EDITORIAL 26.08.11

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Editorial

month august 26, edition 000820, 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. ELEPHANT AND THE DRAGON
2. PEACE DIVIDEND, AT LAST
3. CHANGE AS MORE OF THE SAME - SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY
4. MODI-BAITERS STAND UNMASKED - SANDEEP B
5. PAKISTAN IN GRIP OF RAGING ETHNIC VIOLENCE - B RAMAN
6. BASHAR COULD SURVIVE, THANKS TO RUSSIA'S VETO

 THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. SHEATH THOSE SCISSORS
2. SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY
3. FINDING THE MIDDLE GROUND - PRAKASH SINGH
4. 'SEXUALITY IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR DAILY EXISTENCE' - MONOBINA GUPTA
5. BONG SONG - JUG SURAIYA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. MOVE AN INCH TO WALK A MILE
2. WE'LL PASS ON THIS
3. DEATH OF THE LIBERAL - ABHIJIT MAJUMDER
4. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
5. SHOW A MIGHTY HEART

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. THE PLACE FOR IT
2. ALL ABOUT STEVE
3. CUT-OUT TEXTBOOKS
4. THE ONE-DIMENSIONAL FAST - SEEMA CHISHTI
5. HARRIED IN HYDERABAD - AJAY GUDAVARTHI
6. 'ANNA HAZARE HAS MADE HIS POINT' - MANMOHAN SINGH
7. JUST ONE LAW WON'T DO IT - MADHU KISHWAR
8. ANNA IS NEWS AND NEWS IS ANNA - SHAILAJA BAJPAI
9. IGNITING INDIA - MANOJCG

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. APPLE'S CORE
2. NEW SWISS FORMULA
3. APPLE TO FACE A SEVERE TEST WITHOUT JOBS - RICHARD WATERS
4. THE DYNAMICS OF CORRUPTION - RAJESH CHAKRABARTI

THE HINDU

1. POST-RIOT FALLOUT: SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS MEET U.K. GOVERNMENT
2. JAPAN'S TURN FOR DOWNGRADE - A MASSIVE TREE
3. SETBACK TO SPACE PROGRAMME? - ANDREW E. KRAMER AND
4. THE MIRACLE THAT WAS MOTHER TERESA - NAVIN CHAWLA
5. INSIDE SYRIA'S FAILED REBELLION - PRAVEEN SWAMI

THE ASIAN AGE

1. SOME MPS SET A BAD EXAMPLE
2. THE DISINHERITED - SWAPAN DASGUPTA
3. STARRY, STARRY TWEETS - KHALID MOHAMED
4. FILMFLAM OF AARAKSHAN - SHIV VISVANATHAN

DAILY EXCELSIOR

1. PAPER TIGER
2. PACKAGES AND PACKAGES
3. PLEASE LEAD PRIME MINISTER OR GO - BY TAVLEEN SINGH
4. US DEBT CRISIS AND INDIA - BY SHIVAJI SARKAR
5. CORRUPTION IN COUNTRY - BY ER S C KHANNA

THE TRIBUNE

1. 'CROP HOLIDAY' IN ANDHRA
2. PLAYING WITH LIVES
3. TROUBLE IN KARACHI
4. JOINTNESS IN ARMED FORCES - BY RAKESH DATTA
5. PUNJABI DIASPORA - BY V. K. KAPOOR
6. COMPASSION BEYOND BOUNDARIES - NAVIN B CHAWLA

MUMBAI MIRROR

1. THIS IS A TIME TO HEAL

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. VOICE OF SILENT MAJORITY
2. ENTER THE DRAGON
3. IS IT TIME TO BUY INDIA? - AKASH PRAKASH
4. BETTING ON A RANGE-BOUND RUPEE - JAMAL MECKLAI
5. A NEW CHAPTER IN NEPAL - JYOTI MALHOTRA
6. GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS AND ASIA-PACIFIC - NAGESH KUMAR 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. APPLE AFTER JOBS
2. A POINTLESS EXERCISE
3. GOOD NEWS FROM RAMLILA MAIDAN
4. THE ART OF IDEOLOGIES  - RAKESH BEDI
5. CORPORATE CARETAKER  - LUBNA KABLY

BUSINESS LINE

1. THE INDUSTRY STEELS ITSELF
2. ANNA AND AP - M. SOMASEKHAR
3. TAKES MORE THAN GUNS TO KILL… - ADITI NIGAM
4. SOUTH LUKEWARM TO ANNA'S FAST? - B.S.RAGHAVAN
5. HOW THE WORLD BURNT ITS FINGERS - SHEKHAR SWAMY

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. SOME MPS SET A BAD EXAMPLE
2. CAN APPLE STILL DELIVER?
3. CRICKET'S BRAND DILEMMA
4. UPA NEEDS TO LEARN THE ABC OF PR
5. ANCESTRAL RITES
6. CHAIRMAN MAO & ANNA

THE STATESMAN

1. DARJEELING TO GORKHALAND
2. JAI SHANKAR AGARWALA
3. COURTING CHAOS
4. SOCIAL MORES
5. INFERIOR DRUGS
6. WITHDRAW THE SAD BILL
7. WHY GOVERNMENT TOOK U-TURN  - RAJINDER PURI
8. ANATOMY OF CRAMMING  - ARUNABHA BAGCHI

THE TELEGRAPH

1. HOUSE IN ORDER
2. THE SPOILS OF WAR
3. CORRUPT? WHO, ME?
4. CRYING OUT FOR CHANGE  - MALVIKA SINGH

DECCAN HERALD

1. CHALLENGES AHEAD
2. NEED FOR CAUTION
3. A BEACON OF HOPE

OHERALDO

1. AN UNNECESSARY PROMULGATION
2. THE LOKPAL WITHIN US - IRENE DELANEY
3. THE ANONYMOUS GOAN - PLASTINO D'COSTA

HAARETZ

1. ISRAEL MUST LOWER ITS PROFILE IN FACE OF THE ARAB TUMULT
2. BREAKING MARGALIT TZAN'ANI  - BY NEHEMIA SHTRASLER
3. LEBENSRAUM AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS - BY YOSSI SARID
4. SOCIAL JUSTICE ALSO MEANS ENDING THE OCCUPATION - BY ZEEV STERNHELL
5. WILL EGYPT BE TOO BUSY TO HATE?  - BY JAMES KIRCHICK

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. THE SHORTAGE OF VITAL DRUGS
2. A LIFELINE FOR HOMEOWNERS
3. DO THEY WANT TO KNOW LESS?
4. CALLING INDUSTRY'S BLUFF

TIMES FREE PRESS

1. IRENE'S GROWING THREAT
2. QUAKE, HURRICANE: NATURE'S ONE-TWO PUNCH
3. FOOD STAMPS, JOBS AND 'STIMULUS'
4. TEXAS GOV. PERRY LEADS GOP FIELD

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

1. THE ARAB WORLD: TRANSITION TO WHERE?
2. IRAN, IRAQ, SYRIA AND THE PKK
3. THE ARAB WORLD: TRANSITION TO WHERE?
4. TURKEY'S 'HOUSE OF GLASS'
5. TURKEY PUSHING FOR INTERESTS IN LIBYA
6. LOOKING BEYOND THE MARKETS
7. UNABLE TO SAY 'WE KNEW HIM WELL'
8. SECOND STEP IN CONSTITUTIONAL WORK

THE NEWS

1. SINKING LOWER
2. HEARING THE CRIES
3. A RUGGED PATH  
4. A STRAUSS-KAHN IN CHAKWAL  -  AYAZ AMIR
5. UNLESS THE KILLINGS STOP  -  TASNEEM NOORANI
6. HOMEGROWN IMPERIALISM  -  DR MUHAMMAD YAQUB
7. WEST'S NEW MIDDLE EAST  - DR MUZAFFAR IQBAL
8. INTELLECTUAL SLOGANS AND REALITY  -  SHAFQAT MAHMOOD
9. NUMBER GAME  - HARRIS KHALIQUE

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. ON WHOSE BEHALF BRAHAMDAGH IS SPEAKING?
2. DOCTORS DESERVE RESPECTABLE SALARY PACKAGE
3. CHINA'S DUE INTEREST IN AFGHAN PEACE
4. NATO DESTROYS YET ANOTHER COUNTRY - M D NALAPAT
5. MASS GRAVES IMBROGLIO IN IHK - SULTAN M HALI
6. SIGNIFICANCE OF DUROOD SHARIF — 25 - SIRAJUDDIN AZIZ
7. KILLING SPREE IN KARACHI - MALIK M ASHRAF
8. AL-QAEDA: DOWN, NOT OUT - DAVID IGNATIUS

THE AUSTRALIYAN

1. THE BOOM WE'RE HAPPY TO HAVE
2. SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE MUST NOT BE SHUT DOWN
3. GROUNDING A QANTAS TAKEOVER

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. TAPPING INTO MINING'S BOOM
2. FROM THE BOOK OF JOBS: NEVER FEAR THE NEW
3. AMBULANCE WOES GO BEYOND BOARD

THE GUARDIAN

1. IN PRAISE OF … THE COAST AROUND CRAIL
2. GCSE RESULTS: RIGHT QUESTION, WRONG ANSWER
3. TAXING THE RICH: HOWLS OF ANGUISH

THE JAKARTA POST

1. FOCUS ON THE CONSTITUTION
2. BRIGHT PROSPECT OF ISLAMIC BANKING  - PAUL SUTARYONO
3. FASTING: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE 'PEOPLE OF THE BOOK' - SAMSUDIN BERLIAN
4. THE ANNUAL IDUL FITRI EXODUS: WHAT 'MUDIK' TELLS US - TATA MUSTASYA  

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

ELEPHANT AND THE DRAGON

INDIA MUST DEAL WITH CHINA ON ITS OWN

It could be argued that India-China relations are really no concern of the US, not the least because Washington, DC should be more worried about Beijing's increasing strategic investments in America that make the former enormously dependent on the latter and, to a great extent, ineffective in reining in the dragon, leave alone clipping its claws. The parlous state of the American economy robs the US much of its power though it remains, notionally so, the world's sole superpower, albeit steeped in debt and unsure where it will be by the first quarter of the 21st century. Even the mighty American military with multi-million-dollar weapons now appears no more than a tired and defeated Army, unable to flex its muscles or score a victory. There is nothing edifying about the exit of American forces from Afghanistan, no matter what spin is put on it; when the last US soldier leaves that country, the intervention and the subsequent War on Terror will be remembered more about how the Americans turned tail and ran rather than how they bravely fought back the forces of darkness and evil. A country which decides to opt for sleight of hand — for instance, designating terrorists like the Taliban as 'good' and 'bad' — to cut its losses and run, leaving many others in the lurch, is not worthy of either respect or regard. The view from Washington could be entirely different, but that in no manner diminishes the fact that to the world at large, the US is now just another country, desperately struggling to stay afloat in these hard and trying times. It is against this backdrop that we should view the US Defence Department's report, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2011," which highlights the pace and scope of China's defence investments and capabilities and describes them as "potentially destabilising" to military balances in the region.

This is not to deny that the rapid build-up of China's military capabilities should be of no concern to its neighbours, barring Pakistan, its 'all-weather friend' which is now looking towards Beijing as Islamabad's steamy affair with Washington approaches a rather sour end. Countries in South-East Asia have reason to worry about China's expansionist policies, as does India. After all, if there is one country which China would like to contain, if not hobble, it is India — the Middle Kingdom's history bears testimony to this long-cherished desire. But this is a concern that India has to deal with on its own, instead of becoming a pawn in a fresh round of the 'Great Game' that so enthuses the Anglo-Saxon world and distracts it from pressing concerns at home. Enlightened strategic self-interest demands that India should hasten the process of modernising its military and acquiring far greater capabilities — both in terms of human resource and state-of-the-art hardware. Decades of neglect and the absence of strategic foresight have contributed to the creation of a situation where China has an upper hand over India, especially in terms of mobilising forces and launching warheads from the areas adjacent to the border — in Tibet, to be precise. But pragmatism demands that India must take recourse to creative diplomacy and use bilateral relations to its advantage. Little or no purpose will be served by falling prey to American alarmism.

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

PEACE DIVIDEND, AT LAST

RAJAPAKSA LIFTS EMERGENCY LAWS

Almost 30 years after wartime Emergency laws were first imposed in Sri Lanka in response to the rising threat from the LTTE, President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced on Thursday that they would be lifted at the end of this month, more than two years after the Tamil terrorists were militarily defeated in May 2009. A welcome decision by all means, it marks an important step in the island nation's efforts to initiate the process of post-war recovery and surge ahead on the path to development. Emergency laws were first introduced in 1971 after Marxists attempted to overthrow the then Government. They were abolished in 1977 but re-introduced in 1983, when the late LTTE commander Velupillai Prabhakaran launched a violent campaign demanding a separate homeland for the country's minority Tamil population. Since then Sri Lanka has been under a state of constant Emergency, except for brief periods of peace and ceasefire, usually during which the Government would engage in negotiations with the LTTE. Initially the laws were limited to the country's restive North and Eastern districts which were under the LTTE's parallel administration but by 1995, the entire country was brought under Emergency laws. This last round of Emergency laws were imposed in 2005, three years after they were allowed to lapse in 2002, in the aftermath of the assassination of then Foreign Minster Lakshman Kadirgamar by LTTE terrorists. In the six years since then Sri Lankan forces have fought and won a bloody war against the LTTE and clearly Sri Lanka is now trying to shift gears from being a war-torn nation to a peace-time democracy. Towards that end, the lifting of Emergency laws that had earlier imposed draconian restrictions on the country's civil and political liberties is of huge political significance, to say the least.

Critics of Mr Rajapaksa have pointed out that his decision to finally abolish Emergency laws, which he had allegedly abused to further his own interests by cracking down on the Opposition and muzzling a partisan Press, has come at a crucial time — only a month ahead of the UN Human Rights Council's meeting in Geneva next month where it is expected to discuss charges of war crimes that were allegedly committed by both the Army and the LTTE during the long-drawn war. While Colombo has consistently denied these charges, and has assured the global community that a thorough investigation is being carried out by authorities, the fact remains that by removing war-time restrictions it has proven that the Government is committed to cleaning up the mess from a violent past and strengthening the country's future. This is positive sign that must be acknowledged as such and not trashed as an opportunistic tactical move.

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

CHANGE AS MORE OF THE SAME

SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

It's absurd to rename West Bengal as Paschimbanga because it means the same and does not denote change. A far better option would be to opt for Bangladesh.

We would have been spared all those jokes about 'Waste' or 'Rest' Bengal, 'Bongo' and Paschim 'Bungle' if Ms Mamata Banerjee's yearning for Paribartan, Change, had not blurred the distinction between frivolity and seriousness. Many countries, provinces and cities change their names but usually for more substantial reasons than climbing up the alphabetical ladder. West Bengal's Trinamool Congress Government complains of not receiving the Centre's prompt attention because W is so low in the list.

Tamil Nadu and Uttarkhand, which are not much better off alphabetically, haven't complained. But that doesn't mean dissatisfaction with the present name is either new or entirely illogical. The 'West' became redundant when East Bengal disappeared. Retaining it keeps alive the illusion of indivisibility just as the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Pact of 1950 kept alive the myth that Hindus who had been driven off their land in East Pakistan still retained their property rights.

The obvious answer is to drop the West and call the state Bengal. As a member of the committee Jyoti Basu set up to consider a new name, I ventured to suggest just that. To those who thought Bengal was English and not Bengali, I replied it was as Bengali as the then Chief Minister's own name. We all use Anglicised versions of our names — the present Chief Minister's Banerjee is the obvious example — without it denationalising the bearer in any way. But the committee dithered, leaving West Bengal sounding like a half waiting for its other.

East Punjab's conversion to Punjab (like its Pakistani half) removed the sense of incompleteness. Two vigorously confident Punjabs on two sides of the border set a precedent for two Bangladeshs — which is what Bengalis have always called their State in Bengali — as well. It might confuse some to start with but would not be legally or politically inadmissible to have two Bangladeshs, one an Indian State and the other an independent country, if just Bengal smacks too much of the British Raj.

In fact, there's a precedent from the Balkans where there is an independent Macedonia as well as three regions of Greece called Western Macedonia, Central Macedonia and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. Independent Macedonia was part of the former Yugoslavia but declared its sovereignty when the Yugoslav civil war broke out in 1991. Greece refused to recognise it for some years, insisting on a name change. To add insult to injury, grumbled the Greeks, independent Macedonia's Constitution contained a reference to "all Macedonians" while its flag flaunted the Vergina Star of the Macedonian dynasty of the Greek hero, Alexander the Great. The eventual compromise was that the sovereign state should be called The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (note the capitals!) and be listed under T (for The) by the United Nations General Assembly. Its UN representative sits next to Thailand's.

The parallel continues in Bangladesh's adoption of a Rabindrasangeet as its national anthem, and the Bangladeshi belief that they are the true upholders of Bengali culture. They accuse West Bengal of surrendering its identity to the cosmopolitan lure of English and Hindi.

Perhaps the charge is subconsciously acknowledged in West Bengal too, accounting for the rejection of English nomenclature like Bengal. The more perspicacious Left Front leaders knew that people voted for them not to usher in a dictatorship of the proletariat but to safeguard Bengali interests. The CPI(M) was seen as the local party while Congress was the instrument of Hindi imperialism, with West Bengal Congress leaders merely repeating the high command's orders.

The Left Front eventually decided in July 1999 that the State should be called Bangla. It was not a very appropriate term for Bangla without desh is both an adjective and the word for the language. But it was the unanimous choice and the State Government wrote to the Centre on December 28, 1999, asking that the necessary steps be taken under Article 3(e) of the Constitution to effect the change. Apparently, nothing happened though it took only about three years each for the old Madras State to become Tamil Nadu and Orissa to be reborn as Odisha. For that matter, even local changes like Medinipur for Midnapore are announced but not officially effected, possibly because of bureaucratic lethargy.

No one seems very fond of the new name, which is only West Bengal in Bengali, not even those who adopted it at an all-party meeting on August 19. "Paschimbanga was the unanimous decision at the all-party meeting," says Ms Banerjee, adding "This will take us a step forward." Forward to what? No one knows. Those who were unanimous in their endorsement have not cared to defend their choice in public. Reports suggest that Ms Banerjee herself would have preferred Bangabhoomi, land of Bengalis, which the Forward Bloc rejected.

Scholars argue that Banga, whose origins go back 2,500 years, would have been better. Others complain that the P of Paschimbanga doesn't come too far ahead of West Bengal's W. Most seem to feel there was no need for a change at all. Non-Bengalis will find it difficult to pronounce the new name. Moreover, Paschimbanga retains the old ambivalence about East Bengal, Purba Banga in Bengali, suggesting that West Bengal still sees itself as half a Siamese twin. Any change will mean avoidable expense and other complications but the only point of this one seems to be to retreat from English to the mother tongue.

The worst danger is that we are threatened with another change — or other changes — in future. "Paschimbanga does not fulfil our aspirations," admits Mr Partha Chatterjee, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, "but at this moment it was more important to arrive at a consensus." Read that in conjunction with his boss's "This will take us a step forward" and you get the sense of it. Paschimbanga is probably a stop-gap arrangement and West Bengal is destined for a name-hopping spree, perhaps until Ms Banerjee's favoured Bangabhoomi can be adopted.

Name-changing can be a perilous exercise. It's said that after taking over Uganda, Idi Amin wanted to rename the country after himself. He persisted in the demand until a wily old Ugandan pointedly wondered that since the citizens of Cyprus were called Cypriots, what would the citizens of Idi be called.

Paribartan sounds good on the campaign trail but it's often best not to tamper with the tried and tested old.

-----sunandadr@yahoo.co.in

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THE PIONEER

OPED

MODI-BAITERS STAND UNMASKED

SANDEEP B

A sizeable section of the English media has been suspiciously enthusiastic about touting allegations as proof as far as the 2002 Gujarat violence is concerned. Recent revelations about those agitating against Narendra Modi and his Government have exposed them for what they are: Liars and myth-mongers. IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is one such 'crusader' who should be shamed and shunned by all

Intellectuals, academics, a sizeable section of the English media and other self-appointed guardians of communal harmony consider allegation as proof as far as the Gujarat 2002 violence — or more accurately, Mr Narendra Modi — is concerned. It's only recently that damaging revelations regarding the motivations and credibility of some of these worthies have come to light — one of the vociferous detractors of Mr Modi, Prof Angana Chatterji, happens to be on the ISI agent Ghulam Fai's guest list. Even a cursory examination of the timeline of the 2002 riots investigation will show us that it's not justice that they want for the riot victims but the scalp of the Gujarat Chief Minister.

The riot-investigation timeline is populated mostly by wild allegations and involves actors drawn from various backgrounds united by a common motive to ensure Mr Modi's fall from Chief Ministership. However, over time, their allegations have slowly been coming apart. Teesta Setalvad, who at one point attained celebrity status for her efforts to pursue the riots cases now finds herself facing the ire of courts. One of the revelations from her former aide and confidant Rais Khan include the following statement: "Sadik Hussain R Sheikh, (a) notary, who is on the pay roll of Teesta Setalvad… used to blindly notarise affidavits of witnesses sent by Teesta Setalvad. Sadik has also notarised the affidavits of Sanjiv Bhatt, IPS, on April 14, 2011."

This is the same Sanjiv Bhatt whom the media and self-proclaimed secularists catapulted to instant stardom sometime in April this year because he claimed in an affidavit to the Supreme Court that he was present at a meeting where Mr Modi had, in the presence of seven senior bureaucrats, said that Hindus should be allowed to vent their 'anger' against Muslims after 59 kar sevaks were roasted alive in the Sabarmati Express coach.

Sanjiv Bhatt, a Gujarat Cadre IPS officer of the 1988 batch was suspended by the Gujarat Government last week after an inquiry report found that he was guilty of "continuous disobedience," which constitutes a "serious misconduct and under AIS Conduct & Discipline Rules attracts a major penalty," and is "unbecoming of a senior member of the IPS". Instant outrage ensued from the usual quarters in the media and elsewhere over Sanjiv Bhatt's suspension terming it as an act of vendetta by the Gujarat Government. Sanjiv Bhatt has since claimed to contest the suspension.

So does this saga boil down to one where an upright policeman is punished by the might of the State because he spoke the truth? Here's a brief career graph of Sanjiv Bhatt.

·  Some years ago, Sanjiv Bhatt was indicted by the National Human Rights Commission for planting drugs in a hotel room to implicate, arrest, and wrongfully detain an advocate of Rajasthan. He was then indicted by a lower court and the indictment was subsequently upheld by the Gujarat High Court.

·  In 1996, he was named as an accused in the Gujarat Police recruitment scam for which he was chargesheeted on December 12, 2010. Sanjiv Bhatt was chairman of the recruitment committee. The chargesheet details the nature of specific commissions and omissions done by Sanjiv Bhatt in his capacity as chairman. A notable omission is the fact that he flouted the orders of the DGP regarding certain specific recruitment procedures.

·  Sanjiv Bhatt repeated the same defiance — of flouting his superior's order — when he was posted as Principal, SRP Training Centre, Chawki, Sorath, Junagadh since September 1, 2010. Despite his leave application being rejected by the Gujarat DGP, he went on unauthorised absence starting February 12, 2011 till date. He ignored several reminders to report to duty.

·  When he was posted to the Gram Rakshak Dal (from where he was transferred on October 30, 2010), he appropriated official gadgetry like laptops, projector, video cameras, and a mobile phone and returned them only after the Government ordered a preliminary inquiry against him. Sanjiv Bhatt ignored all the notices that ordered him to be present at the inquiry.

What's most notable in Sanjiv Bhatt's unflattering career record is the fact that his long list of professional misconduct happened years before he filed his affidavit.

This begs another important question: Why did Sanjiv Bhatt wait for nine years to state that he was part of that meeting? Why didn't he depose before say, the Nanavati Commission or the Banerjee Commission?

The Supreme Court-appointed SIT rejected his testimony on the grounds that it was unreliable. Nobody among the seven bureaucrats present at said meeting with Mr Modi ever recalled Sanjiv Bhatt's presence.

Not content with this, Sanjiv Bhatt on July 26, 2011 filed another affidavit, which makes even wilder allegations against a host of people including his (former) friend, the Additional Advocate General Tushar Mehta, RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy, and Mr N Ram of The Hindu. Both Mr Gurumurthy and Mr Ram have denied these allegations.

According to Sanjiv Bhatt, Mr Mehta had colluded with various bureaucrats to help the riots-accused escape punishment. Sanjiv Bhatt's claim that he "chanced upon" some "unusual emails" in Mr Mehta's personal email account — whose password Mr Mehta had given him — is incredible. Even assuming he had been given the password, how does one "chance upon" an email without opening and reading it at some length? On his part, Mr Mehta denies that he had ever shared his email password with Sanjiv Bhatt. Sanjiv Bhatt's other allegation is that his emails have been hacked by "agents" of the Gujarat administration.

Among others, Sanjiv Bhatt has had email exchanges with Teesta Setalvad, Shabnam Hashmi, Cedric Prakash and Leader of the Opposition in Gujarat, Shakti Singh Gohil. An email with Mr Gohil talks about how he (Sanjiv Bhatt) is "eagerly awaiting both the packages" and "the Blackberry".

This is pretty much the complete picture, so far, of a tainted cop who has leveled serious allegations against everybody who have ventured to present the other side of the Gujarat riots saga. It is unthinkable that Sanjiv Bhatt is acting without powerful political support. Union Minister for Home Affairs P Chidambaram's ill-advised remark about the Center willing to intervene in Gujarat's affairs can be interpreted as an expression of support for Sanjiv Bhatt. His statement is akin to a chilling foretaste of a horribly damaged federalism envisaged by the dangerous Communal Violence Bill sought to be pushed through.

Equally, sections of the media need to stop projecting Sanjiv Bhatt as a courageous cop who was victimised given that it has failed to inform the complete picture about Sanjiv Bhatt to the public. Fairness, restraint and balance aren't really very hard to achieve if the media puts its mind to it.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

PAKISTAN IN GRIP OF RAGING ETHNIC VIOLENCE

B RAMAN

The cycle of violence in Karachi will continue as none of the contending parties is likely to force a strategic confrontation which could destabilise Pakistan. Hence, such periodic confrontations will continue till the criminal-politician-police nexus is broken.

The civil war-like situation in Karachi continues without respite. Seventy-three persons belonging to different communities and religious sects were reported to have been killed — many of them in targeted shootings and some kidnapped and tortured to death — during four days of fresh violence between August 16 and 19. The level of violence considerably came down on August 20.

The victims in the four days of fresh violence were mainly Mohajirs supporting the Muttahida Qaumi Movement of Altaf Hussain mainly representing Mohajir migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi) mainly representing migrants from Bihar, Pashtun supporters of the Awami National Party, Balochs without political affiliation and Barelvi Sunnis of the Sunni Tehreek.

The number of victims in the Sindhi community, which supports the ruling Pakistan People's Party of President Asif Ali Zardari and the various Sindhi nationalist parties, and in the Punjabi community, which supports the Pakistan Muslim League of Mr Nawaz Sharif, has reportedly been low, but exact figures are not available.

The deterioration in the situation has been partly the outcome of the alleged action of the Government in releasing the leaders and cadres of the anti-Altaf Hussain MQM (H) who had been arrested and jailed by Gen Pervez Musharraf when he was the President as part of a secret deal with Altaf under which the MQM observed restraint in Karachi in return for the jailing of Altaf's opponents in the Mohajir community.

The MQM of Altaf sees the release of Altaf's Mohajir opponents by the PPP-led Government as a revival of Benazir Bhutto's policy (1988-90 and 1993-95) of pitting the MQM (H) against the MQM in the streets of Karachi .

The present spell of violence, which started as business and smuggling related clashes between the Barelvi Mohajirs of the MQM and the Deobandi Pashtuns of the ANP, has since assumed a wider dimension with Mohajirs killing Mohajirs. The ethnic and sectarian strife, which one saw at the beginning of the present spell of violence, has been aggravated by gang warfare between rival Mohajir mafia gangs.

It is pure and simple criminal violence not motivated by any political ideology or religious goal. The violence is about who controls the mafia economy of Karachi. There have been increasing demands for Army intervention since none of the groups involved in the violence has any confidence in the police, which is controlled by Mr Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister belonging to the PPP.

The demand for Army intervention has come from the Mohajirs of the MQM, who allege that there has been Taliban infiltration into Karachi under the cover of the ANP, the Pashtuns of the ANP, who look upon the violence as the result of the Mohajir mafia warfare, the Balochs, who find themselves caught in the violence between the Mohajirs and the Pashtuns, the Barelvi organisations and all major business organisations.

The only organisations not in favour of an Army intervention are the PPP, the Sindhi nationalist parties, the MQM(H) and the PML(N). The Army, while expressing its concern over the continuing violence, has said that it is for the civilian Government to deal with the situation.

