EDITORIAL SAMARTH: EDITORIAL 27.08.11

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Editorial

month august 27, edition 000821, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

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THE PIONEER

HYSTERICAL HISTRIONICS

PUT AN END TO BABUGIRI

THE CHOICE IS CLEAR - HIRANMAY KARLEKAR

WHY IS THIS MAN WALKING FREE? - UDAYAN NAMBOODIRI

THE SHAME OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY EXPOSED - SAUGAR SENGUPTA

CRIMINALISATION OF CPM A FACT OF LIFE - KSHITI GOSWAMI

HINDUSTAN TIMES

A CARNIVAL CALLED INDIA

A SEASON OF STRUGGLE - SUNIL KHILNANI

DIVERSITY CAN BREED CREATIVITY

MERITS WILL BE SACRIFICED

THE TIMES OF INDIA

TO KEEP IT IN APPLE-PIE ORDER

NOT A WHOLESOME VIEW - PRATIK KANJILAL

BAD TIMING=BAD PRESS

ANIRUDH BHATTACHARYYA

A FUSION OF EMOTIONS - GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

LET US HEAR INDIA

WORD FROM MUMBAI

ROMANCE OF THE RAIL

MESSAGE FROM THE MAIDAN - SHEKHAR GUPTA

TO CATCH A BRIBE - ASHUTOSH PRASAD

INDIA'S POST-GADDAFI WORLD - C. RAJA MOHAN

THE CLASSIFIED TRUTH - MRINAL PANDE

A FULLER FREEDOM NOW - ARUN MAIRA

THE ARMY IN KARACHI? - RUCHIKA TALWAR

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

SOVEREIGN MISTAKE?

SANCTITY OF CONTRACT

GREY HAIR'S BACK IN FASHION - KRISHNAMURTHY SUBRAMANIAN

WINNING THE AEROSPACE TECH BATTLE - DEBA R MOHANTY

THE HINDU

NEW GLOBAL THINK TANK SET UP IN HONG KONG

DON'T HANG THEM

ICONIC JOBS

INDIA 2011: THAT 1980S FEELING AGAIN - HASAN SUROOR

GETTING THE REGIONAL ACT TOGETHER - M.K. BHADRAKUMAR

TRANSFORMING CHILD NUTRITION

LAWRENCE HADDAD

THE ASIAN AGE

NOTHING'S FREE IN CHINA

GENERALLY SPEAKING - FARRUKH DHONDY

INDIA NEEDS ANNA. ALIVE. - SHOBHAA DE

FLOCAM TO THE RESCUE - KISHWAR DESAI

DAILY EXCELSIOR

THE CRUEL JOKE

SINO-PAK RUMBLINGS

A CITY DIVIDED IN CONFLICT ZONES - BY ML KOTRU

THE BENEVOLENT MOTHER - BY CAPT PURUSHOTTAM SHARMA

OUT TO MALIGN ANNA HAZARE - BY B L SARAF

THE TRIBUNE

DOWNPOUR OF APATHY

BUILDING A NEW SRI LANKA

ICON

FEARS OF REVOLT IN PAK ARMY - BY SANKAR SEN

SCREEN TEST - BY PUSHI CHOWDHRY

ANNA STIR: WHERE IS IT ALL HEADED? - B.N.GOSWAMY

GOVT WAS OBLIVIOUS OF PUBLIC ANGER FOR TOO LONG - AMAR CHANDEL

MUMBAI MIRROR

WHEN DABHOL TRIED TO MAKE RULES

BUSINESS STANDARD

SON OF BRICS - T N NINAN

CURE FOR CORRUPTION - SHUBHASHIS GANGOPADHYAY

PAPER MONEY AND PLASTIC PROTESTS - SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

EYE ON AGRICULTURE - JYOTI PANDE LAVAKARE

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

SENSE, AT LAST

MOUNTAIN OF ARREARS

TO CAP IT ALL

WAKE UP, IRDA

DEMOCRACY'S DRAMA IN TERRORISM'S THEATRE

THY HAND, GREAT ANARCH - PARIKSHIT GHOSH

BUSINESS LINE

GOVT FINDS ITS POLESTAR

NO QUOTAS FOR HIGHER STUDIES, PLEASE - P.V.INDIRESAN

DECCAN CHRONICAL

EARLY END TO LOKPAL IMPASSE ELUSIVE

NOTHING'S FREE IN CHINA

GENERALLY SPEAKING

THE STATESMAN

HAILING PARLIAMENT

COUNT NINETY

REFASHIONED IITS

THE REAL CHALLENGE - RAJINDER PURI

'MY FATHER WAS TOO PROUD TO ASK FOR ANYTHING'

ON RECORD

100 YEARS AGO TODAY

CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT IN BENGAL

THE TELEGRAPH

WAY BY JOBS

A PATRIARCH FOR THE NATION? - RAMACHANDRA GUHA

DECCAN HERALD

WAKE UP TO THREAT

WELCOME MOVE

WARS OVER OIL - SAEED NAQVI

OHERALDO

WHAT DID ARIFA DO TO DESERVE THIS?

CULT OF PERSONALITY

THE NEW YORK TIMES

MR. BERNANKE'S WARNING

WHAT DID THEY REALLY SEE?

RELIEF FOR STUDENT DEBTORS

GOING TO THE VIDEOTAPE

BRITAIN GOES NIMBY - BY ROGER COHEN

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

THE NEED FOR REFORM IN THE TURKISH MILITARY

JOURNALISM'S DESCENT INTO THE DARK DANGER OF THE 'CASBAH'

EMOTIONAL RETREAT

END OF MICKEY MOUSE STATE IN LIBYA

BEWARE OF THE ANTI-AKP PROPAGANDA DEPARTMENT

EGYPT: IN SEARCH OF ITS NEW FORMULA

35 MINUTES - AHMET ALTAN

ANKARA AT A POINT OF NO RETURN ON SYRIA?

THE NEWS

THE KIDNAPPING OF SHAHBAZ TASEER

STEPS FOR KARACHI

RISALPUR BOMBING

A SCRIPTURE 'FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK' - S IFTIKHAR MURSHED

OVERRULING DEMOCRACY - PRAFUL BIDWAI

THE UNTHINKING PAKISTANI - MOSHARRAF ZAIDI

FUNDING THE TALIBAN - RIZWAN ASGHAR

DILEMMAS OF LOYALTY

AMERICA TREMBLES - ANJUM NIAZ

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

THESE CRIMINALS AND FAKE DEGREE HOLDERS

PRESIDENT'S RIGHT FOCUS ON CHINA

FLIGHT OF CAPITAL FROM KARACHI

INDIA'S WATER TERRORISM - MOHAMMAD JAMIL

US POLICY BREEDING CONFUSION

THE NIGHT OF POWER — 27 - SIRAJUDDIN AZIZ

DEMOCRACY NOT MARTIAL LAW - RIZWAN GHANI

LIBYANS' TRYST WITH DESTINY - AIJAZ ZAKA SYED

THE AUSTRALIYAN

RESCUING A VITAL DISCIPLINE

THE BOOM WE'RE HAPPY TO HAVE

PRIME MINISTER'S SUPPORT FOR MP IS UNSUSTAINABLE

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

THE SUBSTANCE HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW

DEFENCE HAS A HIT ON ITS HANDS

AFL DRAW NEEDS TO BE FAIRER TO ALL CONCERNED

THE GUARDIAN

ERIC SCHMIDT: AN ENGINEER IN EDINBURGH

LIBYA: GADDAFI'S SPEAR CARRIERS

UNTHINKABLE? REHABILITATING RD LAING

THE JAKARTA POST

MOMENTS OF JOY, FORGIVING

JAKARTA'S NEW BLUEPRINT

IDUL FITRI: FESTIVITY OF CHARITY AND FORGIVENESS - A. CHAEDAR ALWASILAH

SMALL STEPS TO SOLVE TRAFFIC JAMS, AND OTHER COMPLEX ISSUES IN LIFE

IDUL FITRI SHOULD GO BEYOND CELEBRATION, FESTIVAL - DONNY SYOFYAN

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

HYSTERICAL HISTRIONICS

RAMLILA MAIDAN CAN DO WITHOUT TAMASHA

There was nothing edifying about the sights and sounds at Ramlila Maidan on Friday when those leading the agitation to push Anna Hazare's Jan Lok Pal Bill and those lending their support to the demand decided to address the gathered masses. Ms Kiran Bedi, who has been vitriolic from the very beginning in her criticism of the Government, Parliament, the parliamentary process and the Constitution, was shockingly intemperate on Friday while berating the very system of which she was an integral part till she retired from the Indian Police Service. Her act-and-tell show in which she mimicked politicians, denigrated Parliament and repudiated electoral democracy using a kafiyeh as a prop may have delighted those looking for tamasha in the guise of protesting against corruption and drawn applause from those for whom democracy and the liberties it guarantees are meaningless, but it has fetched neither Anna Hazare nor his movement anything to boast about. Decency demands that criticism of Ms Bedi's astounding proclivity for taking recourse to rude words and crude gestures be muted, not the least because raucous denunciation would mean granting the former police officer-turned-activist her wish — to be noticed and taken seriously; she deserves neither. This is not how individuals who aspire to be 'leaders' or believe that it is their burden to lead the masses from darkness unto light are expected to behave, that too from a public platform. Not only does she stand diminished after her Friday afternoon stage-show, she has also surrendered the right to be taken seriously as a 'leader'. The attributes of a leader preclude the dubious ability to crudely mock at all and sundry and rudely ridicule institutions that form the core of our democracy; a leader inspires hope, he or she does not paint a bleak picture; a leader highlights all that is good and encourages people to use that as the foundation to build new institutions, he or she does not undermine the very symbol of a democracy, its Parliament, or ask people to abandon the electoral process. Maoists do that, so do separatists and anti-national elements who hold India in contempt.

Having served as a police officer in various capacities for decades Ms Bedi should have known better than to take recourse to language that could have incited the protesters at Ramlila Maidan to indulge in violence. Her repeated attempts to draw the attention of the emotionally-charged crowd to the presence of two senior BJP leaders who also happen to be Members of Parliament and who had gone to Ramlila Maidan to meet Mr Hazare to brief him about their party's position on the proposed anti-corruption law, her repeated call to confront them, her belligerent and threatening tone, were not only downright dangerous but also entirely unexpected and stunningly irresponsible. Would she have owned responsibility if the crowd had set upon the two MPs? Would she have then rushed to protect them? It is evident to all who saw and heard Ms Bedi on Friday that she would have done neither. Which brings us to the question: Can someone who so callously disregards the consequences of words and gestures be trusted to lead the people? More importantly, can someone who cannot distinguish between civil and uncivil be accepted as a representative of civil society? ***************************************

THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

PUT AN END TO BABUGIRI

INVOLVE MPS IN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

That India's gargantuan bureaucracy lies at the root of much of the country's socio-political malaise is no secret. And in recent times, even its political masters have borne the brunt of its inane babugiri. This has been particularly evident in the many complaints that Members of Parliament from across the country have lodged with the Union Ministry of Rural Development with regard to the conceptualisation and implementation of projects under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. The popular refrain has been that babus often keep Ministers in the dark about projects and rarely care for parliamentarians' suggestions regarding their implementation. Often, Ministers are not even invited for the inauguration of newly-constructed roads. Now, the Rural Development Ministry has taken note of the bureaucracy's flagrant disregard for authority and protocol, and written to all the State Governments to effectively rein in their babus and ensure that the Member of Parliament concerned is given due respect. This is a welcome step. As the letter from Krishi Bhavan notes, Members of Parliament have an important role to play in the planning and implementation of such projects. The Rural Development Ministry has rightly insisted that the MP's suggestions be taken into consideration while giving shape to key elements of the project such as the Comprehensive New Connectivity Priority List and the Comprehensive Upgradation Priority List. In a bid to ensure that its directives are followed, the Ministry has made clear that if MPs are not taken into confidence as envisioned in the guidelines of the yojana, then it will hold back funds for future projects. Towards that end, the Ministry has notified that funding requests for new projects should be accompanied by videographic evidence of the presence of the MPs concerned during the inauguration ceremonies for roads that were built under previous projects. While this in itself is an ingenious idea, the threat to turn off the aid tap, in particular, should do the trick for now.

Introduced under the BJP-led NDA regime in December 2000, the Centre-funded Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana aims to build all-weather roads that will connect remote habitations to the rest of the country. This will allow easy access to economic and social services, accelerate agricultural development and promote employment opportunities in backward areas. With its focus on infrastructure creation — just this past financial year 45,108.53 km of new roads were laid — this yojana is crucial to India's overall growth and development plans. One can only hope that the country's babus with their penchant for endless inefficiency and corruption will not come in the way of such progress.

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

THE CHOICE IS CLEAR

HIRANMAY KARLEKAR

Anna Hazare's movement against corruption has brought together those who want to see the system change for better. They must now contribute their mite.

The movement led by Anna Hazare has served the very important purpose of placing the issue of corruption at the heart of the national discourse. It has, however, also created the impression in vast numbers that the passing of a Lokpal Bill which is a clone of the Jan Lok Pal Bill drafted by Mr Hazare and his associates, will put all forms of corruption to an immediate end. This is not going to happen. The danger is that the consequent disappointment, which will be massive, will so demoralise people that they will again lapse into a mood of deep depression, resignation and inertia which will be difficult to dispel and, after a brief retreat into the woodwork, the corrupt will emerge and rule again.

It is important to remember this as also the fact that corruption is as much a societal phenomenon as it is governance-related. It pervades every sphere of life. Corporate corruption is as real as widespread as that of the governmental variety. The professions are no exceptions and their members who evade paying taxes are as guilty as officials who receive bribes. Even people like teachers and judges, who are supposed to be above the evil, are no longer always — and perhaps not even overwhelmingly so. Instances of teachers leaking out examination question papers, increasing marks for a consideration and senior academics passing off the work of their junior colleagues as their own, are too frequent for comfort. Judicial corruption has also been under the public scanner, though the judiciary as an institution remains the last resort of the people against administrative and corporate high-handedness and corruption and has a number of outstanding judges.

Given the spread of corruption through all strata and walks of life, it will require more than legislative and administrative action to end it. Mass upsurges, like the one triggered by Mr Hazare, are ephemeral. A comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach is needed. For that one needs sustained political action and popular pressure. That would require a qualitative improvement in Indian politics, which in turn would require more and more people of integrity and vision to join it.

The need for this becomes clear on recognising that corruption is rooted in the structure of India's administration, which has remained the same as during British rule. The Government's basic orientation then was towards the maintenance of law and order and revenue administration. Its powers were awesome and exercised from above. There was no constitutional and democratic accountability. The Indian Councils Act of 1861, which marked the first step in involving Indians in legislation and policy-making, did not provide for elections. Indians were appointed. The Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909, and the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935, rested on restricted franchise and gave very little powers to those elected to legislative bodies. The all-important matters of defence and maintenance of law and order were in British hands.

The massive concentration of power in the Government conduced to corruption. Subordinate police, jail and revenue officials were often corrupt. Things however, were kept within bounds from above by a Government which insisted on efficiency in law-and-order administration and maximisation of revenue collection, both of which could be undermined by corruption. The 'steel frame' of the administration was the Indian Civil Service, an elite cadre which often condoned — even rewarded —high-handedness by its members but had little tolerance for personal corruption. It had inherited the mantle of the Covenanted Civil Service of the East India Company, the remunerations for whose members were fixed with the declared intention of putting them "above temptation."

Corruption remained within limits in the immediate post-independence period. At the helm of governments at the Centre and in the States were the stalwarts of the freedom struggle known for their integrity and wisdom and most of whom placed the national interest above their own. The administration, led by the Indian patricians of the ICS who had played a crucial role in helping the political leadership deal with the trauma of Partition, communal riots, influx of refugees and the transition from colonial to national rule, also retained its pre-Independence character. Slowly, however, things began to change.

The stalwart leaders of the freedom struggle, most of them advanced in years when they assumed office after independence, gradually succumbed to gerontion. So did the tall poppies of the ICS and allied civil services. Simultaneously, the powers and functions of the administration expanded as the state became the principal instrument of economic development and social change. With powers, the opportunities of corruption and the temptations born of these also grew. Equally, development opened up new avenues of employment, professional advancement and new business opportunities.

Finally, the introduction of adult franchise changed the character of Indian politics in the short span of a couple of decades. The advantage went to people who could talk to the masses in their own idiom and mobilise their support. Equally, the masses turned towards leaders from their own caste, ethnic and linguistic groups. With the state playing an increasing role in development, those wielding political power, came to control access to the state's resources and their distribution. From this, use of political offices to line private pockets and also resort to the politics of patronage, was a short step.

The field was now open to carpetbaggers, particularly since the educated middle class, many of whose members had joined the freedom struggle because of the humiliating experience of colonial rule, now found the challenges of adult franchise politics a bit too much. Instead, they turned to the new opportunities thrown up by development. This abdication of its political role by the middle class has been a major cause of the poverty of India's political leadership.

Things, however, are changing. The middle class, particularly the younger elements of it, are no longer prepared to put up with the humiliation and extortion to which every citizen is subject the moment he or she steps into a Government office for some work. One can see their massive presence in the movement led by Mr Hazare. It will be a pity if disappointment makes them opt out again. Instead, they should think either of joining one of the existing political parties or forming a party of their own. Abdication is no answer. ***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

WHY IS THIS MAN WALKING FREE?

UDAYAN NAMBOODIRI

If Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is allowed to walk away into the sunset, then the very idea of India is in trouble. The former West Bengal chief minister must stand on the dock, held responsible for three decades of murder and corruption

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is fighting hard to win a second innings for his political career — not in Writers' Buildings, the seat of the West Bengal government, but as the public face of his embattled party, the CPI(M). As evidence of the murder, rape and mayhem committed by his cadre through three decades surfaced throughout July and August in the form of mass graves here, an arsenal there and a confession in yet another place, the former chief minister decided to do something about it. Justify.

On August 13, he shocked the people of Bengal by making a rousing speech in defence of Sushanto Ghosh, a former cabinet colleague, who was taken into custody when skeletons of proven Trinamool Congress supporters were found in the backyard of his ancestral house in West Medinipur district. Braving the monsoon downpour, which was followed by an equally torturous sunbake, Bhattacharjee thundered away for a full hour, denying and alternately justifying the mass murders. He forgot that the inconsistencies in his speech were all too apparent. "How can you reason with a demagogue?" an embarrassed second-rung CPI(M) leader remarked to me later.

Savour this: "They have arrested Sushanta Ghosh out of revenge for some incident that had happened 10 years ago."

Later, in the same speech: "This government (Trinamool) has set up commissions to investigate what had happened 40 years ago at Sainbari…. They are initiating commissions to probe the Marichjhapi incident, Ananda Margi incident. This is a revengeful government and is targeting our party and leaders like Sushanta Ghosh."

It was unbelievable that a man generally regarded as suave and moderate should harbour a belief system which supports the applicability of the statute of limitations for criminals. While he obviously lacks the perfidy to deny outright his party's role in the horrific murders of Keshpur, Gorbeta, Pingla, Saibari, Marichjhapi and Bijon Setu (recalled as the Ananda Marg massacre, 1982) — at least not up to now — he is shameless enough to demand that the masses which suffered humiliation and pillage overnight develop short memories.

Unfortunately for him, Bengal's newspapers and TV channels are not only resurrecting a shameful past, but bringing the new generation face to face with some uncomfortable truths. A lot of Bengali intellectuals these days are recalling how Adolf Eichmann, the infamous chief executive of the Nazi holocaust programme, was dragged before an Israeli court full 16 years after World War II and convicted. Even today, two former Nazis, both in their 90s, are facing trial for their individual responsibility in mass murder. The butchers who planned and carried out the infamous Srebrenica massacre were apprehended only last month and flown to the Hague for an international trial. Many of the architects of the Cambodian Communist holocaust of the mid-1970s are still in custody, awaiting trial.

The Bengali people, despite Mamata Banerjee's proclamation not to follow a policy of vendetta, are slowly realising where the convergence occurred between the CPI(M)'s political, economic and social policies. Because Buddhadeb condoned, encouraged and even fanned the criminalisation of his cadre, the entire fabric of life got corrupted. Elite Bengalis were the unwitting coxmen of the deceitful boat of Buddhanomics. This class, mirroring the attitude of ordinary Germans who after World War II pretended ignorance of the crimes of Nazism, looked the other way, or sometimes cheered, as Buddhadeb went his way rigging elections and letting ministers like Sushanto Ghosh and Narayan Biswas run amok. Bhattacharjee inducted as his minister of industries a common criminal, Nirupam Sen, with full awareness of his role in the 1970 Sainbari massacre in which a mother was forced by CPI(M) criminals to lick her murdered son's blood.

Buddhadeb not only let them be but also helped by instructing his cadre to provide the Kolkata chatterati maximum latitude in the expression of their selfish aggrandisement. Therefore, under his rule, Bengal had the highest concentration of economic criminals — whether "industrialists" who stole their workers' provident fund contributions or traders who thrived without paying a paisa in sales tax or civic dues. The result: a Rs 2,00,000 debt bomb inherited by the successor government.

We must make a distinction between the career of Buddhadeb as chief minister (November 2000 to April 2011) and his term as minister for police in the 1993-2000 period. The last 18 years, taken as a whole, made up the most paradoxical phase of Bengal's near history. The liberalisation of the Indian economy was a macro-economic wonder story and no doubt a small part of that flowed to West Bengal despite the CPI(M)'s obstructionism. But all the ugly manifestations of neo-liberalisation were visible in the state — deepening poverty, differences in living standards between income quintiles, destruction of agriculture, criminalisation of the polity, environment degradation hand in hand with urbanisation, etc.

What exacerbated the economic and social crises was the increasing insecurity felt by the Communists. The rise of a viable Opposition forced Buddhadeb to recall the traditions he had himself set in the 1980s. Political murders, election rigging and terrorisation of the masses became a way of life in rural and semi-urban Bengal. However, it is not that more mass murders and vote stealing happened in Buddhadeb's time than in Jyoti Basu's (1977-2000), but because Buddhadeb lived in the age of media glare, his got a bigger share of disrepute.

It is impossible to put a precise figure to the number of political murders condoned by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, either as police minister or chief minister or both. A calculus developed by state Congress leader (now irrigation minister) Manash Ranjan Bhunia, based on union Home Ministry figures, held that close to 20,000 people died in political incidents between 1977 and 2004. A more moderate sum was put out by Salman Khursheed when he was the AICC observer for West Bengal — about 9,000.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. Given that the police force, which he controlled since 1994, i.e. even under Jyoti Basu, was reduced to state of a partisan, private army of the CPI(M), the vast majority of the murders and mayhem were not even recorded. Gaurav Dutta, an IPS officer who served as SP of Midnapore (pre-bifurcation) was the most visible symbol of this degeneration of police professionalism, but there were countless others. Buddhadeb was intelligent enough to ensure that the police elite was fattened with privileges. Similar immunities were showered on the lower judiciary and public prosecutors. For the CPI(M)'s hapless victim, lodging a FIR was a near impossibility, what to talk of securing justice through conviction. Thousands of ordinary people roamed the paddy fields and open streets as political refugees through three decades of Communist rule.

Every nation which suffers a spell of totalitarian rule must necessarily reinvent itself through a process of social reconciliation focused on putting its society back on legal rails. Mamata Banerjee's policy to bury the past should not confuse forgiveness with forgetting. Prosecuting Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee would be an appropriate way of making the ordinary Bengali understand the might and awe of the rule of law And, if Buddhadeb is allowed to walk free, then there is a danger that with time, the crimes of Bengal's communist rulers would be reduced to a rumour. And we all know what happens to those who forget history.

--The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer, and author of "Bengal's Night Without End", New Delhi, 2006.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

THE SHAME OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY EXPOSED

SAUGAR SENGUPTA

Should Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee escape censure for the crimes of the CPI(M)? A Saturday Special focus

The timely explosion of the Anna bomb has kept one of the most shameful developments in India's recent history out of media focus: "kankalkand" (loosely translated as "Skeletongate") or the discovery of skeletons in mass graves all over West and East Medinipur districts of southern West Bengal. This provides clinching evidence that genocide was indeed carried out by the CPI(M) throughout its 34-year term which ended in May 2011.

Both the political satraps from whom Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee drew sustenance throughout his term, Sushanta Ghosh of West Medinipur (who held a Cabinet berth) and Laxman Seth of East Medinipur (the undisputed king of Haldia), have been implicated. Now that the wheels of the Law have begun trundling finally, things can only go downhill for Bhattacharjee and the denizens of his once violent empire.

Ghosh was once a rising star in the CPI(M) for having expelled any trace of the Trinamool Congress from his district. Now he is in deep trouble. He was arrested after DNA tests confirmed the claims of a Trinamool Congress supporter that one of the many skeletons unearthed in the backyard of his ancestral house was his father who, eyewitnesses said, was murdered in 2002. Ghosh is presently cooling his heels in judicial custody in Kolkata's Presidency Jail. The West Bengal CID is preparing a chargesheet of murder against him.

From June 4 when villagers of Malikdanga, a few miles off Benachapra residence of the Minister, dug out seven skeletons from a pit till early this week, the police have dug out the skeletal remains of about 31 people in West Medinipur alone. These are all believed to be the remains of Trinamool workers.

What is more embarrassing for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is the discovery of fresh graves in neighbouring East Medinipur as well, on badlands once dominated by strongman former MP Laxman Seth. Some of these were found inside the septic tank of a primary school in Nandigram and at least one was dated back to 2001. Anima Das, the wife of slain Subrata Das, who went missing in 2001, has named Seth and 51 others including Susanto Ghosh and West Medinipur CPI(M) secretary Dipak Sarkar in her FIR. The police have already sent in for DNA tests to establish the identity of the victim.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has claimed that there are "at least 55 more such skeletons" buried in various parts of West Medinipur. This signals bad days ahead for Ghosh, Seth, Sarkar and company. For decades these gentlemen held power of life and death over the people of the two Medinipurs. Now, the hunter is the hunted.

What does the CPI(M) do under the circumstances? Express regret? Go into hiding? No, it has launched a weak and downright objectionable counterattack, which is not finding buyers even in its own camp. Bhattacharjee said at a mass rally on August 13: "These are planned excavations, a politics of vendetta perpetrated by a fascist outfit drinking deep from the cup of SS Ray's Emergency regime."

Though Mamata Banerjee herself is exercising restraint, several senior Trinamool leaders have become vocal in demanding the arrest of Bhattacharjee. "What is he doing at Palm Avenue (the street in which the former Chief Minister lives)? He should be sent to jail and proceedings should be started against him in skeleton cases," demanded senior Trinamool leader and party chief whip, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay.

His logic is simple. If Manmohan Singh could be held responsible for the conduct of Kalmadi, Raja and Kanimozhi then there is no reason why Bhattacharjee should be spared. More so because he, apart from being the Chief Minister, doubled up as the Police Minister when the crimes were perpetrated.

"He pampered and patronised criminals like Seth, Ghosh and Majid Master. A polygraph test will establish it all," said State Minister Madan Mitra.

Bhattacharjee, meanwhile, has undertaken a complex strategy. He does not deny that the murders were the handiwork of his former cabinet colleague and senior comrade. But he tries to occupy the moral high ground saying that in his own time he did not embrace vendetta politics. "I did not arrest Mamata Banerjee when she led his men in vandalising the State Assembly."

That hardly washes. The Assembly vandalism Bhattacharjee referred to, happened in 2007 in reaction to the CPI(M) and CPI(M)-controlled police's non-stop atrocities in Nandigram. If Bhattacharjee claims to have "spared" the bitter Trinamool MLAs, then it could be equally held against him that he failed to convince the then Speaker, HA Halim, to withdraw the order to deduct the cost of the damaged furniture from the salaries of the Trinamool MLAs.

