as their principal supporter but the Indian diplomacy did not see any virtue in transforming this claim into a creative understanding, if not alliance. In its endeavour to keep the Maoists out of power, India has contributed significantly to political fragmentation and even weakening of the Madhesi groups that should otherwise be India's natural constituency.

 

The problem with Indian diplomacy in Nepal has been its vulnerability to subjective considerations, personal egos and priority to the immediate over the enduring. Due to this weakness, Nehru's vision of helping Nepal build an evolving and balanced democracy got degenerated into undue and excessive engagement, bordering on unethical interference. Even during the 1950s, Indian Ambassadors like C.P.N. Singh were extremely unpopular for their tendency to micro-manage Nepalese affairs. At times, driven by the strategic paranoia vis-à-vis China and, at others, suffering from the imperial style of functioning, derived from the British heritage, Indian diplomacy has often erred on Nepali susceptibilities. The deviations like the "Gujral Doctrine" were rather short-lived to undo the damage of the years of callousness.

 

India may not be able to extricate itself from the image of an overbearing "big brother" if it fails to relate itself sincerely with the genuine popular aspirations in Nepal. In a radically transformed neighbourhood, India needs a serious diplomatic homework to protect and promote its critical national interests in challenging times.

 

The writer is Visiting Research Professor, ISAS, Singapore.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

ARTICLE

TURBAN TALES

BY ROOPINDER SINGH

 

IT was a nice party and we were all enjoying ourselves to celebrate the success of a friend. My friend introduced me to some young foreigners as "Osama's brother".

 

The two couples were from South Africa, globe trotters and well exposed to international travel and traditions. London figured in our conversation, too. For me it's the place I visited first when I ventured away from Indian shores. These couples had found work there, in the recession, mind you, and we all had a lot to say about their abilities.

 

"We see these greetings and I wish someone would explain them to us," said a young lady.

 

"Which greetings," I asked.

 

"You know, the way Muslim men embrace each other, or place their hand on their heart when they meet, what does it really mean?"

 

Here was I, resplendent in a black overcoat, wearing a nice tie and all, as well as a colour-coordinated turban, and they had decided that I was someone they could query about "Muslim" greetings.  I wore a turban, as did their host, also a Sikh, yet somehow; they had made an intuitive (and wrong) leap about my religious denomination.

 

My mind went back to the time when we found it impossible to tell foreigners apart, unless the differences were very obvious, like skin colours, basic body structures, etc. "A gora is a gora, they all look alike," is a refrain all too common.

 

I took the confusion sportingly and proceed to explain with more confidence than authority the differences in greetings, and also gently pointed out that they had more to do with culture than religion.

 

The idea that my turban had made me, in some sense, a target somehow niggled in my mind. Well, I had been there before and it wasn't all that bad! Joel Baird was friendly towards me from the first time we met in New York. "You are a Sikh. When I was a child, I was told that if I was in a bind, I should find a Sikh and run to him. He would help me," said this Columbia University student. Now Joel had studied in the American School, New Delhi, and had spent time in India. He and his charming wife were great hosts, and the New York memory brings a smile on the face whenever it surfaces.

 

As does another one, of an elderly person at a gas station while travelling on an American highway in the wee hours of the morning. "Sikhs are good people," he pronounced after seeing my turban. He has based his observation on his interaction with Sikhs while serving in the US Army.

 

However, 9/11 changed all that and turbans were associated in many minds with Osama bin Laden. The finer distinctions of kinds and colours of turbans were lost and even someone like Hardeep Puri, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, recently faced undue attention from US airport security personnel because of his turban. So embarrassing, unfortunate and sad. Generalisations can be treacherously misleading, especially sweeping, negative ones. They can even cast a pall over an apparel of honour.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

DEBT'S THE PROBLEM

WEST BENGAL, UTTAR PRADESH, MAHARASHTRA AND PUNJAB ARE AMONG THE HIGHLY INDEBTED STATES. THE POLITICS OF POPULISM, FREEBIES AND IRRATIONAL SUBSIDIES IS OFTEN BLAMED FOR THE INDEBTEDNESS OF STATES. A LESS-KNOWN FACT IS: THE MOST INDEBTED STATES GET A POOR SHARE OF THE CENTRAL TAXES AND GRANTS. HERE IS AN ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUE OF DEBT: 
BIKRAM SINGH VIRK

 

THE debt burden of the states is constantly rising. According to a report compiled by the RBI on the budgets of all states for the fiscal year 2009-10 (Budgeted Estimates), the combined debt of all 30 states of India has reached Rs 14.5 lakh crore from Rs 4.9 lakh crore in 2001, a near three-fold increase in a decade.

 

Some of the states have a high debt-to-GSDP (Gross State Domestic Produce) ratio, which is still rising. The worst case is that of West Bengal, whose debt-to-GSDP ratio went up from 24.8 per cent in 1999-2000 to 40.6 in 2007-08 against the average ratio of all states, which rose from 19.5 per cent to 26.8 per cent during the same period.

 

Next comes Uttar Pradesh and Punjab with debt-GSDP ratios of 39.3 per cent and 38.2 per cent respectively. Though Punjab has managed to bring it down from 47.9 per cent in 2003-04, still the debt figure, which was Rs. Rs 63,277 crore in 09-10 is comparatively on the higher side considering the size and population of the state.

 

In absolute terms, UP and Maharashtra are the highly indebted states, whose debt burden in 2009-10 was nearly Rs. 1.67 lakh crore each, followed by West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, each having an outstanding debt of more than Rs 1lakh crore.

 

The rising debt makes a dent in the revenue receipts of the states by taking a major chunk in the form of interest payments. All states paid 12.6 per cent of their cumulative revenue receipts as interest. West Bengal and Punjab paid 28 per cent and 22 per cent of their revenue receipts, respectively, by way of interest.

 

Adding salaries and pensions, the other committed expenditure, very little is left for planned development, which is mostly funded by borrowings, resulting in a mounting debt and an impending debt trap.

 

Though the politics of populism, tax concessions to certain sections, freebies and irrational subsidies to garner votes are often debated as the root cause of the indebtedness of states and is also true to a great extent, the share from the Central taxes, grants and their distribution, if viewed closely, also holds the key.

 

Broadly, a state'