The Army is unlikely to intervene unless there are targeted attacks on military, Air Force and naval personnel in uniform performing duty or on military, Air Force and naval establishments or the Karachi port.

The latest round of violence has targeted the Police. A bus carrying police officers in mufti was attacked killing four of them. The death of an Air Force employee has also been reported, but he was reportedly on a private visit to Karachi. The Army, the Air Force and the Navy have not so far been targeted. The attack on PNS Mehran, the headquarters of the naval air wing in Karachi in May, was not related to the ongoing ethnic and sectarian violence. It was a pure and simple terrorist attack in which the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan was suspected.

Sections of the Pakistani media have carried highly pessimistic accounts of the situation in Karachi — with the Dawn of Karachi even saying that Pakistan is unravelling.

Pakistan is not unravelling. The cycle of violence in Karachi — sometimes up, sometimes down — will continue, but none of the contending parties is likely to force a strategic confrontation, which could lead to the destabilisation of Pakistan. Periodic tactical confrontations will continue till the policing of Karachi improves and the criminal-politician and criminal-police nexus is broken. That is not for tomorrow.

--The writer, a former senior officer of R&AW, is a strategic affairs commentator.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

BASHAR COULD SURVIVE, THANKS TO RUSSIA'S VETO

AP

The US and EU want sanctions imposed on Syria but Russia is not willing to go along. Moscow continues to stand by Damascus, says Anita Snow

European nations and the United States circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution on Tuesday seeking an arms embargo and other sanctions aimed at stopping the Syrian Government's ongoing crackdown on opposition protesters.

But the supporters faced immediate opposition from veto-wielding Russia. Asked whether it was the right time to slap sanctions on Mr Bashar Assad's regime, Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters, "No. We don't think so."

The draft resolution calls for an asset freeze against 23 key Syrian figures including Mr Assad, his younger brother, Mr Maher, who is believed to be in command of much of the current bloody crackdown, and his millionaire cousin, Mr Rami Makhlouf, who controls the mobile phone network and other lucrative enterprises in Syria and has been the target of many protesters' rage.

It also calls for an asset freeze against two companies controlled by Makhlouf — Bena Properties and Al Mashreq Investment — and the Military Housing Establishment and Syrian General Intelligence Directorate. The resolution would also impose a travel ban on 21 individuals including Makhlouf, but not Mr Assad or his younger brother.

Last week, a high-level UN human rights team said that Syria's crackdown "may amount to crimes against humanity" and should be referred to the International Criminal Court. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said on Thursday she asked the Security Council to refer Syria to the permanent war crimes tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands.

The draft resolution, obtained by The Associated Press, echoes the team's conclusion and notes Ms Pillay's recommendation "that the Security Council consider referring the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court." But it does not order Syria to be referred to the court, saying only that "those responsible for violence should be held accountable".

British Deputy Ambassador Philip Parham told reporters after Tuesday's closed council session that Syria "can stop the killing, release detainees, and allow access" for humanitarian aid. "The focus of the resolution is to apply pressure to achieve that," he said. "The solution lies in a Syrian-led political process."

While the resolution is backed by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and the US, it is likely to face opposition not only from Russia but also from veto-wielding China — and possibly from council members Brazil, India and South Africa.

Mr Parham said council action could come in "the next few days". "We want to allow people time to look at it carefully and consult with capitals," he said. "But then we do want to move, if we can, as quickly as possible."

The draft resolution "strongly condemns the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities, such as arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters and human rights defenders, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of detainees, also of children."

With Mr Assad's forces continuing to crack down on the protests, the UN said this week the overall death toll has reached 2,200.

The draft would express "profound regret at the deaths of thousands of people including children."

It would demand that Syrian authorities immediately stop human rights violations and the use of force against civilians and "allow the full exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms for its entire population, including rights of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and lift restrictions on all forms of media."

The proposed resolution "calls for an inclusive Syrian-led political process conducted in an environment free from fear and intimidation and aimed at effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of Syria's population."

On the arms embargo, the draft would require all countries to ban the sale or transfer of arms and military-related assistance to Syria — and it would also ban the Syrian Government from exporting arms or providing military assistance to any state.

It calls on all countries, especially Syria's neighbours, to inspect suspect cargo heading to and from Syria, including on the high seas if they have consent of the vessel's flag state.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

SHEATH THOSE SCISSORS

 

The reported move by Tamil Nadu's AIADMK government, to exclude from school primers a picture of the sun and a solar eclipse, is on the absurd ground that the "rising sun" represents the DMK's electoral symbol. This is just one of the many deletions being spearheaded by the J Jayalalithaa government. The new administration is determined to remove what it sees as the DMK's partisan and politically motivated textbook insertions. It may have a point, even if airbrushing out images of the sun goes too far. Undoubtedly, the DMK had no qualms about using textbooks as a vehicle of its party propaganda. But so don't most other political parties, which tend to use their administrative and institutional authority to tinker with facts and exclude a multiplicity of ideas that could challenge their politics.

This leads to the absurd situation of history having to be undone and textbooks rewritten every time a new government is elected to power. Political interference does not end with school primers. It continues to eat into the vitals of higher educational institutions. West Bengal is a telling example of this practice. Institutions of academic excellence like the Presidency College are in ruins, thanks to the political patronage of the former Marxist government. In this context, Tamil Nadu's textbook row underlines a deeper malaise of our education system - its lack of autonomy, leaving it vulnerable to manipulations by central and state governments. Given this track record, the AIADMK's claim of freeing textbooks from DMK propaganda will ring true only if it honours the autonomy of educational institutions and boards. In which case Tamil Nadu's example will deserve to be emulated across the country.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY

 

The Lokpal movement has highlighted politicians' petty brinkmanship. The public recently saw statements and denials criss-crossing government quarters regarding discussions with Jan Lokpal representatives and where these might lead in creating a strong Lokpal Bill. There may be problems with the Jan Lokpal Bill proposed by Anna Hazare. But the groundswell of public concern about corruption that Anna has tapped cannot be denied. While he stresses 'big picture' ideas which have captured public imagination across the country - like accountability obtained through non-violence - the obfuscations, delays and paucity of discourse from political quarters grow all too obvious by contrast.

Against this, the prime minister's statement in the Lok Sabha - and his appeal to Anna to end his fast and engage in dialogue - is a positive step forward. But it's still way too little. This is the time for our political leadership to come up with creative, vibrant, large-hearted solutions not just to the logjam over the Lokpal, but in addressing enormous public anger over corruption. The PM pointed out the public distribution system, goods and sales tax and public procurement as elements of the fight against corruption. That's fine. But that's not what the Lokpal movement is about.

This is linked directly to the record-breaking scams preceding it. This is about graft in high places by those wielding power. This is the problem the Lokpal must be empowered to tackle. Instead of our politicos sweating the small stuff, it's time to move onto the big picture. The entire political class seems to have conveniently united around a warm defence of 'parliamentary procedure' - very ironic considering how stalling tactics like walkouts or wasting sessions in shouting matches have become routine practice across our political rainbow.

It's not incumbent on the government to agree with every provision of the Jan Lokpal Bill - nor even advisable. But it now has the opportunity to make the breakthrough that it seeks, by accepting Anna Hazare's condition that a debate on various issues around the Jan Lokpal Bill should begin immediately in Parliament. It's notable that Anna is now insisting on process rather than end-product, and that he too is upholding the supremacy of Parliament that the government is so keen on. This is an opportunity the government must seize. Let it draft a fresh Bill that's powerful, pragmatic and visionary - by taking on board elements from the Jan Lokpal Bill, activist Aruna Roy's version and other drafts. It's high time our political leadership heeded public opinion - by letting leaders claiming the will to fight corruption show this is true.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

                                                                                                                                                            TOP STORY

FINDING THE MIDDLE GROUND

PRAKASH SINGH

 

There is an atmosphere of confrontation between civil society and the government over the passage of the Lokpal Bill. It is most unfortunate and uncalled for. The tragedy of the situation is that while civil society activists have produced a Bill which concentrates too much power in a single individual and is overambitious insofar as it seeks to cleanse the Augean stables, the government has come up with a Bill which appears a devious attempt to shield the corrupt in high places.

The Lokpal Bill 2011 suffers from serious flaws. It gives opportunities to an accused which he could easily exploit to subvert witnesses, intimidate the complainant and even tamper with the evidence.

It says that before the Lokpal comes to a conclusion in the course of a preliminary inquiry that a prima facie case is made out against the public servant, he shall afford him an opportunity of being heard. And at a later stage, before the filing of the charge sheet, the public servant shall be given another opportunity to be heard and shall be entitled to inspect the records in connection with the commission of the alleged offence.

The Bill also states that the Lokpal shall provide legal assistance to the accused to defend himself while there is no such provision in favour of the complainant. This is ridiculous, to say the least. Besides, the Bill lays down that whoever makes any false or frivolous complaint shall be punished with imprisonment for a term not less than two years, apart from having to pay compensation to the public servant and also the legal expenses incurred by the latter. Considering that the accused would be at least a Group A officer and therefore a powerful adversary, it is doubtful that many people would risk landing in Tihar while making a complaint.

The jurisdiction of the Lokpal has needlessly been extended to societies and trusts. Did the framers of the Bill want to ensure that the energies of the Lokpal get diverted so that he has less time to concentrate on the big fish of the services? Section 17 (2) says that the Lokpal shall not inquire into any matter involved in or arising from allegations of corruption against members of either House of Parliament with respect to anything said or any vote made in Parliament. This is also very unfortunate. People want this segment of society to be held accountable for all its actions.

The government has ratified the UN Convention against Corruption. It should, under the circumstances, have been possible under Article 253 of the Constitution for the Lokpal Bill to provide for Lokayuktas in the states. Such an arrangement would have ensured uniformity of the anti-corruption machinery across the country. But the Bill is silent on this point.

This is, however, not to say that the Bill does not have any positive features. The provisions which say that the Lokpal shall not require any sanction or approval for carrying out any investigation, and that he shall have the power to confiscate the ill-gotten "proceeds relatable to the offence", are redeeming and could be considered progressive.

Taking an overall view, the intention behind the Lokpal Bill appears to have been to limit its scope, give opportunities to the accused public servant to dodge or subvert the law and extend immunity to members of Parliament for their questionable activities within the House - and yet allow them to claim that they have passed an anti-corruption Bill.

The Jan Lokpal Bill, on the other hand, aims to set up an overarching structure with a comprehensive mandate which the Lokpal may not be able to fulfil - apart from the fact that it seeks to dismantle some existing institutions and perhaps alter the basic character of the Constitution. It is a little too ambitious and idealistic.

The need of the hour is to find a middle ground. The flaws in the Lokpal Bill need to be rectified and the salutary and workable suggestions in the Jan Lokpal Bill incorporated in it. Regarding giving the Lokpal jurisdiction over the higher judiciary, Santosh Hegde has given an impression that the civil society group may not be rigid on these points.

It is a strange situation today where, to start with, the government was on the offensive and showed arrogance. In due course, as people started coming out on to the streets, the government became defensive and gave the police latitude in dealing with the situation. However, now we find so-called representatives of civil society not very reasonable. One of its leaders has been repeatedly making intemperate observations.

It was also difficult to appreciate Anna changing his stance and giving a deadline to Parliament. Anna and his team need to accept the simple truth that the mass support which they are getting is for their campaign against corruption and not for the Jan Lokpal Bill.

There is a need for sanity, mutual respect and a spirit of accommodation. Perhaps a third group comprising people of impeccable integrity should emerge. They should have consultations with both the government and civil society representatives to evolve a mutually acceptable draft of the Lokpal Bill.

The writer is a retired police chief.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

                                                                                                                                                                        Q&A

'SEXUALITY IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR DAILY EXISTENCE'

MONOBINA GUPTA

 

Pramada Menon is a feminist activist working on issues of sexuality and women`s rights. A stand-up performance artist, her show examines issues of body image, sex and gender through humorous stories drawn from her own life. She spoke to Monobina Gupta about how sex concerns everyone but few people manage to talk about it, a problem that humour - personal and public - can solve:

Your show called 'Fat, Free and Feminist' features stories from your own life. Was it difficult to make your humour, performed publicly, so personal?

The stories that form part of the show are personal experiences that i have lived through and processed in my head. When i started sharing these with friends some years ago, i realised these were universal stories that everyone seemed to have experienced but had never discussed because of a sense of embarrassment and shame. I felt that if one placed these stories within the framework of humour, it would enable people to re-examine their own stories as well as their interactions with the world around. In the process, they may become conscious of the ways in which ostensibly 'casual dialogue' has the power to discriminate and hurt.

I would rather have my show about my stories than create new ones that have the power to hurt and victimise others.

Stand-up, subversive comedy is a relatively new art form in India. What has been your experience as a performer?

The response has been brilliant. The format of the performance enables me to put into the public space issues that would have been unutterable a couple of years ago.

People have responded very positively. The humour makes them keel over in laughter - yet they are forced to engage with the poignancy of the tales recounted and therefore think of issues - body image, sexuality, violence - in ways that they may not have earlier.

Your recent show was 'dedicated' to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad who's been quoted saying homosexuality is a disease. How disengaged are our politicians from issues of freedom of sexuality?

It is not just politicians. Everyone is disengaged with issues of sexuality since it is seen as something extraneous to the 'everyday' issues of poverty and life. This artificial divide makes sexuality a luxury item when in reality it is an integral part of our daily existence. Politicians, even those termed 'progressive', do not want to take a stand, apprehending that it might alienate a large segment of people they probably perceived as their vote bank.

It's often said the discourse of sexual identities is confined to the urbane middle classes. Would you agree?

This is a commonly held perception. Everybody, irres-pective of economic power, ability, ethnicity, caste or gender, is engaged in sexual thought, activity, dreams, desires, etc. It is another matter that some of us who occupy the urban spaces are more vocal about it simply because we do have the power to do soa¦there are people all over the country who are engaging with these issues and trying to find ways to end discrimination and violence. We are trying to celebrate myriad forms of sexual identity.

How has the rhetoric of sexuality and freedom changed?

Has it really changed? True, there are more spaces for discussion on issues of sexuality primarily because many movements, organisations and individuals have been publicly engaging with it. But the fear of sexuality, especially women's sexuality and their ability to make choices about their lives, is something that will still take many years to alter.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

JUGULAR VEIN

BONG SONG

JUG SURAIYA

 

By virtue of the fact that i grew up in what used to be called Calcutta, i've long considered myself an hon-Bong, or honorary Bengali. But will i, and many others like me, now have to start thinking of myself as an hon-Banga (pronounced Bongo)? The official reason being given for the name-change is that, because of its initial letter, W, the state came last of all Indian states in alphabetic order. Was this alphabetic 'backwardness' the reason for the 'step-motherly' treatment that the state has long claimed it has always received from the central government?

A moot point. Another argument for a name-change was that the West in West Bengal didn't make sense seeing as how there wasn't any East Bengal for West Bengal to be west of, the erstwhile East Bengal having first become East Pakistan and later Bangladesh. But in the event, the West in West Bengal is not going to be dropped after all. It is to be retained in its Bengali translation, Paschim.

The question however remains as to whether a Banga by any other Paschim will be any the less Westerly. The answer to which must be 'No'. So why change the name at all, when the alteration - which is going to cost the exchequer, which means the taxpayer, a lot in terms of reprinting all government stationery, repainting official signage, etc - is what might be called a distinction without a difference, in other words a same-to-same thing?

Part of the reason could be phonetic. As all lovers of Bongdom know, Bengali is one of the sweetest-sounding of all languages, Indian or foreign. Much more than mere rhetoric, Bengali - or Bangla, as its speakers would call it - is a rhapsody, a paean of praise to its own innate musicality. But speakers of this sublime tongue have one inbuilt limitation: the inability (or is it unwillingness?) to pronounce the letter 'w', which Bengali speakers turn into an 'oo' sound. Thus West Bengal was inevitably and invariably referred to as Ooest Bengal in local parlance.

This could give rise to confusion. Those unfamiliar with Bongdom and its substitution of 'oo' for 'w' would often be left wondering where on earth exactly was this strange and exotic land of Ooestbengal that the person speaking to them was referring to. Was it one of those newly independent states created after the break-up of the Soviet empire? A breakaway African republic? A remote reach of the Great Australian Outback? Must remember to look up Wikipedia and check it out.

Nope. Ooest had to go, and the sooner the better. But why not just drop the darn thing and make out as if it had never been there in the first place instead of going and replacing it with Paschim, thereby retaining in vernacular avatar a reincarnation of Ooesterly ooes (woes)? And the reason for that, which goes beyond phonetics, is political.

The Ooest - and now soon to be Paschim - in Bengal is a constant reminder to everyone - Bongs, hon-Bongs and non-Bongs - of the partition of Bengal by the British in 1905, long before the partition of the country took place. Effected by Lord Curzon, the then viceroy of India, the partition of Bengal was part and parcel of the imperial policy of divide and rule: the British saw Bengal as a breeding ground of politically progressive ideas and wanted to cut it down to size. As everyone who can read between the lines knows that was the real significance of Kipling's famous line: East is East, and Ooest as Ooest/ And never the tooain shall meet.

If history has recorded a reunification of East and West Germany, why can't it also witness a reunification of Bengal, first divided by the Brits and then by Partition? Maybe that's the real reason for the Paschim in Paschimbanga: a reminder that there is another Bengal which, though it calls itself by another name today, is a once and future part of a unified entity of Bongdom. Neither East nor Ooest, but simply Best Bengal.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

MOVE AN INCH TO WALK A MILE

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has sought to control the very damage that his government and fellow Congressmen had earlier wrought in their dealings with Anna Hazare and his associates.

It is understandable for Mr Hazare and his supporters to treat Mr Singh's offer of discussing all the various drafts of the Lokpal Bill in Parliament as a Trojan horse.

After all, if the government had not tabled a draft Bill that people even within the government now find to be toothless, things may not have come to such a pass. But it's better late than never and Mr Hazare should treat the PM's offer as bona fide if not for any other reason but because at this stage it would be politically suicidal for the government to go back on its word.

As a gesture of firming up this promise and making amends for past chicaneries, the government should make a written commitment as Mr Hazare has demanded as well as to pull its earlier draft out of the parliamentary select committee. There is no loss of ego or political brownie points here.

As there should be no loss of face for Mr Hazare and his associates for accepting Mr Singh's offer. For at stake here is coming up with the most effective law against statutory corruption with in-built safeguards against its abuse, not whose version of the Lokpal Bill makes it as law. This is neither a competition nor a battle of filing patents.

It is about bringing about a law that deters statutory corruption The Jan Lokpal Bill's chief architect Arvind Kejriwal may genuinely believe that his version of the Bill is the best one. In the light of the government draft still pending with the Parliament's Standing Committee, it certainly seems so.

But there are questions regarding the Jan Lokpal Bill that need to be resolved by reason and not by sheer faith. And there are other important voices, most notably that of Aruna Roy, one of the architects of the Right To Information Act, which need to be heard for the sole purpose of bringing about the best Lokpal Bill.

Mr Hazare has reacted to the prime minister's offer by demanding that Parliament start discussions on the citizen's charter, introducing lokayukta in every state, and including all levels of bureaucracy under the lokpal's purview, all key elements of the Jan Lokpal Bill.

Essentially, these points will be included in the discussions that the PM has sought for in Parliament across party lines.

So both sides of the tussle are finally on the same page. Mr Hazare's campaign has undoubtedly brought the fate of a genuinely strong Lokpal Bill this far.

This is the time when he should drop a gear and give the government and the political class the elbow room required to do the very job that Mr Hazare and Co wanted them to do from the very beginning.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE PUNDIT

WE'LL PASS ON THIS

It takes quite a bit to get us battle-hardened editorial writers worried, but we are afraid that moment has come. With the Supreme Court decreeing that only those reporters with a law degree and seven years of covering court proceedings can get accreditation, we fear the floodgates will be opened.

Those covering the health beat may well be required to have at least a first degree in medicine which may then be fine-tuned to different specialisations. Or perhaps business journalists will have to come into the profession armed with an MBA.

Now you will wonder why we are so rattled.

If truth be told, we editorial writers are given to covering a host of issues.

On a good day, it may be Anna's antics, on another the fate of the BJP under Nitin Gadkari, the fortunes of the Congress after Sonia Gandhi's illness, whether Manmohan Singh has ever broken into a guffaw in his life and when, if ever we will understand fully the import of Pranab Mukherjee's rosogolla-accented words.

Will we be asked to acquire several degrees all at once? We wonder what degree we could get to write the more humorous editorials. Is there a Birbal school of humour?

To take things further, perhaps one fine day, our elected representatives will also be required to specialise. So, we cannot have a lawyer like Kapil Sibal presiding over HRD or tele-communication.

We are also worried about how we will print our calling cards once we have gained suitable expertise in all the issues we write about. We might need a scroll to attach all our degrees ranging from LLB to MBBS to MBA just to mention a few that are on our radar.

So, if you notice a drop in quality of our editorials, don't blame us, we are burning the midnight oil trying to notch up all the degrees we need. Yes, these are testing times for us.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

DEATH OF THE LIBERAL

ABHIJIT MAJUMDER

Among a lot of things Anna Hazare's movement has brought to the fore is our shrinking space for liberal thought. On the Comment pages, in TV debates, on Twitter and Facebook, an invisible writ has been clear - you are either with us or against us.

You cannot find merit in a rare, spontaneous and peaceful mass movement and still have some problems with the Jan Lokpal draft. You have to either show up Anna as an autocratic bumpkin or a democratic messiah.

"Will the 830 million people living on Rs 20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?" Arundhati Roy wrote in The Hindu.

Civil war? Really?

The debate around the Lokpal Bill is an example of how language and stances are progressively hardening. You can't be at the centre of a battlefield mulling like Arjun, finding good and ill on both sides. You have to be Krishna, take sides, or risk ending up on the losing side of history.

A couple of weeks ago, two well-known Urdu poets in Bhopal actually had a fight at a poetry session, one accusing the other of wearing shoes while reciting, the other chastising him for coming drunk to the mushaira. And one thought it was difficult to de-hyphenate Urdu poetry and intoxication.

In the late 1970s, students of Jadavpur University in Calcutta composed an underground', pornographic cross between the Ramayana and the Mahabharata called Mahayan. There were similar epics re-made on the heartland's campuses by gifted pornographers using Kabir's style of doha. Will this sort of thing be allowed to pass elsewhere with just a laugh today?

Technology, especially the internet, has created dark corners where one can spend cosy hours with one's low self-esteem and frustrations, not undertake the hard work of forming informed opinion, and shoot blindly from the dark. In cyberspace, one can live with one's shadow, the intolerant, angry fanatic.

You must have attitude, not angularity. You are expected to manage your boss, goal or target; not engage the larger world. You can laugh at others, but not at yourself (what will the consumer of your goods or opinions think?!).

Most of our leading intellectuals - many of them fiery critics of the corporate world - fit snugly into all these corporate attributes. It is as if without realising, they have internalised the dynamics of the same Corporation they rage against.

Our activists-intellectuals would breeze through CEO interviews. They are narrow-focused, goal-oriented, intolerant towards competition or difference, humourless, and relentless. And all this makes them the new, self-proclaimed 'liberals'.

That is why you have to either declare, 'I am Anna', or 'I am not Anna'. You cannot lampoon a bit of Anna and be a bit of him.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH

Like monsoon flurries, recent events in the subcontinent have sent conflicting signals. Has Indian diplomacy finally awakened after its long summer siesta? Or is this just an illusion?

In late July, after lower-level ministerial officials from India and Pakistan had prepared the ground for their respective foreign ministers to meet, the two finally did so, in New Delhi, on July 26 and 27.

This was remarkable in itself, given the bomb blasts just a fortnight earlier in Mumbai - a terrorist attack that claimed 26 lives and left 130 people injured. Even more remarkably, given many Indians' suspicions that the attack was, in some way, authored in Pakistan, there were no mutually accusatory diplomatic blasts.

Instead, the two foreign ministers met on schedule and agreed to meet again, after issuing an encouragingly meaningful joint statement, which spoke of enhancing trade and implementing more confidence-building measures. For other neighbouring countries, that may sound humdrum. For India and Pakistan, merely maintaining a structure for dialogue counts as notable progress.

But farther to India's west, in Afghanistan, things are far more grim. Afghanistan is witnessing a surge of violence accompanying the beginning of the withdrawal of US and Nato forces.

Besides the recent deaths of 30 American soldiers when their helicopter was downed, seven top Afghan officials - including President Hamid Karzai's step-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a key power broker among the Pashtun, and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the influential mayor of Kandahar - have been assassinated in the last three months.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the atmosphere in Afghanistan would worsen. The recently concluded trilateral meeting among Afghanistan, the US and Pakistan, which called for engaging the Afghan Taliban to find a political solution to the country's troubles, turned out to be largely a pro forma exercise. Moreover, Karzai now faces a parliamentary crisis, with his cabinet still not complete. There are also mounting financial problems.

The International Monetary Fund has not sent any payments to the Afghan central bank in recent months, supposedly because of corruption scandals.

Serious allegations of corruption have also crippled decision-making within Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. But, to give the government its due, Bangladesh last month conferred its highest official award, the 'Bangladesh Swadhinata Sanmanona', on Indira Gandhi for her outstanding contribution to Bangladesh's 1971 'Liberation War'.

President Zillur Rahman told Congress president Sonia Gandhi that her mother-in-law "influenced the course of history and the fate of generations". Given the ambivalence that has marked the two countries' relations, there is real hope of a new dawn in bilateral ties.

India's potential for promoting growth and stability in South Asia was also emphasised by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who spent three days in India last month.

In a speech in Chennai, she declared that "Asia's decisions will be shaped by India," whose "markets will play a major role in South East Asia, Central Asia, and beyond," and called on India "to play a role in the democratic transition in the Middle East".

Clinton also touched upon an issue that unites all Indians: the desire for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

The US would support India's aspirations, Clinton declared, but with three caveats: "A major and defining role in Myanmar," meaning that India must push the ruling generals towards democratic transition; India's use of its 'good offices' to "convince Iran about nuclear proliferation"; and an Indian offer of "all help needed to Nepal, Bangladesh, and Maldives" in joining India as thriving emerging markets.

In the South Asian subcontinent, India's role in promoting stability and prosperity is essential. But can India fulfil that agenda? Its ambitions for a global role commensurate with its size and growth prospects will depend on its ability to influence its own neighbourhood for the better.

Jaswant Singh is a BJP MP and a former foreign minister. The views expressed by the author are personal. © Project Syndicate, 2011

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

SHOW A MIGHTY HEART

Dear Anna,                                             

 

I write this to you neither as a fawning cheerleader nor a cynical journalist, but a proud Indian like you. Let me applaud you at the very outset for having brought corruption to the national centrestage. You have worked tirelessly for more than two decades in exposing corruption in Maharashtra, but Ralegan Siddhi is a long way from Delhi which is perhaps why television channels hadn't featured your contribution prominently till now. An opinion poll we did just a month ago suggested that more people had heard of yoga guru Baba Ramdev than a tireless fakir-like crusader from a western Maharashtra village.

 

All that has now changed. Your latest fast has made you a household name. You've brought a mighty Indian State to its knees. You've encouraged millions of anonymous Indians to come out on the streets and get a voice. You've exposed a political class, suffering from a grave moral crisis, to the wider world. You've empowered those who've felt lost in a new India where wealth is the sole presiding deity. You've become a symbol of change and hope at a time when a scam culture has assaulted the conscience of the nation. You've even shown that the Marathas, a community that has failed to conquer Delhi since losing the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, can indeed take the national capital by storm. But in every battle there must come a time when you must call a halt. That time may well be approaching.

 

Gandhi, the greatest Indian of them all, from whom you claim to derive inspiration, never went on a fast-unto-death by refusing medication. For Gandhi, the idea of fasting was a form of self-purification, a fast could not be undertaken as he said, "out of anger. Anger is a short-term madness." Yes, there is anger in the streets today, an almost volcanic eruption of a lava that has been simmering for decades. Your genius lies in being able to channelise that popular anger against corruption into a well-defined goal of a strong anti-corruption law and, importantly, doing so in a peaceful manner. The real danger though now is that a peaceful, non-violent movement runs the risk of being overwhelmed by what BR Ambedkar, the great constitutionalist, described a fast-unto-death as, by the "grammar of anarchy."

 

There have been some signs of this in the last 48 hours that are worrying. The gherao of the homes of Members of Parliament may be visually appealing, but it encourages an anti-politician 'sab neta chor hai' rhetoric that could further destroy faith in parliamentary democracy. The increasingly strident language being used by certain members of Team Anna - a term which creates the regrettable impression of you being surrounded by a coterie - is to be best avoided at a time when a rational dialogue is called for.