The Trinamool leaders are sure that Bhattacharjee had all the knowledge of Ghosh's shady deals like his involvement in a huge arms racket spreading as far as Bangladesh, Nepal and Munger districts of Bihar. They also have no doubt that once they get Buddha it would be easier to nail State party secretary Biman Bose because it was Bose who prevailed upon the then Chief Minister to ignore Ghosh's shady conduct.

The more worrying aspect is the growing feeling among the party's rank and file that a change is needed at the top. The vast majority of cadre and external sympathisers believe the CPI(M) can undertake an effective turnaround only by removing Buddhadeb and Biman Bose from their supreme positions and replace them with clean leaders like Abdur Rezzak Mollah, the land minister who had criticised the Singur and Nandigram deals.

Whether or not these leaders are punished for their acts, there is no denying that Banerjee has won the first round by politically mauling the CPI(M) after pinning it down. And why not? Because experience has taught her that Communists, much like felines, have nine lives. The skeletons which are literally tumbling out of the CPI(M)'s closet are giving her the legal route to eliminate the Marxists from their former strongholds. With the police now bending to please, she is certain to attack the CPI(M)'s power base using a mix of threat and inducement.

--The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer

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THE PIONEER

OPED

CRIMINALISATION OF CPM A FACT OF LIFE

KSHITI GOSWAMI

Professional criminals were drawn into the party fold because the Left Front government was fully aware that it was not delivering on governance. It was through terror that they dominated the democratic process and even Front partners were not excluded from this strategy

The large-scale recovery of arms and ammunition after the elections is quite disconcerting. I am sure it is not a good advertisement for Bengal which wants to invite investment. What has made matters worse is the bunch of skeletons dug out from various places, particularly from a place at Garbeta in West Midnapore, which has witnessed a number of bloody clashes over the past one decade.

The discovery of arms and skeletons is a source of embarrassment for the Left Front, especially the CPI(M) which is the biggest party in the Front and which took all major decisions when in government.

Though a section of the media and the Opposition attribute all the source of arms to the CPI(M) there is much exaggeration in their story as it is hard to believe that the CPI(M) cadres would be so naïve as to wrap such huge stockpiles of arms in party flags. The strategy is to put the local Left leaders behind the bars and take hold of the areas.

Having said that, the criminalisation of the CPI(M) cadre base cannot be denied and it is the leadership of the party which must take the responsibility for such degeneration. When I say criminalisation I have no hesitation to state that it took place in various layers. First a large section of goons came under the umbrella of the ruling party. They were involved in all kinds of crimes but the local party leaders ignored their backgrounds as it was decided to deploy them at different places for area domination and other political purposes.

The second layer comprised non-criminals who maintained liaison with the goons and who gradually took to promoting (building) business and utilised the party, goondas and the police to suit their own ends.

These were the people who joined the party perhaps over the past decade and extracted its juice and gave it the bad name. Here again, the leaders were responsible for having ignored their increasing influence in the party just because they were bringing funds and helping in area domination.

Incidentally, domination of an area is needed when your performance level falls. And there is no denying the fact that our level of performance fell drastically over the past 10 years. Lack of performance and ballooning arrogance affected the CPI(M) and with it the entire Left Front.

The problem of politics is that it is the honest and dedicated cadre and not the leadership that have to pay the price of the flawed steps taken by the party. And if thousands of party men are today rendered homeless or are subjected to inhuman torture or even death it is the CPI(M) leadership and no one else that has to be blamed.

The CPI(M) cannot evade responsibility in the Netai firing case or the Nandigram firing incident where the party men were directly involved. These incidents did a big damage to the Left Front. Questions have been raised on a number of occasions regarding my integrity as a Left leader. Many people have asked me as to why I did not come out of the Left Front government or why my party did not take up the several issues which cropped up within the Left Front during our years in power.

The fact is, I did often publicly criticise Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on a number of occasions and also stopped attending to my work at Writers' Buildings after the Nandigram massacre of March 2007. But then even in my own party I was cornered as the general opinion of the members was that we being a small outfit would not be able to survive independent of the Front or the CPI(M) as the Trinamool Congress would lick us off. So we did what a small partner would do: remain silent after registering our protests.

Within the CPI(M) too there were rumblings, but only one senior leader dared to speak out — land minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah. But soon he was reduced to a minority of one and was subdued. Even today he is being gagged whereas the party's lower level leadership would like him to assume a decision making position.

There is also a question as to why I did not take up things up with Jyoti Basu. In fact I did. I personally complained to him about how ruthlessly the CPI(M) behaved inside the Front and even outside it.

I asked for his suggestions and he said that the Front was made after years of struggle and that it would be wrong to break the Front. He said that most leaders of his generation had passed away and he was also on his way out. So he wanted us to remain united and try to steady the Front from within instead of breaking it. He also said that the irresponsible and foolhardy leaders would one day give way and a new leadership would come up. I wish that day comes soon.

-- The writer RSP leader and former Minister

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

A CARNIVAL CALLED INDIA

Wah India. Your myriad avatars, your million mutinies never cease to amaze. We try hard to hijack you. Some cry, "India is Indira". Others sing, "You are my Sonia". Still others chant, "Saffron Shining". Then comes civil society`s counter: "Anna is India". Yet you defy all labels. You`re that band baaja and political baraat marrying all tunes - Anna`s Ramlila marching song, Rahul`s rejoinders from Lok Sabha, aam admi`s halla bol. For you remain that battlefield where everything from roving mantris to reigning myths are challenged. And how deftly you go from Gandhigiri to Annagiri when power-wielders stumble from hera-pheri to hara-kiri!

Rewind to Gandhi. Who thought colonial India would turn into Free India thanks to the "half-naked fakir" Churchill once derided? Yet that civil disobeyer went to Buckingham Palace to meet the king in the freezing English winter dressed in a loincloth and sandals, remarking "the king had on enough for both of us". It turned out to be the sartorial equivalent of fasting. Ever since he punctured martial machismo, that man from Sabarmati hasn`t lacked fans. Ask Obama. He thinks Bapu`s the ideal dinner date.

And what of Incredible India`s incredible women? Who thought Nehru`s quiet daughter would not only become the only `man` in her kitchen cabinet but also be electorally chastened on an `Emergency` basis? Certainly not the Congress`s all-male Syndicate which believed a "gungi gudiya" PM would make politics a doll`s house. The `dumb doll` went on to put the fear of Indira into everyone from privy purse-holders to Pakistan`s macho Yahya Khan. Equally, who`d have wagered Indira`s quiet daughter-in-law would trump those who dubbed her Congress`s phoren Hand? Or betted Maya and Mamata would turn political He-Men Mulayam and Marxists into Ex-Men?

If gender bromides go bust, so do class- and age-related clichA©s. Many Anna supporters are middle class. So eat crow, those who said the middle class is such an apolitical navel-gazer that it won`t go vote let alone champion popular causes. And, no, our youngsters don`t just chase dollar dreams abroad when not swinging between Marx and Mammon at home. Haven`t they wedded Gandhian idealism with crusading consumerism, lapping up all that Anna merchandise? Who says New India is no country for old men? Septuagenarian Anna`s now a youth icon, cheered by protesters and picnickers, Bollywood-wallahs and dabbawallahs. Think: despite Singh-Isn`t-King and other netas avoiding the hippest headgear in town, the cost of "Main Anna Hazare Hoon" caps have zoomed like aloo-pyaaz prices in these inflation-hit times. What does that make India in these inquilaab-hit times? Priceless.

Political peccadilloes, fasting and feasting, lokpal and jokepal - India`s effervescent, tropical spirit makes a carnival of it all. Look at our record. Salt marches or independence days, spiritual yatras or national elections, cricket matches or hunger strikes, we midnight`s children laugh even as we cry (for) the beloved country. India meri jaan, here`s doffing a topi to you.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

A SEASON OF STRUGGLE

SUNIL KHILNANI

Across the globe, 2011 has been a year to rattle rulers and autho-rities. A quick survey reveals that revolt is afoot across a broad span of generations and places, and in service of a variety of purposes. We have seen the Arab spring, the street marches and battles in capitals from Athens to Madrid, the riots in London, the protests in Israel, and the demonstrations in Delhi.

Popular protest on such a scale and to such extent has not been seen for years. In fact, it takes us back to other eras. Some see parallels with the late 1960s, when, from California to Calcutta, students and workers mobilised. Others press further back, finding echoes of the uprisings that rocked Europe`s monarchs in 1848.

Both of these historical antecedents, inspired by utopian visions, ended in failure. Yet, both genera-ted libraries of interpretation - analysts seeking a thread that would unify the events into a single story. It was Marx and Engels, of course, who became the great theorists of 1848, building their view of world historical change on what happened at the barricades in Paris, in the squares of Sicily and the streets of Prussia. Equally, 1968 spawned radical philosophies galore, which have kept academics in business since.

Protest is always local, but theories seek a global compass - a pattern of discontent across cases. And naturally, 2011 is fast spawning its own theories. In a recent piece, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman self-parodically referred to his own `theory of everything` as he tried to account for what was happening and why.

Friedman sees a `globalisation of anger`, itself a reaction both to changes in the nature of the global economy and in communication: changes that left people cut off from the skills, knowledge and resources they needed to succeed in a new global economic order. Those left out were subject to governments that had turned miserly, but they were also, simultaneously, empowered by their access to instant information that could inflame and channel their frustrations.

There is no doubt that from SMS to Facebook to Twitter, grassroots protest is more easily mobilised today than it has been in decades. But mobilisation is not the same as motivation. Though the tools may be the same, the uses may be radically divergent. So the animating question should be: Is there in fact a common, unifying thread to these worldwide protests, as many would have us believe?

Take the London riots. London`s opinionators and theorists were in business last month as the streets of their city burned, filling TV channels with diagnoses of what was happening. For conservatives, the collapse of traditional values was to blame. Once the smoke cleared in Tottenham and Camden, they sniffed the reek of moral social decay. For those on the left, the root cause was widening inequality and social deprivation exacerbated by unregulated capitalism. The classical dichotomies of individual character versus social structure were back in play.

But to have watched the London riots unfold was to grow less and less certain of a single, driving narrative. Politics? Utopian imaginings? Urgent material need? The ethos of those evenings seemed to be brand avidity. The rioters had their eyes on quality goods - not your ordinary running shoes, but the limited-edition styles. They raced for the premium denim on the first-floor showroom, not the ordinary jeans at ground level. This was aspirational rioting - the politics was all logo. In their apolitical, self-regarding thievery, these rioters made the punk protesters of the later 1970s and early 1980s look like utopian visio-naries and philosopher kings.

We must take care, in retrospect, not to impose upon the London riots a profundity they did not have - or to connect them mindlessly to other protests elsewhere, whether the Arab Spring or the agitations that have brought thousands to the Ramlila Ground in Delhi over the past weeks. The Indian protests may not be as pure as their instigators attest, but they`re peaceful, for a start, and much more purposeful in their aims than the London eruptions. What could be plainer and more explicit than supporting a hunger strike to eradicate corruption? Premium denim doesn`t figure.

But there is at least one connection between Delhi and London and the other far-flung ruckuses of 2011 - a connection the commentators rarely mention, because it blurs their narratives. Those taking to the streets are not typically `the masses` of certain historical precedents, but members of the middle class. It`s as true of Anna Hazare`s ragtag bands of supporters as of the college kids and techie professionals of the Arab Spring. By the material standards of India or Africa, the so-called deprived of London are also relatively privileged, with refrigerators and microwaves at home and Blackberries in their pockets.

Before we set to our totalising global theories about the protests, it might be equally instructive to contemplate who hasn`t risen up in protest, and why. Have we forgotten the group of people who might have most reason to be angry - those most vulnerable to the effects of a corrupt society, those most wracked by the absence of government aid? For the truly poor, corruption at the Commonwealth Games is not the most pressing issue. Here at the end of the summer of 2011, are they better off for all the global tumult?

The writer is director of the India Institute, King`s College, London.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

VIEW

DIVERSITY CAN BREED CREATIVITY

There`s nothing wrong with the decision of the six new IIMs, as well as the ones in Lucknow and Kozhikode, to award special marks for admission to women and non-engineering students. The rationale behind it is plausible and individual educational institutions should be allowed to make experiments in affirmative action of this sort, as long as they don`t flow from government diktat. The IIMs in question feel that their admission process is skewed towards male engineering graduates, when greater diversity in the classroom would make for more academic creati-vity. Promoting women and non-engineering students with bonus points can inject much-needed diversity in classrooms.

The Common Admission Test (CAT) used to screen IIM aspirants is quite formulaic. True, given the massive number of applicants, it is practical to have a nation-wide common entrance exam as the first filter. However, the character of the CAT exam provides an edge to engineering students, a majority of whom are male. As a result, the thinking pattern of IIM students differs little. Giving girls and those from non-engineering backgrounds bonus points can offset the monotony and lead to vibrant classrooms. This is not unlike the affirmative action policy in US universities, where admission criteria for certain candidates are relaxed taking into account the extra edge that diverse backgrounds can bring in.

As long as affirmative action is the discretion of the institutes concerned, not a government mandated rule, meritocracy won`t be diluted. Educational institutes know what is best for them and deserve far greater autonomy over admissions. Besides, there is no rule that says engineers make better management graduates. Cross-discipline studies and interactions need encouraging to foster lateral thinking. Some giants of business, such as Steve Jobs or Richard Branson, owe their success to their ability to think out of the box. That`s something the IIMs should strive for.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

COUNTERVIEW

MERITS WILL BE SACRIFICED

Six new IIMs as well as the institutes in Lucknow and Kozhikode have decided to grant special marks for admission to girls and non-engineers. This is unfortunate in the extreme. If anything, the move comes suspiciously close to the policy of reservation - call it quota in a disguised form. While some may argue that there`s a need to add-ress the skewed gender balance at IIMs and to garner a diverse pool of talent, particularly from non-engineering streams, this shouldn`t be done through a policy of giving `grace` marks. That`ll accord unfair advantage to the targeted beneficiaries, many of whom may be non-deserving candidates.

Such a method is certainly not the way forward. For, if the aim is to engender diversity in the classroom, this policy won`t serve the purpose. All it will do is adversely affect academic standards as many deserving students may be deprived of a fair chance to compete on an equal footing. Our IIMs and IITs have created a reputation for promoting meritocracy. A seat in an IIM is coveted and fiercely contested by lakhs of MBA aspirants. So, the IIMs can`t suddenly blink at the need to attract the best and the brightest. To make academic curricula more diverse and courses less linear, they can instead remould selection criteria which, at present, are tailormade for engineering, economics and commerce graduates.

That will call for devising a selection procedure that goes beyond just assessing a candidate`s mathematical, logical and verbal abilities. The IIMs can take the cue from American universities which appraise the overall suitability of applicants, irres-pective of gender. They look at a student`s statement of purpose as well as analytical skills, not just GMAT scores. This automatically allows them to admit a diverse range of students without favouring any group over others. There`s no reason why our management institutes can`t emulate this practice.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

TO KEEP IT IN APPLE-PIE ORDER

The brain, heart and sinews of any Apple device are made by somebody else. Yet when they came together in the hands of Steve Jobs, the company's creator and resurrector, people queued up overnight for the privilege of being the first buyer of his latest electronic toy.

The digital revolutionary has done more than any other man in shrinking wardrobe-sized laboratory computers to fit into our palms. Apple's graphical interface computer brought college kids on board, its music players had the pre-teens tuning in, and toddlers can now doodle on its touch-sensitive tablets.

The icult worship around Jobs goes beyond the prosaic admiration that has made Apple, if just briefly, the world's biggest company. But it doesn't conceal the workings of an egotistic micro-manager who has been probed for dodging taxes. Apple today faces the existential angst of most personality-driven companies when the Great Leader hangs up his boots.

The Apple stock fell 5% after Jobs announced he would be stepping down as its CEO but investors were more concerned in 2004 when he first underwent surgery for cancer of the pancreas. In the seven years since, Jobs has lined up a big chest of innovative products and has also built an enviable second rung of leadership, with formidable reputations apiece. This and a pipeline of maverick engineering — Jobs himself holds 230 patents — should keep the company going for some time. History, however, shows Apple going downhill when Jobs was away, The $2.75 stock at listing in 1980 was trading at slightly over $3 in 1996, when Jobs returned 11 years after being booted out in a boardroom coup. Over the next 15 years of relentless innovation, Apple has climbed to $368 a share. The beast Jobs is leaving behind this time around is gorilla, not the chimp of the mid-1980s.

Apple is what it is today because it marries cutting edge hardware and software to provide the user an experience she hasn't had before. This walled garden approach could, however, be its nemesis. In an industry where innovation is a commodity, locking consumers into proprietary platforms is not a good idea.

Open source yields technological improvements on a scale no individual company can hope to match. Computer and cellphone makers have mostly burnt their fingers with home grown software. Costs of keeping up with Android, Google's free operating software for mobile phones and tablet computers, can be prohibitive. However brilliant the marketing, the iPhone and iPad are under intense pressure from cheap handhelds that use free software operating platforms. A large part of Jobs' halo is due to his marketing chutzpah, yet it can't face the onslaught of the price warriors.

Expensive itoys are yet to carve their territory in price-sensitive markets like India, which mark the new frontiers of the digital world. Jobs' creative genius has been a holding operation, a more conservative leadership at Apple will have to contend with the sobering reality of prices when his legacy begins to wane.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE PUNDIT

NOT A WHOLESOME VIEW

PRATIK KANJILAL

In these uncertain times, when even gold and silver are looking doubtful, Anna Hazare has brought us the most-valuable element of all — the element of surprise. No one anticipated that the grandpa-next-door could become a lightning rod funnelling the frustrations of millions. And until this week, none of the players in the game had any idea what was going on.

Something impressive, clearly, but democracy is about numbers, not impressions. It's about precisely how many people back and oppose a move, not how hard they push. We have an approximate idea of Hazare's support base but the government, the media and the movement itself don't know how many naysayers and fence-sitters are out there.

In the absence of that information, everyone was rudderless. The government and the Opposition were alternately sniping at each other as usual, pausing occasionally to fulminate about the threat to Parliament, their family estate. We mediawallahs were taken by the spontaneity of the movement and ignored the uneasiness of dissenters marginalised by region, religion or caste. Now we're going the other way, accusing Hazare of being supremacist and fascist. And his mass base has no patience for the details, even those of their own Bill. They're saying something very basic: "Oi! Do something! Now!"

Hazare agrees, but the parliamentary system requires protracted deliberation and bargaining. It does not offer immediate gratification. So Hazare wants to use the force of direct people's democracy to overawe representative democracy, an unfair project. With 1.3 billion people, India is not the Athens of Socrates, where every citizen could be heard on every Bill. We surrender our right to be heard to representatives for five years at a time — long enough for them to change their tune. The disconnect between the ruler and the ruled can be bridged only by disruptive protest — big enough this time to take us by surprise.

There are excellent folk remedies for the element of surprise. Sovereign among them is the right to recall, by which legislators who do not perform as advertised can be unseated. It's easier and kinder than toppling a government, but Hazare's movement has put it on the backburner for now. Equally valuable is the practice of voters directly lobbying legislators, without political intervention. It's catching on in India.

But folk remedies aren't enough. Yesterday, Ram was above the courts. Today, the public is above Parliament. Tomorrow, a new extra-constitutional demand may arise. We can decide their validity only by the democratic principle of numbers, but no one ever keeps count.

Could Aadhar do the job? Its authentication network is designed to deliver services and welfare to the public. Could it also pipe opinion electronically the other way through public polls on Bills, with voter authentication? It would certainly be easier for interested parties to access an Aadhar device than to travel to Delhi for a show of strength.

The result would not be a true snapshot of the national mind, for it would exclude huge populations. But it would be truer than media surveys and the claims of activists and politicians. It could inform legislators about the public will which they are elected to execute. And perhaps eliminate the element of surprise from lawmaking.

Pratik Kanjilal is publisher of The Little Magazine

The views expressed by the author are personal

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

BAD TIMING=BAD PRESS

ANIRUDH BHATTACHARYYA

Imagine the reaction if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh takes a 10-day vacation at an exclusive Rs 22.5 lakh-a-week resort even as Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement roils the nation? The country, the Opposition, the media, everyone, will go ape.

It's certainly difficult to visualise him vacationing anywhere, much less in such a setting, but for most American presidents it's par for the course.

When an earthquake rattled Washington on Tuesday, President Obama received updates while enjoying a round of golf at his favorite vacation spot of Martha's Vineyard, summer playground of the rich and famous. His rental residence there costs $50,000 weekly. It was also from the Vineyard that he monitored the turmoil in Tripoli. No information, though, on how that impacted his handicap.

Critics have been unkind to his vacationing ways. They probably have taken too literally these words of his: "I won't rest until businesses are hiring again, and wages are rising again, and the middle class is thriving again, and we've finally got an economy that works for all Americans again." He said that in February 2010, but has since sought rest coast to coast at places as varied as a national park in Maine, the post-oil spill waters of Florida and the beaches of his native Hawaii.

Even as he takes a break, President Obama can't catch a break. There may be nothing wrong with an American President enjoying some down time. It may actually be fitting since down time seems to well define the state of the American economy and the country's mood, too.

Indian leaders' vacationing habits are less regular. Late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi enjoyed brief retreats at Ladakh, Lakshadweep or Sariska. Former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee took time off in Manali or for healing visits to Kerala. There's very little information on the current PM's holidays, or those of his predecessors, though HD Deve Gowda snatched plenty of rest during Cabinet meetings.

American presidents utilising their leave of privilege is hardly limited to the current incumbent of the White House. Obama has vacationed for just over two months since he assumed office in January 2009. According to data gathered by CBS News, George W Bush spent six months of his eight-year tenure on holiday, usually at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, dirt-biking or clearing shrub. Bush was on vacation when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton took just 28 days off during his entire two terms.

But the man who wanted the word 'it' defined, even took his vacations based on pollsters telling him where the President should go without appearing elitist. So, off he went to the rugged mountain resort at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

On weekends, American presidents have a readymade retreat waiting for them at Camp David near Washington, DC. And it's not just presidents, Americans have perfected the art of the long weekend. During August and the Christmas season each year, the whole country appears to have collectively gone camping, having outsourced the functioning of the nation to call centres in Bangalore.

Despite putting up with the griping, Obama has been luckier than British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in Tuscany, Italy, as mobs of yobs pillaged London and beyond. As he attempted to resume the rudely interrupted holiday, by taking off for Cornwall, he had to rush back to 10 Downing Street as the Libyan crisis reached a flashpoint. Cameron's hectic schedule also included an afternoon off watching the English cricket team pummel India at the Oval. At that time, he said, "I hope no one will begrudge me an afternoon at the cricket. Particularly when England are playing so well."

The problem for Cameron, and Obama, and certainly the majority of India's Test batsmen, is that of poor timing.

And timing feeds into public perception. As American voters get antsy, and the economy keeps tanking, Obama can only hope that he hasn't earned himself a permanent vacation in 2012.

Currently based in Toronto, Anirudh Bhattacharyya has been a New York-based foreign correspondent for eight years

The views expressed by the author are personal

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

A FUSION OF EMOTIONS

GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI,

Collective nouns can be lovely, can be wicked. They can animate, they can annihilate. They are works of art. 'A pride of lions' is perhaps the most famous of collective nouns. No word other than 'pride' can capture the majesty of that being as it sleeps, wakes, wanders with grand unconcern in the sureties of his kingdom. The story is told of when Gautama Buddha once passed through his home town of Kapilavastu with his disciples. His young son Rahula watched the ochre-robed band from his palace's balcony. He asked his mother Yasodhara: "Which of them is my father?" Yasodhara replied: "He who walks like a lion."

My absolute favourite among collective nouns, however, is 'a murder of crows'. The sudden descent of boot-polish wings, the angled glancings of beady eyes, homicidal beaks and thorny toes on an unsuspecting squirrel or a nestling cannot be better described than as a 'a murder of crows'. Writing of the cheeky and wary Jungle Crows, which inflict casualties among the eggs and young of many birds, Salim Ali says: "These crows need to be closely investigated!"

Some collective nouns have an unbelievable loveliness to them. What can match for visual allure 'an autumn of leaves' or 'a bend of willows'? Other collective nouns move from beauty to wit, like 'a convocation of eagles', 'a shrewdness of apes', 'an aurora of polar bears', 'a quiver of cobras'.

There is another devastatingly apt collective noun: 'a barren of mules'. It reminds me of Krishna Menon speaking to students at St Stephen's College gathered for an after-dinner meeting. Typically 'zeeing' his 'esses', Menon directed this comment at a leading political idea of his time: "You zee, thiz idea iz like the proverbial mule, with neither pride of anzeztry, nor hope of progeny."

Collective nouns of more recent coinage describe human beings and their preoccupations as well. As one who has had to attend a tedium of committees, I find 'an agenda of tasks' altogether delightful. And I could give these (the nouns, needless to say) a hug: 'a pomposity of professors', 'a greed of lawyers', 'a scoop of journalists'.

Other collective nouns, in vogue for some time, could be refreshed. 'A clan of hyenas', is too dull and would have been better off as 'a drool of hyenas'. Likewise, 'a colony of wasps' is far too prosaic and, in any case, architecturally dated. Perhaps 'an atrium of wasps' would work better. 'A flight of butterflies' is too pat and could be felt on your fingers as 'a tremble of butterflies'. Similarly, 'an intrusion of cockroaches' is too academic and could open a drawerful of revulsion as 'a scurry of cockroaches'. And 'a colony of vultures' is too slummy. Far better, 'a stoop of vultures'.

One collective noun which is about no living thing, but a living moment rings true: 'a blush of embarrassments'. Another one, again, living, throbbing, pulsating, though non-living, is 'a tick-tock of clocks'.

We can hear a 'tick-tock' of time running out.

What are the clocks that are going tick-tock with such ferocious rapidity? Let me answer that through a set of collective nouns generated by thoughts drawn from recent days.

Jantar Mantar, April 2011: a cap of patriots, a sword of bravehearts, a banner of supporters, a matter of drafts, a fallacy of propositions, a danger of precedents, a question of principles, a gulp of anxieties, a gargle of inanities, a nod of yes-men, a prod of volunteers, a frown of activists, a furrow of academics, a chatter of reporters, a flash of photographers, a gawk of onlookers, a slice of pick-pockets, a slurp of vendors, a shimmer of sages, a blunder of mediators, a curse of cynics, a seizure of opportunists, a sigh of well-wishers, a chant of faithfuls, an obeisance of hopefuls, a stumble of blocks, a clearing of paths, a hail of triumphalists.

Lal Qila, August 15, 2011: a flutter of arrivals, a fort of conventions, a shiver of doves, a stripe of children, a banister of elders, a gradient of uniforms, a ramp of diplomats, a rampart of officials, a smile of front-rowers, a sneer of back-rowers, a clap of dutifuls, a drizzle of expectations, a hood of ministers, a yawn of spouses, a snooze of old-timers, a silence of the thoughtful, a prayer of the fearful, a promise of the hopeful, a lanyard of statesmen, a shower of petals, an anthem of citizens, a chorus of innocents, a sky of balloons, a cheer of supporters, a sneer of reporters, a debris of leavings, a picking of beggars.

Ramlila Maidan, August 2011: an ocean of heads, a captain of storms, a ship of hearts, a deck of guards, a stern of navigators, a flank of barnacles, a keel of grudges, a mast of hopes, a wave of pledges, a foam of soaps, a 'hey you' of allegations, a 'you too' of retaliations, a stream of callers, a steth of doctors, an ambulance of fears, a solution of lawyers, a conflict of statements, an area of agreements, a compass of path-finders.