 

Only two days ago, a colleague of mine was assaulted in the heart of the capital by a drunk biker gang waving the tricolor and chanting 'I am Anna' slogans. The frenzy being built up in the media by hyper-ventilating news channels and demagogic acolytes could easily transform a genuine people's movement into a lumpen expression of mob fury. It's a transformation that could end up destroying the hard-earned credibility of your struggle.

 

Ram Lila is not Mumbai's Azad Maidan nor is it the village square in Ralegan Siddhi. This is not some battle to get the local thug to shut his liquor shop. Here, there are multiple agendas that require dexterous negotiation and not mere sloganeering. The sight of gangster Abu Salem's girlfriend Monica Bedi parading on Mumbai's streets with an Anna cap should convince you of the dangers of reducing the fight against corruption to a well-choreographed primetime TV spectacle.

 

It is true no fast can be called off till the primary goal has been achieved. If that goal is to have the Jan Lokpal Bill passed exactly as you desire then that is a maximalist position hich is never easy to accommodate overnight. Gandhi himself often spoke of the 'beauty' of compromise. Without doubt the fact that you have forced an obdurate government to fast-forward the Lokpal Bill and accept most of your proposals is itself a major achievement. But to ram through a Bill that has been hanging fire for decades within the space of a few days without a sustained and truly inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders would be self-defeating.

 

Yes, one recognises you have little trust in a discredited government that only 10 days ago, arrogantly and foolishly, first defamed and then arrested you. A flip-flop government sorely missing a strong political authority has taken refuge in parliamentary procedure when the simpler way out to atone for their sins would have been an unqualified apology for your arrest followed by a withdrawal of the government bill and a fresh start to the pre-legislation consultation. Yes, you are hurt, and rightly so, by the government's attitude, but this is the moment to show your heart is much bigger than the petty minds who reside in official bungalows. It's time for practicality, not prestige. Why not, for example, get the government to commit to a special session of Parliament in six to eight weeks on an amended Lokpal Bill so that a new, well-considered law becomes a Diwali gift to the nation?

 

Post-script: I have framed a picture of our meeting earlier this week. The caption reads: 'When zero met hero!' India is not Anna, nor is Anna India, but you are now an icon for millions. Please don't allow a personality cult to shadow your ultimate gift of common sense.

 

Rajdeep Sardesai is editor-in-chief, IBN 18. 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

THE PLACE FOR IT

 

The prime minister, speaking in the Lok Sabha after the House had debated corruption and the Lokpal, stressed Parliament's right and responsibility to make law. Yet he stressed the need to find a "via media" between that constitutional principle and the maximalist demands of those around Anna Hazare. In his appeal to let Parliament consider the government's draft, as well as suggestions from elsewhere — from Hazare, from the RTI campaign, even from Dr Jayaprakash Narayan of Hyderabad — the PM struck the note his government should have sounded firmly at the start. It is clearer than ever now how ill-advised was the farcical "joint drafting committee" with Hazare's nominees, which shut out other voices, reducing the process of policy compromise to a spectacle: a shouting match between an apparently compromised government and stern, unyielding pillars of "civil society".

Yet, as the NAC's Aruna Roy pointed out, the legislative process is not a rubber stamp. The RTI Act was amended 150 times during the committee stage, and the prime minister's assurance that the committee should take the best bits of each bill should have been loudly trumpeted at the start. Parliamentary committees exist to strengthen legislation; it is no coincidence that this paralysed government, which seems to think of legislation as an afterthought, has been so far unable to make the case to doubters that the appropriate standing committee will turn out the best bill possible. The examination of the Lokpal bill by the appropriate committee will be much scrutinised, and it should be thought of as an opportunity to demonstrate openness and efficiency — an opportunity, indeed, to renew and strengthen constitutional institutions, the way parliamentarians across parties seemed to wish to, yesterday. Anna Hazare and team have played no inconsiderable part in causing other voices to speak up with suggestions; they should play an important role in the committee-led process of deliberation.

The prime minister's suggestion, too, that Parliament should debate aspects of the various drafts that diverge from each other, as crucial input for the committee, is well taken. Sharad Yadav had pointed out that no institution is as representative as Parliament; if it is not trusted by those shouting for the Jan Lokpal Bill in the streets, that is partly because it is not, often enough, the location for the sort of deliberative discussion of policy which the PM is now urging. This, too, if carried forward with sobriety and seriousness, will add to India's institutional strength — the only possible response, at this moment of questioning.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

ALL ABOUT STEVE

 

Steve Jobs has announced his long-rumoured resignation. After 14 years of making corporate history and setting the rules of the technology-media world, he will now hand Apple over to Tim Cook. The man who urged his first team to "put a dent in the universe", can claim credit for several, starting with the Macintosh in 1984.

A year later, he was forced to leave Apple, and spent more than a decade out, until coming back to helm the company in 1997 (though during that out-time, his company created OS X and iOS, the operating systems that Apple now uses, and Jobs also started the animation phenomenon, Pixar). And in the years since, Steve Jobs remade Apple. He was a tech auteur, someone who left his own singular imprint on his creations rather than leaving it to teams of designers or the wisdom of crowds. Famously disdainful of market research, he created what he wanted, and others discovered they couldn't live without. All Apple's products reflect his pared-down, elegant design sensibility.

And so, Steve Jobs pretty much inaugurated the post-PC world, and clinched Apple's place in that future. Despite initial scepticism, the iPod rendered comparable music devices pointless, the iPhone changed smartphones just as the iPad transformed personal computing. That insistence on "think different" has also been Apple's liability, its inability to play well with existing systems, its closed and, some would say, sterile appliances. But with Steve Jobs' marketing wizardry, Apple is now arguably the world's more valuable brand, and his departure is unlikely to dim its immediate profits. But his impact on the tech industry and the larger culture is still not easy to comprehend, in small and big ways. Many of the things we take for granted — touchscreen phones, or even apps, iTunes, which began the end of physical music. Apple introduced the floppy disc drive in 1978, and just as brutally eliminated it a few years back — Steve Jobs was never afraid to throw away and start again. Throughout his magnificent and restless career, innovation has been the only constant.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

CUT-OUT TEXTBOOKS

 

A change of government is never simple in Tamil Nadu. It always comes with a long list of amendments and alterations as accoutrements. Almost 100 days after the AIADMK came to power, J. Jayalalithaa's unravelling of the previous regime's proposals and policies is still a meticulous work in progress. A look at the three big changes that she insists on reveals much about the nature of the rivalry between the two Dravida parties, the kind of cultural impress in Tamil society that one wants to create and the other seeks to deny, and the cult of personality politics that aggravates and complicates the issues at hand. The new government's immediate and public disapproval was of the uniform system of education that the DMK government introduced, a vast and expensive architectural complex that it created to house the assembly and the secretariat, and its harmless but unnecessary tinkering with the Tamil calendar.

While the education scheme has much merit, bringing a necessary standard to the chaotic school system in Tamil Nadu, Karunandhi used textbooks as tools for ideological initiation, as platforms to play up pet projects like the classical Tamil conference, and to reference himself as a cultural icon. Here, one can sense the old tendency of Dravida parties to use culture and its many pronounced symbols, from movies to poems, to further its politics and to embed itself in public memory. If Karunanidhi set the wrong precedent here, Jayalalithaa missed the big picture in the beginning by disavowing the entire education scheme. Now there is a machinery involved in blacking out and removing references to the DMK's first family from school texts. Her decision to work from the old assembly building and to turn the new one into a hospital is also a display of peeve rather than good politics.

And that is what is often getting lost in this messy battle for cultural suzerainty in Chennai — good sensible politics.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

THE ONE-DIMENSIONAL FAST

SEEMA CHISHTI

 

Amongst believers, there is cheerful optimism about the brave new world that is being sought, the world which this Jan Lokpal would shepherd us all into. The politics of those behind Anna is suitably eclectic to be able to pass off as a rainbow: from spartan Anna Hazare to Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal and the Bhushans. Fighting "terror", "thwarted opportunities" and, of course, "corruption", this motley crowd, which calls everyone corrupt, has actually been very useful for the Centre battling specific corruption charges. UPA 2 has been saved by the attack on the "system", launched as an Enough-is-Enoughism, a lot of it from ammunition still dry and left over from the ire of November 26, 2008.

So, in terms of ideas, where does one locate this Corruption and the narrow way that it has been articulated, as well as the dithering and guilty governmental response to it?

Corruption has been a powerful focus for movements in the past, and battling it is a global idea. In our neighbourhood, "corruption" has been used by army generals in Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Myanmar to do away with elected governments. Latin America was assaulted by corporates from the US, for centuries, arguing that the "corruption" of the local elites in mismanaging the boundless possibilities of resources justified annexations and invasions, generating the fascinating term "banana republic."

Fixing the generically "corrupt" is a win-win at the moment. It is heretical to question it. Yet, there is a deep tussle over the central idea that is at the heart of what "corruption" is.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, there were ideas of freedom from corruption and the tyranny of the state, as economists like Friedrich von Hayek and even David Ricardo understood the phrase. Adam Smithian ideas rested on the freedom of entrepreneurship, under a benign law-and-order minimalism. The Depression of the 1930s and the economics and politics of the World Wars brutally reconfigured these ideas. Keynesian notions were on the necessity of broadening the ambit of the state; and, over the years, freedom from the tyranny and "corruption" of private profit, as opposed to social good, was in currency. The anti-milawat and anti-mehangaai agitations in India, for example, in the late sixties, found a focus at the doors of traders, as seen in several of the popular movies of the time that villainised the shopkeeper.

However, as the world changed once again, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, caused by "corrupt" and bureaucratic insensitivities and the negation of personal freedoms there, free enterprise was once again a winner. But now, the mood in Europe and elsewhere, particularly its annoyance at corruption and malfeasance, is also demanding freedom from unregulated, self-serving business interests. After Lehman and Madoff, the West is introspecting not only on the role of corporations but also that of NGOs, and the need for accountability and transparency in the causes they front and the shows they put up. Scrutiny is not simply limited to the state.

In India, after two decades of economic reforms, there is a flourishing private sector. But this agitation is not quite clear about what and whose corruption it is so doggedly opposed to? CII, FICCI, big industries and several corporations, in a fabulous PR move, were the first to get off the block and ride the Anna annoyance wave. It has been a smart move to pre-empt the identification of other sources of corruption.

As far as the government's response goes, the confusion has, of course, been one of individuals and of competing ambitions. But there, too, is embedded a fundamental clash of ideas: the lack of an ability to articulate where they stand on what, and whose corruption.

The prime minister has been carefully articulating his world-view (at the Planning Commission and then at an IIM), seriously hoping that this "agitation" is by a generation spawned by his economic reforms, an urban population that feels blighted and thwarted by the state and, ergo, anxious for a bigger retreat of the state from most areas and thus freeing up private capital. The second view, held loosely by the "party," is pretty much at variance with any view that it is the state which is "corrupt" and must retreat.

The Congress has, since 2004, argued for a redefinition of the role of the state in India, and seen it as a crucial vehicle for the uplift of those below the breadline. Their understanding of rural poverty programmes; their social vision; even their understanding of the Maoist problem stem from a concept that there is too little of a "good and effective" state. The Two Indias idea — one India desperately needing redress and programmes, food security, employment guarantees, a right to information and freedom even from private contractors, with a dutiful state being refashioned to allow aspirations to take flight — is the bedrock of this idea and its politics. The fact that these two ideas were interwoven (either cleverly or by chance) before the 2009 elections, and that they clicked, should have provided the regime an impetus to push ahead and aggressively question whether the narrow focus on a particular sort of corruption of this movement was at all fair.

How to articulate a broader concept of corruption, breaking it down for the 21st century? Even if corruption is the clear and present danger we confront, don't we have to worry about the corruption of all — the state, private entities, NGOs, journalists, bureaucrats, doctors and lawyers? That would have at least allowed a richer and more textured debate — and, importantly, revealed the exclusive self-righteousness of those shouting "sab chor hain".

But guilt, and an inability to reconcile itself to what it sees as worthy of defending at the risk of unpopularity, has got the better of the ruling party and the government; and the absence of a contest of ideas has plunged the public discourse to a new low — bereft of a clear understanding of freedoms, of contexts and of processes that moments like these should hopefully give us.

Damned as we are, we have to make do with pious sermons from the platform and a cry for war on one side, and, on the other, an executive that does not have the moral courage to force a debate on the ideas floated by the quick anti-corruption coalition, which is using the idea of "corruption" as a cloak, as once George W. Bush used "democracy".

seema.chishti@expressindia.com

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

HARRIED IN HYDERABAD

AJAY GUDAVARTHI

 

When the Congress, under Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, returned to power in Andhra Pradesh in 2009, it was believed that the party would be a force to reckon with for a long time. But YSR's death in a helicopter crash in September 2009 dramatically changed the state's political environment. In less than two years, the Congress seems to have lost its hold on the politics of the region and that, in turn, is leading to new developments that are redefining electoral equations.

The YSR Congress, a splinter group from the Congress, was formed by YSR's disgruntled son Jaganmohan Reddy. Then the newly formed Praja Rajyam Party by actor Chiranjeevi merged with the Congress. There has also been the revival of the struggle for a separate state of Telangana that YSR had managed to contain when he was at the helm. The demand for Telangana created a new political phenomenon: of politicians expressing allegiance to their region as against their party. In Andhra Pradesh now, the region you belong to is more important than the party or ideology you represent.

In order to survive politically and get the mandate of the electorate, legislators across parties are compelled to indicate that they would preserve the interests of the region they come from, even in defiance of party diktats. This conflict — between loyalty to the region and to the party — is further complicated by the loosening of the grip of national leadership over regional leaders and local dynamics. This was evident in the recent crisis in Karnataka as well where the central leadership of the BJP had little or no say in the way B.S. Yeddyurappa made his exit as CM or in the way his successor was chosen. This weakening hold of national leadership is a reversal of the political process introduced by Indira Gandhi, who had a direct connect with the electorate and who undermined local leadership with her interference in state politics.

State-level leaders often emerge from a reworking of caste equations and by imagining policies that are popular with the electorate. In Andhra Pradesh, YSR had rolled out a large number of welfare policies for the poor, including free housing, subsidised rice and special transport facilities in rural areas for farmers to take their produce to the market. These appealed to various sections of the electorate. It is this legacy of YSR that Jagan is attempting to appropriate. He has emerged as a force, and this should be seen in the context of a debilitated Congress. The resignation letters submitted by its legislators from the Telangana region had weakened the party. Now, 27 more MLAs have submitted their resignations to the speaker and they are set to join Jagan's YSR Congress.

The Congress, in order to stop Jagan's surge, found a way forward by discrediting the legacy and image of YSR after the CBI filed an FIR against the former chief minister in an ongoing investigation into the allegation that his family has amassed assets disproportionate to known sources of income. This, the Congress believes, will also strengthen its claim of fighting corruption. But the legislators' bid to join Jagan has complicated the survival of political parties.

Jagan's hold over the electorate is restricted to Rayalaseema and the Andhra region. In fact, when he attempted to take out his "Odarpu Yatra" into Telangana, his entourage was attacked by students. In order to counter Jagan's popularity in the Andhra region, the Congress carried out negotiations with Chiranjeevi, which fructified in the Praja Rajyam Party, which managed to get 27 per cent of votes in the last assembly elections, merging with the Congress on the eve of Rajiv Gandhi's birth anniversary. The alliance might give some comfort to the Congress.

But Telangana is a more complicated case. In spite of its silence on the issue of Telangana, the Telugu Desam Party still retains formidable support from backward castes. The electoral conflict in the Telangana region is now primarily between the TDP and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), with little prospects for the Congress, given the way it handled the demand for a separate state.

The TDP is already making noises about introducing a no-trust motion in the assembly and N. Chandrababu Naidu, in the backdrop of the investigations against Jagan, is on anti-corruption mode and planning even to go on a hunger strike in support of Anna Hazare's campaign.

What is certain in this changing scenario is that local dynamics will have a greater influence in state politics, especially in the absence of tall national leaders.

The writer teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU
express@expressindia.com

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

'ANNA HAZARE HAS MADE HIS POINT'

MANMOHAN SINGH

 

That we should collectively work to find credible approaches, credible solutions to deal with the scourge of corruption is a matter which unites all sections of thinking public opinion in our country. Madam, I share that perception; and on behalf of our government, I would like to assure this august House that, in the two-and-a-half years left to us, we will do everything in our power to clean the system of this country.

Madam, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi is not here. Yesterday, he made a powerful speech and he turned it into a personal attack on me, as if I am the fountainhead of corruption and that I have knowingly connived at corruptions of some of my colleagues... I consider it beneath my dignity to enter into an argument on issues which are before the PAC, issues which are in our courts. In my seven years as prime minister, even when the opposition members have accused me of many crimes, I have never used harsh language in describing the conduct of any member of this House.

Madam, I would like to assert before this House that I have been in the service of this country for nearly 41 years. In these 41 years of my public life, 20 years in Parliament, I have tried to serve this country to the best of my ability.

...All I can say is that if any wrongdoing has been done by me, I invite the leader of the opposition to look at my property which I may have accumulated in the last 41 years, the members of my family... (Interruptions)

I would accept the verdict of the leader of the opposition if they find that I have used public office to amass wealth for myself or for any member of my family.

Madam, in the course of seven years as prime minister, I may have made mistakes. Who is above making mistakes? To err is human but to accuse me of evil intentions, of conniving at corruption is a charge I firmly repudiate...

Shri Anna Hazare has gone on fast. His plea is that we should adopt the Jan Lokpal bill that has been drafted by them. The background of this whole exercise is well known to this august House. We have sittings together with the five representatives of Shri Anna Hazare, including himself, who met with our five representatives and a large measure of agreement was reached with regard to the shape of the Lokpal bill that we should have. On certain matters there was disagreement, and that disagreement could not be resolved — and therefore we have referred that matter for consideration of the all-parties committee, and the consensus was that the government should come with its own version of the bill, and various parties would then reflect on what to do with that bill. We discharged that obligation. We submitted that bill to Parliament. It has now been referred to the standing committee.

This standing committee can consider all options, and we can find ways and means of ensuring that the bill that has been prepared by Shri Anna Hazare is given due consideration by this committee. Also, along with this, there are other ideas. There is Dr Jayaprakash Narayan's group which produced a bill; there are ideas which have been mentioned in a paper by Shrimati Aruna Roy. All these matters can be discussed, debated and a consensus can be built up in the standing committee. We are open to all suggestions. We will work with all sections of this House to have a Lokpal who is strong, who is effective, and about which there is a national consensus.

We have produced a bill which reflects the thinking of our government. But we are open to persuasion, and we have an open mind — and when we discuss this bill, whether in Parliament or in the standing committee, we will work with a single-minded devotion to ensure that we leave behind for posterity a Lokpal bill which does credit to our concerns for meeting the challenge of corruption.

Madam, yesterday there was a very good meeting of all political parties. All political parties agreed that we should request Shri Anna Hazare to give up his fast and that we should find ways and means to ensure that ideas reflected in the Jan Lokpal bill are given adequate consideration in parliamentary processes, and that we should come forward with a strong, effective bill which has the broad support of the country as a whole. I commit our government to working with all sections of the House to realise this dream.

Therefore, I urge all members of the House to join me in making an appeal to Shri Anna Hazare that he has made his point. It has been registered with us. I respect his idealism. I respect him as an individual. He has become the embodiment of our people's disgust and concern about tackling corruption. I applaud him, I salute him. His life is much too precious — and, therefore, I would urge Shri Anna Hazare to end his fast.

We will find effective ways and means of discussing the Jan Lokpal bill, along with the government version of the bill, along with Shrimati Aruna Roy's bill, along with the ideas in the paper that Dr Jayaprakash Narayan has submitted. All ideas should be discussed, debated so that we have a bill which is the best possible bill, which will help us to deal with the problem of corruption.

Madam, it has been mentioned to me that Shri Anna Hazare and his colleagues are very keen that their bill should be discussed in the Parliament. I have not thought over this matter in great depth, but a thought comes to me that perhaps we could have a debate in this House on all the bills that are in the public domain, and have a discussion on what are the weak points of various bills, and what are the strong points of various bills — and at the end of that debate, send the whole record for consideration of the standing committee.

I have a feeling that this will meet the point that Shri Anna Hazare and his colleagues have been making that Parliament must have a chance to give its views on their bill before sending it to the standing committee, and therefore, I submit to this august House that this is one via media which will respect parliamentary supremacy — and, at the same time, enable Parliament to take on board ideas contained in the Lokpal bill drafted by Shri Anna Hazare and his colleagues.

Madam, I conclude by appealing to all sections of the House to join in the appeal that I have made to Shri Anna Hazare that his life is much too precious.

We would like him to live a long life and a happy life in the service of our people. He has registered his point. Therefore, we respectfully request him to end his fast. I think that if we do it, then this would be a befitting finale to this very constructive debate on corruption and in tackling it that has taken place in this House since yesterday.

From a speech to the Lok Sabha on August 25

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

JUST ONE LAW WON'T DO IT

MADHU KISHWAR

 

The country owes a debt of gratitude to Team Anna for succeeding in channelling popular anger against corruption into a determined movement to seek institutional measures to cleanse our politics of the cancer of corruption. However, we would do well to recognise that no one institution, no one law can put an end to India's deeply entrenched culture of extortion, bribery and tyranny. That task requires looking at and reforming each department of the government — each sarkari institution that is engaged in public dealings, or assigned the responsibility of providing public services, or constructing civic infrastructure; and the identification of rules, regulations and laws that bestow arbitrary power to government functionaries or politicians which enable them to deny citizens their rightful due without facing any consequences.

For example, municipal officials all over India systematically fleece citizens by sending highly inflated house tax bills. I recall that several years ago, one of my neighbours, let us call him Mr X, received a house tax bill of Rs 1.65 lakh for a small, two-bedroom flat in South Delhi. In sheer panic, he approached a local political worker who claimed "good connections" with municipal officials. This man then went and brokered a deal with the concerned babus. Mr X was asked to pay Rs 25,000 in order to get the 1.65-lakh demand reduced to Rs 7,000 per year. He accepted the deal gladly because it appeared to him as if he was receiving a big favour, even though the falsely inflated bill was actually just a device to frighten him into paying a bribe. This was in fact standard practice; virtually every house-owner was subjected to this form of blackmail because the rules governing house tax rates were totally opaque, with officials routinely getting away with demanding arbitrary amounts as payoffs because they have the power to send out bogus bills and seal the property, with the victim left fighting never-ending court battles.

This citadel of corruption collapsed in one stroke when, following the example of Ahmedabad, Patna and Bangalore, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi also reformed its mode of property tax calculation and collection in 2004, by introducing a self-assessment scheme with clearly defined parameters for calculating rates for different categories of property, both commercial and residential, depending on the covered area. A detailed description of how to calculate the tax due on each property in different areas of Delhi — with a higher tax rate for high-priced properties and lower rates for poorer colonies — has been put on the publicly viewable website. Today one can pay this objectively calculated property tax in Delhi through the MCD's online payment portal, or through any number of banks. It leaves little scope for extortion. In fact, Mr. X today pays no more than Rs 3,800 in tax on the same property for which he was sent the Rs 1.65 lakh bill.

Another example: Manushi has succeeded in bringing about a dramatic fall in bribes and harassment for cycle-rickshaw owners because, in response to Manushi's petition challenging arbitrary, bribe-friendly rules and regulations for plying rickshaws, the Delhi high court struck them down as unconstitutional in March 2010. Here is a small sample of those absurd regulations:

1) Plying a rickshaw without an owner's and a puller's licence is illegal — but, unlike for motor vehicles, one cannot get a licence on demand. People are kept waiting for years after applying for a puller's or owner's licence, while municipal officials are not required to give any explanation for denying rickshaw licences. However, officials have the power to confiscate and destroy a rickshaw operating without these two licences.

2) While a person is entitled to own as many cars, trucks or aeroplanes as they want and can afford, it was illegal to own more than one rickshaw. A person owning multiple vehicles was liable to having his/her vehicles confiscated and destroyed.

3) A person owning a taxi or bus may hire whoever she likes to ply that vehicle or give it out on rent. But renting out a rickshaw invites confiscation and destruction of the vehicle. This despite the fact that the vast majority of pullers are seasonal migrants who prefer to rent their cycle-rickshaws, so that they are free to visit their villages as and when necessary, without having to worry about their vehicles being stolen or destroyed while they are away.

Thanks to such vicious laws, Delhi's rickshaw-owners and pullers ended up in a web of illegality, paying over Rs 350 crore a year in bribes to police and municipal officials. As soon as these absurd regulations were declared unconstitutional and confiscation was forbidden by law, no owner was willing to pay hafta — even though the new law drafted to liberalise the process for owning and pulling a rickshaw has yet to be enacted.

However, we  have failed to bring similar relief to street vendors, who are similarly targeted by rent-seeking mafias even though new fanciful policies have been announced for them, because officialdom retains the arbitrary power to deny them licences.  

Unlike the high courts and the Supreme Court, the Lokpal, even in its most "undiluted" form, will not have the power to strike down patently unjust laws. Therefore, it will have to go by the existing laws and regulations which leave citizens totally at the mercy of officialdom.

The Lokpal can at best play the role that antibiotics do when our bodies catch an infection. But antibiotics work only if delivered in emergencies, and in judicious doses; an overdose can act as a toxin, or even kill the patient. Anti-corruption institutions work only if carefully crafted systems are put in place that shift the balance of power in favour of citizens, providing them powers to demand transparency and accountability.  

The author is a professor at CSDS, Delhi, and the founder-editor of 'Manushi'

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

ANNA IS NEWS AND NEWS IS ANNA

SHAILAJA BAJPAI

 

It was an English August in London and "Anna ka August" in Delhi (Aaj Tak). The (mis)fortunes of the Indian cricket team and the Indian government were so disastrously alike as they played out before our horrified eyes, that perhaps their fates are linked?

Or blame it on Anna ki topi, visible at both the Ramlila Maidan and at the Oval on Monday evening, as India lost the fourth test. Certainly, each time they were on TV, India's cricket captain looked as lost as India's PM. And what former cricketer Madan Lal said of Dhoni was surprisingly apt for Dr Manmohan Singh: "He is waiting for things to happen... his captaincy was missing." Or, in Kapil Dev's words, "when things are going wrong, troubles come from every direction... Dhoni's inability to cope with them has been exposed." In both cases, we saw one Indian take centrestage and refuse to bow down: even as Anna Hazare fasted to fight corruption, Rahul Dravid had a lean and hungry look about him as he fought unsuccessfully to save India from another defeat.

But while there was nothing to celebrate at the Oval, the atmosphere at the Ramlila Maidan, where TV spent the last six days, has been almost jubilant. It was like any other festive occasion — Janmashtami was celebrated on Monday — a festival of India with the flag held high. And with each wave of the flag, TV anchors and reporters got increasingly carried away with the mood and joined the tide of people. The lines between the public and the media blurred, putting you in mind of the latest TV ad anthem: "har ek friend zaroori hota hai."

Certainly, the media had befriended Anna H, his cause, and those who gathered there to support him. All their descriptions were hyperbolic: hundreds of people became thousands, and thousands multiplied into tens of thousands on every channel. TV news was done with objectivity, so finding fault with their arithmetic might be declared "unpatriotic."

Like Hazare's fast, the coverage has been relentless, 24x7. For nine days we have had no other news, not from the rebel advance in Tripoli, nor of the Naxal attack on policemen in Bijapur. It has been Hazare all the way, with everything else relegated to the bottom of the screen, like a footnote to history. We can debate whether or not "Anna is India and India is Anna," but Anna is news and news is Anna — at least on TV.

This has bothered some channels enough for them to introspect: NDTV 24x7 and CNN-IBN both asked, in a self-referential navel-gazing exercise, whether the Anna movement was media-propelled. In the last few days CNN-IBN has been counselling against "confrontation," and asking for a compromise: "Let us put the nation above individuals," advised Rajdeep Sardesai, after a CNN-IBN journalist was attacked, reportedly by men in Anna caps.

In the TV studios, English news channels have been drafting different versions of the Lokpal bill, and the future of India along with it, while Hindi news channels have been preoccupied with Hazare's health: "Anna ke khoon mein bimari hai — Anna ki jaan ja sakti hai," warned India TV on Monday. "152 ghante bina khana — kisi ko Anna ki parvah hai?' demanded Star News. The most pithy line came from the Zee News anchor on Monday night, when the UPA government first reached out to Hazare: as Anna's pulse rate falls, he remarked, the government's pulse rate goes up. (But the media had its finger on the pulse of the people, right?)

DD News has behaved as though the protests were taking place in Antarctica and it couldn't reach there in time to bring us the latest news. On Monday night, it gave extensive coverage to the PM's speech on corruption at IIM-Calcutta, followed by Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi's views on the standing committee and the Lokpal bill, before getting to the reason both were in the news — Anna's fast — and that too in the form of a medical bulletin: doctors say Anna is fine, Team Hazare says he is not.