Delhi, August 25, 2011: a finger of admonitions, a fist of retributions, a bulletin of concerns, a weighing of options, a draft of adoptions, a round of talks, a dotting of points, a joining of dots, a minute of dissenters, an hour of assenters, an amendment of MPs, a ground of deflections, a chamber of reflections, a bend of faces, a dart of distempers, a stumble of blocks, a sprint of efforts, a glimmer of hopes.

Delhi, August 26, 2011: a swell of hopes, a pool of regrets, a high of lows, a hum of sighs, a swing of moods, a flight of doves, a dive of hawks, a suspicion of twists, a twist of suspicions, a coil of doubts, a loss of gains, a gain of losses.

Delhi, August 27, 2011: we are a collectivity of nouns in ourselves. We think, speak, behave in ways that reflect all of nature's beings, not necessarily at their most elevated. A pride of lions sauntering across India would marvel at the bio-diversity of our conduct. And sighing, move warily forward.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and governor
The views expressed by the author are personal

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

LET US HEAR INDIA

Saturday will be a decisive day for our nation, declared speaker after speaker at the Ramlila grounds, and in one way they are at least slightly, correct. It is a decisive occasion — for Parliament to recapture the initiative. We need to be able to say, after the debate is done, that finally the richness of India's experience with corruption, and the varieties of opinion on how to deal with it, have been heard — instead of the your-draft-or-mine game that has played out so far. Our political parties cannot disappoint by descending into excessive wrangling or political manoeuvring: they must keep the debate elevated. It is good, for example, that the main opposition party appears unlikely to force a vote on the issue. What is needed is for those who are angry and disillusioned with Parliament, who feel that it is a body unable to take decisions on this matter because it is compromised or ill-equipped, to see a Lok Sabha that is willing to debate the issues in an informed and serious manner. There is no other way to respond to the sort of dismissive contempt that is floating around, much of it from the stage at the Ramlila maidan.

It is important to remember what is at stake on Saturday. It is not, as Team Anna would have it, the possibility of getting a handle on corruption — that will require effort, another wave of reform, and legislation that but includes a strong Lokpal bill that has been produced with sufficient input and considerable deliberation. No, what is at stake is the confidence that some in urban India have in the ability of the institutions of state to deliver, and reform, governance. Under UPA 2, which has chosen to neglect the urban constituency that swept it to power, the distrust of institutions has only grown, and this must be remedied. And the effort to remedy it must come from all parties, for no party benefits from a public climate in which politics is roundly condemned.

The prime minister's speech on Thursday, and Rahul Gandhi's speech on Friday, together with points made by the leader of the opposition in both houses earlier, show that our parliamentarians share a sense of the urgency of the occasion. "We must restore the credibility of politics and governance," Arun Jaitley had argued. That restoration can only come in the highest location of politics in the land, which is the Lok Sabha. And it must start today.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WORD FROM MUMBAI

The Reserve Bank of India's annual report was released on Thursday by the deputy governor of the RBI, Subir Gokarn, and it made for sobering reading. There were threats to growth, it warned: not just global factors such as weak external demand or high commodity and oil prices, but internal factors such as continual delays in project execution. As has been argued before, the state-caused inability to ramp up supply in the Indian economy means that inflationary pressure, whether or not caused by external factors, persists. The RBI appears to understand this clearly, talking about "the high and persistent inflation of the last two years," and adding that that monetary policy, while limited in terms of a first-order effect on the phenomenon, is still relevant in "curbing the second-round effects of supply-led inflation."

The RBI expects inflation to go yet higher in the short-term, and that, together with hardening interest rates, could well cause growth in 2011-12 to slow. Meanwhile, the RBI worries, government capital spending has hit a new low even as spending itself has gone up. So deficits might well increase and fiscal space could further tighten, especially if the economy slows more than anticipated, which constrains any attempts at stimulation through fiscal policy. However, the atmospherics with which the RBI surrounds this gloomy news are encouraging: it is necessary for it to create the reputation as a stern inflation-targeting central bank, and thus it is creditable, therefore, that it has signalled its continued focus on inflation even as growth comes under threat and fiscal policy seems cramped.

In particular, the RBI spoke frankly about the danger that a higher inflation level could be expected to be "the new normal." Clearly, the RBI does not intend to quickly abandon its hawkish stance on inflation: since March 2010, it has raised its most instrumental policy rate 11 times. The RBI does, however, have stern words for the government, which it indicates is not being sufficiently supportive in its actions. Two years of inflation have laid bare its "limitation in arresting inflation in absence of adequate supply response," it says. It is now up to the government to initiate second-wave reforms, the only remaining defence against inflation.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

ROMANCE OF THE RAIL

Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation is all set to inaugurate "Namma Metro" — the city's spanking new subway system, a plan that has been a glint in city-planners' eyes for two decades now, and has now materialised with the technical assistance of DMRC, and Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES). It is meant to work seamlessly with other trasit systems in the city, and the state's public bus sytem will provide feeder services to various stations. Its full length measures 33 kilometres, and it will weave through the Bangalore's densest commercial and residential areas.

As Delhi has discovered, a rapid transit metro is one of the wisest investments for urban spaces — they whiz people around without diverting expensive land in the process, and allow cities to grow in a compact way, rendering far-off places suddenly accessible. Transit corridors also push up the value of the surrounding land. Most importantly, the metro will take crazy pressure off Bangalore's roads; the once-idyllic town has been lately beset by the crush of cars and other traffic, and associated problems of pollution, accidents, high fuel consumption and frayed nerves.

Apart from the macro-benefits, riding the metro is a uniquely urban pleasure. It is the community of commuters that gives a city its tidal restlessness. A subway is freeing in many ways, it gives people who do not or cannot drive, the same mobility and autonomy as anyone else. A metro-car is an observational treat, as is the feeling of taking diverse fellow-travellers for granted. In some ways, a metro-car is a crucible of citizenship. Hopefully, this much-delayed project will be all that traffic-strangled, crowded Bangalore has been waiting for.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

MESSAGE FROM THE MAIDAN

SHEKHAR GUPTA

An interesting feature of this "Gandhian" anti-corruption movement, under the leadership of India's most famous Gandhian since Gandhi himself, is the total absence of any portraits of Gandhi in the hands of any processionists. The only figure from our freedom movement to feature on placards is Shaheed Bhagat Singh. The principled and philosophical contradiction between his methods and Gandhi's should be well known to anybody who did not flunk the history exam between Class VI and X. But that is not the story. When people are angry for good reason (as they are over corruption now), it does not matter in whose name they swear and whose portraits they carry. Because, any which way, their point is made.

But there may be a little wake-up call for our MPs from the history of Bhagat Singh's times. At least the MPs from the north and the Hindi heartland would remember the favourite revolutionary invocation of Bhagat Singh's campaign: "Pagdi sambhal jatta... Lut gaya maal tera".

A wee bit of history will be relevant here. This call to the jat (the land-owning peasant) to save his honour (pagdi, or turban) and land was first made by Bhagat Singh's uncle, Ajit Singh, to oppose a punitive land revenue imposed by the British on the peasantry. And if you failed to pay that cess (Rs 20 per acre, a huge amount then), your land was forfeited to the British. Ajit Singh was incarcerated along with Lala Lajpat Rai (later killed in a lathi-charge while opposing the Simon Commission) in the same Mandalay prison, in Burma, where Bahadur Shah Zafar had died in detention. Ajit Singh's movement succeeded, and the cess was withdrawn — but his nephew Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries embraced that pagdi-sambhal exhortation as a rousing battle cry.

But why are we digressing that far into the early history of our freedom movement? Particularly when what's going on is being hailed as our Second War of Independence?

It is relevant, mainly because in this convoluted and yet simplistic and trendy interpretation of our freedom struggle, the new war of independence is being waged against our own political class, particularly Parliament. From "mera neta chor hai" caps to Om Puri's stunningly crude condemnation of Parliament as peopled by "illiterates" and "ganwaars" (we are preferring the exact Hindi pejorative used by him, as the English translation, "rustic", does not capture the contempt of the original), the movement is now utterly anti-political and anti-Parliament. From demanding that Parliament rubber-stamp a pre-drafted law without any change and by a certain deadline, bypassing all "faltu" institutions like the Standing Committee, to gheraoing the homes of the MPs, the central impulse of the movement is that parliamentary processes and institutions are, if at all, a dilatory mechanism in the hands of cynical, corrupt and self-seeking netas.

This is now a strong — and growing — sentiment on the urban street. That is why it makes you remember Bhagat Singh's pagdi sambhal invocation. Because that should be the wake-up call now for our MPs, and indeed for the entire political class, without whom there can be no democracy — but who, with their laziness, cynicism and indeed corruption, are now in danger of losing their honour, as well as their "land", or their foothold in political power. This growing mood, at least in urban, upper-crust India is a rude reminder to the political class. A reminder that in focusing on vote-banks rather than on the larger common good, in treating politics as a hereditary avocation rather than competitive public service, and by themselves subverting parliamentary processes and institutions, particularly bipartisan institutions like the PAC and JPC, they have undermined the very structures of political democracy that bring them power, respect, and even wealth. For nearly three years now, since all of India saw bundles of currency being displayed in the Lok Sabha cash-for-votes scandal, our MPs have only indulged in acts that invite popular scorn and disgust. The writing off of an entire winter session; their inability to pass any bills; daily, nationally-televised obstruction and adjournments have all fuelled this popular disgust. So for them, our MPs, this movement is their "pagdi sambhal..." moment.

This week, after a very, very long time, it seemed as if the political class was waking up to the threat. If you watched the Parliament debate on Thursday, you would have only felt proud of that wonderful institution and not embarrassed. And what of your political class? The most stirring speech was made by a man called Sharad Yadav, an OBC leader who came in from nowhere, learnt political activism in JP's movement, went to jail during the Emergency as a student leader and emerged as a minister, and a brilliant parliamentarian. And he would not be one bit embarrassed if I underlined that he fully personifies Om Puri's description of "half our MPs" as ganwaar. Sharad Yadav is by no means anpadh (illiterate). He, in fact, has a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. But ganwaar, he would quite proudly admit to being. A line from his speech on Thursday, responding to attacks on Parliament, is worth a mention. "Without the wisdom of Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi," he said, people like him would not have been allowed to bring even their cattle to graze in Delhi. "This House," he said, "is the only place, where you can see the face of the entire nation", where Dalits can be seen as equals and where names like "Ghurau Ram, Garib Ram and Pakodi Lal" walk around as MPs. It is only thanks to Gandhi and his freedom movement that today a Pakodi Lal can come here, he said. A Pakodi Lal in your Lok Sabha? Does that answer Om Puri's description of a place filled with ganwaars? And if so, does that make you feel embarrassed? Mahatma Gandhi would have only been proud.

Parliamentary democracy is our biggest strength, and the greatest instrument of equality in a complex, diverse and unequal society. But, before it can argue with forces of corporate-style insta-solutions and indignant, impatient street-fixes, the political class has to make a quick return to old values. Political parties have to learn to keep talking amongst themselves even as they fight in the battleground of votes, ideas and ideology. Congress cannot treat the BJP as evil and unworthy of even speaking to. Similarly, the BJP cannot be so cynical as to block even virtuous legislation, or reform (like GST) just to spite the Congress. Because even when Parliament does function, when the floor of the House is used not to make or counter arguments or to pass bills, but to exercise lung-power and to jump to the well to earn one more adjournment, what impression does it convey to the street? Until now, only the Maoists used to describe our Parliament as a pig-sty. But if so many urban, educated Indians are now becoming equally disillusioned, it is not a moment too early for our political class to wake up.

sg@expressindia.com

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

TO CATCH A BRIBE

ASHUTOSH PRASAD

With the question of corruption dominating the national discourse, we need to realise that the Lokpal is a limited solution, and additional tools are required to battle this pervasive problem.

Recently, the chief economic advisor, Kaushik Basu suggested a way to reduce bribery, by decriminalising bribe-giving. Currently, bribe givers and takers are equally culpable, resulting in their shared incentive to thwart investigations. But what if only bribe-taking is criminalised and bribe-givers are unpunished and their money, in fact, returned to them upon successful prosecution? Perhaps then, he argued, bribe-givers will cooperate with authorities leading to a reduction in bribery.

The argument makes a lot of sense because it emphasises economic incentives for corruption. Indeed, there is a whole literature on "economics of crime" which argues that if the expected gain from a crime is outweighed by the expected cost, then criminal behaviour will be deterred. With respect to bribery, the expected cost of taking a bribe depends on the likelihood of being caught and the penalty if caught. Because the likelihood of being caught is small, some claim that a very heavy penalty is warranted to deter the behaviour. Prof. Basu's argument, however, focuses on the non-penalty factor — the likelihood of being caught. To the extent that modifying the law heightens the likelihood of being caught, in actuality or just in the people's perception, it will reduce bribery.

Note that the "likelihood of being caught" is a catch-all term that can be decomposed into things such as the likelihood of the bribe-giver making a complaint; the likelihood that the authorities will take action; and the likelihood that the evidence will be conclusive in a court of law. A debatable point is whether bribe-givers could collect enough incriminating evidence to recover the bribe, using numbered currency notes as suggested, or perhaps also tape and video recordings. In the hands of an amateur, this evidence may not be legally convincing. Furthermore, bribe-takers could work through intermediaries, making it difficult to collect evidence. Bribe-givers must also worry that while obtaining a conviction is slow and uncertain, the corrupt official can create mischief in the meanwhile. How much recourse is there for the common man from vindictive officials?

It is possible to address this concern about amateurish collection of evidence. Anyone asked to pay a bribe should contact police or vigilance authorities first. In the ideal situation, professionals then conduct the sting and the collection of evidence. Since the potential bribe-giver receives service, but never pays the bribe, the same incentives are created for reporting bribery as in the original suggestion. Rewards can be added to further encourage complainants to come forward. Another advantage is that the complainant can be kept anonymous; shielded from tortuous legal proceedings and vindictiveness.

Why doesn't this, the current system, work? What can be done to improve it? Here are two possible explanations, and two corresponding solutions.

First, is India really awash in officials demanding bribes? If it is, then the authorities do not need large numbers of complainants — they just need to interact with service providers and follow up with investigations. The implication of pervasive corruption going undetected and of corrupt officials being unpunished, is that vigilance authorities are either inefficient or corrupt themselves. If so, anti-corruption measures should focus on this bottleneck. The Lokpal could be efficacious here.

Second, it is possible that officials are not demanding bribes; and that instead of denying service, they are overwhelmed and inefficient. Then bribe-givers give bribes to get faster service rather than waiting in line. Consider a person who needs approval for a building plan. The approval will eventually arrive, but the person bribes the official for faster approval, or alternatively, builds the building without approval and bribes inspectors to look the other way. In this case, bribe-givers are hardly innocent.

For carefully selected cases where the latter category of corruption occurs, other solutions may be tried — the service provider should introduce a fast, time-guaranteed queue and charge a higher price for it. This would attract potential bribe-givers and convert the corrupt transaction into an honest transaction. It is done, for example, with sales delivery, passports and express mail, and it could work with services, permits, licences and so on. Extra money from the fast queue can improve the speed of the slow queue. Yield management, used in airlines, hotels, hospitals and other capacity constrained settings, can reduce bribery for limited seats in railways, buses etc., till more capacity is built. What this means is keeping a few seats available for last-moment, high willingness-to-pay customers. Instead of bribing they will hopefully pay the higher price.

Prasad teaches at the University of Texas, Dallas . His co-author Vijay Mahajan teaches at the University of Texas, Austin
express@expressindia.com

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

INDIA'S POST-GADDAFI WORLD

C. RAJA MOHAN

Preoccupied with the political crisis over the Lokpal legislation, India is paying little attention to the fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, the bloody turmoil in Syria, and the rapidly changing geopolitics of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Delhi's official response to these developments, especially in the United Nations Security Council, has raised some fundamental questions about the nature of India's multilateralism and its long-term strategy towards the Middle East, a region of vital importance to India. Last January, India began a two-year term as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, after a gap of two decades, amidst expectations that it will actively shape the global security agenda.

Nearly nine months after joining the UNSC, the much anticipated geopolitical élan of a rising power has been replaced by the image of a profoundly ambivalent power.

India abstained when the UNSC authorised the use of force in Libya last March. Delhi also sat on the fence when the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the Syrian government's human rights violations a few days ago. Delhi's unwillingness to line up against dictatorial rulers in the Middle East and its tendency to abstain in the UN forums has disappointed many quarters — at home and abroad.

How can Delhi construct a different and more credible approach to the historic political transformation under way in the Middle East? Delivering the Prem Bhatia Memorial lecture in the capital a few days ago, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon talked down the domestic and international chatter on India's "rise" and its "responsible" global role. Menon pointed to the many constraints — the nature of our domestic politics and the lack of strategic resources — on India's ability to define the outcomes in the Middle East.

Recognising one's own limitations is the first step in the construction of any credible international policy. In any case, India's voting pattern in the UNSC is not an exceptional one. Through much of the 1990s, China and Russia, permanent members of the UN Security Council tended to abstain rather than contest the Western primacy in the Middle East.

Despite Russia's more assertive foreign policy and China's rising clout in recent years, neither Moscow nor Beijing have been able to alter the terms of the current UNSC debate on the Middle East. Within the confines of a hard-headed realism, India must necessarily find ways to raise its profile in the Middle East and the international discourse on it in the UN. After all, the region is home to millions of Indian expatriates, the main source of energy and hard currency remittances, and a big market for Indian exports.

A more active policy in the Middle East does not mean that India simply tails the West. Being a "responsible power" does not mean voting with the Western powers every time they choose to intervene in the Middle East. After all, Western policy is not driven by altruism and is riddled with many contradictions.

At the same time, India can't rely on the knee-jerk Third Worldism of the past. There is no consensus today, either within the non-aligned movement or the Middle East, on the issues confronting the region.

On the UN Human Rights Council Resolution condemning Syria, Indonesia — one of the founders of the NAM, the world's largest Muslim nation, and a leading democracy — voted for the move. Of the five Arab members of the Council, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar joined the West in criticising Syria. Only Mauritania abstained.

The only consistent principle that matters for India is the relentless pursuit of national interest. In the past, India could afford to frame its policy towards the Middle East in terms of a broad set of principles. That was alright when India was largely marginal to the regional politics of the Middle East. Today, as India's interests continue to grow there, and the region confronts change after decades of stability, Delhi needs a more flexible regional policy that sheds the old shibboleths.

The old rhetoric about "Arab Solidarity" or opposition to foreign intervention in the Middle East makes no sense when Arab states are drawn against each other, and many states in the region are actively intervening in the affairs of others. India's policy in the Middle East can no longer be a prisoner to such notions as state sovereignty or non-intervention. In international politics, all high principles make sense only in a particular context.

As people seek representative governments, minorities — sectarian, religious, and ethnic — seek their rights, and majorities seek to overthrow prolonged rule by minorities, many deep conflicts in the Middle East are boiling over.

Many regional actors, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, are locked in a fierce contest to shape the regional order even as the West seeks to retain its regional primacy. Where does this leave Indian policy to the Middle East? Four propositions stand out.

One, what Delhi says in the United Nations must reflect India's interests in the Middle East, rather than the past voting behaviour in the UN. After all, multilateralism is not an end in itself, but only an instrument of national strategy.

Two, what India does in the Middle East is far more important than how it votes in the UN. Delhi's attitude to internal struggles within the nations of the Middle East must be guided by assessments of the durability of regimes, the ideological and political orientation of the opposition, and the impact of internal change on India's interests.

Three, as the region's internal and external balance begins to evolve rapidly, India must expand its consultations with all the great powers and regional actors. That is only one necessary part of a broader Indian regional strategy in the Middle East.

Finally, India can no longer limit itself to dealing with just Middle Eastern governments. Amidst great transformation of the Middle East, India must develop the capabilities to engage the many new political forces emerging in the region. For some in the opposition today are bound to become the rulers in the not-too-distant future.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE CLASSIFIED TRUTH

MRINAL PANDE

The truth about the Indian media's increasing reliance on revenues from news that has been paid for, has long been shrouded in half-truths, corporate denials and misleading information in carefully sifted reports sent out by regulatory bodies. While the national media, flush with high TRP ratings and advertising revenues, is patting itself on its self-righteous back for relentless coverage of the public protests against corruption in high places, it is also time for some plain speak on the actual operative ethics that are driving those ratings and revenues.

On Sunday, August 22, while the Anna andolan was at its peak, the city supplement in one of the biggest multi-edition Hindi dailies in India carried a whole page of classified advertising that extended support for the fasting Anna Hazare and his people, in its local pages. Smiling engagingly in the ads, leaders from small-town and rural India could be seen all across the classified section, extending their heartfelt support to Cause Anna and nestling cosily next to ads for reducing fat, increasing male potency and height. Almost all the ads carried the mugshots and mobile phone numbers of those that had paid for the insertions (one such worthy was even wearing a Main Anna Hoon T-shirt). Close examination revealed the ad-givers to be local builders, heads of religious trusts, educational bodies, regional organisations for migrant workers from Bihar and social workers heading various sanghs and sangathans to save Bharat (Bharat Bachao), and various RWAs.

Queries from colleagues and a bit of Internet surfing revealed that the gatherers of such ads are mostly stringers engaged by the dailies — whose main job today is not to gather news and rush it to the nearest "modem centre" servicing the area, but to identify untapped sources of ad revenue in rural and semi-rural areas . Come any major festival from Chhatth to Ganesh Chaturthi, Rakhi to Independence or Republic Day, and they are handed wads of coupons (parchees) and ordered to coax, cajole or threaten the local leader wannabes and money-lenders into paying for insertions that extend their good wishes (shubh kaamnayein) or fulsome praise (shat shat abhinandan) to their fellow citizens. Their remunerations as news-gatherers may be laughable (did you know, for example, that some of the largest Hindi newspapers in Bihar today pay those manning their "modem centres" around Rs 4,000 per month, while comparable wages for the MNREGA work in the state are Rs 5,400?), but the percentile bonuses from ad-gathering are burgeoning each day. With such bounty available, along with the clout a media ID gets you in small-town India, young men and women are queuing up to be picked up as unaccredited stringers.

Today, the cost of producing an all-colour Hindi daily with some 20 pages stands roughly at Rs 20 per copy, after adding the various commissions paid to agents and hawkers for distribution. Amazingly, the average cover price it sells at, in a highly competitive market, stands firmly around Rs 2.50. How, then, do the papers not merely recover their costs — but make historic profits? The answer lies in the team of underpaid, mostly unaccredited foot-soldiers being sent out to milk small-town India with clearly delineated revenue targets. The biggest beneficiary has been the Hindi media, straddling no less than 11 of India's most populous states. One learns also that all other major vernacular dailies are also recording an unprecedented boom in revenues.

How is this possible, you may ask. In fact, with the roles of editor and owner merging more and more in media that increasingly go public, priorities have changed drastically in recent years. We, however, remain in denial, and have been trying to treat the bipolar disorder it has created in the media with good-natured pleas from bodies like the Editors' Guild or the Press Council or stern admonishments from the CEC. The political animal has been quick to sniff this out and is now avidly courting the ubiquitous stringers. Gone are the days when small-town press briefings meant a few accredited journalists being invited, and given freebies like writing pads, torches or petty cash in envelopes. Today, from Bhagalpur to Chhindwara, you hear of local netas, governments and political parties donating staggering sums of money, air conditioners and TVs for local press clubs and favouring the chosen stringers with lavish gifts, ranging from motorcycles to laptops and plots of (mostly public) land. Even small-town dons with long police records are inserting ads in area pullouts on Rakhi (Bharat mata kee putriyon ko naman) or Republic Day.

The ultimate aim, you see, is no longer to gather news professionally and inform and educate the readers, but to beef up the bottomline and please the ad companies and the shareholders. Until this is understood and effectively addressed, no fervent pleas from the public or media bodies, or even that much-battered institution called the Parliament, will make a real difference to the multi-faceted phenomena that has been subject to casual scrutiny under the one-size-fits-all label of "paid news".

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist and chairperson of Prasar Bharati

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

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A FULLER FREEDOM NOW

ARUN MAIRA

Engraved on the portal of the North Block in New Delhi's Central Secretariat are the words: "Liberty does not come down to a people. A people must rise to liberty. Liberty must be earned before it can be enjoyed." They were written by India's British rulers from whom, led by Mahatma Gandhi, Indians earned their liberty.

The surprise of the Anna movement is the rising of young, middle-class, urban Indians, the most visible beneficiaries of India's economic liberalisation (its so-called "second freedom"), demanding action from the very government that claims credit for it. Using Gandhi's methods, they have risen to aspire for a third freedom: from corruption, from the government's apathy, from "chalta hai". Their energy has stirred hope that something fundamental may change at last, as well as apprehension that what will happen cannot be predicted.

Such is the dynamic of revolutionary change that shakes a system out of its rut. Those who have the strength to push the vehicle out may not have the skills required to drive a complex machine. So it is not certain how the vehicle will proceed . These are the uncertainties for Arab countries shaken up by the Jasmine Revolution. India is expected to be more stable, it has been through two big shocks before and has landed solidly on its feet: when the British left (with Churchill predicting that Indians would not be able to manage on their own) and when Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency. India's democratic institutions need reform, but their foundations are strong.

India's youth must bring change. What do they aspire for? For the past year, the Planning Commission has been consulting the people of India, especially the youth, about the challenges before the country and their solutions. Over 950 civil society organisations across the country have already given inputs. Young people in rural areas and small town and urban India have been consulted. These suggestions have been consolidated, along with inputs from organisations representing Scheduled Castes, minorities, women and other groups insufficiently included so far in growth, as well as business associations and state governments. A summary of all inputs compiled by young volunteers, called Listening to India, is posted on the Planning Commission's website.

The Approach Paper to the Twelfth Plan adopted by the Planning Commission on August 20, emphasises the need to improve implementation, accountability and governance, and reduce corruption. It points to ways to do this based on inputs received from the consultations and the Planning Commission's own analysis. Consultations with citizens will continue to shape the Twelfth Plan. Just as the Anna movement could mobilise youth through Facebook, the Planning Commission has also created a platform on Facebook to engage youth (and others) in a systematic, ongoing dialogue . The feedback is being provided to the over 150 working groups, each consisting of representatives of concerned stakeholders, experts and officials engaged with developing the many facets of the Plan. This online consultation process is managed for the Planning Commission by "India@75", an organisation of young people devoted to creating the India they want.

The first responses on Facebook — half from small towns — suggest the tasks ahead. Seventy-four per cent of the youth say that participation of people in local governance is essential for improvements in implementation and reduction in corruption. However, 89 per cent say they are not aware of their local area development plans. Moreover, as many as 44 per cent say they do not even know who their MP or MLA is! Therefore, the gap between the desired state of youth participation in bringing about improvements, and the current reality — the disconnect between the young and their elected representatives and with plans — is large. As the words on North Block remind us, the fruits of desired change — freedom from apathy, corruption, and unaccountable government — must be earned by actions. Demanding change is not enough.

"Be the change you want to see", said Mahatma Gandhi. Young people must take more responsibility for the world immediately around them. They can change the culture of "chalta hai" and helplessness. They can even put discipline into the chaotic traffic of Gurgaon. In cooperation with the local police, some young volunteers are wading into Gurgaon's unruly, peak-hour traffic gridlock, armed with smiles and placards requesting, "No third lane". By stepping out and reminding us to be the discipline that we complain is missing on our roads, they are bringing order.