Why does DD News even bother to pretend? Why not simply call itself DD Government?

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

IGNITING INDIA

MANOJCG

 

Igniting India

Despite all the barbs about Anna Hazare's movement being propped up by the RSS, the Sangh was all praise for the social activist. The latest Organiser declares that Hazare has united the nation against corruption and cornered the Congress, and ignited a new sense of patriotism. "Sixty-five years after Independence, the people of India have again seized the initiative. Again, 'Vande Mataram' and 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' have become fashionable, the battle cry of a resurgent India," it says. The editorial claims that "what we are witnessing in the streets of India is a rebellion against the tyranny of the elected representatives." The BJP has maintained all along that the anger on the streets stemmed from the recent scams, and was directed at the Congress-led government, but the editorial says that the Lokpal bill is only "symbolic of an aspiration for a truly democratic and benign social order."

The Karnataka story

An Organiser article on Karnataka by senior RSS ideologue M.G. Vaidya states some facts that the BJP would never openly admit. He says that though squarely indicted by the Lokayukta, B.S. Yeddyurappa "dithered" over his resignation, possibly believing that his threats would work with the BJP high command. This did not happen, as the "party high-ups must have had full knowledge about the corrupt practices of BSY." He applauds the BJP for choosing BSY's successor by secret ballot, comparing this action to the Congress's practice of choosing leaders. He also calls it deplorable that the defeated faction of the BJP in Karnataka did not show magnanimity when the verdict came in.

Emergency situation

Panchjanya has also devoted several pieces to the Anna Hazare agitation and attacked the government for its "autocratic" ways. One article says the agitation has exposed the government's misdeeds, and that "if our prime minister had an iota of self-respect, he would have tried to change his government's attitude towards Anna and his supporters." It says that the government's action brought back memories of the dark days of Emergency. Another article claims Anna Hazare is no longer a name, but a revolution.

Compiled by Manoj C.G.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

APPLE'S CORE

Steve Jobs gave the above advice to Stanford University students at an oft-quoted commencement address in 2005. He had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from his pancreas the previous year and named his executive VP of worldwide sales and operations Tim Cook as Apple's COO. When Jobs took another leave for health reasons in 2009, COO Cook led the company once again. In January this year, we saw this process repeated, although Jobs returned for the introduction of the iPad 2 in March, with a sustained standing ovation at that. The question is whether Apple will be able to live up to the "stay hungry, stay foolish" impulse that drove the creation of the iMac, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad as Jobs finally passes the CEO baton to Cook. Dominant analyst opinion seems to be upbeat. As prolonged as his health battles have been, no one should be truly surprised by his resignation. Cook can reasonably be expected to cope well in Jobs's absence in the future because he has done so in the past—the stock went up 14% one month following Jobs's leave announcement in 2004, 13% in the month following the 2009 announcement, and 10.4% since January 17, 2011 (against the backdrop of a declining US market). Plus, the product roadmap for the next few years is already laid out. An able talent base is in place as is an excellence-friendly environment. Sure, the product launches will miss the pizazz of Jobs but perhaps Cook will get better with time—Jobs certainly did.

On the other hand, no one knows if tomorrow's challengers will be tougher than today's. Even today, there is Samsung nipping at Apple's heels, with the former's smartphone sales soaring more than 500% in the second quarter, outclassing the latter's 142% growth. Google and Facebook are leveraging their strengths in creative ways. Patent battles are heating up. In such circumstances, can Cook really substitute for someone Eric Schmidt has called the most successful American CEO of the last 25 years? There are not that many CEOs who evolve into popular culture icons—what with the famous instincts that transcend market research because "it's not the consumers' job to know what they want", the Bollywood-worthy battle with cancer, the catechisms that we love SMSing each other, the way in which he has changed how we engage with music and the movies.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

NEW SWISS FORMULA

While India waits for its revised Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) to come into effect—the Swiss will inform India, by October 7, as to whether the DTAA will have to be subjected to a national referendum—a new agreement signed on Wednesday by the Swiss and UK governments opens up another avenue for action. The Indo-Swiss DTAA, when it does come into action, however, does not mean the Swiss authorities will give Indian tax authorities an excel sheet with the name of Indian holders in Swiss banks with the amounts they hold in each account. The way it works, however, is that the Indian taxman will have to make a request and then the information will be made available—this means there will be no fishing expedition, the Indian taxman must have some basic details to begin with, and a credible reason for asking for the account details.

The UK-Swiss treaty is a bit different. While the UK government is allowed to make a maximum of 500 requests per year for information on UK residents who have Swiss bank accounts, Swiss banks will levy a withholding tax on the money held by UK nationals and hand this over to the UK government—the details of the bank account holder, however, will remain anonymous. To show their resolve, Swiss banks have guaranteed the UK government a payment of 500 million Swiss francs (R2,900 crore). A similar agreement was signed with Germany some weeks ago, and the guaranteed amount there is 2 billion Swiss francs (R11,600 crore).

The Global Financial Integrity has put the amount stashed abroad by Indians at $462 billion in 2009, and by 2011, yoga-guru Ramdev had fantastically raised this to $8.8 trillion—much of this is believed to be stashed in Swiss banks. Neither figure has looked particularly realistic, given the high returns Indian stock markets provide, the large amounts coming back to India through Mauritius, and the dramatically lowered taxation levels in India. Indeed, the Swiss banks have gone on record to say they have $2.5 billion of monies held by Indians. Till such time that the government is able to get details of Indian monies held in Swiss banks, it may be a good idea to work on a UK-type deal and start collecting taxes on these funds at least.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

APPLE TO FACE A SEVERE TEST WITHOUT JOBS
RICHARD WATERS

The news that Steve Jobs has stepped down as chief executive of Apple, 14 years after returning to the company he co-founded to lead one of the most dramatic turnrounds in corporate history, marks the end of an era.

From long-time underdog to the new king of Silicon Valley, Mr Jobs had assumed an improbably outsized influence over the technology industry. "It will be a different Apple from tomorrow morning," said Richard Doherty, a technology analyst and long-time follower of the company.

That echoed a widely voiced view late on Wednesday as news of Mr Jobs' resignation letter, in which he said he was no longer able to carry out his duties as chief executive, spread quickly.

With his latest period of medical leave having already stretched out since the start of this year, eclipsing an earlier absence in 2009, confirmation that the tech industry's most closely watched leader was to quit carried with it a sickening air of inevitability.

"There is an emotional impact here," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research. "The company is recognising it is stepping into the next phase."

Exactly what the departure means for the future of both Apple and the consumer technology industry it has led, however, was a question on which there was far less agreement.

For the time being, at least, most observers expect a continuation of the steady drumbeat of big new product announcements from Apple that in recent years have set the agenda for the entire consumer technology world.

Rivals have come to hang on every detail of Mr Jobs' set-piece product launch events, looking to them for cues about the probable next big consumer technology markets—though the barrage of lawsuits that have hit the smartphone and tablet computer industry suggest that sometimes the emulation may have become too slavish.

"He's redefined consumer electronics this century," said Mr Doherty.

Mr Jobs' departure will have "no impact from a product strategy point of view for probably a couple of years", said Mr Golvin. "The next wave of (Apple) products has already been designed."

That existing pipeline of products could enable Apple to sustain what has already become, with the iPhone and iPad, an impressive momentum. If it includes a better way of bringing the internet to TV screens—something Apple has worked on with limited success so far—it could also create a big new business that would produce a gusher of cash for Apple over the next five years, said

Mark Anderson, a US technology analyst and chief executive of Strategic News Service.

Beyond products already in development, however, the post-Jobs era at Apple raises bigger questions.

Rather than relying on customer research, the Apple co-founder pushes his senior managers hard to develop new products that are ahead of what the company's own customers have asked for, says Mr Doherty. He also keeps an iron grip on the approval process for new products, refusing to let new Apple gadgets see the light of day until he is personally satisfied that both the technology, and its application, are ready.

"There is no way to replace the world's greatest product genius – that's what Jobs is," said Mr Anderson. "I really think it's critical." Apple may not face the sort of immediate decline it suffered when Mr Jobs was forced out of the company in the mid-1980s, but the rudderless period that followed his departure then should serve as a warning, he added.

Much will depend on the leadership group that Mr Jobs has built over the past decade, and whether he has been able to instill the disciplines needed to prolong the string of hits that have defined Apple's success.

Below Tim Cook, who has been named chief executive and been given a seat on Apple's board, the well-regarded leadership group includes Phil Schiller, head of marketing; Jonathan Ive, chief designer; and Scott Forstall, the executive in charge of iOS software. In a rare loss, Ron Johnson, head of Apple's retail stores, recently quit to run US retailer JC Penney.

With his relentless drive to lead, cajole and sometimes harass his followers to achieve the sort of breakthroughs for which Apple has become famous, Mr Jobs has created an impressive machine that should outlast his day-to-day leadership, said Mr Doherty. "There aren't many organisations that have that level of striving for perfection," he added.

But, without its presiding genius, Apple's pursuit of perfection is about to face its severest test.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

THE DYNAMICS OF CORRUPTION
RAJESH CHAKRABARTI

As the Anna-Government battle wages on, and provides maximum grist for the political theatre in a long time, it is easy to lose sight of the central issue of how to best battle corruption behind the clash of personalities and the demands and counter-allegations. Few believe that either version of the Lokpal Bill will really rid the country of corruption, but would possibly create yet another barrier to negotiate or a spotlight to hide from. The debate is about how high that barrier should be or how glaring and universal that light, the concern about how to make sure the Lokpal rises above the ill it is supposed to guard against.

I had recently had the chance of researching the subject of corruption with my former colleague Ajay Subramanian*. The questions to ask included whether all corruption is the same—the everyday kind that we face from traffic policemen, road inspectors, tax refund clerks, railway officials or the grand larceny of the kind that the likes of Raja and Kalmadi and former senior judges are now accused of? Which one is worse for the nation, and therefore a bigger danger? And finally, what circumstances bring about the best outcome? Is there a point where the costs of reducing corruption further are more than its benefits? Given that it is unlikely that we can ever build a nation with zero corruption, how much of our resources spent in detection would lead us to the optimum level that maximises the nation's welfare?

In our view of the world, the entire national income-corruption tradeoff is driven by the alignment between three distributions—of productivity, power and compensation. Let me explain. Not all jobs are equally productive—the farmer directly produces output, while the policeman does not. But that does not mean the farmer should get all that he produces, for then there will be nothing for the policeman, and crime will go through the roof. So, clearly, the farmer must support the policeman in his own interest. So, productivity and compensation structures will be different, taxes are necessary. The nature of the job matters too. The schoolteacher has little power to extract rent (particularly if the examiner is external and cannot control admission) that the policeman enjoys. So, professions and hierarchies create a distribution of power in society as well. So it is possible to think of the entire society in a three-dimensional space—of productivity, power and compensation—where each individual chooses his level of individual corruption (between 0 and 1) depending upon the risk-return tradeoff he faces. The higher the chosen level, the lower his output and greater his actual compensation if he goes undetected. Of course, society suffers more from a corrupt PM than a corrupt constable, so societal corruption level has to be power-weighted. Societal output is the sum of all individual outputs. We simulate various such 3-D societies to investigate the income-corruption relationship in them.

Our findings are a mix of intuitive and surprising results. For instance, the more aligned compensation is to power, the better it is from a corruption-reducing viewpoint. For instance, when our top bureaucrats making less than R9 lakh a year (OK throw in the Central Delhi flat and a car to be more precise) hold the key to cash-flows amounting to thousands of crores of rupees, bureaucratic corruption should not surprise anyone. Ditto for judges (just talking

about incentives here, not alleging any judicial wrongdoing). So the "Singapore model" of paying CEO salaries to ministers has its merits. Not surprising—after all, despite its high-corruption neighbourhood, Singapore is among the five least corrupt nations (and the only one outside Scandinavia).

Somewhat surprising is the trade-off between "petty" corruption (of the everyday variety) and "high level" corruption that institutions like the CVC, CBI, CAG and Lokpal are supposed to catch. Our lowest corruption societies are marked by less "high level" corruption than "petty" corruption. So it appears that going after the big fish does produce better bang for buck for reducing corruption than disinfecting the microbes. So the Lokpal debate is actually key—the Anna brigade is certainly not barking up the wrong tree.

It is important to realise that corruption is not the monopoly of the government. Countries like Canada and Finland have large public sectors and low corruption whereas unfettered government monopoly over resources has created kleptocracies in sub-Saharan Africa with active private sector involvement. Our model suggests that scaling back government power reduces "petty corruption" while reducing private sector power leads to a reduction in "high level" corruption. Little surprise, then, that liberalisation has perhaps taken us from one kind of corruption to the other, potentially more harmful, kind.

The author teaches finance at the

Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

* Chakrabarti, Rajesh and Ajay Subramanian, "Power, Compensation and Corruption: Theory and Evidence" Working Paper, SSRN

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

POST-RIOT FALLOUT: SOCIAL MEDIA FIRMS MEET U.K. GOVERNMENT

Executives from Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. are meeting the British government and police to discuss how to prevent social networks being used to plot violence.

The government has expressed concern about the way social media and BlackBerry's instant messaging were used during this month's riots across England. Civil libertarians reacted with alarm to suggestions the services could be shut down in times of crisis.

Police and politicians claim young criminals used Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry's simple and largely cost-free messaging service to coordinate looting sprees during riots in England this month, and Prime Minister David Cameron has said police and intelligence services are looking at whether there should be limits on the use of social media sites or services like BlackBerry Messenger in times of disorder. A senior police officer revealed last week that the force had considered seeking approval to switch off such services like Twitter during the mayhem, but decided against it.

The acting chief of London's police force told lawmakers that the legality of such action was "very questionable," and networks were an intelligence asset. A Home Office spokeswoman said there was "no suggestion" the sites would be closed down. But she said the meeting would discuss "whether and how we should be able to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality." — AP

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

JAPAN'S TURN FOR DOWNGRADE

The downgrading of Japan's government debt by Moody's Investor Services on Wednesday was in the making for quite some time. The revised rating, down by one notch to 'Aa3', carries a stable outlook and brings it on a par with the ratings by its two main rivals, Standard & Poor's and Fitch. Now, Japan is on the same level as China, which surpassed it last year to become the world's second largest economy. The action of Moody's has not caused, nor is it likely to cause, a turmoil in the markets because the rating agency is only seen as catching up with its peers. Moreover, Moody's themselves have said that taking into account Japan's credit strengths they do not see a funding crisis arising in the next 12 to 18 months. A key dampening factor is that the bulk of Japan's public debt is owned internally; there would have been much commotion if overseas creditors had been dominant. Inevitably, comparisons will be made with S&P's historic downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt earlier this month, for both are a verdict on the deterioration in the public finances of two of the top industrialised countries.

Of course, political factors also weighed in the downgrades in both cases. In the U.S., the absence of a smooth working arrangement between the two political parties almost forced the federal government to default and left the administration with very few options to tackle the debt crisis. In the case of Japan, "revolving door politics" — the country is preparing to elect its sixth leader in five years — have stood in the way of effective long-term fiscal and growth strategies. But the economics are more stark: Japan's financial position is in a miserable shape, with nearly half of the central government budget funded by bond issuance. Its gross debt now exceeds 200 per cent of the GDP, a dubious record unmatched by any industrialised country. In addition to its structural debt problems, Japan faces a bill amounting to ¥15-20 trillion for recovery work following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Given the weak growth prospects, it is obvious that Japan will find the servicing of its burgeoning public debt very difficult. To crank up its usually efficient manufacturing sector, Japan has decided to tackle head-on the problems arising from the sharp appreciation in the yen, which is now at its highest levels since World War II. The yen's rise has blunted Japan's much-vaunted export competitiveness and threatens to derail its main growth engine. The $100 billion war chest announced on Wednesday to help small and medium enterprises cope with the surging yen might be too little in relation to Japan's problems and, perhaps, even too late.

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THE HINDU

A MASSIVE TREE

Cataloguing the diversity of life on earth remains one of the incomplete goals of science. Taxonomists have tried to come up with a credible number for the species that have been identified as unique — and succeeded in entering some 1.2 million in a centralised database. The problem with this number is that it is a fraction of the whole; the majority of species both on land and in the oceans has not been catalogued. It is in this context that a new species count put out by a group of scientists becomes noteworthy. Camilo Mora and colleagues propose in an open access paper titled "How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?" (published in the journal PLoS Biology ) that the number of those with complex cell structures could be 8.7 million, plus-or-minus 1.3 million. Of them, the marine species could be about 2.2 million. This estimate is a projection based on consistent and predictable patterns in the system of classifying animals and plants. The real significance lies not in the absolute number — there could be many more species, other scientists think — but in the scale of effort needed to identify and save them in a human-dominated future. Given the magnitude of the task, taxonomy as a discipline should be drawing many more researchers. It also needs massive infusions of funding.

Underpinning the estimate arrived at by Dr. Mora and his group is the thesis that there has been a definite pattern to the discovery of new classes of animals from the year 1750. Reasonable predictions were possible in the past based on the classification pyramid that scientists could build. Now, based on that model, it is suggested there may be 7.7 million species of animals, 298,000 plants, and 611,000 fungi, among others. It will take an accelerated global campaign to validate these figures. It is worth pointing out that only about 15,000 new discoveries are added to the tally annually. At the same time, the mounting resource demands of 6.9 billion humans are altering habitats at such a rapid pace that the resulting extinction rates greatly exceed the natural rates of loss. In many parts of the world, there is a fading echo of biodiversity. This demands a stronger response from governments to document life. Funding to establish more taxonomy centres in universities, for DNA analysis and for scientific expeditions, is crucial. Where funding and expertise are available, the results are impressive. Many amphibians given up as lost in India have been rediscovered and catalogued in recent years, particularly in the Western Ghats. Saving what remains of species diversity is vital, and greater understanding of what exists will help make that possible.

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THE HINDU

SETBACK TO SPACE PROGRAMME?

ANDREW E. KRAMER AND

A Russian cargo rocket ferrying three tons of food and fuel to the International Space Station broke down about five minutes after it blasted off on August 24, completing its flight by arcing into a Siberian forest rather than achieving orbit.

The crash of the unmanned craft, a Progress cargo ship on top of a Soyuz rocket, does not pose an immediate problem for the six crew members living at the space station, who are well stocked with supplies taken there in July by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) last shuttle flight. But it raises questions about the reliability of this model of Russian rocket, a similar model of which is used for manned launchings.

Since the retirement of the shuttle programme last month, Russian-made Soyuz rockets are the only means of transport to space for American astronauts. NASA has contracted with the Russian Space Agency to fly Americans on these rockets for several years.

Under scrutiny

The crash on Wednesday will surely be closely scrutinised because of its implications for American manned space flight on the Russian rockets. If a quick diagnosis and fix elude Russian engineers, NASA and the other agencies collaborating on the space station could face difficult choices.

"We've always known this was a risk," the manager of the space station for NASA, Michael T. Suffredini, said.

The next set of three crew members is scheduled to launch to the space station in September, and another three are to go up in December.

Further, the Soyuz capsules in which the crew members ride also serve as lifeboats in case of an emergency, and the capsules are allowed to stay at the station for up to 210 days.

It means that three crew members may have to return to Earth in one of the Soyuz capsules docked at the station by October at the latest. Without replacements, that would leave only three people to operate the station, greatly reducing the time they could devote to running experiments.

If the problem dragged on to the end of the year, the other three would also have to return to Earth, leaving the space station unoccupied.

Mr. Suffredini said the station could be operated from the ground and stay in orbit indefinitely as long as there were no major failures and other cargo ships continued to fly; a Japanese one and a European one are scheduled to be launched next spring.

The Progress and Soyuz have proven reliable until now. Forty-three of the supply ships have successfully flown to the space station. But the failure on Wednesday was the second in August from the Baikonur launching pad in Kazakhstan. The upper stage of a Proton rocket sent a telecommunications satellite into the wrong orbit on Aug. 18.

Russia has planned another Soyuz expedition on Thursday, from the Plesetsk launching pad in the far north of European Russia. That rocket is scheduled to carry a navigation satellite for the Glonass system, the Russian version of the American GPS.

But the Russian space agency said it might delay manned launchings on the Soyuz — the only means of reaching the station for astronauts and cosmonauts — if the reasons for Wednesday's crash were not quickly determined.

The Progress is a cargo spaceship that the Russians call a space truck, routinely launched to the space station carrying spare parts, fuel, food, oxygen, water and other items.

The Soyuz design is a 1960s holdover that jettisons four bulky booster rockets soon after liftoff, then flies in three stages to space. It carries both manned and unmanned spaceships to the space station. At the launching on Wednesday, the Progress lifted off as planned on top of a Soyuz rocket. A little more than five minutes later, however, the rocket's third-stage engine shut down sooner than it should have, before the spacecraft had enough velocity to reach orbit.

The rocket and Progress ship crashed in the dense Siberian forest. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations said rocket debris landed in three separate areas of the Altai region in southern Siberia, which borders Mongolia. The regional governor, Yuri Antaradonov, said the police had cautioned people to stay clear of the wreckage, as it could be contaminated with toxic fuel. His only concern, he said, was that some people may have been camped in the forest at the time of the crash because "it is the season of collecting pine nuts" in that part of Siberia. — © New York Times News Service

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THE HINDU

THE MIRACLE THAT WAS MOTHER TERESA

NAVIN CHAWLA

A few weeks ago I visited one of Mother Teresa's Sisters who was admitted for surgery in the PGI hospital in Chandigarh. Haryana Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati and the Principal Secretary to the Governor accompanied me that morning to Sister Ann Vinita's bedside. Attending to her in the hospital were two companion Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity. In the course of conversation, one of them said that she was really happy to meet me. She went on to explain that as a young woman in Kerala, she had admired Mother Teresa's work, but it was when she chanced to read my biography of Mother Teresa that she decided to join the Order. That a young Catholic woman should have read a book written by one, who while he was unmistakably close to Mother Teresa yet did not share her faith, stunned me into silence. It made me reflect on a number of issues related and unrelated: of the strength of secular values; and of true compassion knowing no religious, ethnic, caste or geographical boundaries, and indeed being able to transcend altogether the formal contours of religious practice.

Mother Teresa understood her environment acutely. She was no evangelist in the 19th century mould. She remained true to her religion till her last breath, but chose not to impose it on others. Never once during my 23-year-long association with her did she ever suggest that her religion was the only path, or that it was in any way superior. Yet she often reminded those around her of the power of prayer. If I occasionally remarked on some initiative she had taken as a "good idea," she would reply with a teasing smile that if I learned to pray I would get a few good ideas too! She often urged those who came to her that they must be good Hindus or Muslims or Christians or Sikhs, and in that process must learn to "find God."

It was indicative of her success that she understood that in an overwhelmingly non-Christian India, her path had to be a unique one. So while she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency: the poorest of the poor, the leprosy sufferers, abandoned children or the hungry and dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. Their religious persuasion, or even its absence, hardly concerned her. In her ability to have found the middle path in an environment that could have easily become hostile, lay her genius. I once asked the legendary Chief Minster of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, what he an atheist and a Communist could possibly have in common with a Catholic nun for whom God was everything. With a smile, he replied: "We share a love for the poor." India revered her and gave her abundantly of its honours, including the Bharat Ratna. On August 26, 2010, a five- rupee coin was released to commemorate her birth centenary.

Over the years I witnessed many incidents that I called "co-incidences" and which others might well call "miracles." One day in the 1980s at Mother House in Kolkata, a rare medicine was needed to save the life of a child. In those days it was not manufactured in India. When hope was almost lost, and as the Sisters prayed, a carton of assorted leftover medicines was donated by an unknown benefactor. Right on top was the very drug that was needed. The child's life was saved.

On another occasion, Mother Teresa arrived in Delhi from abroad. I was at the airport to receive her. Her flight was late. As she got off, anxiety was writ over her face. "You must get me on the flight to Calcutta. There is a dying child here; I am carrying a new medicine." I told Mother that was impossible. Her flight had been late, and the last Calcutta-bound Indian Airlines flight was boarding. Mother Teresa's own luggage was also yet to come. But as word spread at the airport, the seemingly impossible happened. The first few items of luggage on the conveyer belt happened to be her cardboard cartons (she never owned a suitcase!). Someone informed air traffic control of Mother Teresa's efforts. The pilot happened to be a Calcutta man. Suddenly I was asked if I could drive Mother Teresa in my car to the tarmac — and she caught her flight. I rang her the next morning. The child had been administered the medicine on her arrival, and was now out of danger. "It is a first-class miracle," said Mother Teresa.

Far from once not believing in miracles, I am now in little doubt that Mother Teresa's life itself was a miracle. Witness the facts: as a child of 14 in her native Albania, her imagination was stirred by the stories she heard from the Jesuit Fathers of their work in distant Bengal; at 18, still a teenager, her mind was made up. She took leave of her own beloved mother and joined the Loreto Order of teaching nuns, her only means in the year 1928 of reaching India. It was an age when missionaries seldom returned home, and she was embarking on a life in a world of which she knew nothing. She was sent to Darjeeling for training. She learned to speak Bengali fluently. After almost 20 happy years as a teaching nun, she audaciously sought (and finally received) permission from the Vatican to become the first nun in the history of the Church to step outside convent walls, not as a lay person, but as a nun with her vows intact, to start a mission of her own. She had no helper, no companion, and no money to speak of. Imagine the Calcutta of 1948, overflowing with refugees after Partition, homelessness, poverty and disease everywhere. She wore no recognisable nun's habit; instead a sari, akin to that worn by municipal sweepresses, that cost one rupee. This is where she started her life's arduous mission.

We know where she left off. By the time she passed away in 1997, she had created her presence in 123 countries. She ran a multinational run by 5,000 nuns of her Order, without the help of government grants or Church assistance. She had been awarded every conceivable prize of distinction. She was as warmly received in palaces and chancelleries as she was in the slums and streets of the world's cities. People sometimes accuse her of converting others to her faith: surely then there was no need for her to set up a branch in the heart of the Vatican. She cajoled Pope John Paul II to carve out a soup kitchen next to his grand audience chamber. Anyone today can witness the queues of Rome's poor, who are fed their only hot meal every evening. A former British Prime Minister told me not long ago that when Mother Teresa visited him at Downing Street she always managed to get his aides overruled, and got everything she wanted — because it was always for 'her poor.' In any event, by now it was difficult for Prime Ministers to say 'no' to her, for she was recognised as the conscience-keeper of her age.

As a Hindu, armed only with a certain eclecticism, I found it took me longer than most others to understand that Mother Teresa was with Christ in each conscious hour, whether at Mass, or with each of those whom she tended. The Christ on her crucifix was not different from the one who lay dying at her hospice in Kalighat. There could be no contradiction in her oft-repeated words that one must reach out to one's neighbour.

For Mother Teresa, to love one's neighbour was to love God. This was what was essential to her, not the size of her mission or the power others perceived in her. "We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful," she explained. Mother Teresa exemplified that faith — in prayer, in love, in service, and in peace.

(Navin Chawla, a former Chief Election Commissioner of India, is the author of Mother Teresa: The Authorised Biography . )

Mother Teresa's path was a unique one. While she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency, the deprived and the dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God.

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THE HINDU

INSIDE SYRIA'S FAILED REBELLION

PRAVEEN SWAMI

Thick black lines had been scored over the graffiti under the cherubic image of President Bashar al-Assad that guards the road into Hama{minute}a. The military's clean-up squad had been less than diligent though: the word kalib , dog, survived the paint-brush censorship, and the soldiers had forgotten to have the President's gouged-out eyes repainted.

Inside the city, the rebels had left behind evidence no amount of paint could obscure: the burned-down military officers' mess on the Ard al-Khadra street, which mobs stormed in the hope of seizing weapons; the gutted office block which housed the justice department; the charred walls of the al-Hadr police station, pockmarked with machine-gun fire, where 17 police officers were lynched, before their mutilated bodies were thrown into a nearby canal.

Behind the justice ministry's office, a small group of young men described what happened when the military moved in on July 31, three months after rebel groups, armed with guns, knives and petrol bombs, seized control of much of the town. "They used snipers to shoot at us," one says, and "more than a dozen people were killed." The army, he claims, then tied the hands of local residents and forced them to roll on the street, all the while beating them with rifle butts.

Ever since the spring uprising in Syria, the most serious challenge to the regime since it took power in 1970, commentators had been predicting that President al-Assad's regime was on the edge of collapse. In spite of an energetic western media campaign, largely based on overblown accounts provided by exiled opposition groups, it is in fact becoming clear that the rebellion has all but collapsed: Damascus, for example, is more alive with everyday civic life than New Delhi.