A strong Lokpal will be a deterrent to corruption. However, it is insufficient for the systemic improvements the country needs. The Approach to the Twelfth Plan calls for efforts to be intensified to skill 500 million young people so that they can earn and contribute to India's demographic dividend. The young respondents on Facebook admit they also need capabilities to effectively participate in local governance. Therefore, along with vocational skills to improve their earnings, India's youth must learn constructive skills of citizenship too. It is inspiring that the vision of India's youth is not merely for more consumption and more GDP. They aspire for a less corrupt and more just society. As they step out, they should remember that this will not be a sprint, but a marathon, for which they must have the stamina.

The writer is a member of the Planning Commission

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

A FULLER FREEDOM NOW

ARUN MAIRA

The writer is a member of the Planning Commission

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE ARMY IN KARACHI?

RUCHIKA TALWAR

The army in Karachi?

As violence continued to rage in Karachi, Dawn reported on August 23 that Pakistan's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had asked the heads of TV news channels for video footage of recent violence, and directed the chief secretary and inspector-general of Sindh to submit details about them. The president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Asma Jahangir, as well as the president of the Sindh high court bar association, were summoned on Friday to assist the court. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has offered to "extend all-out support" to the Supreme Court in its investigation, reported The Express Tribune on August 26.

Pakistan's PM does not appear keen to ask the army into Karachi, as some are demanding, reported Dawn on August 22: "Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is of the opinion that a military action in Karachi is not a solution to the law and order problem in the city and says that the issue can be resolved with the 'optimal use of police and Rangers'." The lawyer and former PPP stalwart Aitzaz Ahsan, meanwhile, appeared to suggest an army operation in Karachi, according to the Daily Times of August 23: "'There is no harm in calling in the army to restore peace in Karachi... nobody should be afraid of an army operation, as it would be carried out under the supervision of the Sindh civil administration.' Ahsan cited the example of the UK and India, where the army was called in whenever the civil rulers felt that only the army could help out in resolving the issue. He maintained that peace could not be restored in the provincial capital until an operation would be conducted to deweaponise it. We must consider this option seriously..." The News had earlier reported army chief Ashfaq Kayani's statement that the army would "come up to the expectations of the people of Pakistan if need be." He also reached Karachi on August 25 to "assess the situation," the paper reported.

Taseer's son abducted

The Express Tribune reported on August 26 that Shahbaz Taseer, the son of the assassinated former Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, was abducted early Friday. Reportedly, four men on motorcycles pulled him out of his car after blocking it on a road in Lahore. Shahbaz's brother Shehryar was reported by Dawn as saying that the family had been receiving threats from the Taliban; Taseer's family has been in considered to be in danger after he was shot by a religiously zealot in his personal security force for suggesting modifications in Pakistan's blasphemy law.

Minority report

The Express Tribune reported on August 26: "In a bid to give non-Muslims greater representation in parliament, President Asif Ali Zardari has signed an amendment in Senate election rules to reserve four seats for minorities. The amendment in the Senate (Election) Rules, 1975, came in compliance with provisions of the 18th constitutional amendment, which envisage four seats for non-Muslims, one from each province. Each provincial assembly will elect a senator in the next Senate polls, scheduled for March 2012. Although 10 seats are reserved in the National Assembly for minority members, there is no representation for minorities in the 100-member Senate."

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SOVEREIGN MISTAKE?

While the government remains stubbornly committed to not privatise PSUs, it now proposes to increase the PSUs remit by way of a sovereign energy fund. On the face of it, the idea is a good one. India's rising energy needs, especially with rising incomes and increasing urbanisation/industrialisation, are far above what domestic sources can supply. While importing is the obvious option, having your own oil/gas fields lowers uncertainty and, in some situations, even keeps a check on costs. That's what has been proposed in the past and is, once again, doing the rounds—a $10bn sovereign wealth fund, made available to PSUs, to be able to buy energy assets overseas.

The fund has been opposed in the past on the grounds that, unlike China, India doesn't own its forex reserves. But once you classify them, the 'hot' reserves which can flow out quickly are relatively small, so a $10bn fund isn't much of a risk. What needs a bit more thought, though, is why the fund should extend support to only PSUs. ONGC and other PSUs have already spent more than R60,000 crore to buy overseas assets, so the plan is to give them some more money to do this.

At the outset, it has to be pointed out that the government is not really giving these PSUs anything—even if this is an outright grant, keep in mind that oil PSUs spent R78,000 crore in just 2010-11 to subsidise the sale of petroleum products on government instructions. But that aside, the real issue is whether the money is spent best by PSUs and whether the PSUs are dynamic enough to make good purchases. One issue in the past has been that, given the need for the government's consent for big purchases, bid details have sometimes leaked out; the necessarily bureaucratic structure of PSUs also slows decision-making. In the past year, the private sector has also made big purchases of energy assets—Adani Mining, for instance, bought an Australian mine for $2.7bn. It may be a good idea for some part of the sovereign fund to be channelised to the private sector, either by way of an equity share or by way of soft loans. On a separate note, just like opening up the oil sector to private firms raised the level of discoveries quite dramatically, the government should consider doing this for the coal sector.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SANCTITY OF CONTRACT

When the government was arm-twisting Cairn into accepting ONGC's demands before it cleared the Cairn-Vedanta sale, many pro-reformers including this newspaper argued that the government must honour its contract. The shoe's on the other foot now, with leading private sector firms asking the government for help in renegotiating contracts they have signed. The government should not accept these demands. If it does, this will open up demands, from even within the government, that any project, such as a PPP awarded for electricity distribution, that is viewed as unfavourable be cancelled/renegotiated.

At the heart of the issue is the Indonesian coal mines purchased by firms such as Tata Power to fuel their ultra mega power projects (UMPPs). With the Indonesian government dramatically raising the cost of coal exports, these UMPPs are now unviable and want the government to raise prices—the UMPPs were awarded on the basis of the lowest bid made by firms for the power they'd supply over the next 25 years. The power ministry's stand is that if there is an escalation clause in the agreement, that will be implemented, but nothing beyond this can be offered. Industry, on the other hand, argues that this is a special situation and will affect the project as well as the Indian bankers who have lent to the project. While this sounds reasonable, the problem is that it encourages firms to bid aggressively to win projects and, having won then, press for a renegotiation on precisely these kind of grounds. If a decision is taken to bail out the UMPPs, the danger is the signal this will send to prospective investors. If the UMPPs are instead re-bid by the bankers and another firm comes in, it may still be willing to offer power at the same price as it will buy out the original owner's equity at a substantial discount. Even if the new bidder wants to sell the power only at a higher price, the old bidder still loses a part of the money he has invested—which is the lesson of capitalism.

What is, of course, true is that the single-part tariff bid that the power ministry introduced some years ago, where the power producer has to take a call on the fuel risk for 15-20 years, was always a bad idea since it is not possible to either anticipate or hedge such risk. Those in the government/Group of Ministers that cleared this have to go back to the drawing board to figure out just how they expected this to work. All future contracts, whether for UMPPs or smaller power projects, should do away with the single-part bid criterion. Needless to say, if power regulators don't allow, as they are at the moment, even legitimate fuel price hikes to be passed on to consumers, even the two-part tariff bid won't work.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

GREY HAIR'S BACK IN FASHION

KRISHNAMURTHY SUBRAMANIAN

What is the ideal age group for CEOs in Indian firms? The days of managers in their 40s taking over the CEO positions are getting shorter and shareholders and corporate boards are increasingly looking at hiring more CEOs in the 50- to 55-year age group. Grey hair, wisdom and experience seem to be back in fashion. Of the big new appointments, Wipro's CEO TK Kurien is 50 as is Tiger Tyagarajan of Genpact. In fact, the increase in CEO age reflects a global trend towards hiring older CEOs. For example, among the S&P 500 firms, while the typical CEO was about 52 years in 1992, in recent years, the typical CEO is about 55 year old. Furthermore, the percentage of new CEOs over 50 has been increasing every year.

Since optimism is a valued trait in a leader, CEOs at all ages have to be willing to hear the bad news over and over and still see a silver lining. But good leaders don't turn a blind eye to the data without good reason, and the data about corporate leaders indicate that age matters a lot more than CEOs and CEO experts think. There is a leadership sweet spot that falls in the 50s and early 60s.

While CEOs almost never get the job at 72, there are those who are effective at that age and beyond. Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has crossed 80. Walter Zable, CEO of electronics manufacturer Cubic, is 95. Marriott International CEO Bill Marriott is 79. Kirk Kerkorian, CEO of Tracinda, is 93. Financier Carl Icahn waded into the fight between Microsoft and Yahoo! at 72. T Boone Pickens is weighing in on the energy quandary at 80. Late Sidney Harman, who died recently, retired at 88 as CEO of audio equipment giant Harman International, where he had long been the dean of S&P 500 CEOs. Dinesh Paliwal, 51, replaced Harman as CEO four years ago. Under such youthful leadership, stock in Harman International has fallen 63%. The oldest five S&P 500 CEOs left are 77 to 79, practically wet behind the ears.

However, as a group, the S&P 500 companies run by the youngest CEOs have been outperforming those run by the oldest. Of the 27 CEOs of S&P 500 who are 47 and younger, 23 have been CEO since the start of 2007. Those 23 stocks are down an average 2.8% over 19 months versus a 9% decline in the S&P 500 index. The six companies with CEOs who are 72 and older are down an average of 21%. Thus, it seems that indeed leadership sweet spot falls in the 50s and early 60s. There is a reason for this: Good leaders are crafted from tough times, especially failure. The necessary experience rarely comes before 50. Research finds that such traits as perseverance, integrity and trust have nothing to do with age, but that conflict management and negotiating skills improve over time.

In the Indian context, the increase in CEO age stems from the fact that with globalisation, CEOs' essential challenge is to manage vastness since greater business complexities and greater firm size require sound judgement and foresight. With an increase in complexities, efficiency and innovation come into play more than ever before. In particular, globalisation as well as the concomitant increase in the size of Indian firms has increased manifold the complexities involved in managing a typical Indian firm. While globalisation has considerably increased the number of factors that influence a CEO's decision making, the increase in firm size has meant that a lot more is at stake for every decision that the CEO makes.

Research in the US shows that selecting a wrong CEO can damage the organisation as a whole and can cause depletion of talent at the top of the firm. As a consequence, we find that in the US now, 62% of all S&P 500 CEOs have earned an advanced degree beyond their undergraduate degree (this includes MBAs, other master degrees, PhDs, etc), when compared to less than 50% in the 1990s. Similarly, since 2000, the percentage of top 100 CEOs who followed one functional path (general management) throughout their career has decreased from 25% to 8%.

With the increasing complexities in Indian firms, it is safe to assume that these findings extend to the Indian context as well. The ability to manage complexities may be a function of age since complexities lead to potential team conflicts. When compared to a relatively simple situation, a complex situation is more likely to be interpreted in very different ways by different people. As a result, team members are more likely to differ in their interpretations of and solutions to today's problems than those a decade ago. As a result, the conflict management abilities conferred by age may matter more today than a decade ago.

The author is a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago and is currently faculty in finance at the Indian School of Business

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WINNING THE AEROSPACE TECH BATTLE

DEBA R MOHANTY

The latest Sukhoi T-50 prototype—PAK-FA—a twin-engine fifth-generation stealth jet fighter aborted a takeoff at the recently held MAKS Airshow outside Moscow on August 21, 2011, after four days of successful demo flights. While two prototypes of PAK-FA have cumulatively made 48 flights since January 29, 2010, it will be important to know the reasons for this mishap.

A reasonable comparison between the T-50 and its counterparts emanating from the West, for example the F-22 Raptor, denote three primary pointers. First, fifth-generation aerospace technologies, primarily involving improvements in stealth, super cruise, composites, engine thrusts and avionics, are in demand, although some argue that improved unmanned systems could eventually replace these big birds in the future; second, inter-twined escalated costs and innovations put a premium on the buyers whose numbers are shrinking and hence a fierce competition among the producers; and third, there is less visibility in technology diffusion than what is claimed by the producers.

India has recently decided to partner Russia in a joint project known as Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) project. It is to be noted that the FGFA will be a derivative of T-50 PAK-FA, which effectively rules out an Indian option of going for either the F-22 Raptor or a possible partnership for the F-35 JSF. As recently as on August 8, the minister of state for defence, MM Pallam Raju, answered a parliamentary query on the status of FGFA: "A Preliminary Design (PD) contract has been signed between HAL and Rosoboronexport, Russia on 21st December, 2010 for implementation of design & development of Prospective Multi-Role Fighter (PMF) Aircraft programme by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) jointly with Sukhoi Design Bureau (SDB) of Russia at a cost of $295 million. Full scale Design & Development work will be taken up under a separate contract. Presently a requirement of around 250 Fighter Jets with induction in Indian Air Force from 2018 onwards is envisaged". The reported cost of 250 such fighters will be anything between $25bn and $30bn by 2030.

As PAK-FA's eventual success will heavily impinge the FGFA, it is time to evaluate India's decision in an objective manner. On the positive side, six pointers are placed for further consideration. First, the need for involvement in a fifth-generation technology programme for India is a logical step forward, not only for possession of an adequate number of frontline fighters in its aerospace arsenal but, more importantly, for its indigenous fighter programme like Tejas that necessitates a graduation to the next level. Second, comparative costs and need-based rationalisation of technology options would place FGFA as a reasonable choice vis-à-vis existing products in the global market. Third, a possible Brahmos-like joint venture for FGFA as envisaged between India and Russia would be the second of its kind, attributes of which would be far more valuable than any other joint technology project executed thus far. Fourth, the Indian 'arms card', defined as the 'abilities to utilise financial strengths to gain industrial and technology dividends', can woo the western countries to offer similar defence related high-tech projects in time to come. Fifth, FGFA is likely to take the bilateral scientific and industrial communities to a new level of involvement, beyond mere exchanges of technical notes and licence production. And last but not the least, fifth-generation technologies have been largely confined to an action-reaction cycle between the West and Russia. As a passive entrant, India could eventually aspire to be a player in the game.

However, such optimistic projections are hindered by limitations at the ground level. First, existing Indian aerospace capabilities are limited, except for a few pockets of excellence like in avionics and composites. Second, the Indian involvement in the FGFA project is very limited, considered to be less than 25% in design and development. Even within design and development, its contribution is limited to a few areas like navigation system, cockpit display, critical software and composites. Third, learning and integrating experiences from Tejas, Kaveri and Su-30MKI and thereby complementing a project like FGFA could prove to be a difficult proposition.

Fourth, even though the comparison between PAK-FA and FGFA is considered to be somewhat similar to the comparison between Su-30M (for Russia) and Su-30MKI (for India), much would depend on how the preliminary design works progress. It would be interesting to see whether India goes beyond limited contribution to get involved in aero-engine, airframe or similar complex technologies. Fifth, a state-blessed FGFA project leaves almost no leverage for aspiring Indian private contractors to get a reasonable share of the pie. How much work would players like Mahindra Aerospace, Jubilant Aerospace, Taneja Aerospace or Dynamatic Technologies get from the FGFA remains to be seen. Even Indian small and medium enterprises will remain as ancillary suppliers to the prime contractor (state-owned HAL forms the Indian side) for the project. And last, much of the design and development work, including innovation, will be confined to the project leaders like the DRDO, HAL and Bharat Electronics Limited.

A project like FGFA is a rarity, like Brahmos, that India can ill afford to lose. Prudence would demand employment of a realist strategy of engagement by India in convincing the Russians to expand the scope of involvement, encourage the Indian private players and must consistently strive to gain as much knowledge as it can.

The author is a senior fellow in security studies at the Observer Research Foundation. These are his personal views

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

NEW GLOBAL THINK TANK SET UP IN HONG KONG

A prominent Hong Kong business family has set up a think tank to look at global economic issues in the latest attempt at developing a world class research institute in Asia that can compete with those in North America or Europe

The Fung Global Institute was established on August 25, Thursday, and will look at global issues from an Asian perspective as economic power increasingly shifts to the East.

As Asian economies have grown, new think tanks have sprouted in the region. But limits on democracy and free speech in many Asian countries mean few have produced research comparable in quality and influence to counterparts such as the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, Canada's Fraser Institute or Britain's Chatham House.

The Fung Global Insitute said it is recruiting experts from around the globe to provide business leaders and policymakers with research that aims to "help shape and advance international dialogue on Asia's growing influence on the world economy."

Michael Spence, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, will chair the think tank's academic board.

The institute is set up with an endowment from the Victor and William Fung Foundation, a charity funded by and named for the two brothers behind trading company Li & Fung Ltd. It will look at four main themes, including global supply chains.

Li & Fung Ltd. is one of the biggest suppliers of clothing and other consumer goods sourced in Asia for Western consumers. — AP

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

DON'T HANG THEM

Preparations have begun at the Vellore Central Prison for hanging Murugan, Santhan, and Perarivalan — convicted for their involvement in the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Jail officials have fixed September 9 as the date for the executions. The mercy petitions of the three were rejected by President Pratibha Patil earlier this month, 11 years after they were filed, and the Union Home Ministry has notified her decision to the Tamil Nadu government. Of the three, Murugan and Santhan are Sri Lankan Tamils. They were core members of the LTTE team that carried out the ground work for the assassination, acting as its conduits for money and messages; and Perarivalan, an Indian, was charged with buying the battery cells used in the belt bomb worn by Dhanu, the suicide bomber who carried out the assassination. He also bought the battery for an illegal wireless set the assassination squad used to communicate with the LTTE in Sri Lanka. All three were convicted and sentenced to death for murder and criminal conspiracy, along with Nalini, who was granted clemency in 2000. The assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was on the comeback trail two decades ago, shook India. The monstrous crime, months in its planning and cold-blooded in its execution, deserves the harshest civilised punishment. Capital punishment is a throwback to a medievalist bloodlust that has no place in a modern criminal justice system. The sanction of law does not mitigate the cruelty of taking another person's life. It has been The Hindu 's consistent stand for decades that, regardless of person, place, and circumstance, India must abolish capital punishment. The just punishment for crimes such as the Rajiv Gandhi murder must be a lifetime in prison without any possibility of remission.

Globally, an increasing number of countries are tending towards abolition of the death penalty. Ninety-six have done away with it, and 34 are abolitionist in practice by observing official or unofficial moratoria on executions. India too has not carried out any legal execution since 2004, though every year the courts add substantially to the numbers who face the threat of execution. That the government is suddenly eager to fast-track death penalties that it has sat on for years may be no coincidence. But hanging a few condemned prisoners is not going to redeem the UPA in the eyes of the nation. The case of the three LTTE operatives on death row at Vellore offers an opportunity to put an end to the death penalty without in any way going soft on their crimes. The government must seize it by commuting their sentences to life, extending this to all other death row prisoners as well.

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THE HINDU

ICONIC JOBS

Steve Jobs could connect the dots and how. Apple Computer, which he co-founded with Steve Wozniak in 1976, has been a world-beating success under his visionary leadership. It soared from its start as a garage venture into a technology giant with a market valuation of $350 billion, and an unmatched reputation for inventing disruptively brilliant gadgets. Apple's orchard has been sprouting wonderful things starting with the Macintosh computers and going on to the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, each testifying to the value of fine minimalist design and excellence in performance. What makes the legacy of Mr. Jobs remarkable in the fast-changing world of consumer electronics is his ability to come back to the core of innovation after fighting tough battles, and set the bar higher. Neither a 12-year absence after his 1985 exit due to an internal power struggle nor serious health setbacks seemed to curb his spirit. Now that he is stepping down as CEO, the question naturally arises — can Apple maintain its pre-eminence without the boss at the helm? The answer would seem to lie in the leader's own philosophy of life and work.

Mr. Jobs, who was raised by working class parents, did not graduate from college. But he continued to learn. He listened to intuition. He is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in more than 230 awarded patents or patent applications. Talent must be allowed to speak and experiment with ideas, even if every move is not bound for immediate commercial success. Mr. Jobs has a timeless message for everyone — the only way to do great work is to love what one does. A second powerful message from the 56-year old tech wizard is to learn from failure. Mr. Jobs is on record that his departure from Apple in the mid-1980s was one of the best things that happened to him — the heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of becoming a beginner once more. He proved himself all over again before returning to the company. Perhaps even more extraordinary is his triumph over life-threatening health challenges. Yet, as events show, indomitable spirit must also defer to the constraints of physical ability. Today, legions of fans look differently at music, video, and the web with each wave of innovation at Apple. The iPad tablet computer is the latest. They will look for the same game-changing impact in future products, an expectation that incoming CEO Tim Cook will have to meet. In a competitive future, Apple will have put its trust in itself. As Mr. Jobs told Stanford University graduates in a 2005 commencement address: "You have to trust in something. Your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." A fine thought from someone who has lived it.

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THE HINDU

INDIA 2011: THAT 1980S FEELING AGAIN

HASAN SUROOR

Casting a glance back at how India appeared to the outside world just a few months ago is rather like looking at grainy footage of yesteryear: a booming economy, IT whiz-kids making waves all over the globe, top ranking in international Test cricket, the ICC Cricket World Cup in the bag, Bollywood on the roll. It seemed India couldn't get anything wrong. All the good news fit to print was coming out of India. And set against the crisis in Pakistan, lurching from one embarrassment to another, the Indian "miracle" looked even more stark.

The British media never quite seemed to get enough of this "new" and "happening" India. For many leading journals, it became the default cover story whenever they ran out of ideas. The Economist produced two special India editions within a span of a few weeks ("Contest of the century: China V India"; and "How India's growth will outpace China"). New Statesman had its latest India cover only last month, with the poser: "Should we fear this new superpower?"

But that was "then." Fast forward and the headlines these days are about India's "stalled" economic reforms; high inflation; speculation about the political fallout of Sonia Gandhi's illness; the 4-0 "whitewash" in cricket; and, of course, the popular "revolt" against corruption, dubbed the "Indian spring."

"It feels like the bad old 1980s again," said an Indian expatriate.

Extensive media coverage

There has been extensive British media coverage of social activist Anna Hazare's campaign with front page reports and photographs topped by special commentaries by familiar India "experts." One London daily ran a full-page report under a four-column, screaming headline: "The grinding routine of corruption that drove ordinary people to Hazare's side."

For a creative take, some newspapers have turned to young Indian novelists. The Guardian carried a breathless front-page dispatch from Chetan Bhagat. Its opening line was: "At the time I write this, millions of my countrymen are on the streets, fighting for a strong anti-corruption law. Many more are glued to their TV sets, watching developments as the initially defiant Indian government looks on track to eat humble pie."

In the Financial Times , another young novelist, Rana Dasgupta, extolled Hazare's "fearlessness" and "Gandhian tactics." These were "very bad times" for India with millions of Indians "tired of watching a corrupt, swaggering political class taking the best for itself."

"Only in a bad time would a movement such as Mr. Hazare's elicit such widespread and emotional allegiance," he wrote.

The so-called "Team Anna" will not be pleased by a lot of what has been written about their leader by some very sober commentators. He has been widely ridiculed for describing his campaign as India's "second freedom struggle," and for attempting to appropriate the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. His own often crude and authoritarian methods, such as meting out corporal punishment for drinking, and his opaque links with divisive and intolerant groups, have also come under scrutiny.

Arundhati Roy's critique in The Hindu of the Hazare campaign has been widely quoted in British newspaper reports from India.

"Booker star leads growing backlash against graft protests," reported The Times , citing Arundhati Roy's article in which she criticised Hazare's campaign for its "aggressive nationalism" and "draconian" methods. Her criticism, it said, was "echoed by other columnists but the backlash is unlikely to stop the momentum behind what is becoming a mass movement."

Much of the criticism of Hazare has centred on his bid to cast himself in the image of a latter-day Gandhi. Patrick French, the author of India: a Portrait , called it a "farce."

Writing in The Sunday Times under the headline "Firebrand in Gandhi garb leads middle class India to revolt," he said: "Anna Hazare, the Gandhian crusader, is not so much an imitation of Gandhi — the 'mahatma,' or 'great soul' — as an imitation of his later imitators. In the decades since independence in 1947, India has seen a procession of latter-day saints claiming to be completing the great man's work. For years Vinoba Bhave dressed in the Gandhian outfit of a white dhoti and shawl, and persuaded landlords to give their spare fields to the poor. Jayaprakash Narayan's popular agitation in the early 1970s provoked Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister, to declare a state of national emergency. Now we have Hazare. Following his release from prison on Friday, he said: 'The fight for freedom has started. India is still not independent.' His followers, largely vocal members of India's assertive new middle class, are delighted."

James Lamont in FT pointed out that until barely six months ago Mr. Hazare was "an obscure civil society leader in India's western state of Maharashtra,'' with a reputation for teaching "morals by tying young offenders to trees."

A profile in The Observer highlighted worries about his "populist contempt" for institutions, such as Parliament, and his "apparent authoritarianism," pointing to his call "for corrupt officials to be hanged." It said his "vision of an India of teetotal, vegetarian rural communities" appealed to "India's right wing."

"So too does his faith," it added.

Reservations about Hazare's campaign notwithstanding, the current turmoil (not to mention the stuttering economy and the white-wash in cricket) has taken much of the shine off the so-called "New India."

It may not be like the "bad old 1980s," but certainly this is not how "India 2011" was supposed to turn out.

The current turmoil has taken much of the shine off the so-called 'New India.'

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THE HINDU

GETTING THE REGIONAL ACT TOGETHER

M.K. BHADRAKUMAR

An appreciable level of seriousness underscores the government's thinking on pressing ahead with the bid for iron ore blocks in the fabulous Hajigak mines in Afghanistan as well as to sponsor the Steel Authority of India proposal to set up a steel plant in that country. The Hajigak mines hold an estimated reserve of 1.8 billion tonnes of iron ore. The "hands-on" interest shown by the new Foreign Secretary, Ranjan Mathai, in the progress in the bidding process testifies to the new thinking. From the Indian policy perspective, the Hajigak project has three dimensions.

The project, quite obviously, stands at a junction where foreign policy intersects national policies. National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon said in New Delhi recently: "Our primary task now and for the foreseeable future is to transform and improve the life of the unacceptably large number of our compatriots who live in poverty, with disease, hunger and illiteracy as their companions in life. This is our overriding priority, and must be the goal of our internal and external security policies. Our quest is the transformation of India, nothing less and nothing more."

Looking back, an esoteric Afghan policy conceived in the ivory tower in the classical mould of the "great game" in the Hindu Kush never really made sense for India. Things, after all, need to add up in life. When Russia supplies helicopters to the Afghan government, it makes the United States buy them at market price from Russian stocks, and servicing and repairs will be met from a trust fund set up by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to that end.

NATO's war is related to Russia's own security as well as its "near abroad." Yet, when the western alliance (or the U.S.) uses the Northern Distribution Network to transport supplies for the troops in Afghanistan, Russia levies a transit fee, estimated to be in excess of $1 billion. Such realism makes sense. Again, the Pentagon, although neck-deep in the uncertain war, did undertake an exhaustive study of Afghanistan's multitrillion-dollar mineral wealth. Indeed, has there ever been a "pure war" in history since Alexander? Hopefully, the Hajigak project will be a "leap of faith" also for the Indian strategic pundits. It is senseless to pursue politics without economics. This realism has long been in coming in our regional policies — be it toward Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bangladesh.