But there is no disputing that Syria's government is far from slaying the three-headed dragon which threatens its future: a threat from the West; an economic crisis engendered by neoliberal economic reform; and a mounting Islamist threat.

The failed rebellion

Late in February, authorities in Dera {minute}a arrested a group of teenagers for painting anti-government slogans on the town's walls: like the Libyan, Egyptian and Yemeni rebels they'd watched on television, the protestors proclaimed that the people wanted the regime overthrown. Parents of the children, a widely-believed but possibly apocryphal account holds, met with Dera {minute}a intelligence chief Atef Naguib al-Assad to secure their release. In a traditional tribal gesture of supplication, one parent placed his headscarf on Mr. Naguib al-Assad's table, who in turn flung it into the dustbin — an unforgivable insult that sparked off rioting.

This much is clear: the protests soon spread out of Dera {minute}a, to the towns of Jisr al-Shughour, Homs and Aleppo. For weeks, President al-Assad's government allowed the rebels to hold control of the towns, ceding space in the hope of securing a political rapprochement.

In the end, the response was ferocious: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said her office had received "over 1,900 names and details of persons killed in Syria since mid-March 2011; all are said to be civilians." It received testimony that over 350 were executed. The Syrian government denies this charge, but has released no figure of its own.

Even though the opposition council-in-exile that claims to represent Syria's rebellion includes a wide spectrum of ideological opinion — pro-western liberals, secular-nationalists and Islamists — there's just one party that seems to matter on the ground: the Ikhwan ul-Muslimeen, or Muslim Brotherhood

Born in 1937, the Brotherhood had drawn its core from the pious traditional middle class of urban merchants, artisans and clerics — independent of the ruling Ba {minute}ath party's patronage structures. Its first published manifesto, of 1954, sought the "establishment of a virtuous policy which would carry out the rules and teachings of Islam." From 1963 to 1968, the Brotherhood led a dogged campaign of resistance against the secularising, Arab-nationalist Ba {minute}ath. Following the catastrophic defeat of Arab forces in the 1967 war against Israel, a radical faction led by the Aleppo-based weaver-turned-cleric Abdul Fattah Abu Ghuddah pushed for a confrontation with the regime.

Hafez al-Assad, an air force officer from the Latakia province — the first of his poor peasant family to graduate from high school — seized power. Even though Hafez al-Assad hailed from the heterodox {minute}Alawi sect, who make up just 10 per cent of the Sunni-majority of Syria's population and constituted a peasant underclass, he won Brotherhood chief Issam al-Attar's support. Knowing the al-Assad regime lacked a mass base, al-Attar bargained for policies that would help the Damascus merchant class.

In 1975 though, a combination of crippling inflation, high housing prices, and growing tensions between the Ba {minute}ath and Palestianian radicals led younger figures in the Brotherhood to take a more radical course. From 1976, there was a series of attacks on Ba {minute}ath functionaries, strikes and shutdowns — culminating in the massacre of 83 {minute}Alawi cadets at the Aleppo military academy in 1980.

The new Islamist radicals were the children of the traders who had formed the backbone of the Brotherhood — now largely students, teachers and professionals. Adlan Uqlab, who led the ill-fated 1980 uprising in Hama {minute}a, was a civil engineer whose father had been a baker; his predecessor, Abdus Sattar al-Zaim, was a dentist born to a tradesman. Husni Abbu, head of the military section of the Brotherhood in Aleppo, was a French language-teacher, born to a well-to-do merchant and the son-in-law of Shaikh Zayn-ud-Din Khairullah, the Imam of Aleppo's grand mosque.

Figures who escaped the State's ferocious assault on Hama {minute}a went on to occupy a key role in the global jihadist movement. Born and educated in Aleppo, 1958-born Mustafa Nasar joined the Combat Vanguard Organisation, a radical breakaway group from the Muslim Brotherhood, while he was studying mechanical engineering. He participated in the uprisings of 1980, and fought against Syrian forces in the 1982 bloodbath in Hama {minute}a. Forced into exile, Nasar moved to Spain and then London, where he had an influential jihadist magazine. In the years before 9/11, Nasar joined Osama bin-Laden's inner circle — though he later fell out with the al-Qaeda chief, and set up a separate organisation under the command of the Taliban's emir, Mullah Muhammad Omar.

Nasar has now emerged as among the jihadist movement's most influential ideologues, arguing in his 1,600-page manifesto, Da {minute}wat al-muqawamah al-Islamiyyah al- {minute}alamiyyah, the case for a "leaderless resistance" of individual terrorism.

Following the violence in Hama {minute}a, Aleppo and Palmyra, the Brotherhood sought to head off these nascent jihadist tendencies by adopting a more adversarial relationship with the State, repositioning itself as the spokesperson of Syria's Sunni majority against its {minute}Alawi rulers. "Nine or ten per cent of the population," its 1980 manifesto argued (referring to the al-Assad family's sectarian origins), "cannot dominate the majority in Syria." The {minute}Alawi "minority has forgotten itself and is ignoring the facts of history." This, the Brotherhood said, "could ignite a murderous civil war."

The idea resonated among Islamists: the medieval cleric Ibn Taymiyya, who fires up the imagination of the modern neo-fundamentalist movement, argued that the primary challenge for the faith was stamping out heresies like those of the {minute}Alawi.

But, as commentator Hanu Batatu pointed out in a 1982 essay, the Brotherhood also reached out to a wider constituency, adopting ideas drawn from classical liberal thought. Its 1980 programme condemned martial law and torture, and advocated judicial independence and the rule of law. It spoke to capitalist concerns, castigating industrial workers who "think they are entitled to everything" and converted "factories into hospices for the lazy and indolent."

'Syria is stable'

Early this year, as rebellions erupted across the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad held out sage words for other regional rulers. "Syria is stable," he asserted. "Why? Because you have to be very closely linked to the beliefs of the people." "If you didn't see the need for reform before what happened in Egypt and Tunisia," he concluded, "it's too late." His assessment was correct — but applied as much to the State he runs as to other besieged Middle Eastern regimes.

First, the United States and the European Union have seized on the rebellion to build bridges with the Muslim Brotherhood, and isolate the geopolitical adversary, Iran's principal regional ally. Harsh sanctions have been imposed, and direct support is being provided to opponents of the regime. The U.S. Ambassador to Damascus, Robert Ford, has been engaged in an extraordinary political campaign, first encouraging dissidents in Hama {minute}a to break off talks with the regime and more recently defying official travel restrictions to meet with opposition leaders in Jassem.

Ever since the rebellion that deposed Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt, the U.S. has moved to develop deeper links with the Brotherhood — seeing its pietist leadership as allies who will help replace its failing authoritarian collaborators with Saudi Arabia-style conservative regimes. The Brotherhood, U.S. diplomats argue, will also be able to contain anti-western jihadists. Ever since 2006, the Brotherhood has had a lobbying presence in Washington, D.C.; it also has the support of Turkey's Islamist-led government and Saudi Arabia.

Though western sanctions alone are unlikely to undermine the regime, it faces a second challenge: from a growing youth cohort alienated from the Ba {minute}ath party's patronage structure and hardhit by economic change.

President al-Assad's neoliberal reforms generated respectable economic statistics: the real growth stood at 3.2 per cent in 2010, 5 per cent in 2009, 5.1 per cent in 2008, and 4.3 per cent in 2007. Poverty, long stuck at about 15 per cent of the population, declined to 11.9 per cent in 2006.

But Nader Kabbani, director of research at the Syrian Trust for Development, noted early this year that the country's positive macroeconomic numbers masked disturbing trends. Though growth had been steady, few jobs had been created; those with only primary and intermediate qualifications found it hard to find work. In addition, severe drought, coupled with years of diminished investment in agriculture, alienated the Ba {minute}ath's core constituency, the rural poor.

The protests now unfolding in Syria thus represent the rebellion of a new generation of disenfranchised youth — the vanguard of the third challenge to the regime, from political Islam.

Protest against the regime has expressed itself through religion: Damascus residents note a steady growth in the use of headscarves, for example, which authorities even felt compelled to ban from universities in 2009. Lectures by the neo-fundamentalist cleric Yousuf al-Qaradawi are said to have become increasingly popular. There is little doubt jihadists played a vanguard role in the rebellion. Homs' Bab {minute}Amr area was one of several which came under de-facto jihadist control. A brigadier-general, along with his two sons and a nephew, was assassinated.

Policy backfires

For years now, the Syrian government sought to buy peace with the jihadists, allowing Iraq-based Islamist groups to ship weapons and cadre through their territory in return for leaving President al-Assad's regime alone. That policy has backfired: at a recent meeting with visiting journalists, Hama {minute}a Governor Anas Abdul-Razzaq Na {minute}em admitted that "Salafi-Takfiri groups who want an Islamic emirate spearheaded the uprising."

President al-Assad understands that democratic reforms are needed to contain the threat — but the several half-steps towards political openness he has taken since 2005 have led nowhere. Now, the uprising has compelled him to promise an end to draconian emergency laws, and commit himself to holding elections. At meetings with Indian, Brazilian and South African diplomats, Syrian authorities even said they would lift the ban on the Brotherhood, if it abandoned religion-based politics.

Will this prove enough? The gains of four decades of rule by the al-Assad dynasty ought not be dismissed: the country has, without dispute, the most secular State institutions and culture of any Arab State today; women occupy positions of influence; minority rights are scrupulously protected. The fact though is, that the accompanying absence of democracy has pushed more people to the religious right — threatening to sweep away these gains.

Even though the uprising of 2011 has been crushed, thus, Syria remains on the edge of the abyss: an abyss that black paint cannot obscure.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has imposed order — but is yet to slay the three-headed dragon which threatens its survival.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

SOME MPS SET A BAD EXAMPLE

Former Samajwadi leader and sitting Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh has been chargesheeted in the cash-for-vote scandal, along with Sudheendra Kulkarni, a former adviser to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and one-time aide to BJP stalwart L.K. Advani, as well as two BJP MPs of the last Lok Sabha. The police has also sought the Lok Sabha Speaker's sanction to prosecute sitting BJP MP Ashok Argal. The trial is about to get under way. As such, it is too early to take a definitive view, much less pronounce guilt. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that the dramatis personae, in the main, have a close association with the country's main Opposition party.
The case is a straightforward one of corruption in the system. Either the Congress went on a bribing spree, or the BJP simply contrived a cock-and-bull story to make its main adversary look soiled. In both events, the system would be suborned. In July 2008, when the Left withdrew support from the UPA-1 government, it is alleged the Congress took steps to ensure that its government did not fall on the floor of Parliament. The effort was to get non-UPA MPs to vote for it, or at least abstain. Why then is no one from the Congress among those arraigned? Or is there no proof of this yet?
The implied suggestion is that Mr Singh was playing the Congress' game, that he arranged the money with which to bribe BJP MPs. The veracity of this is yet to be established. The police claims it hasn't yet figured out where the former Samajwadi leader got the money from to pay BJP legislators. Until this is done, the case against the UPA won't stand.
Mr Kulkarni claims that his role was to stage-manage a sting operation and get a television channel to shoot the proceedings. Did he do it at his own behest? The BJP MPs in question were roped in to "accept" a bribe on camera, and promptly take the loot to the floor of the Lok Sabha to make a dramatic show of exposing the wrongdoer — in this case the government — by displaying wads of currency notes. We must, of course, wait for the trial to progress to know if they pocketed any of the so-called bribe money, or took the entire sum to the House, which was then deposited with the authorities. But no matter what, this is a despicable tale. It is terrible that any MP, least of all from a party that claims for itself a higher standard of public morality, should be involved in such a tawdry show.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

THE DISINHERITED

SWAPAN DASGUPTA

An unintended consequence of the Ayodhya movement was that it improved middle-class India's knowledge of German history. For a decade, intellectuals horrified by the phenomenal Hindu mobilisation for a Ram temple in Ayodhya drew analogies with the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s. The demolition of December 1992 was equated with the Reichstag fire of 1933, the communal riots which erupted were compared to the infamous Kristallnacht of 1938 and the kar sevaks were viewed with the same degree of horror that the world reserved for Hitler's storm troopers.
The second round of Anna Hazare's movement that grew out of his fast in Delhi's Ramlila Maidan has witnessed an intellectual celebration of parliamentary democracy. An institution that had been tarnished in the public imagination for the quality of its members, the scenes of raucous disruption and the indifference to serious debate, has suddenly emerged as the cornerstone of Indian democracy. Abstruse parliamentary procedures, unfamiliar to most Indians, have also been painted as sacrosanct by MPs cutting across party lines. The sobriety of a select committee of Parliament has been juxtaposed against the emotional anarchy of an unthinking rabble. Like 18th century England, responsible politics has been posited against a mob that is potentially riotous.
Like most intellectual exercises, both analogies are flawed and based on hideous caricatures. The spectacular groundswell of support for a 74-year-old Gandhian with a genial disposition
wasn't born out of a perverse determination to put an end to democracy and replace it with an oligarchy of the great and good. The mobilisation of people around a dhoti-clad icon in a Gandhi topi wasn't effected by the army of "subcontractors" who helped popularise the message of the Mahatma in the 1920s. "Team Anna" was a catchy media construction and accorded a disproportionate importance to a clutch of individuals whose motivations were not always altruistic. But people didn't flock to Ramlila Maidan, Azad Maidan and the umpteen demonstrations and vigils all over the country because they were followers of Prashant Bhushan, Santosh Hegde and Kiran Bedi. They responded to Anna out of a profound sense of exasperation with a system which, while democratic, was also venal.
The Anna movement was never a revolutionary movement; its orientation was always reformist. It was a movement that was not born out of careful pre-meditation by US-funded think tanks; it was astonishingly spontaneous and a product of the post-1991 process of liberalisation.
For many intellectuals, usually of a radical disposition, the term middle class has both pejorative and sinister connotations. It is automatically assumed that middle-class India carries a baggage of selfishness, prejudice and detachment. Just as Rudyard Kipling and Lord Curzon often contrasted the chattering babus speaking comic English to the rugged earthiness of the "real India", there is an inclination to view the tricolour-waving Indians shouting Vande Mataram as the pampered children of an India that doesn't really know the meaning of deprivation. If the 18th century London mob, immortalised in the sketches of William Hogarth, were gin-drinking ruffians, the lot that turned up on their motorbikes to cheer Anna were people with a lot to lose. They had a stake in India but very little stake in political India.
This alienation from politics is understandable. For the past seven years, a facile media has been enthusiastically tracking the emergence of the Gandhi "youth icon". But regardless of the good work Rahul Gandhi may have done in building the long-term foundations of a new Congress Party, the public manifestation of change has been remarkably feudal. The proverbial brat pack of the ruling party is made up of sons and daughters of politicians and maharajas. A big, all-India dynasty has helped to prop up a new political aristocracy in the provinces and localities. Congress politics has given the impression of being a closed shop run by people with a fierce sense of entitlement. For them, the plethora of inefficiently managed anti-poverty programmes is noblesse oblige.
Ideally, the feudal distortions of the Congress should have provided an opening to the BJP to emerge as an authentic representative of a mushrooming middle class that is hungry for opportunities. The BJP, unfortunately for it, has been unable to gauge that its vision of nationalism is regarded as being too restrictive and fuddy-duddy. Narendra Modi may be the exception but he has to overcome the demonology built around him.
The chants of "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki jai" in Anna's rallies may provide evidence of the middle class' incipient fascist proclivities to the paranoid, liberal intellectual. But these people are as detached from the BJP as they are from the Congress. An overdose of regimented ideology
doesn't appeal to a generation that attaches priority to personal opportunities.
To this generation, intensely proud of an Indian-ness that transcends caste and religion (but not region), corruption is a drag on India and a restrictive practice that they would rather not accept as karma. The Anna movement, quite unwittingly and, perhaps, to its own consternation, has tapped a reservoir of entrepreneurial energy which is not finding a suitable political outlet.
In the eyes of the blinkered, the attack is on parliamentary democracy — a term that remains an abstraction to many of those inspired by Anna. Viewed from another angle, the Anna movement could also be an assault on the residual sludge of the licence-permit-quota raj.

Swapan Dasgupta is a senior journalist

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

STARRY, STARRY TWEETS

KHALID MOHAMED

It's prudent to be politically correct. No wonder Mumbai's film community tweeted, darted TV bytes and occupied reams of newspaper print, extending their support to Anna Hazare. Rajinikanth, too, currently the superstar No 1 of Indian cinema, came out of recuperation to give Mr Hazare's anti-corruption crusade the thumbs up.
Now, news reports even claim that the politically-active producer-director Prakash Jha intends to launch a film titled Satyagraha, with perhaps Amitabh Bachchan portraying the messiah of a scam-oppressed nation. A twist of irony there, since Bachchan in real life has sought to distance himself from the hurly burly ever since he found himself inadequate as an elected MP who couldn't quite swim in the cesspool of realpolitik. Also, Inquilab (1984) and Main Azaad Hoon (1989) in which his roles had overt shades of dissent against the Establishment, didn't find favour either with the mandarins or the masses.
In post-Independence India, film personalities have attained mythic followings both as stars and politicians, essentially in the southern states: N.T. Rama Rao, M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa, have straddled the screen as well as the highest corridors of power. In Bollywood, though, it has been an uneasy liaison.
Occasionally, Aamir Khan admirably pitches in his support for the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Even before her tenure as Rajya Sabha MP, Shabana Azmi combated the authorities for the alleviation of the lot of underprivileged. Mahesh Bhatt is vociferous in articulating his views on myriad issues. Anupam Kher has come out strong on his views about social and political inequities. Javed Akhtar represents the secular and liberal voice of the intelligentsia. And Rahul Bose, in perhaps a low-key manner, has been politically conscientious.
The recent quotes by showbiz stars on Mr Hazare's protest movement, however, appear to be kneejerk reactions. Starlets as well as stalwarts have expressed an opinion. Okay, so why not? Answer: it was perfectly okay if the quotes were substantiated with reasons, besides a mature understanding of a protest movement.
Token statements, whether they come from an A-lister heroine or from a publicity-craving wannabe, amount to little more than unquotable quotes.
In fact, those who have kept their views to themselves have done so, simply because they don't have one. Like it or not, a majority of film celebrities have little on their minds besides the peaking or dwindling graphs of their personal and professional lives. Again, why shouldn't they? After all, it's the survival of the gym-fittest.
Meanwhile, over the decades Mumbai's film celebrities,who actually plunged into politics formally, have recorded a fluctuating graph. As elected MPs, sure Shatrughan Sinha and Raj Babbar have been high-profile. Whether you agree with their ideologies and attitudes, they have made their presence felt. But that's it. Other star Lok Sabha MPs couldn't quite tackle the intricacies involved in retaining their following in their constituencies. Examples: Dharmendra (Bikaner), Govinda (North Mumbai) and Vinod Khanna (Gurdaspur).
About his tenure in the Rajya Sabha, the late artist-filmmaker M.F. Husain would admit that he just bided his time at Parliament sessions. On the upside, he sketched the proceedings and politicians, printed as a book which is a rare collector's item today. Of the other Rajya Sabha members, Lata Mangeshkar came in for an iota of criticism for her lean attendance, a controversy which quickly died a natural death, thanks to her iconic status. Jaya Bachchan, couldn't be a long-distance runner in the upper house. She was caught in the crossfire between the Samajwadi chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and the erstwhile Bachchan family friend Amar Singh.
Jaya Prada and Hema Malini have held lengthier tenures in the Rajya Sabha. Sporadically, they are viewed as political entities in the media, but there's no gainsaying that their lingering screen charisma remains their calling card. In the past, faux pas have been made by top filmstars — including Madhuri Dixit who seemed to be clueless about the states and territories of India. Instant clarifications and apologies were issued, peace prevailed. Moral of the story: quickie, of-the-cuff statements can be dicey business. Those celebrities who have a smidgen of political knowledge, a grasp of the pros and cons involved, should certainly tweet on. The others could perhaps realise that there are no airconditioners on Mr Hazare's bandwagon.

Khalid Mohamed is a journalist, film critic and film director

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

FILMFLAM OF AARAKSHAN

SHIV VISVANATHAN

In a week of high drama, from the theatre of the Anna Hazare movement to the temporary demise of Indian cricket in England, littler dramas got sidelined. One such now-forgotten episode centred around Prakash Jha's Aarakshan, a much-touted film about reservation.
Today's film has trailers of two types. There is first the trailer which provides an over-dramatised fragment of the film as an introduction; the second comprises the debates, the anticipated controversy around the film. This battle often creates an intellectual or operatic prelude to the film. Aarakshan expectedly created more than a storm in civil society's tea cup.
Dalits objected to it saying they were misrepresented. Filmmakers struck back by talking about the freedom of expression. Dalits argued that freedom of expression did not include the freedom to misrepresent a social group. Critics hit back by emphasising the integrity of cinema and the creativity of the artist. As stereotype battled stereotype, artistic licence on both sides was heightened by the fact that few had seen the film.
Key actors of the film were present in most of the TV debates. Jha said that he would not waste `70 crore merely to misrepresent a group. Meanwhile, bureaucracies entered the fray. What the Censor Board passed, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes had to question, summoning the Censor Board chairperson to appear before it as if it were a vassal. The soap opera quality was exaggerated further by protests in a few cities and the banning of the film in three states. People in other states felt privileged that they were going to see another Jha classic. What they witnessed was an insult to good cinema, the debate on reservation and the quality of democratic discussion.
The publicity of the film was misleading. Reservation is only one of the issues discussed; Jha's film is more a battle of tutorial colleagues. The plot thickens in an interesting but a predictable way.
The story centres around the relationship between an idealistic old teacher and his student. The old man, or should one say the angry old man, is played by Amitabh Bachchan. If Bachchan's films in the Seventies epitomising the angry young man created cinematic history, Bachchan as the angry old man here in Aarakshan is boring and utterly predictable. It is almost as if he's lost his cinematic touch. Aarakshan, in fact, looks like a continuation of Mohabbatein with Bachchan as headmaster. Only, instead of Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan plays both the idealist dalit and angry teacher. Deepika Padukone as Bachchan's daughter and Khan's friend waters down the plot even more successfully. Bachchan, caught in the reservation battle, is dismissed and his old school becomes part of a tutorial college chain. Bachchan, never one to give up, sets up a tabela school opposite the tutorial college and a battle of tutorial colleges ensues. The tutorial college, which is the real villain of the show, charges exorbitant fees for those who do not get admission in regular colleges because of reservation.
Bachchan, seeing the hypocrisy of reservation and its unintended consequences, single-handedly teaches a school for poor students. The battle warms up as the original tutorial college, jealous of his success, tries to evict him. The conspiratorial link between politicians who see in school an ideal business and educational entrepreneurs is played up. Their collaboration represents investment without responsibility. Khan, who had left for Cornell University, returns to help Bachchan. The battle between good and evil develops Bollywood-style. By that time, even if you do not have reservations about reservation, you develop some about Jha and Bollywood. Aarakshan is atrocious cinema where the whole issue of good and bad education, reservation versus merit is trivialised. Bad cinema is no answer to social injustice and devious publicity is no answer to the question of freedom. Jha trivialises the movie twice, first by directing it, and then by discussing it in public space. When bad acting combines with bad sociology, even Bollywood should look embarrassed.
I remember somewhere during one TV discussion, a commentator added that "sunlight is the answer to censorship". One can go a step further. I think exposure is the answer to a bad film. The audience realises that they have been conned. I am surprised there were no protests after the film. It was terrible.
The film's ending is the last straw. The chairperson of the old college, who had taken sanyas, returns to remedy the situation. She requests Bachchan to return to his old college and head the centre for remedial education. The choice before the Indian student is stark. It is the tutorial college versus remedial education. The battle is between a pedagogy that sees shortcuts to education as the solution and a project that sees the poor and the backward as needing remedial treatment rather than justice, empathy and fairness. Two pathologies confront each other in the name of pedagogy, while the issue of justice is quietly ignored. When Bollywood creates these forgettable reconciliations, the audience feels cheated. A movie which was to prove an act of courage turns out to be a con game. The social debate becomes a cover to encourage fan attention.
There is another critical issue. It is the question of stereotypes. If one looks at the TV debates one has to ask why are dalits always presented in a restricted manner. They are always seen as being obsessed with their social status. Why cannot one expect a dalit to make an aesthetic point or raise an issue about the politics of the imagination? I think liberal stereotypes combined with electoral politics do greater injustice to the creativity of the dalit mind. Dalit intellectuals are cosmopolitan creatures who can survive the provincialism of caste elites.
The question is what makes the debate on justice so wretched in this movie. I think it is the notion of sentimentality. To assume that goodness is attuned to the demands of social justice is false. Philanthropy and fairness live in different worlds. Goodness can be socially blind and politically witless. Jha's movie does not allow for real struggle or genuine ambiguity. It creates surrogate villains in the tutorial college, it disempowers history and creates an impotent politics. There is a dishonesty here, which he must account for.

Shiv Visvanathan is a social science nomad

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

PAPER TIGER

 

For five long years, the proposal of instituting State Accountability Commission remained in limbo allowing public functionaries in lucrative posts to perpetrate general loot and raise properties disproportionate to their normal income. It was only when a slew of unearthed scams in the country hit the headlines and forced the Union Government to take some action, albeit half heartedly, that the State Government began to feel the heat. It scrambled for vitalizing State Accountability Commission, an institution that had been authorized by a decision of law making body. After sleeping over the matter for five long years, there was some stir and the government took another one year to decide who would head this Commission. A panel was drawn and obviously the Government would have wanted that top slot be managed by its confidante. The Governor of the State, sensing the public mood in the country, and in the State, made a very right and judicious decision of nominating two distinguished and widely trusted retired judges, namely Justice Y P Nargotra as Chairman and Justice Hakeem Imtiaz Hussain as member of the SAC. The selection was widely appreciated in both Kashmir and Jammu region and it raised the hope of ordinary citizen that an impartial body manned by the distinguished law-knowing persons would deliver the good in letter and spirit.
But as reports trickle down, it is found that for obvious reasons Commission's proper functioning remains paralyzed. According to a press release of the Secretary to the Commission, the pre-requisite of adequate infrastructure of the Commission remains unfulfilled so far. Even the budgetary provision remains undecided. Secondly, as stated by the Secretary, some junior appointments made by the government contravene the criterion and qualifications set forth in the rules, and as such cannot be allowed to continue. The press release says, "Most of the staff available in the Commission lacked eligibility prescribed under the SAC rules. Secretary, Deputy Registrar and Assistant Registrar don't possess requisite qualifications as provided by the regulations. It asked the Government to provide budget for the salary of the employees and other necessary expenditure to the Commission. The Commission met for the first time on August 23 and 24, 2011 but had to defer the hearing of cases indefinitely for want of adequate infrastructure. The rules and regulations contain provision for a full-fledged investigating agency with an Additional Director General/Inspector General as its head. At present there is no officer available in the Commission for investigation of the cases. Therefore investigation into cases without the proper investigating mechanism cannot be carried on. Government's non-serious attitude towards making the accountability institution really functional and effective will be understood by the almost dilapidating accommodation provided to the Commission office in Sonwar Bagh in Srinagar. The owner of the unsafe building has already served a legal notice to the Commission to vacate the premises. The rules stipulate that request for deputation of Judicial Officers and Deputy Registrars wherever required be made in this behalf to the High Court in consultation with the Commission. The Government has to consult the Commission in recommending the deputations. Keeping the entire gamut of the situation in mind, the Commission summoned Commissioner/Secretary Law and apprised him of the facts.
The entire episode of instituting the SAC is a story of doing something half-heartedly. The action on the g round belies the fanfare with which the Chief Minister of the State announced the appointment of the head of the Commission and hoped that it would deal with the urgent matter of investigating into the cases of corruption in various departments. It seems that the state bureaucracy has an axe to grind and would not let the Commission run the errand. Day in and day out, print media in the State is unraveling cases of alleged corruption, bribery and scams that are eating into the vitals of the polity. Rampant bribery has affected social structure badly and it needs to be arrested without loss of time. The Commission has publicly spoken of how it wants to function with transparency after opening the section branches in Srinagar and Jammu with headquarters moving with the Durbar. It envisages dealing with all the three regions with equality and on even keel. But there seems little hope that vested interests would allow the Commission to function with full force. The onus of making the Commission toothless or a paper tiger will come to the doorsteps of the Chief Minister because he has been vociferously advocating for clean administration. Government should not take people's silence over the shabby treatment of the Commission for granted.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

PACKAGES AND PACKAGES

 

Bids made by Pakistan based and trained terrorists to infiltrate into J&K by crossing LoC have increased during past few months. A major attempt is being made by these armed gangsters to pile up arms and ammunition in a number of hideouts, caves and covered places to be used during their subversive activities in winter. During winter months when snow bound passes and secret inlets are closed and rendered impossible for crossing, the terrorist would ensure they have the stockpile at their disposal. The security forces and the police have rightly concentrated on collecting intelligence about these secret dumping grounds and several of these have now come to light in Kupwara, Doda, Reasi, Poonch and Surankot sectors. A huge cache of arms and ammunition has been made in Riasi and Kupwara jungles on the tip off from reliable information sources. According to Army spokesperson and also the State Police, groups of terrorists fully armed with sophisticated weaponry have assembled at various spots along the LoC on PoK side waiting to infiltrate into Kashmir. The vigilant security forces have foiled many of their attempts and inflicted casualties on them the most recent being in Gurez sector. Security forces commanders have been holding regular meetings and assessing the ground situation. Additionally the meeting of the command headquarter was also held this week with the Chief Minister in the chair. The ongoing scenario of sudden spate in infiltration bids was thoroughly discussed. Ground situation along the LoC is that our security forces are maintaining constant vigil but the border is so long and so porous that despite extraordinary vigilance, mishaps do occur. Containing infiltration is becoming effective with improved counter strategy. We cannot lower the guard even if talks between the two countries continue at various levels. The main reason is a total situation of uncertainty prevailing in Pakistan.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

PLEASE LEAD PRIME MINISTER OR GO

ON THE SPOT

BY TAVLEEN SINGH

 

How can I begin to tell you how depressing it has been to be a political columnist in Delhi in recent days? The cause of my depression is that it has sometimes felt as if there was no Government of India and that the country was instead being ruled by a bunch of shadowy officials who were presiding over the last days of some evil empire. After his timid and very dull Independence Day address the Prime Minister vanished again into some backroom and left it to a team of his glib ministers to handle the Anna revolution. They have been assisted by the Congress Party's arrogant spokesmen who having failed in their smear campaign against Anna have continued to pop up on our television screens to spout words like 'constitution' and 'democracy' as if they were buzzwords picked up in a junior level political science class.