Second, New Delhi is beginning to look beyond the din of the war into a future that seems misty. The Hajigak project is located in the central Bamyan province, which is relatively stable, but it can be optimally realised only if peace arrives in Afghanistan. So what lies ahead in Afghanistan? The U.S. is finding itself in a strategic cul-de-sac and the Taliban pushing the NATO commanders into an "increasingly reactive operational posture," as a former Pentagon analyst, 'Chuck' Spinney, blogged recently, where they are reacting to events rather than moulding them. Indeed, the Taliban has switched gear and is focussing on exhausting the NATO forces and paralysing American willpower "by inducing our [U.S.] military to over and underreact to an unfolding welter of widely dispersed insurgent attacks." In a brilliant analysis, Spinney added: "The probable result is that the U.S. will not leave Afghanistan on its own terms but on its adversary's terms … other than reversing the troop withdrawal and escalating the conflict with yet another troop surge, the only way out of the trap is to negotiate a political settlement with the insurgents … The goal should be one of establishing conditions for the emergence of a neutral and prosperous Afghanistan … It is too late for American leaders to be adhering to the primitive idea that one can only negotiate from a position of strength abroad and economic strength at home — both those bases of power have been blown."

Without doubt, the Taliban is demonstrating great skill in adapting itself to the changing conditions. Its recent operations testify to the impressive reach of the insurgency and a loss of initiative for the U.S. From this point, small decentralised insurgent groups can be expected to create havoc when the American troop withdrawal continues. Fewer and fewer forces will be available to counter them. There is also the great danger that somewhere along the line the Taliban might do a "Khobar" on the NATO. It took just a single team of suicide bombers belonging to Hezbollah Al-Hejaz in October 1983 to attack the famous Khobar Towers in Beirut, where the U.S. Marines were based, and kill 241 of them. This, in turn, compelled President Ronald Reagan to order the troops home post-haste.

In sum, the new thinking in the government on the Afghan situation, as was manifest during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Kabul in May (and presently over Hajigak), has come not a day too soon. Delinking the Indian policy from U.S. strategies in Afghanistan was long overdue. As indeed the need to keep communication lines open with all Afghan groups while dealing principally with the Kabul government; scrupulously avoiding taking sides in that country's fratricidal strife; not even remotely contemplating a military deployment; and, most important, doing all we can to ensure that Afghanistan does not become an arena of conflict with Pakistan. The indications are that much ground has been covered in this direction. Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar's reference to Islamabad's "outreach to Afghanistan and India" in the same breath, in her recent speech at the National Assembly, conveyed a positive signal. This brings us to a third point. How do the Indian regional policies adapt to the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan?

In a nutshell, the U.S. retreat should encourage India to be more active in its regional policies. If one thing is absolutely certain about the Hajigak project, it is that India's involvement in it — or, for that matter, in any Afghan or Central Asian project of large scale — is one hundred per cent predicated on the climate of relations with Pakistan and Iran. Pressing ahead with the Hajigak project would seem to convey a degree of optimism that the improving relationship with Pakistan is sustainable and could possibly be taken to a qualitatively new level of cooperation. Similarly, it also presupposes, perhaps, that new life can be breathed into the insipid ties with Iran. These are hopeful signs.

What has been lacking at the policymaking level is a conceptual framework of regional cooperation. This is evident from the predicament inherited by Mr. Mathai as regards a possible mechanism to evacuate iron ore from Hajigak. The options being considered are through a Pakistani land route and/or through the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran. Evidently, for this to happen, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran ought to form a hub of regional cooperation. Clearly, such a hub has immense potential, be it in terms of energy, market, mineral resources or manpower. But the ground reality is that we have a long way to reach that goal.

Most certainly, Mr. Mathai asked a pertinent question: how do we evacuate iron ore from Afghanistan? A land route via Pakistan is theoretically possible but it will mainly have to be through the Iranian port of Chabahar. That being the case, do we factor in adequately the importance of India's ties with Iran, which are in great disrepair? The fact remains that India hurt Iran's core interests and thereafter subjected the relationship to benign neglect. It could afford this misadventure because it had no economic ties worth mentioning with Afghanistan or the Central Asian countries. Alas, India failed to evolve coordinated policies toward Central Asia in the post-Soviet period. And the appalling failure to exploit our enormous soft power to build the sinews of an economic relationship is all-too evident. Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Prime Ministers fly back and forth every now and then, but no one regards India as a serious player in the region.

However, things can change when India gets full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The American rhetoric often spoke of a Great Central Asia strategy aimed at rolling back Russian and Chinese influence in that region by bringing it closer to the Indian market. By deciding instead to work with Russia and China and the Central Asian countries within a regional framework, India has made a significant policy decision. The diplomatic challenge now will be to put in place the underpinning to galvanise India's economic ties with Central Asia once the SCO membership gains traction. This underpinning principally involves robust ties with Iran and pressing ahead imaginatively with the normalisation process with Pakistan. In sum, India's Hajigak challenge is to get the act together in its regional policies by evolving a strategy of mutually beneficial cooperation with Afghanistan and Central Asia, built on predictable ties with Pakistan and Iran.

(The writer is a former diplomat.)

By deciding to work with Russia, China and the Central Asian countries within a regional framework, India has made a significant policy decision.

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THE HINDU

TRANSFORMING CHILD NUTRITION

LAWRENCE HADDAD

Over the last 15 years, India has posted unprecedented economic growth rates. Only China has grown faster. India has emerged as one of the most important rising global powers, but it also has one third of the world's undernourished children and one of the highest rates of child undernutrition in the world. Undernutrition causes 35 per cent of under-5 child deaths, impairs learning outcomes, increases the likelihood of being poor and is linked to illness or death during pregnancy. India is estimated to reach its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) nutrition indicator by 2043. China has already met its goal, halving its 1990 rate of underweight a few years ago. For Brazil, the Goal will most likely be met by 2015. Why is such an economic powerhouse struggling to reduce undernutrition?

Is India's economic growth pro-poor enough?

The decline in India's poverty rates compares well against the more lauded performance of China. Over the period 1981-2005, China's poverty rates declined from 40 per cent to 29 per cent, while India's rates declined from 60 per cent to 42 per cent (both represent about a 30 per cent proportionate decline). Studies find that economic growth continues to reduce poverty, but is not reducing poverty's cousin, undernutrition. Why is it so?

How strong is the enabling environment for undernutrition reduction?

Could it be that India's economic growth is preventing it from reducing undernutrition because of a weak enabling environment for nutrition improvements?

For most countries we would expect agricultural growth to have large impacts on the nutritional status of children. But the latest most authoritative study concludes that agricultural growth in India does not seem to have an impact on child undernutrition.

What about food and poverty programmes? An evaluation of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) by the Indian Planning Commission in 2005 concluded that the majority of subsidised food does not reach its intended recipients. On the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), the evidence is mixed. A recent systematic review of employment guarantee schemes finds two studies from India. One of these shows a positive net impact on household expenditures; another shows a negative net impact. The Midday Meals Scheme tends to be evaluated positively in terms of child growth, but it does not help infants in the two-three-year age group who are the most vulnerable to nutrition insults.

Discrimination against women in South Asia has long been thought to be one of the key drivers of the high levels of infant undernutrition in the region — levels that are well above those in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Studies show that low status of women is responsible for a significant, but not a majority, share of the difference in infant undernutrition rates between these two regions.

India has a system that is ranked significantly below those of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Professor K. Srinath Reddy and his colleagues note that the Indian public health system spends less than 1 per cent of GDP, and 80 per cent of health expenditures are incurred out-of-pocket. They call on the government to increase spending to six per cent of GDP by 2020 and outline actions needed to strengthen the system.

On sanitation, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India accounts for 56 per cent of the world's total cases of open defecation. We know that infection rates are powerfully associated with such unsanitary conditions, leading to an increased need to ingest nutrients and fluids and a depressed appetite.

Social discrimination is a powerful exclusionary factor in many Indian States. Research following children over time finds that being from a Scheduled Caste or a backward tribe substantially increases the probability of a child being stunted — and persistently so.

If the underlying context is not strong for economic growth to generate undernutrition reduction, can India's nutrition interventions overcome these barriers?

How strong are the country's nutrition interventions?

The coverage of key nutrition interventions in India is patchy. Interventions on infant and young child feeding practices cover 25 per cent of the population. Access to iron-rich foods and vitamin A supplementation rates are in the 30-40 per cent range depending on the State. The main nutrition intervention, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), has a positive and significant impact on infant nutrition, but at a cost that is four times higher than elsewhere. The Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) programme pays community health workers to reduce infant and maternal mortality, control specific diseases, and improve young child nutrition. So far no evaluations are available to assess its impact on nutrition status, but other evaluations suggest that stronger recruitment and support systems need to be put in place to assist these crucial activists in the fight against undernutrition.

How strong is the governance of nutrition?

Given the multiple opportunities for investing in nutrition and the multiple ways that nutrition status can be undone, it is vital that there is a nutrition strategy backed by strong leadership. Brazil has done this successfully, leading to dramatic declines in hunger and child undernutrition rates. Going by available information, the government is not well supported to do this; and is not sufficiently pushed to act strategically.

First, nutrition data are collected every five to six years. This is too infrequent to track changes and respond to events. Second, because there are so many moving parts in any nutrition strategy, the government needs to use nutrition diagnostic tools to prioritise and sequence action to improve child growth, in the way it does for economic growth. Third, this variation in contexts is also matched by variance in nutrition status. There are many bright spots in the fight against malnutrition (for example, the recent Karnataka Nutrition Mission) but the incentives to analyse and learn from them are weak.

This lack of data and strategic analysis also diminishes the effectiveness of Indian civil society to mobilise around nutrition. For example, the Right to Food Campaign's push for a National Food Security Act makes important demands, but even if some of them are met, they will need transparent monitoring of resource flows to promote accountability of all stakeholders.

Looking forward

At current rates India will meet its MDG target by 2043 rather than 2015. Economic growth is poverty-reducing and this should help undernutrition reduction in the long run. But the current environment is not very supportive to nutrition. Action is needed to:

make agriculture more pro-nutrition by focussing it more on what people living in poverty grow, eat, and need nutritionally

experiment with cash-based alternatives to the TPDS

promote community led approaches to sanitation

increase coverage of essential nutrition interventions in the context of a stronger public health system

focus ICDS resources more on children under two, on severe undernutrition and locate centres where most needed

continue the fight against gender and social exclusion

But most importantly, India needs a national nutrition strategy with a senior leader within the government who is empowered to implement that strategy. Successful implementation needs civil society to play its part, helping shape and deliver the strategy and promoting greater transparency and accountability in the fight against undernutrition.

In the context of rapid economic growth, persistently high levels of undernutrition may seem like a curse but, as has been outlined here, there are many things that can be done to lift the spell. The most important thing is the commitment to do so.

( Lawrence Haddad is Director of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and President of the U.K. and Ireland's Development Studies Association. He is an economist; his main research interests are at the intersection of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. He will deliver a detailed version of this argument in an address on September 2 at the 3rd Britannia Nutrition Foundation symposium in New Delhi .)

India is struggling to reduce its rate of undernutrition. What it needs is a national nutrition strategy, with a senior leader within the government empowered to implement

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

NOTHING'S FREE IN CHINA

Freedom is just a word for nothing left to lose, sang Janis Joplin. If she were alive today, she and her song would have surely been banned in China because she used the word "freedom". The sensitive Chinese find the term very subversive and have been scouting around for all songs which have it and proscribing them. Lady Gaga, who no doubt looks menacing to the Chinese, has earned the Communist Party's wrath for mainly two songs. In one, she ends the song with a Spanish line that translates as O freedom, O love... which definitely has the potential to overthrow the system; while the other is no less sinister, since it has the dangerous words: This is my prayer/That I'll die living just as free as my hair.
In the bad old days, party censors were touchy about references to matters like Tiananmen Square, Tibet or the Dalai Lama because these were seen as ways to meddle in the country's internal affairs. Human rights was of course a big bugbear. Lately, however, Beijing has become extra-touchy. Just a few months ago any online search for the word "jasmine" was blocked, as it was seen as a reference to the "jasmine revolutions" in West Asia and North Africa. God forbid a florist wanted to check the flower's prices; he could be hauled off to jail. What next? Arresting someone for ordering the film Born Free for nice family viewing on the weekend?

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

GENERALLY SPEAKING

FARRUKH DHONDY

"Where is the girl who stole the sunlight?
Burnt to a crisp, she's gone without trace-
We treat them as deities, twinkling and bright
Though we know stars are only explosions in space."
From The Angle of the Dangle by Bachchoo

The best place to lose a grain of sand is on the beach. The best place for Osama bin Laden to hide was in a compound close to the people who were supposedly hunting him down.
The latest conspiracy theory on his capture and execution is ingenuous and intriguing, maintaining that Bin Laden and his retinue were apprehended by the Americans altogether elsewhere and then smuggled into the compound in the military town of Abbottabad. The Americans then followed through with the staged landing of helicopters, the deliberate destruction of one of them to obviate the danger to the heroic American squad undertaking this operation and the enactment of the encounter in the bedroom, the execution and removal of the body. The theory acknowledges that a watery grave was the final resting place of OBL (fish be upon him!).
The conspiracy theory is ingenuous in its construction, disingenuous in intent. The world has so far conjectured that the Pakistani Army either colluded in Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad and that elements of the Armed Forces knew all along that they were sheltering the terrorist, or that the Pakistani Army had a failure of intelligence and really didn't know that Bin Laden was sheltering in their backyard.
The Army Chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has taken the hit. The Pakistani government pleads ignorance of Bin Laden's presence and pleads guilty to a failure of intelligence. As the slogans on the rickshaws in Pakistani cities after the incident said (in various ways in Urdu and Punjabi): "Shoosh, be quiet, the Army is asleep!"
Either way, Pakistan's American sponsors, or American allies in the international line-up against Islamist terror, will be displeased, sceptical and are even now asking hard questions. An internal enquiry, already enquiring, may come to some conclusions. These may contain some truth or they may prove to be a complete obfuscation, known in the enquiry trade as "a fix and a whitewash".
The Pakistani government's favoured option is inefficiency rather than connivance and the international double-cross it implies.
Our conspiracy theory overrides both. It's the Americans who, suspicious of Pakistan's feeble commitment to the anti-terror cause, set out through this Machiavellian plot to bring disgrace or suspicion upon the Pakistani Army. The Army is therefore neither guilty of double dealing nor of inefficiency. Allowing American helicopters to use its skies has been sanctioned before.
To her credit, Carey Schofield's Inside the Pakistan Army, an account of the eight years that this English writer spent in the ranks and on the frontlines of conflict in that country, bravely starts her book with a bald statement of this dilemma. It must have been difficult for a writer, whose commitment to and affection for the institution, operations, personnel and spirit of the Pakistani Army is more than clear, to acknowledge in her introduction that she leans to the failure of intelligence option.
Inside the Pakistan Army is the first portrait of an institution which has governed the 63-year-old country for two-thirds of its existence and has to be seen as a chief bastion against the spread of Islamism in the South Asian theatre. It features interviews with the major players as the themes and narratives unfold. It ought to interest the specialist and the lay reader.
In a breathless introduction Schofield outlines the several paradoxes the Pakistani Army presents. Is it complicit with and encouraging terror or fighting it? Through several narratives of Army offensives against insurgents, mainly in the tribal regions, she comes to the compelling conclusion that several commanders of the Army — she boldly names them — approved of a policy of buying off the warlords of the insurgency.
Others, such as Gen. Faisal Alavi, whose tragic story she presents in detail, the head of the Special Forces, Pakistan's Force de Frappe, believed that paying warlords would only strengthen them and reinforce their ambition of de facto rule over the tribal regions and territories. The danger of the establishment of a Shariac state was evidenced when the Islamists took over Swat and began seeping southwards, even threatening Islamabad.
Alavi, in pursuit of his conviction that the Army if better equipped, trained and led could and had to beat the insurgents, set up official co-operation with the US and the UK special forces, such as the SAS, making material and strategic alliances. While he was at this task briefly in Hereford, rival factions within the Army connived to have him sacked. They influenced Gen. Pervez Musharraf to believe that Alavi had in some serious way broken ranks and been disloyal. Moreover that he had brought the Army into disrepute through his liaison with a Pathan lady who seems to have been a "broad Generaliser", so to speak. Mr Musharraf dismissed Alavi and soon after the protection afforded to him as SF commander was removed, he was ambushed and murdered.
Schofield's account deliberately avoids the larger question of why Pakistan has not generated its own form of sustainable civil democracy. Is the Army the only competent and coherent body that can rule a country conceived as Pakistan was? Is that competence and coherence, not least through the evidence of this book itself, in question today?

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

INDIA NEEDS ANNA. ALIVE.

SHOBHAA DE

At the time of writing (11th day of the famous fast), Anna Hazare is still alive. That statement sounds crass… crude… shocking. It is meant to. I think we have all lost the plot. And in the cacophony of all the noises and voices, we have conveniently overlooked the one person who is at the centre of it all — Mr Hazare. He has been reduced to a sideshow, a mascot, as his overzealous keepers continue to exploit his frail persona and use Mr Hazare as a bargaining chip. Mr Hazare's health is now the nation's obsession... its chief concern. His physical health has become the barometer for the nation's emotional health. If anything happens to Mr Hazare… and let me put it bluntly… if he dies, it will lead to consequences that may be far more terrible than rejecting the Jan Lokpal Bill. But, of course, in polite societies, we don't talk about the death of someone who is very much alive. As of now, the stand-off is on. There's no resolution in sight. But heaven help us, if the situation suddenly deteriorates and his health fails. Hey bhagwan! Till then we shall have to put up with a parade of assorted personalities holding forth on TV channels. Bristling belligerence getting the better of some.
While other lightweights opt for catchy hyperbole. An overenthusiastic ad man described the Ramlila gathering as a Kumbh Mela. Carried away by his own imagery, he went on to declare that the crowds could be still bigger than the pilgrims who gather for the holy dip during the Kumbh. His wild exaggerations were understandable — we have reduced the entire protest to a pathetic game of numbers ("Mine are bigger than yours…"). Awestruck TV anchors urge their camera crew to sweep cameras over the surging crowds and then rhapsodise over the spectacle. A few hand-picked commentators ("especially flown in") hold forth from the Ramlila Maidan and assure viewers they have never witnessed anything like this — the scale, the fervour, and of course, the numbers!
It's always about the numbers. An irate housewife from Noida rants about rising prices and how she has to pay bribes to get a gas connection. The anchor turns to the camera with a triumphant look and thunders, "The entire nation stands solidly behind this lady… this is India's second freedom struggle." And then it's back to this season's biggest reality show… poor Rakhi Sawant will need to do something more than flash her eyes and cleavage if she wants those TRPs. While Salman Khan must be scratching his head to come up with a clever gimmick to promote Bodyguard. As of now, there is just one bona fide superstar in India, and that's Mr Hazare.
But what of the screechy, shrill supporters who chant "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat mata ki jai" on cue the minute cameras cut to close-ups? Emotions are running dangerously high. When that happens… anything can happen. It's like a flash flood or a bush fire. Or open heart surgery. Timing is everything.
As of now, the protests have been admirably non-violent. Those who have taken to the streets have done so only because they fervently (perhaps, naively) believe it is a do-or-die moment — if they let this opportunity go, another one may be a long time coming. There is hope in their hearts that the protest (more against the scourge of corruption than a thumbs up for the Jan Lokpal Bill), will lead to seminal change. Will it? So far, the country has been governed by a succession of elected representatives (irony!) who have ruled like history's worst despots — no questions asked! What we are witnessing across India is a display of collective wrath. The sort of suppressed, accumulated rage that has finally found an outlet. For that alone one must thank Mr Hazare. If Mr Hazare's patience has worn thin, it's in perfect sync with the sentiments of the people. Perhaps for the first time in 64 years, the aam aadmi believes the time has come to aggressively challenge those who have trampled on and abused their trust for six decades. The ordinary citizen is experiencing a heady feeling of instant empowerment after years of being resigned to accepting powerlessness as their collective "fate".
Armed with this new weapon, trusting citizens continue swarming different venues across India demanding to be heard. This has been the single biggest achievement of Mr Hazare. No wonder Manmohan Singh was gracious enough to honour and salute Mr Hazare during his uncharacteristically emotional address in Parliament. What we are witnessing is living, throbbing democracy in motion. It is an image that will endure long after the impasse ends, and everybody goes home to carry on with his or her life… the significant difference being, from this moment on, it will be a transformed life, an aware life, an entitled life. And most crucially, a life that comes with a built-in assurance that in a democracy, every voice counts, even the one that disagrees with you.
For all this to happen, India needs Anna. Alive. The countdown has begun.

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

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

FLOCAM TO THE RESCUE

KISHWAR DESAI

When in trouble there are a few things a Prime Minister or a President of a country can do, with a little bit of luck. If it is US President Barack Obama, he can ensure that a dangerous terrorist is picked out in Pakistan, killed and buried quietly at sea; and if it is UK Prime Minister David Cameron, he could try to win a war in an oil-rich state and swiftly access the country's resources. Both these leaders have suffered seriously failing ratings, and Mr Cameron, especially, has come under a lot of criticism after the terrible riots in London. He has been forced to take a hard line on the breakdown of law and order, promising harsh punishments to the culprits. Till the fall of Tripoli he has also had to face flak over the Libyan war, and now the phone-hacking scandal threatens to bite him again. It was, no doubt, time for him to pull out a charm offensive and see if the public could warm up to him.
Thus Mr Cameron has now unleashed his secret weapon — it is a tiny blonde bundle and happens to be affectionately dubbed FloCam. Her photograph has been on the front page of every newspaper this week, and her red lips and saucy blue eyes have made her quite a hit with the public.
Actually her full name is Florence Rose Endellion Cameron and her proud parents took her back to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, in Truro, where she was born where she could meet the doctors and nurses who helped in her safe passage into this world.
FloCam has made her father's worst critics lose their bile: right from the day she was born she has given photographers and journalists a steady wide-eyed look, which completely bowls them over. Thus, recently her rare appearance enabled the Camerons to overcome a few unhappy moments of questioning over Mr Cameron's ill-advised holiday while London burnt and even about the proposed NHS reforms. This is not the first time that a UK Prime Minister's family has come in rather handy in distracting everyone by providing attractive front-page fodder, nor will it be the last.
Cynics say that both family happiness and grief have been occasionally used by Mr Cameron and other premiers such as Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to win sympathy votes — and why not? Whilst in India, we can still see that there is enormous respect for the privacy of the political class, in Britain there are few limits. On the one hand, not only does the press intrude on privacy, sometimes there are careful spin-doctored reports on the part of the politicians as well. So far, the only taboos had been the children, but even that barrier seems to be falling down. Things began to change a decade ago, in Mr Blair's time. Mr Blair, like John F. Kennedy perhaps, wanted to promote the image of the young, virile politician with a growing youthful family. It is these little "personal" interventions, apparently that make politicians much more human and bring them closer to their constituents.
Thus, while someone like Gordon Brown had resisted his two sons being photographed whilst he was chancellor and Prime Minister, he could not help speaking tearfully about his daughter Jennifer who died shortly after birth. This was a subject on which journalists knew they could get an emotional reaction and it made Mr Brown appear less formidable. Mr Cameron, too, has sometimes spoken about the death of his son who had special needs, and these conversations have also given an insight into him.
Thus, some would say the appearance of the stoic and cheery FloCam was much needed. Her intense blue-eyed gaze has kept the media in thrall for a while, but it does raise the question whether Mr Cameron should exercise restraint in exposing his family in the media? Especially since deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has shown no inclination of allowing his three sons to appear before the camera.

Privacy has also been an issue uppermost in the media mind in India in the last few weeks after the reported illness of Sonia Gandhi. What is interesting is that while international media would have felt no restraint upon them, there has been very little about the state of her health even in the UK papers. Of course, requests may have gone out to all concerned that Mrs Gandhi's privacy should not be disturbed.
However, spin doctors would argue that if occasionally politicians allow a glimpse of their private lives it can prove extremely helpful. Not only does it attract empathy, it removes the distance between the politicians and the public… just look at how wonderfully FloCam has helped her father!

Kishwar Desai can be contacted at kishwardesai@yahoo.com

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

THE CRUEL JOKE

All Party Inquiry Committee (APIC) constituted by the separatists organizations in Kashmir including both factions of APHC to conduct investigation in the killing of Maulana Showkat, the chief of Jamiat-e Ahl-e Hadith on April 8 around a mosque in Srinagar, has come out with what it calls the investigation report. It was released in a meeting in Srinagar attended by heads or representatives of all separatist groups. Release of the report spearheaded by LeT, is the first ever of its kind we have seen in Kashmir for last two decades of armed insurgency. The first question that needs to be answered is why the separatists felt the need of setting up their Inquiry Committee into the killing of Maulana Showkat when no inquiry like that was ordered or even thought of in assassination cases of many prominent leaders that took place in Kashmir during past two decades of armed insurgency. While Hurriyat (M) chief Moulavi Omar Farooq was present at the release of the report in Srinagar, one would like to know why he or any of his followers and allies never demanded an enquiry into the assassination of his father. Why no probe was conducted by the separatists in the case of gunning down of Abdul Ghani Lone? Everybody in Kashmir knows that they and many more were gunned down by the terrorists trained and armed outside Kashmir and acted on the behest of their Pakistani mentors. The reason why the separatists instituted inquiry into the assassination case of Mualana Showkat is that they knew it would be difficult rather impossible to bring the blame to the doorsteps of the security forces and then prove it because the police and intelligence sleuths had good deal of information about the perpetrators of the crime and of their entire network and links. The police and intelligence organizations swung into action immediately after the killing of Maulana Showkat and arrested some people including Javed Munshi on suspicion. Secondly the assassination of the Chairman of JAH, Maulana Showkat created rumblings of factional tension among the community in the Valley which could have escalated into street demonstrations thereby exposing the dissensions among the separatists. They met and decided to announce the constitution of APIC just to diffuse the outbreak of factional strife in the valley. The constituting of APIC was announced with much élan only to sober the agitated tempers and gain time. That precisely happened. No voices were raised demanding the APIC to speed up their job and tell the people about the truth.
The report has now been released. Its contents are not unexpected. This is a very interesting report which brings in many such elements in a shrewd manner as would support the contention that the heinous crime was committed by the culprits who have links with the Indian agencies. In other words, the report does not directly charge the Indian agencies of pushing the criminal acts but getting the dirty job done through its paid agents. The LeT shrewdly tries to trace the link of the assassin to other persons in various militant organizations who they say have links with the Indian agencies. Even the names of some of them have also been mentioned. One Imran is reported to have told the LeT operatives that the double cross agents within the separatists' organizations were planning the assassination of the Liberation Front chief also. A bizarre story of links of these militants with Indian agencies has been built to convince ordinary and unsuspecting Kashmiris that India is contriving these assassinations by scheme.
One doubts whether this fabricated story called the report of APIC will go down the throat of serious minded Kashmiris. The truth is that there is deep dissension within the separatist groups. There are rivalries and vendetta; there are huge money transaction disputes. There is growing realization among many of the activists that they are doing some exercise in futility and that the entire movement is based on falsehoods and canards. Desertions among the separatists' ranks is on increase and besides the deserters, the activist who surrender to the army or those who are captured in action, when interrogated, make startling revelations of complete mess and lawlessness among the militant groups. The separatists of all hues are aware of this and want to put all this under wraps and present a presumptuously united profile of the movement. Prof. Abdul Ghani Bhat, the former Chairman of the APHC, once said that those who killed many prominent Kashmiris were "our own men". The report now submitted by the APIC is yet one more cruel joke of separatists with Kashmiris.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

SINO-PAK RUMBLINGS

Pakistan Foreign Minister seems to have chosen an inopportune time for her maiden visit to its grand ally China. In Beijing she pontificated on Pakistan's desire to establish good friendly relations with her neighbours India and Afghanistan. She spoke of looking into future and building a new approach to bilateral relations and she swore by Pakistan's close relations with China. But the Chinese newspapers mostly ignored the rhetoric and focused on containment of terrorism short of saying that Pakistan was the home of terrorism and it was straining relations with her because of recent terrorist activities of Pakistan trained fundamentalists in some of the cities of Xinjinag, the Eastern Province of China. This is not the first time that Beijing has expressed displeasure on Pakistani trained and based militants expanding their subversive activities in the vulnerable Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjinag where nearly 18 million Uighur Muslims live. Pakistani religious fanatics have clandestinely entered the Uighur region and are instigating the Uighurs to rise in revolt against local government saying that their rights are being encroached upon and demographic complexion is being reversed by settling millions of Han Chinese on Uighur soil. They say that their culture is being invaded and their identity demolished. Apart from this irritant, the crumbling of law and order in Karachi where killings, loot, arson and butchery are rampant, has also dampened the spirit of the Pakistan Foreign Minster in the course of her maiden visit to Beijing.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

A CITY DIVIDED IN CONFLICT ZONES

MEN, MATTERS & MEMORIES

BY ML KOTRU

When Gen. Kayani, the Pakistani Army Chief, informed his political peers in the Government of the army's willingness to put an end to the spiralling factional killings in the country's commercial capital, Karachi, he was politely suggesting that the military could not be a mute witness to the growing lawlessness in Pakistan's most populous city and its capital in the early days of the country's freedom.
Karachi, always a major port of pre-independence India, recalling Mumbai, say some, became an obvious choice as their new home for millions of refugees, mainly Urdu speaking, who opted for Pakistan at the time of the partitioning of the sub-continent. In the course of time, some three crore plus 'mohajirs' (refugees) made the twin cities of Karachi and Hyderabad, Sindh, their home.
The demographic picture changed further as Karachi's comparative prosperity brought in herds of Pushtuns from the former North West Frontier Province. For many in Balochistan, the ignored largest province in terms of area of Pakistan, Karachi was just a hop away. The original Sindhis thus were submerged by an ocean of aliens bringing with them different cultural and linguistic heritage.
The Mohajirs from India were for the most part Urdu speaking and prone therefore to set themselves up as a different entity from the Sindhis. The Pushtuns are a different kettle of fish; they preferred to live in ghettos of that their own making and were always wary of the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, who with their better education and other skills, forged ahead leaving the Pushtuns and most locals to look out for low paying jobs such as taxi divers.
The Mohajirs developed a political identity of their own and were willing to take on the Sindhis and the Pushtuns. The Muttahida Quami Movement was thus born in Karachi as a force to reckon with; led most aggressively by Altaf Hussain, who was ultimately forced out of the country by military rulers of the day. Hussain has been orchestrating the MQM's activities from his London base, his pre-recorded speeches playing regularly at all MQM rallies.
Karachi thus has become home to three seemingly irreconcilable interests which in turn has led to the city becoming a regular killing field of the three principal contenders. In the fresh phase of violence 1,138 people were killed in the past six months. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan the body count is on the conservative side but with 1456 people killed and still counting - nearly 40 people were killed last week alone including, a former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan - incredible violence has become a constant.
It is another matter that the Karachi wallahs have found a modus vivendi with the perpetrators of extreme violence; a bomb explosion in a mosque or an act of arson in a crowded bazaar will see people returning to the roads about an hour or two of the violent incidents. Indeed the Karachiite appears to have accepted violence as an acceptable hazard for the "pleasure" of living in the megapolis.
The People's Party of the Bhuttos, now headed by Pak President Asif Ali Zardari, though, it heads the provincial government in coalition with the MQM and the ANP, is virtually non-existent in Karachi and Hyderabad, an odd match which somehow is reflected in Islamabad as well, in the Geelani (PPP) government and one that is not really working.
The MQM, annoyed by PPP's sleight a hand when it replaced popular rule in local bodies by installing Commissionrates which was seen as an attempt to dislodge the MQM from power in Karachi and Hyderabad and, predictably, withdrawn when the MQM walked out of the government in Islamabad.
The demographic phenomenon in Karachi is really a shocker. From 51.45 per cent of the city's population in 1951 and 54.34 in 1998 the Urdu-speaking population now makes up for 48.52 per cent of the city's population. While the Sindhi population halved during the same period from 14.32 per cent in 1951 to 7.22 in 1998, the Pushto speakers have tripled from 3.99 per cent to 11.42 per cent.
The demographic shift has further consolidated since 1998 with more Pushtuns from war-torn tribal areas migrating to the port city. While many believe that the violence has its roots in crime, covertly and overtly aided by the State and the political parties, all three major players have treated Karachi as their fiefdom and have constantly lent support to the violent elements loyal to them.
Politicians however appear content to play out their petty games for their survival, the future of 17 million people of multi ethnicity in the city seems to be of no concern to the State.
And that's what may have prompted Gen. Kayani to make his offer of help to the civilian authority to combat terror in the megapolis. The move, though is looked upon with grave suspicion by political parties. They seem to believe that the military may be trying to make a back-door entry to power by initially offering to help out the civilian government in Sindh.
The Karachiites would not have forgotten the rough end of the stick which they received under Gen. Ziaul Haq's dispensation. Gen. Zia, a refugee himself (from) Jalandhar, always saw himself as a Punjabi first and this was reflected in his handling of the Sindh problem, a policy which Nawaz Sharif, in one of his terms as Prime Minister, pursued in Karachi for a long while. The city did see relatively better days during Gen. Musharraf rule as the military dictator but it was shortlived.
The city, gradually deserted by industries and even major commercial houses, has known anything but peace. In the words of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan what is worse is the ethnic rivalry among the population. It has noticed - and it is common knowledge which even a casual visitor cannot but notice - that one community bars people from the other from being treated in hospitals, sharing same mosques, burying dead or sending its children to schools perceived to be a ethnic 'no-go' area.
When violence peaks, as it has repeatedly these past few months, such is the level of ethnic profiling that an innocent bystander's attire could get him into trouble, with the Urdu-speaking man chosen by his trousers and the Pushtun by his Salwar Kameez. Thus with the city divided into "our zones" and "their zones" it is not surprising that a perennial sense of insecurity should lead to ghettoisation which will only deepen. The police is better known for its absence than presence, at preferred ethnic battle fields and places prone to sectarian violence. A friend in Karachi says that even by the city's own standards, the recent spate of ethnic and political violence has been brutal and prolonged. He confided that he was planning to spend a few months in London now "if only to retain my sanity".

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

THE BENEVOLENT MOTHER

BY CAPT PURUSHOTTAM SHARMA

Born on 27th of August, 1910, to a well-to - do Albanian couple in Skopje, Yugoslavia, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was a kind-hearted child who could not withstand the pains and sufferings of others. A hurt bird or an animal, a sick person, a wounded soldier, a hungry beggar, a needy or distressed received her 'Love in Action'.
Florence Nightnigale well known as ''Lady with the Lamp', while nursing an Indian soldier wounded in the Crimean War, had given a word to him before his death, that she will go to India and serve the poor. She died on 14th August, 1910, at the age of 90 years. To keep her word, may be, Florence was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu who landed in Kolkata (India) on 6th January, 1929, when she was just 18 years old.
She was deeply pious and prayed for long hours alone as well as in the mass. Often she prayed loudly too. ''God is Good! God is Truth! God is Love! Praise Him!'' also formed part of prayer. She received Lord's Messages and acted upon them with robust faith. She adopted the name of 'Teresa' in 1931. It was the famous patron of Missionaries of 16th Century. In 1931 itself, she joined Loreto Convent High School, Kolkata as a teacher and later promoted as Principal. Her living room overlooked the slums across the boundary wall of the School where the devils of disease, hunger and heaps of filth moved her heart. She decided to visit those slum-dwellers and serve them. And she did it in various ways for many years. It was on 10th of September, 1946, while on train journey to Darjeeling she received Divine Message to free herself from the Loreto and concentrate herself on service to the poorest of the poor and convert Hell into Heaven. It took the permission two years to come through. She took her 1st teaching class of 5-6 slum children on bare muddy ground using a stick to write Bengali alphabets. However, people appreciated the noble work and more infrastructure and children joined the classes, thus a school came into being.
Subashini Dass, at the age of 19 years, a former Loreto student joined Mother Teresa in March, 1949, and she has been number two in the Missionaries of Charities.
It was in October, 1950, that the Order began and Sister Teresa became Mother Teresa. By then she had received Indian Citizenship also.
Mother Teresa had an Army of more than 3000 sisters and 400 Brothers operating in 71 countries around the world. Her Missionaries of Charity work among the poorest of the poor. Hundreds of thousand of victims of Leprosy, hungry families, dying destitute and orphaned children receive love and care in well-established Leprosy Centre, Children Homes, Schools, feeding stations and homes for dying destitute.
Mother Teresa's first gigantic project was 'Nirmal Hirday' at Kalighat in close proximity of Maha Kali Temple. There are around 150 such homes for the Dying Destitute around the world today. Inmates admitted to these homes receive love and care in abundance and die with dignity and honor. 'Nirmal Shishu Bhawan' in Kolkata is another amazing project where hundreds of unwanted and abandoned babies come from the hospitals, roadsides, slums and dustbins. They are brought up with love and motherly care. Mother Teresa said ''Abortion is a murder in the womb. A child is a gift of God. If you do not want him, give him to me...''
A Leprosy Centre known as 'Shanti Nagar' near Asansol diagnoses and treats thousands of Leprosy victims. They have been provided life of dignity and also trained for vocational work which fetches them good earning.
The free-food kitchen of New York's Queen of Peace Mission is another good piece of Noble gesture of social welfare where even stray youth share the food and transform themselves into useful guys and contribute to the Mission. Gift of love, another project, cares AIDS patients who carry message of love to God from the Mother Teresa, her co-workers and patients.
In reply to a question about the magnitude of Missionaries of Charity, she said ''It is not an institution. It is love in action, not an institution''. She always believed that with an assignment of service, the Lord always provided resources too. Her motto was love and service empowered by sincere prayer.
Mother Teresa and her co-workers led an ascetic's life. Sisters had two or three blue-bordered-plain white 'saries', and other few essential items. Work schedule from 4.40 AM to 10 PM was very tight and tiresome but they performed the divine work of service with pride and pleasure and success always smiled at them. She called upon those who have, to share with have nots. She experienced her own self in others. She always said that while cleaning the wounds of a victim, she felt as if she felt as if she were serving the God directly. Mere 4'-11'' in height, she served good causes with determination and courage knocking down all odds on the way. Once she fell short of quilts. As soon as she put her hands to remove the cotton from the pillow to fill the empty sheet of quilt, a knock at the door surprised everybody. A truck-load of quilts, mattresses, pillows and bed sheets were brought by a man who was on transfer abroad. On another occasion, Home ran short of rice for the Dinner and the inmates had to make do with milk. Lo and Behold! an unknown lady came and dumped a full bag of rice and dispapeared.
In London, Mother wished to purchase a house for the homeless. The seller lowered the consideration from 9000 pounds to 6000 pounds, but to raise that was too an uphill task in those days. The very next day, Mother Teresa, on her return from a visit to co-workers, handed over her bag to Mr John Blaike, a Lawyer, who helped in her mission, telling him ''I think there is some money in it''. He counted and it was exactly five pounds short of 6000 pounds. Mr John took out 5 Pounds currency note from his pocket and made it up 6000 pounds. The house was purchased.
She was called 'Saint of Gutters' also for obvious reasons. She passed away at the age of 87 years on 5th of September, 1997, at 9-30 PM at Kolkata. Her funeral took place on 13th September, 1997. She was given state funeral at Netaji Indoor Stadium Kolkata.
Her body was laid to rest at Mother House, her abode for about 70 years. Floral tributes were paid to her by all the heads of States and other leading personalities of the world.
She was conferred numerous honours and awards by various countries for her bringing excellence to the services to the suffering mankind. She was True Messiah indeed who won the hearts of millions of people all over the world. The human history has not so far found a saintly person of such an immense stature who found place in every heart. She practically experienced God residing in all beings.
She was conferred Padam Shri in 1962, Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Bharat Ratna in 1980, 'Bharat Ki Mahan Suptri' in 1992. All the prize money accompanying the awards was spent on her spate of new projects. Donations to her projects swelled to millions of dollars.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

OUT TO MALIGN ANNA HAZARE

BY B L SARAF

As expected , our so called ' conscience keepers ' are out to condemn the lone survivor of the dying breed of the genuine Conscience Keepers of the Nation - Anna Hazare . His fault is that he and his lacs of supporters raise slogans like ; Vande Matram , Bharat Mata ki Jai and Jai Hind, to garner support for the movement launched by him to cleanse the body politic of the cancer of corruption . For some libertarians , Anna is a stubborn , autocratic and violator of the democratic system of governance , who indulges in blackmail to have his way . Others of the tribe accuse him of undermining the parliamentary system of democracy and challenge him to contest the elections in order to assert his credentials. To them, he is totally unelectable. In the rage against Anna, these honorable men and women forget that his campaign to eradicate corruption among the high and low public functionaries has awakened the nation. His demand to turn the Jana Lok Pal bill into a law has brought millions across the country on the roads .
The contrarians make a ludicrous argument that the Jana Lok Pal will overthrow the Indian state .That it is draconian anti corruption law where chosen few will administer a huge bureaucracy. The other argument is that the common people who flock to Anna don't know, and are least expected to know, the nitty gritty of Jana Lok Pal Bill . That the organizers have created only a mass frenzy. Well , the opponents of Anna Hazare seem to overlook the spirit of the issue , or tend to see it superficially .One must remember that aim of the Bill is to curb the menace of corruption at all the places . That is a sentiment which goes down well with the agitating masses. Each one of the protesters understands how he is thwarted at all levels by the corrupt public officials and the decadent system as a whole .He experiences it on the death of his near and dear ones: when he is made to run from pillar to post to procure the death certificate . Same is the experience he undergoes to obtain a driving license . passport , a ration card ,or when he has to deposit the electricity bills .These are the dreadful obstacles a poor citizen has to contend with daily , on the routine basis . The common man dreads the thought to confront a patwari for the revenue check of his land holdings and a municipal employee to procure a birth or a death certificate of his near and dear ones.
True, the laws are to be made by the parliament. But can one trust the worthy members of the legislature to make the laws which will tighten the noose around their necks for their brazen and compulsive financial and moral malfeasance . Therefore, they must be coerced to make the laws to purify the rotten system. In the pathological misdemeanors of the legislators, we see utter failure of representative democracy .Our legislature are made up of criminals and millioner politicians , who in no way can claim to represent the people. The Parliamentarians have consistently failed to follow the spirit of the Constitution Of India They are more concerned about their privileges and wielding authority for their personal ends than with the welfare of the state and the citizen .Such has been their conduct as parliamentarians- barring a few exceptions-that their talking about dignity and supremacy of the legislature is like "devil quoting scriptures".
The so called liberals, who oppose the Anna movement from the roof top, see every thing bad in the nationalist slogans and mobilization of the millions on the national agenda . They describe the struggle of Anna a fascist and communal in nature Well, this argument has been torn to the shreds by the Muslims of India when they rebuffed Delhi's Jamia Masjid chief cleric Syed Ahmed Bukhari-who had asked them to stay away from Anna Hazar's movement. Bukhari had described Anna's slogans and struggle as "anti- Islam" .As reported in the press business man and the common Muslims have found no problem with people chanting Vande Mantram . They have expressed solidarity with Anna's movement and described him as some one who is standing up for the country. The so-called liberals take pride in attending seminars and meetings organized abroad courtesy Pakistani ISI and CIA , where they deride India and the Indians -right ,left and the centre . For them, therefore, to denounce Anna is a matter of bread and butter .
Yes , Jana Lok Pal Bill has certain provisions which need to be discussed and debated and, probably, recast . Certainly it will not be a panacea of all ills. But then there is no better alternative. All are agreed that the government Bill is a farce. Let Anna's Bill be a base document, upon which a meaningful anti-corruption law is built .
(The author is former Principal District & Sessions Judge)

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EDITORIAL

DOWNPOUR OF APATHY

THE FLOOD-HIT BATTLE THE ELEMENTS

The flood-hit in Punjab have been left to fend for themselves. Barring some half-hearted rescue efforts here and there, the administration is virtually missing from the scene. The Punjab government has doubled the flood relief amount to Rs 10 crore but the process of loss assessment and making the cash available will take time. What those marooned need is immediate rescue, shelter, food, clean drinking water, fodder and medical help. Punjab has a large number of gurdwaras where the flood victims, including children and the aged, could have been shifted. With the SGPC elections on, representatives of the Sikh "sangat" have by and large failed to reach out to their brethren in distress.

Villagers have shifted to roads or other nearby places for safety. A far-sighted, helpful and sympathetic administration would have set up well in advance temporary shelters, used panchayat or school buildings to accommodate the affected families, which face dislocation whenever the monsoon is "normal". It is not a natural calamity that has suddenly struck the villagers. They are victims of sudden water releases from the Pong Dam and the Bhakra Dam. While it may be imperative to release waters to save the dams, the situation can be handled better if advance warnings are given so that villagers in the flood-prone areas move to safer places in time along with their belongings and save agricultural machinery and equipment from damage.

Punjab is known for community work in times of a crisis or a calamity. There are examples of villagers building protective bundhs to protect their villages from the menacing flood waters. But the government cannot abdicate its responsibility. It has allowed encroachments to come up on river beds at various places which hinder the natural flow of water. The rivers and canals have not been cleared or repaired for long. It is surprising that in a state faced with a declining water table little effort has been made to encourage rainwater harvesting. Successive governments have paid little attention to efficient water management.

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

BUILDING A NEW SRI LANKA

WELCOME END TO EMERGENCY RULE

The withdrawal of the state of emergency by Sri Lanka reflects the new confidence that the island nation has gained. The emergency laws, which have been in force for over three decades in some form, are no longer needed. As President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced in the Sri Lankan Parliament on Thursday, the country could now "conduct its affairs through its normal laws and in a democratic manner". Interestingly, before taking the decision to do away with the emergency, President Rajapaksa took a stroll in a park in Colombo without the area getting sanitised. He himself drove down in his personal car to have a feel of the changed security scenario. This and his intelligence agencies' reports must have convinced him that it was now time to end the siege mentality.

Sri Lanka tasted emergency rule first in 1971 when Marxists tried to overthrow the government of the day. The emergency laws were withdrawn in 1977 but reimposed in 1983 when the LTTE emerged as an extra-constitutional force capable of derailing the system. The Sri Lankan Army had a tough time handling the LTTE, which at one time appeared to be not far from achieving its objective of having an independent state for the Tamils of the country. However, in 2009 the LTTE became a part of history. It suffered a crushing defeat — unthinkable some time ago — at the hands of the Sri Lankan Army.

The return of peace is helping the economy to grow at a faster pace. An economy which had been damaged considerably because of the LTTE's activities now hopes to record a growth rate of 8 per cent during the current fiscal year. The lifting of the emergency laws will help Sri Lanka to develop at a faster pace. But the main reason why the emergency has been lifted is the growing international criticism of the government for human rights violations in the Tamil-dominated areas because of the draconian laws remaining in force. The economic condition of the people in these areas is woeful. The Rajapaksa government has been accused of following a discriminator policy, which must be abandoned immediately. A democratic Sri Lanka must not discriminate against its own people owing to the ethnic factor.

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

ICON

STEVE JOBS AND HIS LEGACY

Apple Computers is today one of the most influential companies in the world, and when Steve Jobs quit as the CEO of Apple, his place in the hall of fame had already been carved out in golden letters with his business and technical accomplishments. He will always be associated with the products that bear his stamp, the Mac computer, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. He helped Apple and its shareholders earn billions of dollars. Only recently, briefly, Apple had more money than the US government.

Steven P. Jobs, who back-packed through India in search of spirituality during his early years, his friend Stephen Wozniak and, later, Armas Clifford Markkula Jr, worked in the 1970s to produce the first Apple computer. The Macintosh computer became the first successful computer to use the graphical user interface and Apple introduced many innovations that later became industry standard. However, on the management front, by 1985, Jobs found himself without a job at Apple. He was ousted in a boardroom battle and went to start another company called NeXT.

Jobs' second coming as the CEO of Apple in 1977 saw the flowering of his vision matching with the technological advances that had taken place in the meantime. He revolutionised how we interact with computers, listen to music and use mobile phones.

He set new standards of technological innovation and aesthetics, and sold them hard, creating millions of consumers and earning billions for his company. The iPad fulfilled a need that users didn't even know existed. Jobs really saw what personal computing means and what it should be. Innovation, smart designing, timing and above all, a commitment of making computers and allied devices easy to use, all these contributed to crafting a success story that has made Jobs a cultural icon. How Apple fares without Jobs is where the real test of his legacy will lie. He has a good successor and has built a good team. Thus, this too seems to be one test that Jobs will pull through with flying colours.

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THE TRIBUNE

ARTICLE

FEARS OF REVOLT IN PAK ARMY

SOME OMINOUS PORTENTS

BY SANKAR SEN

Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's fears of revolt in the Pakistan Army are not unfounded. Indeed, many in the Pakistan Army are increasingly viewing the war against terror as America's war which Pakistan is forced to fight. There is also a growing feeling that the US is lording over Pakistan and treating it as a client state.

The Pakistan Army is a disciplined force and its soldiers have a long history of acting in accordance with the orders of senior army commanders. Various coups, insurgencies and national emergencies have not rocked the cohesion and discipline in the army. Now because of the variety of factors, loyalty and discipline in the army are being severely tested, and fears of a mutiny in officers' rank are mounting.

In Pakistan, till now, says Prof Anatol Lieven, "(Pakistan — A Hard Country)", there has not been a military coup from below. Every coup has been carried out by serving army chiefs backed by a solid majority of senior officers. Officers and soldiers of the army are keenly aware of the fact that it is unity and discipline in the army that has held the country together. Along with discipline and loyalty, fear of India is drummed into the mind of every Pakistani soldier from the day he joins the army. Thus, apart from the unforeseen consequences of a mutiny in the army, the fear that it will provide an opportunity to India to crush Pakistan appears credible and is widely believed by every Pakistani soldier.

The Pakistan Army's history shows that in the past commanding officers were westernised and secular in their outlook. Stephen Cohen in his book, "Pakistan's Army", has identified three generations of army officers. The first was the British generation when the Pakistan army was set up. They came mostly from loyal westernised families and did not hold strong religious views. After World War II, when Britain was not in a position to provide the type of aid which the young Pakistan Army needed, Pakistan turned to the US and this spawned an American generation of officers who were secular in attitude and un-Islamic in outlook. But the tide turned after Pakistan's humiliating defeat in the Bangladesh war. And the American generation was replaced by the Zia generation. General Zia wanted to build up a devout and puritanical army and with that end in view allowed religious groups like the Tablighi Jamaat to hold classes and give discourses in the army units. Zia himself attended the convocation of the group — the first army chief to do so.

The new generations of officers hailing from middle classes are generally hostile to Western ideas and receptive to Islamic teachings. In a sense, younger officers reflect the larger society and are becoming more Islamic and anti-West. Many of them are imbued with anti-Western, particularly anti-American, sentiments. Shuza Nawaz, a well-known expert on Pakistan's army speaks of the emergence of a "different breed of officers" children of the lower middle class akin to General Zia's own background who chose the service because of its economic and social advantages rather than military traditions.

Now the American raid in Abbottabad and the killing of Osama bin Laden has caused within the army a deep sense of anger and humiliation. In a way, it was a projection of American power and a clear message to Pakistan to align itself with America or face the consequences. Drone attacks on militants within Pakistan have also been causing an acute sense of unease in the army ranks. It is said that using anti-American anger without getting burned by it has become a fine art with Pakistan. What is worrying the military leadership now is the sense of anger within the army is accompanied by a feeling of humiliation. Unilateral nature of some of the US decisions and action has added fuel to the fire.

There is also growing criticism of Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaque Kayani within the country and in the army barracks. His close links with the Obama administration have not gone down well with the army. The overwhelming opinion in the army is that Americans pose a danger to Pakistan's national security, and it is time the military leadership drew a red line. The terrorist attack on PNS, Meheran, a naval airbase, in Karachi, has further exposed the army and the ISI to public criticism for sheer incompetence. Deflection of public criticism by blaming India or America is no longer working. Along with anti-American anger there is also sympathy for Al-Qaeda. It is not precisely known how far anti-American officers are wedded to radical Islam or if anti-Americanism reflects outright sympathy for the Talibani elements in the army.

The situation in Pakistan is difficult and grim. It is rocked by ethnic clashes, jihadi terrorism and general lawlessness. It has become a dysfunctional state; its economy is in a mess and the legal system has broken down. Its politicians are derided as clowns. The army, though supreme, with its badly tarnished image, is sunk in gloom. The Pakistan Army is no longer as it was loyal and professional as it was before. A number of army personnel are members of the Jamaat-e-Islami. Some military and intelligence officers have been involved in assassination attempts against Gen Pervez Musharraf (retd). There is desertion and surrender of soldiers before militants, and there is a growing feeling among sections of the Pakistan Army that they are fighting against their own countrymen at the behest of the US.

A division among officers on ideological lines is thus neither unlikely nor impossible. Such a division would hasten the fragmentation of the army.

The split is likely to stem from the differences among the officers with secular or Islamic leanings. A strong army has so far held together Pakistan, but if it gets divided on fundamental issues like the identity and the purpose of Pakistan, or relations with major outside powers like the US, and disaffected officers join the radicals to gain access to Pakistan's rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, it will indeed be a dangerous scenario.

The writer, a former Director, National Police Academy, is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

SCREEN TEST

BY PUSHI CHOWDHRY

I was a student at the London University in the mid-sixties. Those were the days of 'Hippies' and flower power. Sending money from India was a problem and as a student the Reserve Bank allowed 600 pounds (about Rs 12,000 at that time). This had to cover tuition, board, lodging, travel and entertainment.

I shared a flat off Kensington High Street, with an English artist (Bill Holmes) and a plumber (David Cole). Guess who was the richest? Yes, Dave the plumber. He treated us to pints of beer every weekend, at the Devonshire Arms, our local pub. I, in turn, used to make aloo curry with onions and tomatoes which we devoured with brown bread and achaar.

To make ends meet I did odd jobs. Like delivering mail in freezing December early mornings when there was a Christmas rush at the post office. Most students did this to earn 30 pounds for 10 days' work. I also worked as a loo cleaner at Ronny Scots Jazz Club in Soho. Horrible work, but I did get paid to listen to some amazing jazz.

One Friday evening when we were at the Devonshire Arms, Dave was at the bar replenishing our drinks. He got into an animated conversation with a guy at the bar — a pot-bellied fellow (PBF). Bill and I were wondering why he was taking so long when he came back with PBF in tow. Apparently PBF was a film maker and was keen that I, a young turbaned lad, act in his next film. He had made films with all nationalities but never had a Sardar in the lead.

He promised me 50 pounds for a four-hour shoot. A lot of money, equivalent to one month's allowance. I asked for the script, he said just come to this address in Earls Court on Monday and we would take it from there. Never having acted before, I was reluctant. But Bill and Dave persuaded me to go for it.

So I arrive at the appointed hour and enter this basement flat. The set was a bedroom, with a huge double bed. I am ushered into a corner for my makeup. This guy asks me to remove my shirt and proceeds to 'paint' a cobra tattoo on each arm. I ask who the co-stars are. No response. A few minutes later this gorgeous blonde walks in draped in a towel. She proceeds to the bed, and the director says to me: "Right, take your clothes off and sit next to her on the bed." I am set to run away from this, but then thinking of 50 pounds I say to myself "what the hell". So there I am in the clothes I was born in, with turban on head and go and sit next to my co-star. "Lights, Camera, Action," says PBF. Nothing happens. He again screams "Action" — nothing!