By the time Anna's supporters were making their way towards Ramlila Maidan in their thousands after he released himself from Tihar Jail the consensus in political circles in Delhi was that this government was the most inept that India has ever seen. Inevitably, it was the Prime Minister who was blamed. I cannot begin to tell you the number of times I have now heard people say, 'Why doesn't he resign? It would be much better than leaving in disgrace later on.' Wherever I have gone I have met people who recount stories of his timidity. Here is one I heard from a high official in one of our biggest corporations. 'I went to him some time ago to complain about a policy that was going badly wrong but had the backing of one of his senior ministers. And, he agreed with what I was saying but then said 'how can I go against a senior colleague' and I, exasperated by then, said because you are the Prime Minister sir.'

This story set me off on a train of mental political analysis at the end of which I concluded, as other commentators have, that in the diminishment of the Prime Minister's office lies the crux of the political problems we have faced in recent months. Anna's mass movement could have been prevented by not arresting him. Had he fasted quietly in some Delhi park he would have attracted some television attention and some followers but there would probably not have been the upsurge of urban rage his arrest provoked. So why did the Prime Minister make the stupid mistake of ordering his arrest only to be forced to release him after protesters took to the streets shouting Vande Matram in cities across India?

My own view is that it was because the Prime Minister has not been allowed to make any political decisions in the past two years. They have all been made by the lady who rules from 10 Janpath since the general election of 2009 gave the Congress Party the biggest mandate they have won since 1991. As someone who covered that election I can report that one of the reasons why the Congress Party and its allies won a second term was because compared to L.K. Advani, as the prime ministerial choice of the opposing alliance, Dr. Manmohan Singh looked so good. The Congress Party missed this just as they missed the fact that it was urban Indians who gave them the majority of the seats they won last time. So they made two crucial mistakes when the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government took office.

They began the open promotion of Rahul Gandhi as India's future prime minister at the cost of denigrating the man who was in fact prime minister. He was encouraged to take charge of political matters, give interviews and wander about rural India wooing villagers. There was even a rumour in Delhi's political circles that in 2012 Rahul would become prime minister and Dr. Manmohan Singh would be put out to grass in Rashtrapati Bhawan.

This diminished the office of the prime minister further after it had already been dangerously diminished when Sonia Gandhi decided in 2004 to give India its first prime minister by appointment. Parliamentary democracy has as one of its fundamental rules that the prime minister be elected by Parliament and this rule was recklessly broken. Dr. Manmohan Singh did as well as possible in the circumstances and came to be regarded internationally as one of the world's elder statesmen. This image has been so badly crushed during the past two years that ordinary Indians are asking for his resignation often without realizing that he has not been allowed to lead. After the humiliating defeat in the Bihar elections last November Rahul Gandhi's plans to take over in 2012 were put on hold but nothing was done to rectify the diminished image of the Prime Minister.
So when the scandals began to tumble out of government closets towards the end of last year Dr. Manmohan Singh was unable to handle the public rage they provoked. It refused to subside even after senior ministers and officials were locked up in Tihar Jail. It is this widespread rage that has brought middle class Indians into the streets in support of Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement and last week this rage reached a crescendo as he continued his fast in Ramlila Maidan.

Meanwhile, the Government continued to bumble its way from mistake to mistake. If they were going to allow Anna's jan lokpal bill to be discussed in Parliament why did they not do it on day one? Why did they wait until Anna was able through his fast to become India's most important national hero? His movement has now so captured the imagination of urban Indians that the Government of India will be forced to concede all his demands no matter how unreasonable they may be.

It is not good for a country the size of a sub-continent to be as rudderless as we clearly are and so I find it hard not to add my voice to those that currently ask the Prime Minister to resign and let someone younger and more dynamic take charge. If Rahul Gandhi wants the job this is his moment. If not let the Congress Party find someone else for the job. It is no longer possible or wise to force India to wait for a real leader till 2014.

 

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

US DEBT CRISIS AND INDIA

BY SHIVAJI SARKAR

 

The situation- US debt crisis- is grave but there is no need to press the panic button, says Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

It is assuring to read. But the last budget projections have relied heavily on the US situation with a hope in recovery in its economy. India's growth projection assumes that the US will stay strong pulling the world economy along with it.

Though somehow US President Barack Obama managed to clobber up a deal to enhance the debt limit from # 14.2 trillion, he could not manage maintaining the confidence of the rating agencies.

The Standard and Poor (S&P) downgraded it. The US Government questioned the credibility of the rating agency. The S&P decision has shaken global confidence. The rating has been lowered from the highest- AAA, meaning extremely strong capacity to meet financial commitments- to the next-AA, very strong capacity.
The move would increase the borrowing costs of the US Government. The worse is that S&P has indicated a further downgrading in a year's time.

Does it affect India ? Indirectly it does, though much less than countries/blocs with big trade and debt dealings with US, like EU and China. Still, a worldwide downturn could hit Indian exports and FDI flows, which already is plummeting.

Globally, it might create a panic as governments, investors and businesses across the world will stop investing in US bonds. There will be panic in financial markets globally, with investors exiting equities for safe havens like liquid cash and gold. It has also started happening and that is why gold and silver prices are creating records.

Critics have argued that the debt ceiling crisis is ''self-inflicted'' as treasury bond interest rates were at historical lows and the US had no market restrictions on its ability to obtain additional credit.

Many want us to believe that it is the creation of wrangling between Republicans and Democrats. Had that been so, US ratings would have been lowered long back. The debt ceiling has been raised 68 times since 1960, and its increase was considered routine until this debate. Now no American considers it to be a routine affair and wants the Government to tighten its belt.

On all earlier occasions, the US economy was on growth path. But since 2008, hit by corrupt banking and financial practises, high individual debt, stunted growth, rising unemployment and increasing expenditure on US military operations in Europe-Chechnya, Georgia, Herzegovina; Asia Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Kuwait, Arab countries and now Africa- Libya, Tunisia, Somalia have drained its coffers.
The US Government is sustaining itself on borrowings raised through treasury bonds from foreign countries- floating new bonds to repay its debts. It owes foreign governments # 4 trillion and to China alone $ 1.2 trillion. It has raised # 3.6 trillion from US public and companies and $ 6.2 trillion from the US federal system- different state governments and public institutions.

The Afghan and Iraq war has cost the Obama administration $ 2.4 trillion while the George Bush administration had spent $ 6.1trillion.

It is also an irony that as government finances shrunk profits of many US Corporates touched new highs and they have reserves higher than the US Government.
This is a phenomenon that started afflicting it in the 1960s, when corporate influences on the government increased. The US GDP growth was considered synonymous with corporate growth.
The US was driven to many wars, now it is almost confirmed, by various corporate- petroleum, arms, services and even food grain and processed food suppliers. The wars have been virtually subsidising their operations. Higher the US government debt, higher has been the growth of US and some European multinational corporations.
In short, the US debt was not for its common taxpayers, who are the worst sufferers today. Now over 20 per cent of its population, as per United Nations human development parameters, has slid into poverty from the earlier 10 per cent.

India needs to learn and reduce dependence on corporate and their lobbies like Ficci, Assocham and CII. Higher corporate growth only has resulted in higher miseries for the people of the country. The US crisis should act as the warning bell.

The expenditure cut imposed on the US Government, as per agreement with the Republicans, would have wider ramifications. It has also greater message. The US would find it difficult to maintain global policing role-particularly in the Indian Ocean and South Asian region.

This is a concern for India, it may be a growing economy. India, however, depends on many crutches, including heavy dependence on the US, Europe and NATO operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle Eastern oil-rich region. The US also puts a check on China as well.

The foreign direct investment (FDI) is also linked to US Government expenditre. As it comes down, it is bound to happen; western companies would invest less in India.

These all would impact the Indian growth story. India would have to increase its defence- national and international- expenditure to fill up the vacuum created by withdrawal of the US. Its security scenario would cost far more than it is doing now.

Indian economy has already started slowing down. It faces stagnation and severe inflation-stagflation. Its credit rating is many notches below that of the US-AA+ and China AA minus. India is rated at BBB minus by most rating agencies- lowest investment grade.

Pranab Mukherjee may say that it is not the panic button that needs to be pressed. It is true today we can manage. But as the scenario develops, it would not be easy for India to maintain its financial strength. The worse politically it might be driven into a difficult regional situation. Even its energy security might get threatened.

The US is to shrink, if not sink, but India needs strong independent strategies to keep it afloat and maintain its regional supremacy. (PTI)

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

CORRUPTION IN COUNTRY

BY ER S C KHANNA

 

India became independent from British and now we want freedom from Indians. The freedom was got with peaceful bandhs, hunger strikes and yatras against the foreign rulers. It is very clear from the wave - political, social and religious; our- people -ruled India is polluted with corruption. The highly placed officers such as Chief Vigilance Commissioner ousted by the President and Prime Minister had to apologize for his appointment; a close aide of the former telecom minister being a partner of scam had to suicide and accepted self punishment, and so on, are eye opening. 2-G Scam, A Raja ex- union minister, Kalmadi and Ms Kanimozy daughter of Ex chief minister of Tamil had to beg for pillow and mattress to rest after relishing luxurious and lavish life under influence of power, corruption and illegal means. Mr. Yedurappa another CM and an MP Amar Singh are also under questions of Police in corruption cases. A Raja has confessed that the all decisions were taken as per the advice and suggestions of prime minister and the then finance minister. The Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit is also under vigilance of CAG. The corruption in our country has become a huge tree of destruction. I recall that in the last quarter of fifties decade, some one brought to the notice of high authorities that the working officials and the agencies are making extra money for the construction of Bhakhra Dam in Punjab. If I am right, our worthy Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru took it lightly by saying "It makes no loss as the money is not going out of the nation. That seedling has brought that greed into a big tree producing sweet and lavish fruit at the top for those who cultivated, watered and protected the plant. This BIG tree has taken the shape of Borh (BANAYAN) tree that rises from a seed, converts into a very large shape covering large ground and then pierce its aerial roots into the ground. This is a tree that gives shade to rest the workers and exhausts carbon dioxide which is harmful for human beings in place of oxygen contrary to the other plants. Similarly the tree of corruption has taken a shape of Maha Vikral tree that has covered and rotten whole of India.

The report rating J&K state 2nd most corrupt among 28 states is a cause of corruption. It indicates that the elected government, its departments, their officers and employees are also supporting and a part of the game to its core. Hardly a single participant in administration, execution and at control panels is free from favoring their relations, familiars.

On 12th July, 2008, Governor (J&K) N.N. Vohra advised that Honesty and hard work shall be rewarded and no laxity would be tolerated. He stressed to avoid delays and be transparent, accountable and clean administration. What is the return? Visible nowhere. Our Chief Minister has rightly admitted that he has no reason to question the legitimacy of Baba Ramdev's assets whereas he has authority to check, evaluate and question the assets of his employees, Govt. servants, minister's, legislators, in service or retired along with their families and familiars, and ask wings for verification of their declared assets and is suggested to check the Investigating and controlling agencies also. The properties, movable immovable and style of their living in posh luminous and palacious mahals should also be analyzed along with their family grounds, evaluation of their blood relations assets with source of income and a lot of difference in levels of their status. Each & every wing of our state government: - Agriculture, CAPD, Engineers, Mechanical, Electricity, R&B, hydraulics, Judiciary, Medical, Police, PHE, Vigilance a few of the endless list are dipped in corruption up to their noses. No work that is, getting any mandatory right, annual increment, Promotion, transfer, posting and public dealing in the offices is done without transaction of money or material. The Government should very sternly evaluate and compare the declared assets and on ground. If some cases are registered and after a few years the accused are set free for destruction or loss of evidences..
Words alone can't solve the problem. When requests fall on deaf ears. It is felt that arm twisting can do nothing as we have become weather, atmosphere torn and hard matter, that only intensive over hauling can improve the functioning of the departments. One proverb is charity begins at home. Let us pledge to; - If we can not do well, at least we should desist from doing evil.

 

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EDITORIAL

'CROP HOLIDAY' IN ANDHRA

A SIGN OF DEEPENING FARM CRISIS

 

Farmers in Andhra Pradesh's rice belt have declared a "crop holiday" this season after they suffered losses despite a bumper crop last year. The growers' loss varied from Rs Rs 2,200 to Rs 3,600 per acre. They have been forced to take the extreme step as paddy cultivation is no longer financially viable. The cost of farm inputs, including seeds and chemicals, has soared by up to 300 per cent in the last two years in the state. Secondly, migration to cities has led to a shortage of labour, which, in turn, has pushed up farm wages. The minimum support price at Rs 1,030 a quintal has proved inadequate to cover the rising costs and even this price is not available to a large number.

 

In Andhra Pradesh there is no assured procurement of paddy as in Punjab and Haryana. Private mills buy paddy in a big way. Since private rice millers could not offload their existing stocks to generate money for fresh paddy buying and the government added to their woes by delaying a decision on exports, rice growers did not get the MSP and had to resort to distress sale. Many dumped paddy for just Rs 700 a quintal. There were not even enough bags for self-help groups, which procure rice under a poverty reduction programme to help the rural poor.

 

While the poor lack access to affordable food, vast quantities of food rot due to poor storage. The government does not seem to know how to handle a glut. A large majority of people dependent on agriculture face a threat to their livelihood as returns from farming decline and costs escalate. Farm labourers move to cities in search of better work. Daily wages back home rise, eating up a larger slice of farmers' revenue. A team of experts led by M.S. Swaminathan has studied various aspects of the deepening agricultural crisis, but their reports gather dust as the governments in states and at the Centre have other priorities.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PLAYING WITH LIVES

HOW DO INSPECTORS OVERLOOK VIOLATIONS?

 

THE explosion in a firecracker factory near Karnal, that claimed at least five lives, besides causing injuries to 15, was a tragedy that was waiting to happen. The factory, running without a "no-objection certificate", made firecrackers, a hazardous substance, in temporary sheds which did not have the prescribed height. Fire-fighting arrangements were inadequate and equipment non-functional. Not only that, it also employed children in violation of laws. Still, it was allowed to run for full eight years. Ironically, it was inspected in August last year but the inspectors did not find anything amiss. How the inadequate height of the shed and other details escaped their attention defies comprehension. It was challaned several times earlier, but never sealed. Those who allowed it to run without valid documents and safety arrangements are as guilty as those who operated it.

 

Nor is this a rare case. There are several such factories functioning in or close to densely populated areas. There was a similar blast in a firecracker manufacturing unit in Fajjupur near Gurdaspur in January which had claimed six lives. As is usual in such cases, an investigation was immediately ordered but after that nothing much was heard about it.

 

There are inspectors galore to curb illegal activities. But they add to illegalities by looking the other way after being sufficiently "compensated". Not only does such corruption cause horrendous accidents, but it also shakes the faith of the public in the administration. The anger that the ministers and others show after a tragedy should be on display when violations are taking place. Locking the stables after the horses have bolted has never worked. Then there is also the issue of compensation to innocent victims. The administration generally tends to be miserly. The amount that it pays to the poor people for their monetary loss is not enough to cover even a fraction of the damage suffered.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

TROUBLE IN KARACHI

WHERE POLITICS AND VIOLENCE ARE INSEPARABLE

 

Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, remains in the news mostly for the wrong reasons as it is today. Over 600 lives have been lost in July and August in political-ethnic violence in the metropolis with the people having little faith in the government's ability to maintain law and order. Paramilitary forces have launched a major operation to restore order, but it is doubtful if they can succeed in a politically charged atmosphere. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has demanded the deployment of the regular army to prevent more killings. The PPP, which leads the ruling coalition in Islamabad, and the PML(N) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are opposed to the idea of seeking the army's assistance for political reasons. Interestingly, however, what the MQM wants has been backed by the Pakistan Army Chief, Gen Ashfaque Parvez Kayani.

 

Under similar circumstances in the late eighties the army had to be called in to restore order in Karachi. How far the government is able to resist the demand for deploying the army now remains to be seen. But ethnic polarisation in this biggest city of Pakistan is getting sharper with each day passing. The tribal Pathans, whose roots lie in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, are at daggers drawn with the Urdu-speaking migrants from India, the Mohajirs. Their enmity is not new, but it has again come into the open today with the MQM leading one camp and the Awami National Party (ANP) of the Pathans backing the other camp.

 

Though the trouble began with the kidnapping and murder of five Baloch residents of Karachi a few weeks ago, tension had started building up after the revival of the Musharraf-era local government system in Karachi and Hyderabad, dominated by Mohajirs, understandably under pressure from the MQM. It is believed the PPP-led government in Islamabad brought about this change recently to mend fences with the MQM, which had withdrawn from the ruling coalition some time ago. The prevailing commissioner system had the support of the tribal population and the ethnic Sindhis. Thus, the violence in Karachi may influence the course of politics in Pakistan.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

ARTICLE

JOINTNESS IN ARMED FORCES

POLITICS OF CHIEF OF DEFENCE STAFF

BY RAKESH DATTA

 

Immediately after Independence, Lord Ismay, Chief of Staff to Governor-General Mountbatten, was approached by the Government of India to draw up a system for defence management in the country. Ismay, while recommending integrated functioning among the three Services for smooth coordination, also cautioned Pt Nehru not to go in for the position of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to have strong, stable and federal civilian control in the country. It was, however, taken by the successive governments as a quote from the Bible.

 

Ironically, after over five decades the Kargil Review Committee and later a Group of Ministers suggested that the capability of the armed forces could be enhanced significantly if they operated with a high degree of jointness. Modern warfare demands a much higher degree of coordination in operations by the various Services. The creation of the CDS may promote greater jointness in the armed forces.

 

The key recommendation of the GoM on jointness included the restructuring of the Services headquarters with the Ministry of Defence promoting a single point military advice, management and control of nuclear weapons and strategic forces, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of the planning process, technical and commercial evaluation of capital schemes and optimising the use of training and other resources in the Services to ensure economy in expenditure. While the GoM asked for the enhancement of jointness in the armed forces, it also suggested even the cross-posting of officers in operations, intelligence and planning directorates.

 

At the same time, the GoM recommended the creation of an Andaman & Nicobar Command, a strategic forces command, a defence intelligence agency and a defence procurement Board. Later, however, all recommendations except those pertaining to the CDS were approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security on May 11, 2001. In the case of the CDS, the Cabinet Committee on Security opted for wider discussions with various political parties before taking the final view. Instead, the HQ Integrated Defence Staff was raised on October 1, 2001, providing staff support to the Chief of Staff Committee.

 

Military jointness is not a new concept. It has only come under focus again. The reasons for this include shrinking wars, an extended period of mobilisation, rising defence budgets and the lack of interoperability and the dominating Service ethos. As regards promoting military jointness, the most significant thing is training and preparing the mindset to overcome some of the inherent fears like the Services redundancy, presumably linked to the appointment of the CDS.

 

It may be pointed out that nearly 66 countries are having joint command structures. In most of the western democracies like the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy as well other nations of consequence in the Asia-Pacific region like China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Sri Lanka, there is a duly appointed Chief of Defence/General Staff enjoying full confidence of their respective Head of State or Goernment to whom they directly report. There can be no better way of ensuring supremacy and control or the civilian authority over the military.

 

On the other hand, countries not having opted for the CDS system are of little consequence. Some of them do not ever possess the armed forces sufficient to undertake the regular defence requirements. At the same time, countries like Saudi Arabia are considering military jointness as a necessity. India, on the contrary — possessing the third largest army, the fourth largest Air Force and the sixth largest Navy — has remained averse to military jointness and to the institution of the CDS.

 

It may be interesting to know that after 1971 war, Indira Gandhi offered the then Army Chief, the late General Manekshaw, the position of Chief of Defence Staff. Later, when consensus was sought by the then Defence Minister from the other two Chiefs the matter got aborted. During NDA rule the long-awaited integration of the three Services got shelved due to the indifference shown by the Services. This attitude, however, goes contrary to the belief otherwise expressed by the defence services for the Chief of Defence Staff.

 

All nations practising jointness of the armed forces provide single window advice or, more correctly, a synergised institutional opinion.

 

The CDS system is considered essential for the armed forces the world over and India is no exception. The future operating environment will need the application of military power in a small incremental manner which, in turn, will require the achievement of joint synergy at all levels. There is, therefore, much scope in having a joint service, said the US Defence Attache in India. The joint command is multi-service in nature, much better and cost-effective. For instance, a joint assignment is mandatory for getting a one-star appointment in the US defence forces.

 

The creation of a joint defence structure does not mean abolition of the authority of the Service Chiefs. Their significance lies in maintaining the Service character, ethos and training, and being force providers for facilitating joint operational engagement, which itself is a full-time job. However, keeping in view the inter-Services conflict in India that may arise from the appointment of the CDS, the most desirable course would be to adopt a power-sharing mechanism.

 

The writer is Professor and Chairman, Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He was also a member of the National Security Advisory Board.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

PUNJABI DIASPORA

BY V. K. KAPOOR

 

I have met Punjabis all over the world. Their upward mobility, ability to make friends and influence people, and practical approach to life are amazing.

 

I was in Peshawar. The man talking to me appeared to be a Pathan. Suddenly, he switched from Pashto to Punjabi and told me that his maternal grandmother was a Kapoor.

 

He narrated his visit to Bombay and meeting Raj Kapoor, who belonged to Peshawar. He recounted how Raj Kapoor met him warmly and introduced him to all the leading heroines. He excitedly told me that all the women appeared to be in "Ishq" with Raj Kapoor. When I told him that I had only one 'Aurat' (wife), there was a perceptible dip in respect for me in his eyes.

 

Punjabis are fond of good things of life. I had once asked famous music director O.P. Nayyar as to what he loved the most, after music. Pat came the reply: "Sharab, Shabab aur Kabab" (liquor, women and non-veg food).

 

I met a leading Punjabi film star in London. In spite of his years, he looked charming. I asked him the reason of his 'Husno-Shabab'. Three things, he said: "I eat very little. I do not drink. I do not take things to heart, both literally and figuratively. Some films did well, the other did not. Several affairs and heartbreaks" (kai var dil lagaya, kai var dil tutya).

 

He said Punjabis had three traits. "They are very good looking as you can see in the film industry. They can adjust anywhere; that is why you find them in all parts of the world. Punjabis are neither moral nor immoral, but 'amoral'. They believe in 'jugad'. A Punjabi can do well anywhere from the underworld to the art world".

 

Punjabi music has taken over Bollywood. Punjabis have made a name even in Hollywood with people like Mira Nair and Shekhar Kapoor registering their presence.

 

Punjabis all over the world have done very well. America has two Punjabi Governors. The UK has two Punjabis in the House of Lords. Southall is an extension of Punjab. Canada has a number of Punjabi MPs.

 

Punjabis have a strong sentimental side. Whether in London, Switzerland, Kenya or Las Vegas the longing for their 'pind' (village) always surfaces. Some of us were sitting in 'Moulin Rouge,' the most expensive joint in Paris. The best food, glamorous dancers, and suddenly the conversation turned to 'makki di roti and saag' and 'bebe de hath di tandoori roti'. I attended a concert in Toronto, where a singer from Punjab sang 'Tusi Vasde Raho Pardesio, Tuhade Naal Vase Punjab'. I could see a large number of moist eyes.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

COMPASSION BEYOND BOUNDARIES

SHE MOVED THE RICH AND THE POWERFUL BUT SERVED THE POOREST OF THE POOR, REMEMBERS THE BIOGRAPHER ON THE 101ST BIRTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REMARKABLE NUN WHO EMBRACED POVERTY AND MADE INDIA HER HOME

NAVIN B CHAWLA

 

A few weeks ago I visited one of Mother Teresa's Sisters who was admitted for surgery in the PGI hospital in Chandigarh. The Chief Secretary of Haryana Smt. Urvashi Gulati and the Secretary to the Governor Mohinder Kumar accompanied me that morning to Sister Ann Vinita's bedside. Attending to her in the hospital were two companion Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity. In the course of conversation, one of them said that she was really happy to meet me. She went on to explain that as a young woman in Kerala, she had admired Mother Teresa's work , but it was when she chanced to read my biography of Mother Teresa that she decided to join the Order. That a young Catholic woman should have read a book written by one, who while he was unmistakably close to Mother Teresa, yet did not share her faith stunned me into silence. It made me reflect on a number of issues related and unrelated: of the strength of secular values; and of true compassion knowing no religious, ethnic, caste or geographical boundaries, and indeed being able to transcend altogether the formal contours of religious practice.

 

Goodness

 

Mother Teresa was a tiny figure who strode her century like a colossus, and in the process made her name a synonym for goodness and compassion the world over. She was invariably received in the halls of power, but her mission lay in the meanest streets and slums over all the continents. She built brick by brick, a global infrastructure with the help of five thousand Sisters and Brothers of her Order, and also had the capacity to enjoin millions of ordinary people, who came forward to help her in her mission to alleviate loneliness, hunger and suffering. By the time she passed away in 1997, she had established a multinational organisation that operated in over 123 countries and served her special constituency of the destitute, the abandoned, homeless, hungry and dying. In the process she became one of the principal conscience-keepers of her time.

 

Although she herself remained true to her religion, her brand of faith was not exclusive. Convinced that each person she ministered to was Christ in suffering, she reached out to people of all religions. The very faith that sustained her infuriated her detractors, who saw her as a symbol of a right-wing conspiracy and, worse, the principal mouthpiece of the Vatican's well-known views against abortion. Interestingly, such criticism went largely unnoticed in India, where she was widely revered. I once called her the most powerful woman in the world. Mother Teresa replied: "Where? If I was, I would bring peace to the world." I asked her why she did not use her undeniable influence to lessen war. She replied: "War is the fruit of politics. If I get stuck in politics, I will stop loving because I will have to stand by one, not by all."

 

Loving & sharing

 

I first met Mother Teresa, 36 years ago in 1975. That meeting remains indelibly printed on my mind. That morning I had accompanied Delhi's Lieutenant Governor, with whom I was then attached, to her home for the destitute. I was taken aback when I came face to face with her. She was smaller than I had imagined, dressed in her trademark, hand-woven sari with three blue stripes that was neatly darned in several places. I noticed her back was bent even then. Her feet were twisted and her hands were gnarled, testimony to her arduous life in the slums.

 

That morning, as on many other occasions where I heard her, she spoke of simple things: of loving, caring and sharing. She seemed at many levels a very ordinary woman. Yet she was a powerful communicator who reached the hearts of those who listened to her. My overwhelming thought that morning was that there was very little difference between the poor whom she and her Sisters served, and their own vow of poverty.

 

As I reflect on her life, I find there were several mysteries that lend themselves to no easy answers. Mother Teresa was hardly qualified in academic terms. She never went to a university and her studies were largely confined to the scriptures. And yet she set up hundreds of schools that lifted poor children from a desolate life on the streets. She provided a safety net for the homeless by opening centres and soup kitchens. She started Shishu Bhavans for abandoned infants. There were homes for the terminally ill, so that they were not alone when they died. Not all these centres were in the poorer parts of the world; many were in the affluent west where loneliness and despair were a sickness she likened to leprosy.