Minutes later I am heading towards the Devonshire Arms to drown my sorrows in a pint of beer. I had failed the screen test!

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

ANNA STIR: WHERE IS IT ALL HEADED?

WHILE NO ONE WOULD DENY THAT SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE TO ROOT OUT CORRUPTION, THE METHODOLOGY ADOPTED BY THE CIVIL SOCIETY TEAM FOR DOING IT IS QUESTIONABLE. TO VOICE ASPIRATIONS OF THE COMMON MAN IS ONE THING. BUT TO ASK THAT EVERY RULE, EVERY SYSTEM IN PLACE SHOULD BE BENT OR BROKEN IS ANOTHER

B.N.GOSWAMY

The Anna Hazare movement - I am reluctant to call it the Civil Society Movement, for civil society is much larger than this - is a remarkable phenomenon. The stir is slickly timed and finely orchestrated, and the pulling in of so many disparate elements into its vortex is, purely in 'marketing' terms, an achievement in itself. What one is witnessing day after day on the television is in some ways energizing: such a sense of commitment, such crowds, such enthusiasm. And all seemingly Gandhian; at least without any signs of violence, so far.

The cause is laudable: undoubtedly corruption in public life is a looming issue and there is a growing feeling - ably articulated by Anna himself - of there being lack of justice for the common man. The question, however, is: where is it all headed? How will it end? What would have been achieved at the end of it? If the 'demands' of the Anna Team - not so civilly raised, one would have to add, certainly not without a touch of arrogance at times - are met and a victory for the civil society is declared, would it be a pyrrhic victory where one would have to sit down afterwards and compute with care and sorrow the losses suffered?

Conflicting voices

There can be little doubt that on the part of the government - the other party, so to speak - the stir has not been handled well. There have been conflicting voices, too many heavy-handed statements, too much of incremental 'giving in' or 'yielding of ground', too little preparation for meeting the challenges posed by the scale of the movement and for gauging the mood of the nation. The Opposition is also not covering itself with glory: there is lack of clarity in its views; the impression is gaining ground that they are in it simply for gaining points; there is greater interest on their part in enjoying the present discomfiture of the government rather than in giving cogent thought to the long-term implications of a movement such as this.

At the other end, for the common people, this is all a great spectacle, a perfect opportunity for venting their anger and their frustration. How many among the agitators or the sympathisers, however, truly understand what the intricacies of the issues involved are? The ambit of the Lokpal or the Jan Lokpal bill, the reservations about keeping some offices or institutions out and the virtual impossibility of implementing some of the ambitious provisions will always remain a question. A panacea is what everyone is looking for and hoping to get. But there is no panacea. All around, there is a welter of confusion.

In search of a panacea

From all this, however, one thing is emerging with clarity. Whatever the merits of the agitation, in the manner in which it is shaping it is questioning the very fabric of our Constitution, for that document and Parliament, which is so fundamental an institution of our democratic system, are being truly challenged. While no one would deny that something, something even drastic, needs to be done as far as rooting out corruption from our public, and private lives goes, the point is whether the methodology being adopted by the Civil Society team for doing it is right.

To try and raise the level of our conscience and to voice the aspirations of the common man is one thing. But to ask that every rule, every system in place, should be bent or broken is another. What is the government being told, not asked, to do? Withdraw your bill and substitute it with the Bill that the 'Team' has cobbled together; this must be done by the end of this month; bypass the Standing Committee of Parliament; pass the Bill - not present or debate, but to pass it as it is - before the present session of Parliament runs out. And so on. These are diktats, not recommendations or prescriptions. And to agree to them, as has been pointed out in clear and cogent terms, is to subvert the processes established by our Constitution. There is need, therefore, to pull back a bit, I believe. And to reflect about long-term implications.

In the energy that has been released by Anna Hazare's stir, especially among youth, there are great signs of hope. But that energy needs to be channelled, watchfully and constructively. Poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz once sang beautifully of the 'crop of hope' - yeh fasl ummeedon ki humdum - but then hinted darkly that it could also wither away as quickly as it grew: 'ghaarat jaayegi' were his words. Before that happens, there is need to nurture that crop with care and to help it turn into a harvest of gold. Perhaps Anna himself will think of ways of doing it, for he does have the ear of the young, it seems.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

GOVT WAS OBLIVIOUS OF PUBLIC ANGER FOR TOO LONG

IN GOVERNANCE, WHAT MATTERS MOST IS PUBLIC PERCEPTION. MINISTERS MUST NOT ONLY BE HONEST BUT ALSO PERCEIVED TO

E SO. RIGHT NOW, QUITE THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE

COUNTERPOINT

AMAR CHANDEL

It is said that when a pigeon sees a cat, it simply closes its eyes instead of flying off. Since the cat is not visible to it with eyes closed, it feels smug that the danger has receded.

The government did something quite similar in the face of the rising public revulsion over the omnipresent corruption and ignored it for too long. It thought that the voices of protests were just storms in teacups which could be easily ignored, or, better still, suppressed through tried and tested strong-arm tactics. That is why it came to the stage where it had to eat crow on the Anna Hazare issue. Drunk on power, its leading lights ensconced in bungalows in Lutyen's Delhi never realised that Anna was only a symbol of the public anger. If it would silence his voice, somebody else would take his place.

Worse than unleashing the police might against him was the vilification campaign. Manish Tiwari's fulmination that he was corrupt from head to toe was the ideal oil to the fire. The aggression proved counter-productive and helped broaden the protests, which otherwise might have been far less severe.

Had the government been upright, this might have passed off as "firmness". But at the hands of the mega scam-tainted UPA government, it was only seen as haughtiness, which proved to be its undoing.

'Empire strikes back'

Ironically, there is a pattern to this "Empire Strikes Back" syndrome. All sort of enquiries are started against those who dare to say that the government is corrupt. Ramdev was a saint till he protested. Even Lalit Modi was fine till he blew the whistle on minister Shashi Tharoor in the IPL imbroglio. The message that went out loud and clear was that if anyone dared to protest against corruption in the government, he himself would be hauled over coals. If Anna Hazare's fast was blackmail, so was this tit for tat, and helped in adding indignation to public anger.

The government made another tactical error. What was revulsion towards the politicians in general was allowed to be focused on the government alone by keeping away the opposition parties from the preliminary negotiations with Team Anna on the Bill. No party can claim to be squeaking clean but the ill-thought-out policy of the government gave them a chance to strike a holier-than-thou attitude. Not only that, it brought almost the entire Opposition together. The more the government shouted that the campaign was an opposition conspiracy, the more isolated it found itself.

Even now, it is not too late to realise that corruption by a government functionary is the fountain-head of all corruption. When a minister takes his 10 per cent (if not more), he is giving an open general licence to the contractor to use substandard material. When a bureaucrat takes money on the sly for appointments and postings, he is making all his subordinates employ unfair means.

The public is in a cleft-stick and one has to shell out money even to get what is one's right. While the common man who is forced to pay a tidy sum to get his revenue record or driving licence or ration card in time is given sermons that he should be honest, hardly anything is done to those who demand and accept this bribe. Ironically, he is told that he is equally culpable. That is adding insult to injury.

Scratching the surface

When a man has to pay bribes even to get his due, he is encouraged to curry special favours from government functionaries by offering illegal gratification.

A few cases of action against corrupt officials are cited as the shining examples of a clean-up drive. Given the size of the country and the extent of corruption, these do not even constitute the scratching of the surface. In any case, even the action against men like Kalmadi and Raja came about after nationwide hue and cry.

In governance, what matters most is public perception. Ministers must not only be honest but also perceived to be so. Right now, quite the opposite is true. So many politicians have gone from rags to riches in such a short time that the entire class stands discredited in the public eye. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that Mr Manmohan Singh's legendary honesty is being seen as no more than a mask behind which various ministers are looting the country. This image can be salvaged only through genuine action on the ground, not by unleashing legal eagles on the likes of Anna Hazare.

The Jan Lokpal Bill may have many flaws. Perhaps it is not the answer to the problem of corruption in the country. Anna Hazare's fast may amount to "blackmail". But what cannot be lost sight of is that it came after a never-ending cycle of scams, scandals and corruption.

The government should have seized the initiative with an even more potent Bill of its own, and made Team Anna redundant in the process. Instead, it came up with a hopelessly diluted "Jokepal Bill" and ended up smearing its own face with the accusation that it was going all out to protect the wrong-doers.

The UPA should consider itself lucky that the protests are being spearheaded by Gandhian crusaders. If it continues to sideline them, there is a very real danger of the movement passing into the hands of the people who have no respect for non-violent means. That is a possibility which every right-thinking person should be frightened of.

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MUMBAI MIRROR

EDITORIAL

WHEN DABHOL TRIED TO MAKE RULES

IS THE ANNA AGITATION ALSO ABOUT RESISTING THE EROSION OF AUTONOMY OF LOWER TIERS OF GOVERNMENT?

In June 1992, within a few days of prodding from Delhi, the Maharashtra government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a company called Enron. The MOU was to set up the world's largest gas-fired power plant. It would be run by a foreign company called Dabhol Power Corporation. DPC would be located in the Gram Panchayat limits of a village called Dabhol. It was going to be a Rs 10,000-crore project, and the company was guaranteed to succeed. This was because it had a heads-i-win, tails-youlose power purchase agreement with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), which ensured profits whether or not it sold power! And if its creditors defaulted, it had a sovereign guarantee from Delhi.

So in its wisdom, and armed with powers granted to it by the Constitution, the village council of Dabhol decided to ask DPC for its share of taxes. The village could legitimately levy property tax on any commercial entity which was located within its area, just like other municipal councils or corporations. They figured that for such a giant project, they could expect a couple of crores of taxes per annum. That would take care of their roads and the schools. Alas it was not so! The villagers were shocked to learn that they could barely expect a few lakhs. The autonomy of the local government was extremely limited, notwithstanding the constitutional amendment for panchayati raj, championed by the late Rajiv Gandhi. Never mind that almost 3,000 farmers had lost their land to DPC. Never mind that the project was being thrust upon by Delhi against their wishes. Never mind that there was great opacity and haste in pushing the project. Never mind that the power purchase agreement with MSEB was a top-secret document. The villagers' lot was to do the bidding of higher-up layers of government and be quiet. (Any similarity to Jaitapur is purely coincidental!)

Enron ended up being criminally indicted, and the DPC saga is well known. The state paid a heavy price to get itself disentangled from various obligations. The people of Maharashtra paid a heavy price in terms of a decade of power shortage.

But today's column is about that rude lesson learnt by Dabhol's village council. It serves as a tiny example of the several ways that autonomy of lower forms of government is steadily eroding in India. Instead of decentralising aggressively, and genuine devolution of powers to lower tiers of government, we find that Delhi is getting stronger, often at the expense of state and village governments.

Later this year when the central government passes the right to food, it would effectively be imposing its will on states' functioning. When the right to education was passed, that is a topic which is on the states' list of our constitution. Even electricity is in the states' domain, although DPC overrode that. When the country passes the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill, it would mark a historic occasion. That's because it would mean, that all states of India would have surrendered their right to impose sales tax, and would now defer to Delhi. Of course, the GST regime would be great to curb tax evasion, and will enhance inter-state commerce and increase efficiency. But these gains would be at the price of sacrificing tax autonomy at the state level.

Seen from the lens of losing autonomy, the anti-corruption agitation led by Anna Hazare is also an expression of discomfort. Just as passage of the right to information restored power to an individual (the lowest tier) to be on par with any Member of Parliament, similarly Anna's movement is also about wresting some more power back to the lower tiers. The tug of war between centralising and decentralising forces will intensify in the days to come.

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COLUMN

SON OF BRICS

T N NINAN

Three weeks ago, The Economist noted a key transition in the global economy. It pointed out that the emerging markets now account for a greater share of world gross domestic product (GDP) than the developed economies. The magazine also pointed out that while the rich world's output was still below 2007 levels, the emerging economies had grown by 20 per cent since then. Its conclusion: "The rich world's woes have clearly hastened the shift of global economic power towards the emerging markets."

A useful reference point for confirming this is Goldman Sachs' Brics report of 2003, which postulated the then novel notion that the four Brics economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) would become larger than the economies of the G6 by 2040. Goldman also forecast that China would overtake the US and become the world's largest economy by 2041. Eight years ago, those projections were considered far-out. In 2011, they read like the cautious forecasts of someone who likes to hedge his bets.

For a start, make three plausible assumptions: that the US will be stuck in a low-growth trajectory, that the yuan will rise annually against the dollar by the 5 per cent that it has been doing in recent years, and that China will slow down but grow by at least 8 per cent annually. Taken together, they mean that China's GDP would have reached $19 trillion by 2021, and probably become as big as the US (which is $14 trillion today). That would be an astonishing two decades ahead of the Goldman schedule. The phrase that comes to mind is Alvin Toffler's Future Shock — the future is getting here at a faster rate than anyone had thought possible.

Then look at India. Assume that the Planning Commission's annual growth target for the next five years (9 per cent) is missed, and India manages only 8 per cent — the same as in the last decade. If you also assume 6 per cent inflation, and a steady rupee-dollar exchange rate, India's GDP would more than treble in dollar terms by 2021, be as big as a stagnant Japan's, and therefore poised to become the third largest economy in the world — a decade ahead of the Goldman schedule. More Future Shock.

A third Brics country, Brazil, has benefited from the commodity boom, its currency has soared, and its GDP is now nearly as big as Italy's — something that Goldman said would happen only by 2025. With these country scenarios as a backdrop, if you re-assess the big prediction by Goldman – that Brics would be bigger than the G6 by 2040 – the plausible scenario today is that they might overtake the G6 a full decade before that date.

If the theme since 2003 has been about the coming power shift in global affairs, some transitions have already occurred — as The Economist has noted. But the period from now till 2021 is going to be the defining decade. So far the Brics economies have had momentum, now they will also have mass. The difference is between a bird hitting a plane, and a meteor hitting Earth.

The mandatory word of caution has to be that it is always possible for countries to veer off course. You only have to study how the advanced economies have committed hara-kiri since 1999, to see how the most assured futures can turn into troubled realities. And who is to tell that the virus will not spread? When it comes to the emerging markets, every decade other than the last one has claimed one or more victims. Still, the default scenario today is one in which the global power shift is round the next corner.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

CURE FOR CORRUPTION

DEVELOPING A STRATEGY TO REDUCE THE POSSIBILITIES OF PROFITING FROM CORRUPTION CAN HELP INDIA FIGHT THE MENACE EFFECTIVELY

SHUBHASHIS GANGOPADHYAY

The increasing support for Anna Hazare is telling. Even those who are critical of his methods support his cause. I am pretty sure that this feeling about corruption has little to do with whether one is party to it. Most people I know who pay bribes claim they do so to avoid harassment by one official or another. They look forward to the day when they can carry on with their daily grind, receiving from the government whatever they are entitled to and have voted for, without having to grease anyone's palms. This is understandable — very few people who do illegal things do so because they love doing illegal things. People are corrupt in India because the material life resulting from corruption – an illegal act – is better than a corruption-free existence. There is a problem with not accepting this position, for then we are claiming that there is something rotten in the Indian gene.

There is another common trait I see among the people who hate corruption. They all believe that the "establishment" is corrupt. They, therefore, want to "establish" an institution filled with good people who would investigate corrupt activities and punish those involved in them. First, we are confident of finding good people who will not be swayed by the gains to be made from being corrupt. Second, we are also confident that as long as civil society is watching, these good people can be chosen by the very same individuals and group who are going to be investigated. The question that remains unanswered is: have we, as a society, thought about what we will do if some members of the new institution are also corrupt? After all, we did build a vigilance commission and we do have a vigilance officer in each government department. How come we are still on the streets fighting against corruption at lower levels of government?

If (some) people are corrupt because they find it profitable, then there are two ways to stop corruption. One is the surety with which corrupt actors get caught and are then punished. This makes corruption very costly, if caught. We need to ensure that the probability of catching corruption is high and the path to punishment is easy and smooth. This is what the Lok Pal Bill, if enacted, is trying to do. The other way to stop corruption is to remove possibilities of making profits through corruption. Both need to be simultaneously implemented; otherwise, resourceful as we are, if there are enough ways to profit from corruption, we will find out ways to avoid, or corrupt, the members of investigating institutions. Unfortunately, as we try to intensify the policing on corruption highways, we keep adding newer highways of corruption all the time. Policing is expensive; if these highways are not built, we will save on the policing costs. More importantly, the investigating agencies will not be overworked and become more efficient in catching those who are corrupt.

Let me introduce a new corruption highway that we are in the process of constructing, overshadowed by all the Lok Pal activities. The land acquisition Bill in Parliament has proposed that owners of lands acquired in rural areas will get six times their current market value and the owners of urban lands will get two times their current market value.There are too many problems with this clause, were it to pass and all these problems together make it easier for corrupt activities to develop.

There are two immediate problems with the land acquisition Bill. The fundamental one is the power being given to the government to act as an intermediary in the transfer of land owned by a set of private parties to another set of private parties. Based on this fundamental problem of letting in the government in what should be a market-based activity, the compensation principle generates avenues of corruption. Let me explain how. Suppose that a particular modification of the use of rural land will increase the land value by four times; a developer is willing to pay 100 per unit of the land, while the last recorded sale of a unit of this land was 25. An honest public servant will not acquire this land. She has the responsibility of not doling out money from one group to another; so if the government cannot pass off the land acquired at six times the current market price to someone who is willing to pay that amount, she should not go ahead with this acquisition. But I am a resourceful Indian (amazingly, when it comes to corruption it does not matter in which ivory tower one resides), so let me outline a process by which I can make a gain from this system. I need to record a sale at 16 per unit. I sell a part of my land at 16 and lose 9 per unit. Now the developer's 100 is an acceptable price for the public official. I sell each of my land units at 100, make a profit of 75, and can easily recoup my 9 per unit loss. Observe that I can make a similar gain if the market price was 10 and the developer was willing to pay 100. For then, instead of 60, which is what the government should pay me, I need to register a sale at 16 so that the government pays me (close to) 100! Of course, the public official is also smart and resourceful; she knows precisely what I am doing and demands a share of my profit and we have something which is called corruption!

Are we thinking about these things while we search for good Indians?

The author is Research Director, India Development Foundation

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BUSINESS STANDARD

PAPER MONEY AND PLASTIC PROTESTS

SELF-STYLED GANDHIANS SHOULD ASK WHY OUR SAVINGS ARE STEADILY BEING ROBBED

SUNANDA K DATTA-RAY

Reports of the 25 paise coin's demise and the expected birth of two-rupee, hundred-rupee and even thousand-rupee coins don't trouble self-styled Gandhians crusading for financial rectitude in a blaze of publicity. But people who have to worry about the spiralling cost of everything, including Gandhi caps and an unending supply of freshly-laundered crisp white dhotis and kurtas, cannot ignore these warnings of bleak times ahead with money rapidly losing all value.

A chazi, as we schoolboys called the four-anna coin, predecessor of the doomed 25 paise, bought a bottle of Rose and Thistle lemonade with the tantalising marble that no juggling could ever get out. It was a respectable sum to hand across the tuck shop counter or give the box-wallah in return for bright stamp-sized pictures that you dampened and pressed on your arm and, hey presto! you had a colourful tattoo.

The chazi soared to grander heights. "A chavanni membership of the (Congress) party was a badge of honour," an MP reminded Parliament recently. It also plumbed to abysmal depths. As I have written before in this column, some small boys from Burrabazar at a Republic Day parade burst out chanting "Chavanni! Chavanni!" when the Kolkata Police contingent, pot-bellied and panting, shambled past. It was their nickname for constables though I suspect the latter already demanded far more than 25 paise for the least favour.

The 50-paise coin, equivalent of the old eight annas, is probably next on the hit list. It's already gone in one sense for never, in the dozens of times I have flown out of Kolkata airport, has the newsagent in the terminal given me back the change when I have bought a Rs 2.50 newspaper. He always opens his drawer, gazes into it and murmurs, "Sorry but I don't have 50 paise." Never does he suggest taking two rupees. He always takes three, selling the paper at a premium.

Others too play that game. I was glad when the fee for an hour's parking was increased from Rs 7 to Rs 10 because that's what the parking man outside the high court demanded anyway. He always rapped out a peremptory "10 rupees!" when you returned to your parked car. "I don't keep change," he retorted when you pointed out timidly that you had parked for a bare 25 minutes and a full hour's charge was Rs 7. Now, a 10-rupee note will change hands without argument.

Coins once meant gold, silver and copper. Devi Chaudhurani's gold mohur in Bankim Chandra Chatterji's eponymous novel, finds its equivalent in the gold sovereign that William Boot, the innocent hero of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, is done out of. Tradition decreed welcoming a bride or a newborn with a guinea. But it wasn't all give; there was take too: the new son-in-law who paid obeisance to his mother-in-law with a guinea had to be blessed with two. But just as rupees, annas and pies became decimal paise, metal yielded to nickel-brass, cupro-nickel, aluminium-bronze and aluminium.

Liberia was left moneyless when a bunch of Lebanese traders with tin trunks mopped up all the US dollar notes that were the country's currency. India can always print and mint more but I have known children's piggy banks painstakingly stuffed over the years with two, three and five paise coins going to waste. Five-rupee coins are becoming thinner and lighter.

With legions at his beck and call and the mightiest in the land at his feet, Baburao Hazare should ask why our savings are steadily being robbed. Paper money was bad enough, and for that sleight of hand we must thank China whose seventh century Tang emperors first thought of taking the public for a ride. When Europe introduced notes in the 14th century, the holder was entitled to exchange them at the official bank for the equivalent value in gold or silver. Arvind Kejriwal, economist, erstwhile income-tax official, activist and Hazare's right-hand man, should demand the meaning of "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one hundred rupees" on a Rs 100 note. How will the governor of the Reserve Bank of India redeem his solemn word? By exchanging one 100-rupee note for another?

We are being short-changed all the way. Self-proclaimed champions of justice aren't interested in complaints that won't make newspaper headlines, draw TV cameras or force the prime minister's intercession. The really poor haven't flocked to the Ramlila grounds. Just as protest fasting is for those who never go hungry, coins are for the poor… and numismatists.

sunandadr@yahoo.co.in

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BUSINESS STANDARD

COLUMN

EYE ON AGRICULTURE

AGRI-ENTREPRENEURS ARE FINDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO INCREASING CROP YIELD VIA SUSTAINABLE FARMING PRACTICES

JYOTI PANDE LAVAKARE

Imagine getting fresh produce at your table that has been locally and sustainably grown in hygienic, disease-free conditions. Now add to that the knowledge that while you're eating, you are involuntarily conserving resources, reducing your carbon footprint and participating in ecological farming, perhaps even providing landless women and marginalised farmers with jobs.

Okay, it may not make your palak paneer, pesto or rocket salad taste any sweeter, but if you're like me, you will be ready to pay more for the privilege of this choice.

And now the best part – suppose you don't actually have to pay more – all this is available for the same price as your pesticide-ridden, chemically-fertilised produce coming from farms located several hundred miles away? I'd make the switch in a heartbeat — I can't imagine why others wouldn't.

This isn't just an imaginary scenario of a utopian farming commune but something we could see happening around urban pockets, if a couple of agri-entrepreneurs succeed in their attempts to find creative solutions in a sector ignored by policy-makers and educators alike.

Anju Srivastava is a former advertising professional and a first-time entrepreneur with big ideas and a desire to do good. As founder, WinGreens Farms, she has positioned herself as an ethical intermediary between farmers and retailers, straddling the rural-urban divide with empathy and compassion. And a sharp business model.

Cutting straight through to the essence of what's troubling the agriculture sector – fragmented land holdings, the controversial land ceiling Act, lower returns on investment, high dependence on monsoons and crop cycles, distorting fertiliser subsidies, lack of education and thus, investment into modern farming techniques – Srivastava has devised an innovative solution for farmers with small land holdings.

Instead of outright buying or even contracting, Srivastava rents land from farmers at higher than their existing revenues. Then, for an additional salary, she hires those same farmers' families to work the land, thus providing them with not just a rental income, but also a fixed salary. She employs their women as casual labour, which further helps augment family income. By doing all this, she takes the risk away from exactly those people who are at highest risk. And by making them her employees, she makes skilling them acceptable.

But this column is about entrepreneurship, not philanthropy, so what does WinGreens get out of this? Plenty, it appears.

Srivastava is able to explode productivity by introducing high-value, low-water use crops and modern farming techniques. When Srivastava tweaks traditional cropping pattern, swapping jowar and bajra for herbs and salads, converting to drip irrigation to save gallons of water and bring down electricity bills, using composting and other sustainable farming techniques to conserve and improve soil, she gets exponentially higher output of already high-value produce.

"Jab zameen sone ke bhaav hai, to uspe sona ugaana chahiye, na?" (When the land is worth the price of gold, then shouldn't we grow gold on it?) she says as we sit at a coffee shop in New Delhi, less than 50 miles from the three villages where her pilot project has been functional for the past three years .

Where farmers were able to get a revenue of '20,000 per acre per annum, Srivastava, through these techniques, has managed to get '12 lakh per acre per annum, thus creating wealth. "My farmer's family incomes have gone up from '20,000 to '3 lakh per annum," for every acre of land they continue to own, Srivastava says, pride in her voice. And in the process, she ends up educating her farmer-employees, teaching by demonstration.

But because she is a newbie to farming, Srivastava has been circumspect in her growth. She has limited herself to renting 4 acres in Haryana, experimenting with inter-cropping high-value plants like garlic and turmeric with traditional crops, focusing on improving yields. But come November and she will have another 20 acres under her belt and ready to produce winter vegetables such as carrot, cauliflower and bok choy.

"We're on the verge of take-off. Our aim is to minimise food miles and supply the freshest, ethical and traceable produce. And we want this model to be replicable in all parts of India," Srivastava says. She will limit herself to 50 acres over the next three years, but believes that other farmers will be inspired as they learn how to improve yields, and hundreds of acres of farmland will begin to be cultivated more efficiently.

But breaking into traditional cropping patterns requires patience. Embedded inefficiencies become part of the farmer's DNA, and inertia won't let him switch to new crops. And change seems too risky.

"We found an innovative way of taking risk away from the farmer," says Srivastava. With the help of one of the world's largest irrigation companies, Jain Irrigation Systems, Srivastava is helping farms switch to drip irrigation, which waters only the root of plants. This has cut her water and electricity use by almost half. And a 90 per cent subsidy on drip irrigation that the Haryana government offers makes this even more profitable.

But what's really practical is the forward linkage she has created with large retailers — Spencers, Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar and Bharti-Walmart's Easy Day. Currently, she supplies edible greens as well as oxy-generators in garden pots through rented branded kiosk space. And has recently expanded to set up live counters to demonstrate preparation and test-marketing of chutneys, dips and pestos from her farm-grown fresh produce while she waits for various government licenses that will allow her to stock her processed produce on retail shelves.

Srivastava is pulling in all the weight of her past-life corporate networks and personal contacts as she plans her business strategy. Mentor-friends like Technopak's Arvind Singhal have been helping her. Coincidentally, he, too, is experimenting with his own farm-to-market initiative in Uttarakhand — Amrylis Farmworks, currently being handled by son, Aditya.

"We've bought 20 acres in Uttarakhand and are experimenting with 30 different fruit and vegetables, as well as exotic flowers, trying to find the right crop mix," says the 26-year old."Once our project becomes viable, we'll transfer all the technology and know-how to local farmers, free of charge," Singhal tells me over a very strong double espressso.