 

Serving London's poor

 

The early faltering steps, too, were a mystery. What a strange sight she would have presented on the streets of Kolkata in 1948. A European nun not clad in a familiar religious habit, but in a cheap sari similar to those worn by the municipal sweepresses, her feet encased in a pair of rough leather sandals: a nun in her belief and vows, but not in appearance. She was alone. She had no helper, no companion and carried no money to speak of. She stepped into a city in which she had taught long years but of which she knew nothing. She taught herself to beg, the ultimate humiliation for one whose life had been secure, though not even remotely luxurious. In her only diary, which I was privy to, she wrote of her struggle between her faith and the temptation to return to the security within the convent walls.

 

She proved to be an excellent administrator and soon discovered she could multi-task. She had the unerring instinct of realising who could help her in her task, in the shortest possible time. She started her first little school in a Kolkata slum in 1948, determined to teach the little children who ran out to greet this stranger in their midst. With no blackboard, nor table and chairs, she simply picked up a stick and inscribed the Bengali alphabet on the mud. Gradually more children gathered around her. People recognised her goodness; someone contributed a chair, another a desk. Teachers volunteered to teach; soon the little school became a reality. But this little school was good only for one slum. Soon she started another in a different locality. This was followed by a dispensary, another school in another slum of the city. She had discovered that she could multi-task.

 

She encouraged lay persons and community workers to join hands with her. Teachers volunteered, doctors came forward offering free service, chemists donated medicines. In this way, she formed a human chain of millions the world over.

 

Many years later, but in much the same spirit, I was to see the start of a soup kitchen in North London. The bishop had offered her a derelict church. Her Sisters went from shop to shop in the neighbourhood to beg for vegetables and food. Within a week shopkeepers themselves came forward to deliver their surplus. Cooks and helpers volunteered their services. Soon, on an average day, the Sisters fed 500 of London's poor their only hot meal of the day.

 

 

the Congregation

 

She founded her religious order with a special vow—to serve only the poorest of the poor. Having witnessed the growth of her congregation, I was anxious how the Missionaries of Charity, which had created a presence in 123 countries by the time she died, would survive after Mother Teresa passed on. She was charismatic and the funds flowed in plentifully, helping her to expand her work to over 600 branches for the destitute, orphans and children, old age homes, crèches, leprosy stations, AIDS hospices, feeding centres and schools all over the world. She once told me that as long as her Mission served only the poorest forms of destitution, the work would continue. Today, I notice no signs of its abating. In fact the Missionaries of Charity today have a presence in 135 countries, where poverty, destitution and loneliness are constant companions in rich and poor societies alike.

 

As a Hindu, armed only with a certain eclecticism, I found it took me longer than most to understand that Mother Teresa was with Christ in each conscious hour, whether at Mass or with each of those whom she tended. The Christ on his crucifix was no different from the one who lay dying at her hospice in Kalighat. There could be no contradiction in her oft-repeated words that one must reach out to one's neighbour. For Mother Teresa, to love one's neighbour was to love God. This was what was essential to her, not the size of her mission or the power others perceived in her. "We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful," she explained. Mother Teresa exemplified that faith—in prayer, in love, in service and in peace.

 

The last time I met Mother Teresa was in July 1997, two months before she died. She was briefly in Delhi on her way back from overseas to her beloved Kolkata. We spoke then of simple things, of loving, caring and sharing. She held my hand in hers and said, "You must always work for the poor and the good of all people. You must continue to touch the poor."

 

(Navin B Chawla is a former Chief Election Commissioner of India and is Mother Teresa's biographer.)

 

a life extraordinary

 

Born in Macedonia ( in former Yogoslavia) on August 26, 1910

 

Of Albania descent, she was christened Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu

 

At the age of 17-18, she joined Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns.

 

She was sent to India, where she took the initial vows as a nun in 1931

 

She taught Geography at St Mary's High School, Calcutta till 1948.

 

 

She was allowed to leave the Convent to work in slums.

 

An open-air school for slum children was the first project she took up

 

The Vatican allowed her to start her own order, The Missionaries of Charity, in 1950

 

The order was set up to love and care for those people whom nobody was prepared to look after

 

The first 'Home' for the dying was set up in 1952

 

The order today is to be found across the world

 

She set up the first hospice for AIDS patients in New York in 1985

 

When she was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she insisted that the formal banquet be dispensed with and the cost handed over to her so that she could feed the poor.

 

The order today takes care, among others, of drug addicts, prostitutes, battered women and orphans besides the beggars, lepers, destitutes and the old and the dying

 

Known simply as 'The Mother', she died on September 5, 1997

 

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MUMBAI MIRROR

EDITORIAL

THIS IS A TIME TO HEAL

 

CHASM BETWEEN DRAFTS OF LOKPAL BILLS IS WIDE – ONE IS A MILD SEDATIVE TO CANCER OF CORRUPTION, THE OTHER RISKS KILLING THE BODY

 

Our existing systems for tackling corruption are catastrophic failures. Prosecuting public servants needs prior sanction. It seldom comes. Prosecutions drag on for years. Relative to the (intangible) result, the effort is monumental. If the comparisons to cancer are accurate, is the solution to administer a mild sedative and only address the symptoms, which is what many say is all that the Government Lokpal Bill does, or is it to use a treatment many feel is so severe that it risks killing the body? In a time to heal, we must have something effective but not fatal.

 

How do the two bills differ and where do they accord? The second is easier. Both agree on the establishment of a separate authority, the Lokpal, to investigate instances of corruption. In both, the Lokpal has investigative and prosecutorial powers, and there are Special Courts to fast-track corruption cases. Most importantly, both do away with the prior-sanction requirement. In itself, that is a huge step forward.

 

The divergence in other areas is very wide. First, what is to be investigated and what is the definition of "corruption"? Narrowly tailored, the government bill limits itself to offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (PCA) by including these in the definition of a 'complaint'.

 

The broader Jan Lokpal Bill also includes offences relating to public servants under the Penal Code; kickbacks, victimising whistleblowers and something called "repeated violation of a citizen's charter by any public servant". That is perhaps too fuzzy. The definition is crucial and needs work on both sides. There are important areas of public and civic governance that are beyond simple bribery. How are these to be included?

 

WHO'S ON SELECTION PANEL

On the selection of Lokpal members, the government's draft is far too restrictive. From the selection panel of nine, only one is drawn from public life, and all nine are government nominees. Four are "judicial members" – Supreme Court judges or High Court Chief Justices, or persons of such high qualifications that perhaps only three in India might qualify. The Jan Lokpal Bill has a broader base: 11 members including the Chairman, four of whom must have a legal background.

 

The Selection Panel includes the PM, the Lok Sabha's Leader of the Opposition, two SC judges, two Chief Justices, the CEC, the CAG and all previous Lokpal Chairmen. Some of the eligibility criteria are vapid but their deletion will not affect the integrity of the bill.

 

The government Lokpal Bill limits itself to ex-Prime Ministers, Union Ministers and MPs and Group "A" officers, the principal officers of government boards and companies and governmentaided societies and trusts. The complete exclusion of Group B officers is inexplicable for these include mid- and lower-level officers in the postal services, excise, customs, health and Union Territory administrative and police services. These are the ones who most often interface with citizens and it is here that corruption is most rampant. The Jan Lokpal Bill goes to the other extreme: it also includes the higher judiciary and that, to my mind, is a potential disaster, for no judge can ever function independently with the Lokpal's crows sitting on his shoulders. Worse: the Jan Lokpal can only be removed by the Supreme Court, whose judges the Jan Lokpal will investigate and prosecute.

 

PUNITIVE AUTHORITY

The trickiest area is the Lokpal's functioning. Under the government's Bill, the Lokpal can prosecute public servants in special courts, and recommend disciplinary action against MPs and Group A officers. For Union Ministers, the Lokpal's report must be tabled in Parliament; but the Lokpal is then merely to be informed of the action taken or proposed.

 

If one bill does not go far enough, the other goes too far. Under the Jan Lokpal Bill, not only can the Lokpal investigate and prosecute but it can directly impose penalties including fines and jail sentences (up to life). For this, it has a parallel judiciary with benches of judicial officers. There is no justification for this or for its particularly nasty provision for sanctioning wiretaps; and it is no answer to say that at present this is being done by some Home Department. Wiretaps without judicial supervision are unacceptable intrusions into citizens' civil liberty regardless of who authorises them.

 

As a panacea, the Jan Lokpal Bill generously offers citizens protection under Article 226 of the Constitution, under which High Courts can enforce fundamental rights. That power exists whether or not the Jan Lokpal Bill says so; and it cannot be granted or taken away. Consider the consequences: if at some later date, that clause is amended or deleted, can a High Court no longer issue a writ even if the Lokpal's orders violate fundamental rights?

 

The power of judicial review, some 300 plus years old, needs no re-affirmation by the spokespersons of civil society.

 

The Jan Lokpal Bill forbids government officers from working in any capacity with anyone with whom they had official dealings. That is absurd, and is also based on the assumption that every bureaucrat is, of necessity, corrupt. Bureaucrats deal with a large number and variety of persons and entities in their careers. The retirement age is relatively early. What are they to do after? On this definition, they cannot even work for the Lokpal itself.

The Jan Lokpal Bill proposes a takeover of the CBI's anti-corruption wing. Given the enormity of its powers and given that they lie almost entirely outside a constitutional mandate, this is dubious. The CBI needs autonomy, and the Lokpal should certainly be able to draw on its resources. But to make it subservient to the Lokpal is to replace an elected representative by a person merely nominated, unanswerable to any electorate.

 

WHAT ABOUT THE COMMON MAN?

Neither bill seems to reach the common man; neither focuses on the removal of bureaucratic discretion. We encounter corruption in small things: the refusal to provide adequate drains or garbage collection services or to issue permits and licences, harassments by excise and customs officers – any number of things. To bring any of these to the Lokpal, you must show that there is some corruption, material that is almost impossible to get. You must then grind through some form of legal system, following impenetrable procedures and meeting tough evidentiary standards. Corruption is fraud, and fraud is concealment; and therefore almost impossible to "prove". Without rational changes to procedural and evidentiary law little can be achieved in practice.

 This is tied to the question of false complaints, on which the government Bill is punitive, the Jan Lokpal bill markedly less so: it is not to be held against a complainant "merely because a case could not be proved". This bill therefore assumes that all complainants are, by definition, honest and so lends itself to immediate abuse. Without fear of reprisal, complaints will flood the Lokpal, often for reasons that are themselves corrupt (eliminating competitors in a tender bidding process, for example).

A cleverly worded yet false complaint is enough to trigger the Lokpal's investigative wing, a vast army of the incorruptible with enormous powers of raid, seizure and search. It is one thing to make proof and procedure simpler; it is another to dispense with it without consequences. Idealistic (and therefore foolish) presumptions make for bad laws; a corrupt democracy should not be replaced by a potentially corrupt autocracy. The answer is in neither draft but somewhere in between.

As there are several versions of the bills on different websites, this article refers to the latest ones available on the Ministry of Personnel website at http://www.persmin.nic.in/Lokpal_Index.asp 

 

GAUTAM PATEL

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COLUMN

VOICE OF SILENT MAJORITY

ANNA HAZARE MUST ACCEPT PARLIAMENT'S UNANIMOUS REQUEST

There are victors and vanquished only in a war. In a genuinely political engagement everyone must emerge a winner. That is made possible only through compromise, through "give and take". Through his reasonable statement in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has opened the door to an honourable compromise between the government and civil society on the issue of the Lok Pal Bill. Dr Singh only stated the obvious when he said that Mr Hazare's fast had helped place the issue of corruption in public life at the centre of national political discourse. The government has also made several important concessions on substantial matters without conceding the primacy of Parliament in making laws. Mr Hazare and Team Anna should also take a step or two back from their hard-line position and accept that in a parliamentary democracy, Parliament must have the final word. "My way or the highway" cannot be the basis for negotiations in a democracy. Prime Minister Singh's gracious "salute" to Mr Hazare is a gesture that has been widely appreciated. Indeed, it has secured for the government a softening of stance by the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, with Sushma Swaraj, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, accepting the prime minister's gesture and supporting a unanimous message from Parliament to Mr Hazare to withdraw his fast. The point of principle that the government has conceded to Team Anna, of Parliament discussing a Bill drafted by private citizens, comes with the gesture that all other existing drafts – one by Aruna Roy and another by Jayaprakash Narayan – would also be considered by Parliament. Constitutional purists will find it difficult to accept this political compromise because it could complicate the process of lawmaking in future, especially if vested interests start drafting Bills that get promoted by civil society groups acting on their behalf. However, given the prevailing mood in the country, this was the best of a bad bargain. Mr Hazare must take it.

Mr Hazare and his supporters must also realise that while theirs has been an important and influential voice in the debate on Lok Pal, there is still no reason for anyone to believe that a "majority" of the people are with them. The only way anyone can claim majority support for a view in a parliamentary democracy is to test their strength either on the floor of the Lok Sabha or at the polls. Parliament as a whole, treasury and opposition benches taken together, spoke in one voice when Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar urged Mr Hazare to end his hunger strike and allow Parliament to discuss the Lok Pal Bill drafts. This is an unprecedented gesture on behalf of Parliament which speaks for the nation's silent majority. Every group of social activists speaks on behalf of one vocal section or another of society, some large and some small, but Parliament speaks for India's silent majority. While Mr Hazare has captured the imagination of a large number of Indians, his views must contend with those of other civil society groups. Together, the voices of all such groups must contend with those of the silent majority that Parliament represents.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

ENTER THE DRAGON

RISING CHINESE DIRECT INVESTMENT IN INDIA IS WELCOME

Partly in response to India's concerns about a huge trade imbalance in favour of China and partly in pursuit of the Indian middle-class market, Chinese companies have decided to invest in India. Sinovel, China's largest wind turbine manufacturer, and four Chinese automobile majors have announced plans to set up manufacturing units. This follows an earlier announcement by prominent Chinese power equipment manufacturers to do likewise. The motivations for the investments are diverse. In the case of power equipment, the Indian government's stipulation that only companies that manufacture their products domestically are eligible to compete for government-owned power projects effectively poses a barrier to entry for Chinese firms, which to date have been exporting capital equipment. On the other hand, "tariff hopping" and reducing transaction costs seem to be the guiding motivations for the automobile firms, while Chinese firms in the consumer space such as Haier (white goods) have merely wanted to be close to the consumer in order to quickly respond to market signals. With the Indian auto and auto components industry gaining in strength with every passing day, relocating manufacturing units to India makes eminent sense given the vast agglomeration economies available domestically. On the other hand, the picture for large-scale manufacturing, as with power equipment, is a lot less encouraging, owing to considerable gaps in the manufacturing ecosystem, most visibly in the quality of physical infrastructure. Overall, the increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), though admittedly far below potential, signals that India as a host country is perceived as a lot more hassle-free than, say, a decade ago.

Given that capital goods ("electric and non-electric machinery") comprise a significant proportion of China's export basket to India, the existing trade surplus of $20 billion that China enjoys should significantly decrease, depending on how much of capital goods manufacturing relocates to India. Even though the procurement restrictions do not apply to private power producers, it would make little sense for Chinese producers to use separate channels to supply public and private sector power plants in India. Chinese firms have already secured orders for up to 30,000 Mw of new capacity in plants that are expected to be commissioned during the 12th Five-Year Plan. It would be interesting to see how Chinese power companies fare in the new scenario, without the benefit of tariff waivers and other surcharges that domestic firms have to contend with. From India's standpoint, the "markets for technology" argument will have limited utility, since China's technological capability in both consumer and capital goods is way behind the competition. With prices already headed south owing to intense competition, especially in the white electronics and automobile industries, any difference made by Chinese products in this space will only be at the margin. On balance, more Chinese FDI in India is a positive development that deserves to be encouraged. Hopefully, this growing business-to-business relationship will foster better people-to-people relations and make it easier for both countries to resolve their territorial disputes. This, apart from more transparent China-Pakistan military relations, will help build trust between the two Asian giants.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

IS IT TIME TO BUY INDIA?

INDIAN STOCK VALUATIONS LOOK ATTRACTIVE FOR THOSE WITH A LONG-TERM VIEW

AKASH PRAKASH

I have been part of many discussions over the last week with prospective investors trying to figure out whether this is a good time to put money to work in India. Everyone is naturally cautious and worried about the drawdowns and mark-to-market pressures. Also, most markets in the world are in bear market territory (down 20 per cent from their recent peak). Thus, someone with capital to invest is spoilt for choice. On paper, India does not look particularly cheap. European and American markets are trading at 12 or 13 times their prospective earnings with bond yields nearly two per cent, while India is trading at 13 or 14 times with bond yields above eight per cent. India is also trading at a 25 to 30 per cent premium to the emerging market averages. So why come to India when the majority of global markets are far cheaper?

If one takes a 12-month view, then the following becomes clear:

(i) Interest rates in India are going to be lower than they are today. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been the most aggressive central bank in the world in normalising rates. Our interest rates are within 50 basis points of where they were before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Given the leads and lags of monetary policy in curbing inflation, the clear economic slowdown we are entering both in India and globally, and the likelihood that commodity prices will stabilise if not go down, it would be very surprising if rates do not come down in the next 12 months. India has the ability to cut rates, and has already gone through an inflation spike. Most countries do not have this flexibility.

(ii) The global economic environment seems to be one in which the West will stumble around at near recession levels of between 1 and 1.5 per cent gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Liquidity will remain very easy and interest rates are going to remain near zero for at least 24 months. With global interest rates at zero, capital will flow into the emerging market asset class in search of growth, returns and to move away from the exposure to the US dollar. I believe enough regulatory action will be taken to prevent this capital driving commodities parabolic.

(iii) India will probably grow at seven per cent, with the RBI itself mentioning 6.8 per cent (growth rate in the financial crisis) as being a disaster scenario and the absolute worst case. Our domestic-oriented, non-correlated growth will be far more attractive and get a lot more attention in a growth-starved world. Indian companies will be able to deliver 15 per cent earnings growth, which will stand out globally. As the capital spending cycle restarts (it will eventually have to unless the country comes to a halt), this will also jump-start earnings growth for the market. With a robust monsoon so far, consumption demand for the coming year is going to be strong, which will also underpin earnings.

(iv) Indian valuations, which are currently about 13 to 14 times March 2012 earnings, will be nearly 11 times March 2013 earnings. These valuation multiples are arrived at after cutting earnings estimates by five to eight per cent for FY 2012 and 10 per cent for FY 2013. While there may be some more earnings downgrades, investors have already built that into their calculations. Rarely does India stay at these levels of multiples for long. In a weak global growth environment, the growth visibility that India has will attract premium valuations. Mid-cap valuations in particular are starting to get very attractive. As these stocks have underperformed the broad market, investors are bailing out and want to have only large cap investments to reduce portfolio risk. There has also been significant sectoral dispersion. If one can take some short-term pain, valuations of companies with economic sensitivity are at very reasonable levels. Indian multiples are at a premium to the region, but arguably, so are the return ratios and growth visibility.

(v) The current policy paralysis and standstill in government decision making cannot go on. Either the government should take the initiative and start governing, or we will have some change. This fire-fighting approach to governance is not sustainable. India is one of the few countries that have the opportunity to undertake fundamental game-changing policy reforms. The goods and services tax Bill is one example. Government policy action can make a huge difference to structural growth and investor sentiment.

One was negative on markets at the beginning of the year, as valuations were high, earnings estimates were too optimistic, and interest rates were rising much higher and faster than the consensus. Over the next 12 months, interest rates will decline, with valuations getting far more interesting, and the global economic difficulties will highlight the value of India's growth story. There are very few large markets that can deliver double-digit growth and earnings, independent of all but the most extreme global economic conditions. Combine this with the fact that retail participation in the markets is next to zero, all investor surveys show most professional investors underweigh India, and record outflows from emerging market equities. This market is not over-owned, especially not from a longer-term real money perspective.

We are going through a classic bout of risk aversion and investor fright, when risk is taken off the table indiscriminately. This will settle down and the fundamentals will then become relevant again.

So should one buy now? It really depends on the time frame and positioning. If one has a genuine longer-term view and underweight equities (as most Indians are), then we are close to a very interesting entry point. I am convinced that investments made slowly and systematically over the coming three to six months will deliver good capital gains over an 18 to 24 month time frame. If one has the ability to time markets or is very concerned about short-term mark-to-market pressures, then one can wait and be more opportunistic. There is the possibility of one more leg down in markets, as markets need to riot to force western policy makers to act decisively. We could have another five to ten per cent downside. However, to remain bearish from here, you have to believe that either this policy paralysis is the new normal for India or the Indian growth surge of the past decade is unsustainable. You would have to believe that India grew at 7.2 per cent over the last decade owing to global capital flows and a very benign global economic backdrop, both of which will now reverse and thus Indian growth will slip to five per cent.

I do not belong to this bearish camp and genuinely believe that the economy has enough momentum and the polity has the understanding of the consequences that such a downshift in growth will not happen. I also believe all the noise today will eventually lead to structurally better governance. This is a transition that we have to go through.

The author is fund manager and CEO of Amansa Capital

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BUSINESS STANDARD

COLUMN

BETTING ON A RANGE-BOUND RUPEE

WITH VOLATILITY RISING, THE NEED FOR SOME TYPE OF STRUCTURED SOLUTION COULD NOT BE MORE IMPORTANT

JAMAL MECKLAI

With the rupee having slipped below 46 against the dollar this week (for the first time since September last year) after having peered above 44 just a few weeks ago, my January forecast – that the rupee will range between 43.50 and 46.50 this year – looks to be getting well filled out.

Interestingly, when the rupee fell below 46 on Monday, I received calls from companies with long US dollar positions, asking whether they should get more aggressive in selling. Correspondingly, when (on July 27) the rupee hit its recent peak, despite semi-hysterical media talking about three-year highs, the reaction from the export sector was remarkably muted. Indeed, the only nervous calls I got were from companies that had significant unhedged import payments and foreign currency loans.

With the rupee having been relatively quiet over the past two years and forward premiums running at a tasty six per cent a year or so, most exporters had been steadily increasing their hedge ratios, whereas people with short dollar positions were edgily waiting and watching and enjoying the carry.

Of course, staying unhedged when the world is brimming over with major risk events – the rolling European sovereign debt crisis, faltering US growth and quantitative easing?, the evolving revolution in West Asia (does anyone even remember that) – creates increasing interest in prudence.

So, what to do? How to be reasonably prudent and yet not pay out a huge amount to hedge dollar payments, when there is every possibility that the rupee will not weaken, and even if it does, not to levels reflected by the forward costs?

Unfortunately, there is no cost-free answer.

The first step, of course, is to set a stop loss — the level at which you will cut and run if the market moves against you. This is a fundamental requirement of risk management, but one that most companies almost studiously avoid. Even when they do set a stop loss, few treasuries have the discipline to hedge fully when the stop loss is threatened.

I have a lovely story about this. Back in 2006, we were working with a large, integrated steel company and had built a risk-monitoring and decision-support system for them. About a month after we went live, there was a huge surprise in the market — the Chinese government allowed the yuan to appreciate (modestly) for the first time. Global markets were startled and the rupee shot higher. The company had significant exports at the time and the system signalled a large hedge. The head of treasury was a very experienced trader and he believed that this was a knee-jerk reaction and would not sustain. The CFO took his view and overrode the signal.

Sure enough, the treasurer was correct, the rupee slipped back the following day and the company saved some money.

Almost exactly a year later – April 2007 – the rupee, which had been strengthening, suddenly shot above 40 to the dollar, once more triggering a large hedge signal. Once more, the head of treasury viewed this as a temporary blip. Once more the CFO agreed with him and overrode the signal. This time, he was wrong, the rupee continued to strengthen and the company lost nearly Rs 40 crore in that quarter.

The lesson: respect your stop loss, and even if you do override it, set another stop loss just behind it.

The next step is to determine the initial hedge. Depending on your view of the market environment – whether it is likely to be range-bound, trending, or choppy, whether volatility is likely to rise or not and so on – and the forward cost, you would need to choose between different instruments, like plain-vanilla options, forwards, call spreads or other simple structures.

So you would also need to set up a process for locking in positive movements. We have found that a high-water mark based lock-in works best. And, of course, you would need to review your market view at regular intervals — at least once a month.

Following such a hybrid hedging approach delivers superior results. When markets were trending (2007 and 2008), appropriate selection of parameters resulted in an improvement of nearly 1.25 per cent as compared to a 50 per cent hedge. Incidentally, 50 per cent hedge is an excellent benchmark against which to measure treasury performance since it acknowledges market uncertainty, is relatively inexpensive to implement, and generally provides a reasonable performance.

Since 2010, when the rupee has been largely range-bound with low volatility, using appropriate settings has delivered more than 0.75 per cent better than the 50 per cent hedge. This translated to effective protection at a cost of a bit over two per cent a year, in a market where the fully hedged cost was six per cent a year.

With volatility rising, the need for some type of structured solution could not be more important.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

COLUMN

A NEW CHAPTER IN NEPAL

DELHI MUST ASK WHAT IT CAN DO FOR KATHMANDU, NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND

JYOTI MALHOTRA

If you can bear to tear yourself away from the high drama around Anna Hazare for a moment, here's a great alternative to stun your senses: Nepal.

When the world's youngest republic finally chose Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) to become prime minister in February, after 17 rounds of voting, there was great hope. Since Khanal was supported by the Maoists, Nepal believed the Constituent Assembly would finally be able to write a new Constitution, reflecting its amazing diversity and ethnicity, and the Maoists could honourably integrate at least 7,000-8,000 of its nearly 20,000 strong cadres into the Nepal army.

This would signal the end of the civil war that lasted a full decade until the "jan andolan" or "people's revolution" of 2006, in which thousands of lives on both sides were lost.

But Khanal lost the confidence of his masters and quit on August 7. President Ram Baran Yadav gave the political parties an August 24 deadline to come up with a consensual name for prime minister, failing which the new man – or woman – would be elected by a majority vote in the Constituent Assembly.

Well, the deadline expired on Wednesday evening. India's newest ambassador to Nepal, Jayant Prasad, flew to Kathmandu to take up his new job on Thursday. The ballot to elect a new prime minister doesn't have a date yet, but we know that Baburam Bhattarai, a key Maoist ideologue and an alumnus of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (he was in Periyar hostel) and Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Poudel are in the fray.

Meanwhile, a powerful member of the Central Committee of China's Communist Party, Zhou Yongkang, arrived in Kathmandu last week to reaffirm its undying friendship with Nepal, and immediately declared that "China hopes to share its prosperity and progress with the people of Nepal."

Clearly, the northern country is in the throes of a particular frisson of excitement. Nepalese commentators are talking about China's "excessive liquidity" of $2 trillion and how Beijing could outsource some of its lower-end, labour-intensive industries to Nepal.

Clearly, it would be a win-win situation: in exchange for promoting its economy, Nepal would ensure a certain security cooperation. Meaning, the flood of Tibetans who pour into the Himalayan country annually from neighbouring Tibet – many of them on their way to India, the current home of the Dalai Lama – would be dammed up. As relations warmed up, Kathmandu would get a new route to access the wider world, via Beijing.

Now, this is not the time or place to wring one's hands about China's growing, dragon-like presence across South Asia or mournfully reiterate its "string of pearls" strategy – a phrase, if truth be told, was drummed up by an imaginative US researcher – or fulminate over Nepal's native Maoist cunning that seeks to replace India's primary position in the hearts and minds of the Nepalese with China.

My argument is that Delhi must share some of the blame for the deteriorating relationship with Kathmandu in recent years. Of course, the Maoists broke several promises, including on retaining a non-partisan character to the Nepal army. Of course, the Maoists weren't able to transform themselves from a fighting, guerrilla force to a parliamentary party, where battles are fought not by bullets but by rapier wit, and power won not from a barrel of a gun but by the sheer force of the ballot box.

Clearly, India's political class – which is totally at sea over how to deal with one hunger-striker in Ramlila Maidan – was unable to get a grip on how to deal with Nepal, or even worse, was hardly interested. So it left it to the bureaucracy in the ministry of external affairs to muddle through.

The moral of the story this month is that if India wants to assert its place in the neighbourhood, it has to use more than arrogance to convince the opposition. Whether the Maoists are bad or the Nepali Congress is good is a decision that the people of Nepal will make — not Delhi.

That is why it is important to reiterate the special relationship with Nepal this week. Not only do we have history and culture and religion in common, but also that sacred, indefinable thing called democracy. Both Baburam Bhattarai and Poudel know they have a duty to fulfil by leaning across ideological divides and fulfilling the mandate of the people.

So where does India come in? Well, Delhi remains the largest donor as well as the top investor into Nepal, notwithstanding the temptations offered by the Chinese. By offering to kick-start the Himalayan country's faltering economy – in the massive opportunities offered by infrastructure, power, water resources and retail sectors – India would only be doing itself a favour.

If a new chapter has to open on Nepal-India relations, Delhi must ask what it can do for Kathmandu, not the other way round. Que sera sera.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

COLUMN

GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS AND ASIA-PACIFIC

REDUCING EXPOSURE TO CAPITAL FLOWS CAN HELP THE REGION SHIELD ITSELF AGAINST VOLATILITY IN GLOBAL MARKETS

NAGESH KUMAR 

Global developments in the past few weeks have been reminiscent of the events that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Asian and emerging capital markets have fallen in tandem with their global peers. Besides the ongoing European debt crisis, worries about raising the US debt ceiling by August 2 heightened the volatility in capital markets in July. Even though the debt ceiling was eventually raised, Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgraded the US long-term sovereign debt on August 5 from AAA to AA+ for the first time ever. This led to a five to seven per cent decline in the US stock exchanges in one day on August 8, triggering a sharp reaction in global markets. Since then markets all over the world have been sinking downwards in a concerted manner. The Indian stock market has also been under tremendous pressure and its market valuations have dropped by $200 billion, with a 13 per cent decline in the Sensex. The Korean index, KOSPI, like other Asian indices, hit the 2008 levels with a 6.2 per cent loss on August 19. So a big question is: are we back to a September 2008 kind of situation or a double dip? How would the economic prospects of the Asia-Pacific region including India be impacted?

It is important to consider whether the downgrade by S&P was an isolated affair or was shared by others. Even though Moody's has retained its ratings of the US debt, it has changed the outlook to negative. Furthermore, the insurance premium on the US debt against default has risen from an average of 25 basis points in 2007 to a range of 55 to 75 basis points now, implying an increased risk of default. However, with the European debt crisis deepening and spreading to cover Italy and Spain, the US dollar has actually strengthened against the euro and the pound.

The US economy's growth outlook is severely affected and is put at 1.7 per cent in 2011 compared to three per cent in 2010. Even though the US economy is technically not in recession yet, the risk of a double-dip recession has increased. However, there is a critical difference between the situation in 2008 and the present one. The 2008 crisis was a result of bursting of the real estate bubble and concerns about the subprime mortgage market. The governments had the policy space to roll out massive fiscal and monetary stimulus packages to contain the damage. The current crisis, on the other hand, has been precipitated by concerns about a sovereign debt build-up and sustainability of fiscal position. This time the government's ability in terms of policy arsenal is much more limited. With nearly zero interest rates, the US and European economies find themselves in a liquidity trap, hence the move to quantitative easing. But when the sentiment is down, even quantitative easing does not help. Excess liquidity finds its way to emerging markets such as Brazil, India and China, seeking good returns and bringing volatility to their shores too. Fiscal policy is severely constrained by the build-up of a sovereign debt crisis.

The governments in the US and the Eurozone have to manoeuvre a delicate balance between short-term support for growth and jobs and fiscal consolidation in the medium term. Neglect of support for growth and jobs in favour of fiscal consolidation will be self-defeating. A credible medium-term plan of fiscal consolidation and debt reduction would be equally important to restore confidence.

The impact of the ongoing global turmoil on the Asia-Pacific economies will be felt through different transmission mechanisms. The most immediate one is through capital flows and financial markets that have grown increasingly interdependent over time with increasing short-term capital flows from the US and the European Union to the region's emerging markets. As the growth rate falters in advanced economies, the export-oriented economies of the region will be significantly impacted. Some of these economies have already started showing signs of slowing down. Leading indicators like the Purchasing Managers Index for the manufacturing sector in emerging markets are suggesting incipient signs of a slowdown.

For India, however, the aggressive monetary tightening by the Reserve Bank of India to address inflationary pressures has been a greater source of the slowdown than a slump in the western economies. The slowing global economy may mean that booming commodity prices may come down, like oil prices which have moderated lately. This may bring some relief from inflationary pressures for India and other net importers of commodities.

The other implication beyond the short-term challenge of the slowdown for the Asia-Pacific economies is to develop new engines of growth to sustain their dynamism over the medium term. Given the growing inability of the advanced economies to sustain growth in the region given the challenge of restoring debt sustainability, the Asia-Pacific economies have to rebalance in favour of greater domestic and regional demand over the coming decade. The other adjustment the Asia-Pacific economies can do to bring down volatility is to reduce their exposure to short-term capital flows. It is timely to assess the costs and benefits of these flows which will reveal that these flows have high servicing burden besides bringing a high degree of volatility in the financial sector while contributing little to the capital formation in the host economy. In a dramatic reversal of its long-held position, the International Monetary Fund now agrees that capital controls are an important constituent of the policy tool kit for emerging economies.

The author is chief economist of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, Bangkok

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations

nkumar@un.org  

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

APPLE AFTER JOBS

AMERICA'S ICONIC COMPANY HAS LOST ITS SUPERSTAR CEO; WHAT COMES NEXT?

Thirty-five years after starting Apple, cancer has forced Steve Jobs to step down as the CEO of America's most iconic company. There's no other large listed company in the US, or possibly anywhere else in the world, whose successes have been associated with one man. Jobs and friend Steve Wozniak who founded Apple, brought out the first personal computers and the first portable one, but more than that, they pioneered a design and development culture that seemed to click instantly with consumers' wants. There have been mp3 players before the iPod and tablets before the iPad, but Jobs insisted that people didn't know what they wanted and he could surprise them with better and smarter stuff. He made sure this mantra worked, again and again. Apple realised his value between 1987 and 1996 when Jobs was exiled from his company by a CEO recruited from PepsiCo. In his absence, Apple floundered, lost most of its value and Jobs was brought back to rescue the company. The iMac, iBook and iPod followed each other in the next five years. By 2010, when a visibly ill Jobs launched the iPad, Apple had overtaken Microsoft as the most valuable tech company on the planet.
Will Apple, which briefly overtook ExxonMobil to become America's most valuable company this month, continue to grow under new CEO Tim Cook? Many believe that it can: Jobs could be rude and abrupt, but he had a bunch of fanatically loyal people working with him. Many are likely to stay on with Cook. The culture of design innovation, secrecy about new products and proprietary technology will continue. But there are chinks in Apple's armour. It's not a particularly great innovator, relying, instead, on design, functionality and branding to charge huge markups for its products. Increasingly, to fend off rivals like Google, it has had to resort to costly patents lawsuits. Japanese and Korean rivals are snapping at its heels; Indian and Chinese companies will follow. Gadget makers know that market leadership can change faster than you can say Nokia. Apple under Jobs played its hand well, but the going is bound to get tougher without its charismatic leader.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

A POINTLESS EXERCISE

REVIEW THE OUTDATED SMALL SAVINGS SCHEMES, NOT THE RULES GOVERNING THEM

The government's decision to ask the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) to review the rules governing schemes like the Employees Provident Fund, the Public Provident Fund and National Savings Certificates is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Doubtless, many of the rules relating to these schemes have become outdated and need overhaul. But the basic problem is not with the rules per se as with the schemes themselves. These schemes were framed in an altogether different milieu, well before reform and financial liberalisation, and are an anachronism today. For instance, the rate of interest paid under the EPF and small savings schemes is unrelated to market rates. The Central Board of Trustees decides the rate of interest on PF balances while that on small savings is fixed by the government. The net result is when interest rates in the economy are falling, there is an implicit subsidy involved since the administered rate exceeds the market rate. And when rates are rising, as at present, those with money in small savings instruments end up getting less than the market rate. Administered interest rates interfere with the transmission of monetary signals, weakening the efficacy of monetary signals. It is more important to revamp the schemes and then frame new rules for the revamped schemes rather than expend time and energy framing new rules for schemes that need overhaul in the first place.

Several expert committees, starting with the R V Gupta committee back in the 1990s, the Y V Reddy committee, the Rakesh Mohan committee and most recently, one headed by Shyamala Gopinath, former deputy governor of the RBI, have looked at the small savings schemes and made their recommendations. They want to link the interest rate to market-determined rates. So, there's a blueprint in place. We need to translate it into action. However, since the beneficiaries of these schemes belong to the vocal middle class, governments have baulked at action, preferring to buy time instead. The decision to rope in the FSLRC seems to be yet another instance of that.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

A POINTLESS EXERCISE

REVIEW THE OUTDATED SMALL SAVINGS SCHEMES, NOT THE RULES GOVERNING THEM

The government's decision to ask the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) to review the rules governing schemes like the Employees Provident Fund, the Public Provident Fund and National Savings Certificates is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. Doubtless, many of the rules relating to these schemes have become outdated and need overhaul. But the basic problem is not with the rules per se as with the schemes themselves. These schemes were framed in an altogether different milieu, well before reform and financial liberalisation, and are an anachronism today. For instance, the rate of interest paid under the EPF and small savings schemes is unrelated to market rates. The Central Board of Trustees decides the rate of interest on PF balances while that on small savings is fixed by the government. The net result is when interest rates in the economy are falling, there is an implicit subsidy involved since the administered rate exceeds the market rate. And when rates are rising, as at present, those with money in small savings instruments end up getting less than the market rate. Administered interest rates interfere with the transmission of monetary signals, weakening the efficacy of monetary signals. It is more important to revamp the schemes and then frame new rules for the revamped schemes rather than expend time and energy framing new rules for schemes that need overhaul in the first place.

Several expert committees, starting with the R V Gupta committee back in the 1990s, the Y V Reddy committee, the Rakesh Mohan committee and most recently, one headed by Shyamala Gopinath, former deputy governor of the RBI, have looked at the small savings schemes and made their recommendations. They want to link the interest rate to market-determined rates. So, there's a blueprint in place. We need to translate it into action. However, since the beneficiaries of these schemes belong to the vocal middle class, governments have baulked at action, preferring to buy time instead. The decision to rope in the FSLRC seems to be yet another instance of that.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

GOOD NEWS FROM RAMLILA MAIDAN

WE MAY NOT KNOW WHERE THE CORRUPTION DEBATE IS HEADED, BUT THERE ARE ALREADY SOME POSITIVES FOR INDIA

 

As per hallowed newsroom traditions, the bad news first. 1. We have a government and a ruling party that have displayed tactical, strategic, policy and moral incapacities. 2. We have a main Opposition party that, despite witnessing such government and ruling party incapacity, has displayed its own incapacity to do anything intelligent or meaningful. 3. We have a core group of agitationists led by Anna Hazare which has displayed, at best, its alarming naivety in the matter of institutional reform process; a naivety that allowed the political class to finally get the upper hand in the last 36 hours. 4. We have a corporate sector that has displayed its unwillingness and/or inability to contribute an implementable big idea in the corruption debate.
Now, the good news.

1. India's public life is enriched. However sceptical one is of Anna & Co's methods and some of the proposals — this correspondent is one of the sceptics — it was impossible not to recognise the plus side of tens of thousands of citizens peacefully gathering in many cities and asking the government and the political class to get their act together. Yes, there were protestors who probably didn't know their Lokpal from their Fiat Palio. But the demand that those who were protesting with Anna must display acute knowledge of the complexities of the issue at hand was unfair. By that criterion every political party rally or gathering should be dismissed. And what should our verdict be on the parliamentary process, in which the finance Bill involving tens of thousands of crores is passed sometime with little or no discussion? This variety of critics of Anna protestors seem appalled and amused that there were so many oddballs, not to mention some "hooligan types", with varying degree of ignorance. That demonstrates a witting or unwitting ignorance on the part of those critics about the processes of popular participation. The same critics are also rather cattily asking whether this popular participation will have any lasting effect. Nothing is guaranteed to last; Manmohan Singh was once popular with the middle classes. There are, however, real reasons to seriously inquire into the possibility of a few changes in popular responses to institutional politics. That's good news, too.

2. India's politicians are a little bit concerned. This becomes clear once you recognise the possibility that something may have shifted in the people-politician equation. Politicians, mostly very clever (they have to be; politics is a brutally tough business), will not probably admit it but they most likely have sniffed out that some behaviourial changes are in order. Is it is a coincidence that as the Anna protest peaked, Parliament saw reasoned debates and very little of raucous behaviour? BJP's M M Joshi targeted the PM, and the treasury benches didn't erupt. The PM took on Joshi the next day and BJP MPs behaved. Even the so called caste-based parties, those who are supposed to have no fear from an angry urban middle class, behaved. Why? Probably because no politician wanted TV images of a raucous Parliament, not when the entire political class's argument to Team Anna was that parliamentary sanctity must be honoured. How long this will last, whether the opportunity for making Parliament a more effective institution will be taken, depends upon how long politicians think the popular mood change will last. But so far, so good. 3. India's "radical" intellectuals have shown up to be even less relevant. The interventions by Arundhati Roy in the Anna debate were pointless. If Team Anna is a creature of a corporate conspiracy, prove it. And even if it is, address and analyse its popular appeal. That's what serious intellectuals do.

    Or, actually, that's what they don't do. They say we must love violent Naxalites and we must dismiss peaceful protests. The so-called radical left has always laid claim to insights that are important precisely because they are supposed to be deeply troubling for the mainstream. The message from Ramlila: the radical left is in deep trouble, which can't but be good news for a country that requires many reasoned debates over how to maximise both private entrepreneurial opportunities and public gains.
4. India's upper administrative classes are quite afraid. This has a short-term negative outcome in that government decision-making gets slower for fear of getting embroiled in a graft investigation. But the upper administrative classes needed this dose of fear. They started getting afraid from before Anna, when the Supreme Court took charge of the 2G investigation and the CBI actually did some good investigating. The Anna agitation, the possibility of a halfway effective Lokpal and the popular mood against graft have all contributed to that fear. The class that takes calls on or advises its political masters on decisions involving millions of rupees of public money but had little fear of consequences needed to be a bit afraid.

What will all this good news add up to? If all of it holds, we may have a more engaged middle class, a less cavalier political class, a more careful administrative class and we may soon ask, radical left, who? That's a good deal.

 

There's a final argument that those dismissive of Ramlila use: look at Anna, isn't he himself odd in all kinds of ways? Sure he is. But he, despite himself, connected. Call Anna nothing but a symbol, if you want. But spot the good news from Ramlila.

 

SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

NEURAL NET

THE ART OF IDEOLOGIES

RAKESH BEDI

When Saul Bellow visited the dying Trotsky in a Mexico hospital in 1940, he had strong Trotskyist leanings. But towards the end of his long, remarkable and Noble-winning career, Bellow took an insidious right turn and published a novel called The Dean's December in which he excoriated many failings in Americans. He had issues with everyone, especially blacks and Chicagoan slum dwellers. Bellow's attack was indirect yet vituperative. His invective against things and attitudes he didn't agree with was far removed from what he held as beliefs in his younger The Victim-writing days. The American-Jewish novelist also had developed a late friendship with philosopher Alan Bloom and celebrated it in his fictional paean Ravelstein. Bloom was unabashedly right and constantly bemoaned the fall in American standards and his call to change was, some say, deeply conservative.

Across the Atlantic, Camus was pelted with abuse from leftists for his stand on Algeria. Sartre, who was thick with the writer of The Fall, had a falling out with Camus and castigated him for his silences to which Camus was anyway prone. Many years later, the same acrimony played out in the lives of Truffaut and Godard, the French filmmakers. Godard swerved left with a vengeance and tore into Truffaut for making middle-class melodramatic and bourgeois films. Both remained distant until Truffaut's death of a brain tumour in 1984, when Godard wrote an eulogy. Sartre too, when Camus died tragically young in a car accident, wrote in praise, burying even the whiff of their celebrated fight.

In recent times, the British novelist Martin Amis wrote a long lamenting letter to his friend Christopher Hitchens deriding his Trostkyist past. Hitchens, of course, had crossed the pond by then and buried all his leftist leanings and, in his views, sounded more like a newly minted neocon.

The history of artistic discords also has its fair share of inter-war chapters. The American critic Edmund Wilson, in between wars, had gone deep into Soviet land and failed to see Stalinist excesses, and fell into an almost friendship-ending debate with Russian emigre novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who with his family had escaped the Reds and did not think much of Lenin's revolution.

Papa Hemingway and John Dos Passos, a solid communist, had a rupture in Spain during the civil war. Hemingway was a compulsive friendship breaker and wife changer and needed to do both every few years. He had gone there to cover the war, his talent diminished. Hemingway reported the war and got his humdinger novel out of it: For Whom the Bells Toll, which went on to become a huge success and restored him in the pantheon of great writers. We can be pretty sure Kafka, who wanted to burn down every sentence he wrote and expressly told his friend Max Brod about it, also would have been aghast to see how his friend, when he reached Israel, got deeply interested in things conservatively Jewish. Kafka was a dabbler in Jewry and Yiddish arcana too in his Prague days, but would have blanched at the height his close friend went to in nascent and hardly nimble Israel. Do some artists, bound by their ideologies and swamped by dull ideas generated by their weltanschauung, have the right to not see the stark truth even when their vision clearly registers something really infantile and puerile and wily and lifethreatening? And do they with their warped outlook and truculence and recalcitrance have the right to ditch their lifelong friends whose version of a particular event is truer and sharper than theirs? Art is produced out of harmony, but it also comes out of deep discord, personal and impersonal. Some kinetic energy that art requires gets wasted in these kerfuffles, but being true to their inner selves artists produce something that overrides their inner complexities and outside dynamics and sometimes even their ideologies. Artists, because of their sheer force of will, create for themselves and the world, and it's the same driving force that makes them spawn masterpieces and compels them to hold fast to ideas whose weight has become feeble for many. These ideology-ridden ideas still remain attractive to them because they are, willy-nilly, attached to the selfsame will, which gets its power from their humongous egos, which, in turn, makes their imaginations more fertile. In this world, if art stays egos stay, and so will the animosities and rancours.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

LAW STREET

CORPORATE CARETAKER

LUBNA KABLY

 

Dilbert is one of Zenobia Aunt's favourite comic strips. In fact, she reads this comic strip first, before turning over to the front page and of this newspaper. Not so long ago, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, in his blog has mentioned that tax policy has two purposes. One is to collect money to enable the government machinery to function. The other is to promote public policy. For instance, he cites: mortgage deductions are meant to encourage home ownership. Or as Zenobia Aunty adds, back home, stiff taxes on tobacco are expected to deter tobacco chewing or smoking.

Scott Adams wonders whether we could have a tax on stupidity and thereby reduce its prevalence over time. One big obstacle to taxing stupidity is identifying it. But he has quite a few suggestions which include a general knowledge test running thousands of questions long. And it would be entirely optional. If you choose to not take the test, you can simply pay a stupidity tax instead. If you take the test, and score 100%, you pay no stupidity taxes at all; else the tax paid would be dependent on your score. Unlimited chances would be available to improve your score.

He is curious on whether tax policy could make a huge difference in the effectiveness of society by directly taxing stupidity. Unfortunately, Scott Adams admits it is an impractical idea and no government would buy it. But perhaps he may, some day, on some island create his own kingdom, design this tax mechanism from scratch and introduce it. Zenobia Aunty would love to be a resident of this island, maybe she could help in preparing the questionnaire and thereby get an exemption from the tax. Some tax laws can be stupid, to put it mildly. Other legislations are equally insane. Several months ago, there was a hue and cry, in Corporate India, when the government in India had proposed to make corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory — in other words, companies would have to contribute a certain percentage of their profits towards CSR. The reasons were many. Those opposing it felt that the main duty of the corporate sector was to earn returns and dividends were a way of paying back to the shareholders. Since corporate entities paid tax, there was no need to contribute separately towards CSR, it was the government job to work for society's welfare from the taxes collected. Fortunately for those opposing the move, such CSR contribution is not mandatory. But, it seems that the French government has also adopted asimilar stand, that corporate entities need to pay back!!!. To improve purchasing power of the hoi polloi and put some punch back in the economy, it has not eased the tax burden on individual taxpayers but wants the corporate entities to pay a bonus to its employees, if they declare a higher bonus. Oracle, as this columnist's boss is often referred to, because of his in-depth insight into ever-changing and complex global tax laws, persuaded Zenobia Aunty to cover this topic. Venting her ire, only against the draftsmen in India, was discriminatory, Oracle firmly stated. Zenobia Aunty meekly obeyed his orders, as does this columnist.
Last month, the French Parliament adopted a sweeping bill that requires companies to pay a bonus to all the employees when the dividend per share distributed to the shareholders is higher than the average of the dividends per share distributed in the two previous fiscal years. These provisions apply to all companies having more than 50 employees. Companies having a lesser number of employees can voluntarily opt for the proposed provisions. These rules apply to dividend distributions authorised as from the beginning of this calendar year and will be valid for a period of three years. As far as the amount of the bonus to be paid is concerned, an agreement will have to be signed by the company with employee representatives within three months starting from decision to distribute the dividends made by the ordinary general meeting of the shareholders. The agreement is subject to modalities applicable to the signing of a profit-sharing agreement. Failure to start the negotiations results in penalties and prosecution for the company. The French ministry has provided for some minor sops such as exemption a bonus up to €1,200 per employee and per year, from certain social security contributions. The moot issue is: can the government really expect the corporate sector to step into its shoes. In the Indian scenario, the government wanted the society to benefit by ensuring that a certain sum was spent on social welfare (it is a different matter altogether that CSR activities were not defined). Now the French government, to boost the sagging economy, has decided to burden companies that are earning profits and want to share it with the rightful segment — the shareholders! Market forces would automatically ensure that any company's pay to its employees is at parity with that of its competitors. But, as economies continue to stagnate and governments can ill-afford to reduce taxes further, perhaps additional burdens, in myriad forms, will fall on the corporate sector. Stay tuned.

 

 

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BUSINESS LINE

OPINION

THE INDUSTRY STEELS ITSELF

At an opportune time, Indian companies are learning to cope with high input prices in more innovative ways than simply passing on the burden to the consumer. In a major strategic move, Indian steel-makers that rely on imports may just be acquiring some bargaining power in global markets. Emulating their Japanese counterparts, they will be scouting jointly for global supplies and, for a start, Tata Steel, SAIL, JSW, Jindal Power and RINL will bid collectively for iron ore in Afghanistan; this could eventually even lead to a stake in coking coal property in that country. Forming an alliance of national producers to bid collectively for a financial stake in a prospective mineral asset or negotiate prices for long-term supply is a time-tested approach to keeping costs down. Indeed, wherever physical inputs are not the key differentiator for success in the market place, producers do tend to collaborate; and steel, perhaps more than any other industry, exemplifies this philosophy.

India produces 70 million tonnes of steel and imports virtually half of the raw material in value terms; with such high import intensity, steel producers are always vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the global supply situation in raw materials. With steel production slated to go up sharply in the medium term, relying on overseas supplies alone may not be enough. Global prices of coal and iron ore have softened in recent months. Coking coal prices, which peaked at $350 per tonne, have since softened to $275. But the steel industry cannot afford to be complacent. It needs to augment domestic reserves of these commodities, and signs of such intent are emerging. SAIL, for instance, is planning to invest more than Rs 10,000 crore in mine development besides contract extraction from existing captive sources. The Government must support similar initiatives by others.

The steel sector suffers from legacy issues as, for decades, its operations have suffered from a regime of price and output controls which left very little surplus for investment in the future. While efforts at modernisation have begun, the process needs to gather steam. Growth in the larger economy may be slowing and demand for steel may also dip temporarily. Yet, this is a good time for the government to push its new mining policy with earnestness right through to the States. The mining industry is in shambles and it reflects poorly on a government pitching for nine per cent growth in the Twelfth Plan to ignore a perennial shortage of the vital inputs for steel — the backbone of manufacturing.

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BUSINESS LINE

OPINION

ANNA AND AP

M. SOMASEKHAR

The fight against corruption has thrown up some interesting facets of India, the land of diversity. While Anna Hazare has forced the political class to run for shelter in the national capital, the scene is a bit different in the State of Andhra Pradesh. Here, 26 MLAs have openly quit to support a political leader, who is under the CBI lens, facing myriad charges of financial corruption.

Is corruption relative? Is it different in different places? Is there more acceptance of political corruption in some regions? Several interesting questions arise to extend the fight against this malaise that is threatening to destroy our democratic institutions.

Movement gathering momentum

Anna Hazare, the ex-serviceman, donning the Gandhi topi and adopting the Mahatma's potent weapon against the British — fasting — has captured the imagination of Indian youth, especially in the national capital, by steadfastly highlighting corruption.

In the national capital, while the pre-dominantly urban, middle-class, youth and people of all ages and from neighbouring states too demonstrate their solidarity with Anna, MPs, Minister's and the UPA Government, after initial bungling by his arrest, followed by a 'comatose' phase, are finally showing some signs of flexibility on reaching a consensus.

Interestingly, while most fights against corruption — be it the Bofors case or the earlier mass movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan — found echo largely in the poor and disadvantaged sections of rural India, who used their vote to throw out regime's, Anna Hazare's campaign has attracted urban people and is definitely showing ominous signs of heading into the rural hinterlands.

People's representatives (MPs and MLAs), both in Parliament and State Assemblies, who are in a way the central target of this mass campaign, exhibit reactions ranging from knee-jerk criticism to the methodology of Anna, to arrogance that laws are made only in Parliament and not in public places by a handful of people.

INDIA's two faces

The Andhra case is quite curious. Even as the ruling Cong(I) dispensation, led by Mr Kiran Reddy, confronts the growing agitation for a separate Telangana State, resignation of nearly 100 MLAs, and efforts by Mr Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy (son of former Chief Minister , Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy) to whip up support to topple the Government, the CBI, on the directive of the High Court, has unearthed a slew of charges against the Kadapa MP and more than two dozen corporates associated with him. The graft charges have led to a bizarre situation. Twenty six MLAs of the ruling party quit in support of Mr Jagan and, in a way, endorsed corruption (if Mr Jagan is proved guilty), to threaten the Government.

Another interesting feature is that Mr Jagan continues to attract large crowds in both Rayalseema and coastal Andhra Pradesh and few places in Telangana, where he is touring on a Odarpu yatra (consoling families which lost a member, immediately after the death of Y. S.R in an helicopter crash in September, 2009), even while facing charges of corruption. The question on everyone's mind is, will Mr Jagan pull off a coup in the ruling party or will the graft charges be proved and lead to his political marginalisation. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear that India lives in two entities — India and Bharat — and it is indeed a land of diversity. Will it show unity in the fight against corruption?

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BUSINESS LINE

OPINION

TAKES MORE THAN GUNS TO KILL…

ADITI NIGAM

It's good to fight for effective laws that guarantee basic rights to people. But, after that? The Right to Information Act (RTI) is one of the most enabling legislations passed in recent years. It has helped unearth many a scam across the country and is the most potent tool in the hands of citizens today to stop any wrongdoing by government officials and authorities.

This Act has, nevertheless, led to the snuffing out of precious lives of courageous and promising young activists, whose only crime was to take on the local power nexus. According to official figures, in the past few months, as many as 10 RTI activists have been killed in various parts of the country. The number is much higher, according to activists.

Activist shot

The latest in the series of such killings is the murder of Shehla Masood in Bhopal. Unfortunately, the news of her murder was buried in the din of the Lokpal Bill protests. The day after Independence Day, Shehla, an RTI activist in her late thirties, was about to leave her home in an upscale locality in Madhya Pradesh's capital to take part in a support rally for Anna Hazare's fast. But before she could start her car, she was shot dead by an unknown assailant. Her aunt, who did not hear the car leave, came down to check and found Shehla slumped on the driver's seat of her Santro.

Shehla, say her friends, was a gutsy woman who was involved in taking up many environmental causes in her State, such as protection of forests, rivers and wildlife, including tigers. Of late, she was active in the movement to save the watershed of the Panna Tiger Reserve and the Shyamri River in Madhya Pradesh, one of the cleanest in the country, from NYSE-listed transnational diamond company, Rio Tinto's mining activity.

Even the Rural Development Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh, acknowledged her zeal and expressed shock at her death. He recalled the numerous interactions he had with her on issues concerning tiger conservation and environment when he was Environment Minister. He has written to the Madhya Pradesh Government demanding a probe.

Living under threat

Predictably, the Madhya Pradesh cops started floating theories of a possible suicide, even as the CBI is now looking into the case. Besides killings, attacks on RTI activists have been on the rise. This is apart from the daily threats that they and their families live under.

Doesn't the entire purpose of such an enabling legislation get defeated if there is no protection for all those who stand up to take on the powerful and moneyed? These are just RTI activists, but there are hundreds of others, including journalists, who have lost their lives in the process of exposing the powerful, such as Satyendra Dubey, Manjunath and J. Dey.

The Government says it is framing a law to protect whistle-blowers. However, the process needs to be speeded up. Moreover, unless the law is strong and its implementation is enforced, it may go the same way as many others.

There have been instances when activists have asked for protection, but the local authorities, under pressure from politicians or money power, have denied it. Probably, the Gujarat RTI activists have shown the way — they have formed a union. If that's the way to get your voice heard, so be it!

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BUSINESS LINE