Singhal is also experimenting with sustainable techniques. Amrylis uses greenhouses or polyhouses, which the government subsidises, to increase yields. "Output has increased 10-20 times," he says.

Both these entrepreneurs are taking risks in a sector that's never been considered exciting. Ideas such as Srivastava's are brilliant in their simplicity — doing well by doing good? C K Prahalad would approve!

Feedback? Write to garagegigs@gmail.com

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

SENSE, AT LAST

AFTER MONTHS OF CONGRESS WAFFLE, RAHUL GANDHI TAKES A SENSIBLE STANCE ON GRAFT

After nearly four months of dither by the government, it's taken the normally reticent Rahul Gandhi to articulate Indians' anguish about corruption. In Parliament today, Gandhi thanked Anna Hazare for speaking out against graft at all levels; he also said that the Lokpal could be made into a constitutional authority like the Election Commission. Gandhi correctly said that an empowered Lokpal will be a necessary, but not sufficient instrument to curb corruption. For that to happen, democratic institutions need to kick in at all levels to hold people to account. By emphasising the role of democratic institutions and Parliament, Gandhi has tried to create a broad, all-party platform to debate and formulate institutions to curb corruption. This is something the government, and the Congress party at its core, failed to do for four months, as the anti-graft movement gathered strength. Gandhi said at least five different areas need special regulations to curb graft: government procurement, land and mining, delivery of pensions and ration cards, tax evasion and political funding. He could have added more: the police and law officers prey on the poor, villagers are at the mercy of local officials, hospital employees extort money from the families of the ill and injured.

It's easy to agree with much that Gandhi said, but his proposal to reform electoral finance through state funding is flawed. Yes, today political funding is a black hole where unaccounted billions of rupees disappear, never to be seen again. But if, as Gandhi says, the state funds political parties and campaigns, it'll be tough to devise a formula acceptable to all parties. Any ruling party will always be suspected of favouring itself over rivals. And even with state funding, there's no guarantee that political outfits wouldn't make a little extra on the side with corporate and private contributions. To reform political funding, India has to move to a system of transparent, voluntary donations to political parties and campaigns. This is allowed in law, but most people choose to keep funding under wraps fearing political reprisal or vendetta. Political parties will now debate the Lokpal; after that they should sit down with businesses and work out how to reform campaign finance.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

MOUNTAIN OF ARREARS

A CULTURAL CHANGE IS NEEDED IN THE WAY THE TAX DEPARTMENT COLLECTS TAXES

The finance ministry has substantially raised the monetary limit for legally contesting indirect tax disputes. Welcome as this is, it is at best an incremental step to reduce litigation. Total tax arrears — direct and indirect — have crossed a staggering . 3.9 lakh crore, which is 40% of the estimated tax collections this fiscal year. Of this, a substantial amount is difficult to recover as defaulters have no assets left, or vanished without a money trail or secured a stay order from courts. Clearly, we need action to clear up this mess and also overhaul the system to prevent a build up of arrears. For this, the tax department should get to the root of the problem that leads to disputes between the authorities and taxpayers. The most important among them is the poor drafting of tax laws that often leads to opposing and varying interpretation of the provisions. Tax laws should be simple and clear-cut if the government wants to lower litigation. The new direct taxes code can and should remove ambiguity to encourage voluntary compliance. The problem will also be addressed by the goods and services tax. Second, cases mount when litigants are reluctant to settle pending ones. Third, there is also unwillingness on the part of the system to take a decision that favours the taxpayer and that adds to case backlog. We should bring down the number of levels of appeals and also incentivise settlement of disputes. The dispute settlement mechanism should become more robust and cases should be disposed of fast.

Of course, tax cheats should not be let off the hook. The government should make creative use of technology to go after big tax offenders that now swim effortlessly outside the tax net. Recent initiatives in using IT to collate taxpayer information have been only partly successful. However, it's unfair to burden a taxpayer with an outgo that is not due under law. Tax officers should not make high-pitched assessments in their zeal to collect taxes. What is needed, therefore, is a cultural change in the way taxes are collected and arrears recovered. Lower tax rates, without exemptions, will also help cut litigation.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

TO CAP IT ALL

ANNA'S TOPI COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING TO HIT THE INTERNATIONAL FASHION SCENE

There is always a fashion week around the corner in some city in India. But with designers as over-worked and under-rested as the Indian cricket team, will this artistically sensitive community also do its mite to support Anna (Hazare) for the next ramp show? There is no doubt that the anachronistically dressed Gandhian has effected a resurgence of retro and triggered a revalidation of white k h a d ifor a new generation that should catapult him into the same league as the fashion world's Anna (Wintour). Indeed, thanks to him there has been an unexpected Indian contribution to the current international Autumn/ Winter 2011-12 accent on 'statement' accessories as well. Though the d h o t iAnna wears is yet to catch on with a motorcycle and metro-rail habituated youth, his inscribed Anna t o p i s(a 21st century recasting of the defunct headgear paradoxically named after a man who never wore it, Mahatma Gandhi) are undoubtedly the fashion statement of this season of discontent. Thanks to its sleek silhouette and androgynous appeal (another A/W 2011-12 trend) the chances of it making an international splash are high, especially as it has potential for a seamless transition from couture to pret-a-porter.

It is not unusual to see Indian designers get inspired by historic happenings or artistic ferment in other parts of the world; so far most tumultuous Indian events have not given them a defining leitmotif that can get their creative juices flowing. This movement, having also captured the attention of their target clientele, thus presents a unique opportunity for the Indian design fraternity to guide the t o p i'stransition from mass to class, and even offer the international fashion world another uniquely Indian element to draw on after the Nehru jacket and b a n d g ala.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

WAKE UP, IRDA

THE INSURANCE REGULATOR HAS A LONG WAY TO GO BEFORE IT ACQUIRES RESPECTABILITY AMONG POLICYHOLDERS

We understand an insurance product as one in which we pay a small premium to avert the small probability of a huge loss. That is why insurance-linked savings products are expected to yield somewhat lesser returns because the returns have to account for the inherent insurance premium. Now imagine an insurance-linked savings product, called a "savings assurance plan" into which you could invest a periodic sum (premium) every year for, say, 10 years. The policy tells you that if you survive the 10 years, you shall receive "the maturity benefit (a certain assured sum) — plus any attaching bonuses, payable on the maturity date of this benefit". Let us say this takes care of the savings element in the policy.

But what if the policy's insurance element states thus: "In case of death during the first year from the date of commencement of the policy, a basic benefit of 80% of the premiums received will be paid to the nominee of the life assured and in case death after the first year, the amount payable on death will be the 'lesser of ': The sum assured (in the maturity benefit) — plus any attaching bonuses; or the total of the premiums paid plus interest, at 6% per annum compounded, on each premium from the premium due date to the date of death"? Now does that surprise you? Well, it appalls me, considering it is a real-life "insurancelinked-savings" product of a prestigious insurance company I came across recently, duly approved by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda)!

Why is the above product shocking? Because, in case of policyholder's death before 10 years, the maturity benefit plus bonuses is almost always likely to be greater than the premium paid plus 6% interest, so that almost invariably, what the survivor will be paid in case of the death is whatever the policyholder had invested plus 6%, which in any case is the least the policyholders could have earned for their nominees in a simple fixed deposit (FD) in a bank, with possibly a higher return. What is worse, the policy has a three-year lockin and one cannot even borrow against it. So, not only does the so-called insurancelinked savings policy afford no insurance, it offers way less interest and flexibility and convenience than any ordinary bank FD.
So, if an insurance product has no insurance element in it, exactly what service does the insurance company render the policyholder? And for this non-service, how do they justify lopping off 20% of the dead policyholder's premium paid if the unfortunate policyholder were to die in the very first year?
Further, is the company being fair to the policyholder in case he survives the 10-year period? Well, the product is very cleverly structured (for the insurance company, that is). The company pegs the maturity benefit (in case of survival) at 84.25% of the nominal value of the premiums paid in this case. For example, if the premium is . 1 lakh per annum for 10 years, the nominal value of the premiums is . 10 lakh. Against this, the maturity benefit is only . 8.425 lakh, which works out to the present value of the 10-year annuity discounted at 4%. Now the attaching bonuses of this company stood at 3.25% at the end of six years of the ten-year period, implying a surrender value of the policy at the end of six years (in case one wanted to exit the policy at the end of six years) to less than the principal paid over six years! And at the end of 10 years if the policyholder survives, even if the "attaching bonuses" improve to, say, 10% at the end of 10 years — an unlikely scenario — that 10% would apply to the maturity benefit which was the discounted value of the annuity at 4%. This would imply a princely return of 6% on your investments, when there was in fact no insurance element to the product! But laymen frequently fall victim to such products.

Now all this raises two interesting questions. One pertains to the quality of governance in an insurance company. Is this really an honest product, providing any real value to the policyholders? If yes, it is difficult to see what it is. If not, and if such a product is an aberration that slipped through by error, should a responsible company in the financial sector, recall the product just as reputed companies recall defective autos? It takes years for financial companies to build their reputation. A single product like this has the potential to kill that reputation, in case a matter like this ends up in a court of law. The second issue pertains to Irda itself. According to its website, Irda's objectives are to protect the investor's interest; promote orderly growth of insurance industry in the country; devise control activities needed for smooth functioning of insurance companies including investment of funds and solvency requirements to be maintained by insurance companies; and adjudicate on disputes, among others. It is difficult to see how clearing the above product addresses any of the above objectives.

Of course, the above product may not be unique of its kind. Perhaps issues of these kinds are what are at the bottom of the "turf war" between Sebi and Irda that erupt from time to time. It is easy to see why Sebi's concerns may have been justifiable and how Irda may have a long way to go before it acquires the status of a respectable regulator working truly in the interests of the hapless policyholders.

V RAGHUNATHAN

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

GUEST COLUMN

DEMOCRACY'S DRAMA IN TERRORISM'S THEATRE

President George W Bush was famous for proclaiming democracy promotion as a central focus of American foreign policy. He was not alone in this rhetoric. Most US presidents since Woodrow Wilson have made similar statements. So it was a striking departure when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to Congress earlier this year about the "three D's" of American foreign policy — defence, diplomacy and development. The "D" of democracy was glaringly absent, suggesting a fundamental policy change by President Barack Obama's administration.

In the eyes of many critics at home and abroad, the Bush administration's excesses tarnished the idea of democracy promotion. Bush's invocation of democracy to justify the invasion of Iraq implied that democracy could be imposed at the barrel of a gun. Moreover, Bush's exaggerated rhetoric was often at odds with his practice, giving rise to charges of hypocrisy. He somehow found it easier to criticise Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Burma than Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and he quickly toned down his initial reproach of Egypt.
There is a danger, however, in over-reacting to the Bush administration's policy failures. Democracy is not an American imposition, and it can take many forms. The desire for greater participation grows as economies develop and people adjust to modernisation.

Nor is democracy in retreat. Freedom House, a non-governmental organisation, listed 86 free countries at the beginning of the Bush years, a total that increased slightly, to 89, by the end of his term. Democracy remains a worthy and widespread goal, which should be distinguished from the means chosen to attain it. There is a difference between assertive promotion of democracy and more gentle support. Avoiding coercion, premature elections, and hypocritical rhetoric does not rule out a patient policy of economic assistance, quiet diplomacy, and multilateral efforts to support the development of civil society, the rule of law, and support for well-managed elections.

Equally important to the foreign-policy methods used to support democracy abroad are the ways in which we practice it at home. When we try to impose democracy, we tarnish it. When we live up to our own best traditions, we can stimulate emulation and generate the soft power of attraction. This approach is what Ronald Reagan called the "shining city on the hill." For example, many people both inside and outside the US had become cynical about the American political system, arguing that it was dominated by money and closed to outsiders. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 did a great deal to restore the soft power of American democracy.

Another aspect of America's domestic practice of liberal democracy that is currently being debated is how the country deals with the threat of terrorism. In the climate of extreme fear that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration's tortured legal interpretations of international and domestic law tarnished American democracy and diminished its soft power.

Fortunately, a free press, an independent judiciary, and a contentious legislature helped to bring such practices into public debate. Obama has proclaimed that he will close the Guantánamo detention facility within a year, and he has declassified the legal memos that were used to justify what is now widely regarded as torture of detainees. But the problem of how to deal with terrorism is not just a question of the past. The threat remains with us, and it is important to remember that people in democracies want both liberty and security.
In moments of extreme fear, the pendulum of attitudes swings toward the security end of that spectrum. Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese-American citizens during the early days of World War II.
When some of the more reasonable members of the Bush administration are asked today how they could have taken the positions that they did in 2002, they cite the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11, the intelligence reports of an impending attack with nuclear materials, and widespread public fear of a second attack. In such circumstances, liberal democracy and security are in tension.

Terrorism is a form of theater. It works not by sheer destruction, but rather by dramatising atrocious acts against civilians. It is like jiu jitsu: the weaker adversary wins by leveraging the power of the stronger against itself. Terrorists hope to create a climate of fear and insecurity that will provoke liberal democracies to harm themselves by undercutting their quality in terms of their own values. Preventing new terrorist attacks while understanding and avoiding the mistakes of the past will be essential if we are to preserve and support liberal democracy both at home and abroad. That is the debate that the Obama administration is leading in the US today.

Joseph S Nye

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

GUEST COLUMN

THY HAND, GREAT ANARCH

PARIKSHIT GHOSH

Recently, as the English cricket team re-enacted the Battle of Plassey in Birmingham, faithfully assisted by a supporting cast of our putative world champions, a more dramatic spectacle erupted all around it and eclipsed the coronation ceremony. Riots had broken out all over Britain.

London was burning, Manchester was ruled by mobs, gangs of young men were smashing store windows in Birmingham with the same sadistic determination that Alistair Cook summoned up while smashing the toothless Indian bowling all over the park. British Prime Minister David Cameron looked irritable on TV, perhaps because his much-awaited summer vacation, coming on the heels of a nasty and protracted tabloid scandal, was so rudely interrupted.

The riots startled TV pundits and laymen alike, who are more used to seeing such broadcasts emerge from a Third World hell-hole or some banana republic. Assorted experts were trotted out to spin their pet theories. If you're the type who lies awake at night worrying about the perils of globalisation, you will have no trouble seeing in the mix of things a familiar set of villains — the financial and debt crises, austerity drive, a Tory government, unemployment and income inequality. Those with a taste for psycho-babble can be richly rewarded with panel discussions about the mob mind, garnished with references to Jung and Canetti. Meanwhile, various Third World dictatorships have been watching with interest, and could barely contain their schadenfreude.

Cameron's own diagnosis is predictable: the parasitism and antisocial culture bred by an indulgent welfare state is to blame. He has threatened to kick out folks from government housing colonies, that den of all social vices.
To those who analyse urban riots, admittedly an esoteric pastime, all this should inspire not the gaping disbelief displayed by the commercial media but a sense of déjà vu. The notion that glittering neighbourhoods in affluent nations are immune to social breakdown is incorrect. Police strikes have been made rare in these countries by essential services acts, and if you look at what unfolded on those rare occasions, you might want to check your pro-union sympathies at the door as far as policemen are concerned.

Boston 1919, Melbourne 1923 and Montreal 1969 are all infamous episodes when the withdrawal of police patrols turned the streets into jungles in the space of a day or two. In the summer of 1977, there was a power blackout in New York City that lasted through the night and turned Big Apple into a playing field for arsonists, looters and vandals.

Only a couple of months ago, a massive crowd of hockey fans gathered in Vancouver's downtown after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup finals to the Boston Bruins. What the city lacked in hockey, they made up that night in mayhem and anarchy. I spent the better part of the last decade in Vancouver, and I can testify that save for a few seedy pockets populated by junkies and prostitutes, this is as laidback, idyllic and dainty a little town as you will ever come across, where public disorder seems as likely to occur as a UFO landing. Well, except that the UFO landed once before — there were riots after the 1994 Stanley Cup finals too. Amidst all the pontification about deep social causes, the simplest theory of riots is often missed — they are their own rationale. If you are alone and pick up a brick and aim it at a store window, there will be plenty of cops and prison cells to give you a taste of the incarceration industry's hospitality. If you're one of thousands rushing in to gather merchandise without a credit card, you will be rather unlucky to be among the few token arrests the police will make in order to save face. Dumb choice in one instance, a pretty good bargain in the other.
People so inclined will riot when they sense the prospect of a riot, because there is safety in numbers. The avalanche can be triggered by a very minor cue: maybe a small weakness in the defences like a power blackout or a police strike, maybe a local scuffle that leads to a critical mass of angry agitators, maybe rumours of a UFO landing.

Of course, you and I, upstanding citizens animated by our conscience rather than incentives, cannot imagine indulging in such remorseless opportunism. But humanity is a big club and young adult males have, across ages and cultures, displayed a proclivity towards both ruthlessness and cunning.

Nor is this sort of thing confined to law and order. Recessions happen because people are worried about recessions. Banks fail because depositors pull out all their money worried about bank failure. A currency tanks because speculators come to believe it will. A country defaults because creditors lose faith in its solvency, making it impossible to roll over debt. Psychology is no less important than fundamentals when self-fulfilling prophecies are possible. Beneath every peaceful community, there lurks an ugly riot.

(The author is Associate Professor at Delhi School of Economics)

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BUSINESS LINE

OPINION

GOVT FINDS ITS POLESTAR

For over three months now, the Government's position on the Lokpal issue has been quite unclear. During this period, the situation has gradually got out of control with the Anna Hazare camp insisting on one — and only one — thing, namely the unconditional passage of their version of the Lokpal Bill and the Government careening like a drunken driver who has lost all control. The country and the world have been subjected to some amazing sights and ineptitude. Overall, the Government's credibility has been eroded beyond repair and has led not only to calls by the Opposition for the Prime Minister's resignation but also, by some people, for a general election. Unnerved by the goings-on and its own gross incompetence, the Congress has been muttering darkly about the absence of its President, Ms Sonia Gandhi.

Finally, however, thanks to the intervention in Parliament made by the party's second most important spokesperson and General-Secretary, Mr Rahul Gandhi, the country now has a better idea of how the Government is thinking about the issue. The burden of Mr Gandhi's song, which lasted about 15 minutes, was that the Government would not allow itself to be bullied. Towards this end, he made three important observations. First, he said, since corruption was intimately linked to the problem of funding political parties and elections, Government funding of the two was essential. This is an old chestnut that has been chewed over many times with no consensus on just how to allocate the money across different claimants. There is no reason to believe that it is a solvable problem. Second, he said, the Lokpal would have to be accountable to Parliament, which means it would have to be a constitutional authority. This requires an amendment to the Constitution, which is a long drawn out process — except, of course, during an Emergency. Third, he said, just one law was not enough to tackle the problem of corruption. This means a comprehensive reform of so many laws that, once again, the time horizon stretches almost indefinitely. The country has seen how difficult it has been to reform the financial sector, where so many changes are needed to so many different laws that the Government has had to set up a semi-permanent body to come up with all the legislative changes that are needed.

Thus, Mr Gandhi has made clear the essence of the Government's response: we will not be bulldozed into passing an ill-conceived law. No one was expecting such a firm stand which, in some ways, dilutes the Prime Minister's assurances on Thursday. He had promised a debate on all three versions of the Bill. Little wonder, then, that the Hazare camp is saying that that the Government has no credibility. Mr Gandhi has, for all intents and purposes, told Anna Hazare and his supporters to take a walk. That they will, but in which direction?

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BUSINESS LINE

OPINION

NO QUOTAS FOR HIGHER STUDIES, PLEASE

P.V.INDIRESAN

In its latest order, the Supreme Court has made a distinction between eligibility and qualifying criterion for the admission of OBC students. Eligibility is taken as the minimum marks to be obtained in the qualifying examination for a person to be eligible for admission, whereas qualifying marks relate to those obtained by the last candidate of the general category, who was admitted. Choice of the eligible mark is arbitrary; the qualifying mark is a fact.

UNABLE TO SURVIVE

Invariably, the eligibility criterion is lower than the qualifying marks. In its wisdom, the Supreme Court has said that in admitting students from the OBC category, only the eligibility criterion is valid and not the qualifying marks. I wonder what the IITs should do — they have no eligibility criterion and depend only on the marks obtained in the Joint Entrance Examination.

The IITs have had a long history of admitting SC/ST students. In 1971, the Indian government introduced reservation of 22.5 per cent for the SCs and STs in admission to the IITs. It was done hurriedly and without preparation.

Reportedly, there was a case in one of the IITs, where a student was admitted with zero marks in all four subjects of the entrance examination. While the other SC/ST students had realised they had performed badly and opted out of the later examinations, this particular candidate had entered all four exams, and as it happened, there were not enough students to fill the quota, and so he too was admitted.

At this stage, I became the Dean in IIT Delhi, in charge of undergraduate courses. Realising what a travesty of justice it would be if such poor quality students were allowed to continue for five years or even more without any prospect of getting a degree, I introduced minimum performance for continuing in IIT. At the end of the year, of the 53 SC/ST students admitted, admission for 47 of them was terminated. In fact, one of them wrote me a letter of thanks for saving his career.

Professor Nurul Hasan, the then Minister for Education, called me for an explanation. I told him that every student had written two sets of internal tests, two semester examinations and also a supplementary examination. On each occasion, I had sent letters to the student and to the parents, expressing my concern at the poor performance and fears that if they continued in the IIT, their future would be ruined.

The Minister was impressed but still concerned. He went through the list of students who had been terminated and found one Ashok Chaturvedi there. Ye kaisa aa gaya (how did he come in here?) he asked. I explained that the IITs give automatic admission to the top 10 students from each school board and that he was one of them. He looked at me and then asked aap kya lenge — chai or coffee? (What will you have, tea or coffee?) That was that.

MINIMUM PERFORMANCE

In a subsequent meeting, I suggested that no SC or ST student should be admitted without securing a minimum of two-thirds of the marks listed for admission for the general candidates to the IITs and to the BHU.

That did not help because not enough candidates qualified. Mr Shankaranand, himself an SC, had become Minister for Education and, at first, he objected to the suggestion made by the Additional Secretary, Professor Jha, to reduce the qualifying marks further, by saying that it would bring a bad name to the community. In the end, he yielded.

Nowadays, the cut-off is 50 per cent. Unfortunately, sympathy and charity have not helped. Even after 40 years of reservation, SC/ST candidates do not seem to be doing well in the IITs. In IIT Delhi, general category students passed out with an average Grade Point Average of 7.5, whereas the SC/STs had an average of around 5-6. By IIT standards that is low, very low.

EARLIER RESERVATION

In the light of this record of nearly 40 years, I conclude:

Reservation at the IIT level has not helped SC/T candidates.

It is inconceivable that a community that produced an Ambedkar cannot produce a few hundred students each year to perform well in the IITs.

Therefore, the system used by the IITs does not attract the best students from the SC/ST communities. SC/ST candidates look for a career in government establishments, which only reserve posts for their community but do not show any preference to IIT graduates.

Hence, it appears that good quality SC/ST candidates voluntarily prefer to study in institutions other than the IITs, where the competition is less severe and admission is easier. Thus, it appears highly probable that the IITs are not attracting the best students from these communities.

I go further and suggest that reservation at the university level is not the correct solution to the backwardness of communities. Instead, reservation should be given at the earliest stage — say at the end of the first standard, or at the most, the fifth standard.

I suggest that in each district, a hundred or two hundred best students be selected at this low level and sent — with adequate scholarships — to the schools from where the IITs and other such institutions get their regular students. With such good education, the SC/ST students should be able to compete, on equal terms, perhaps, without any need for special privileges.

Selected students may even be below the poverty line (BPL) — they will mostly be SC/STs — but will definitely not bear the stigma of caste. The "SC Brahmins" — who want to preserve their hegemony rather than truly help the underprivileged — are likely to object. But then, there is the Supreme Court; but that is another story.

Reservation at the university level is not the correct solution to the backwardness of communities. This is borne out by their poor performance. Instead, seats should be reserved at the primary school level.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

EARLY END TO LOKPAL IMPASSE ELUSIVE

Many have noted an atmosphere of intimidation being sought to be created by the massed protesters of the Jan Lokpal Bill movement. Chances are that if they don't agree with you, they will send a posse from Ramlila Maidan to camp outside your house in a bid to elicit compliance. Rahul Gandhi learnt this to his cost on Friday. Shortly after he suggested in the Lok Sabha that the Lokpal be accorded a constitutional status — same as the Chief Election Commissioner or the CAG — rather than a mere statutory one being deliberated now, the Ramlila battalions were exhorted to picket his residence. Earlier, the tweeting mob was asked to similarly coerce Congress MPs and leaders, including the Prime Minister. The purpose is to barrack them into lending their support to the movement's version of the Lokpal Bill and no other. This was not Gandhi's way. It is suggested by the movement's leaders that the Congress general secretary's proposal is diversionary. Former Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan does not agree. In any case, the move can be seen as a postponing tactic only for those who unreasonably insist that the Lokpal be installed, say, no later than 10 days from now, by short-circuiting parliamentary processes and by forcing all MPs to vote one way, that desired by the movement. It is not clear what will be lost if a Constitution amendment bill takes two or three months. The famous jurist, Fali Nariman, said in an interview to this newspaper about two months ago that a constitutional footing for the Lokpal will imbue the position with greater responsibility. It can also be argued that just as the writ of the CEC and the CAG runs across India, so will that of the Lokpal if Mr Nariman's view and Mr Gandhi's is considered. In that event, some of the key points raised by Hazare like the national remit for the anti-graft baron are likely to be addressed more easily, removing a serious point of friction. With PM taking the lead, on Friday the Lok Sabha was to debate the movement's bill as a "document" alongside other versions in order to get a sense of the House. It made no sense to introduce voting at this stage as the idea was to glean valuable inputs from the several suggestions that are in the public domain. Mr Hazare had indeed wanted his bill to be given an airing in the House, and this was a perfect opportunity. Regrettably, the move was aborted with the BJP leadership seeking a vote on the three thorny elements of the Hazare movement. An early resolution of issues looks to be slipping away.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

NOTHING'S FREE IN CHINA

Freedom is just a word for nothing left to lose, sang Janis Joplin. If she were alive today, she and her song would have surely been banned in China because she used the word "freedom". The sensitive Chinese find the term very subversive and have been scouting around for all songs which have it and proscribing them. Lady Gaga, who no doubt looks menacing to the Chinese, has earned the Communist Party's wrath for her songs. In one, she ends the song with a Spanish line that translates as O freedom, O love... which definitely has the potential to overthrow the system. In the old days, party censors were touchy about references to matters like Tiananmen Square, Tibet or the Dalai Lama as these were seen as ways to meddle in the country's internal affairs. Human rights was of course a big bugbear. Lately, however, Beijing has become extra-touchy. A few months ago any online search for the word "jasmine" was blocked, as it was seen as a reference to the "jasmine revolutions" in West Asia and North Africa. God forbid a florist wanted to check the flower's prices; he could be hauled off to jail. What next? Arresting someone for ordering the film Born Free for nice family viewing on the weekend?

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

GENERALLY SPEAKING

"Where is the girl who stole the sunlight? Burnt to a crisp, she's gone without trace- We treat them as deities, twinkling and bright Though we know stars are only explosions in space." From The Angle of the Dangle by Bachchoo The best place to lose a grain of sand is on the beach. The best place for Osama bin Laden to hide was in a compound close to the people who were supposedly hunting him down. The latest conspiracy theory on his capture and execution is ingenuous and intriguing, maintaining that Bin Laden and his retinue were apprehended by the Americans altogether elsewhere and then smuggled into the compound in the military town of Abbottabad. The Americans then followed through with the staged landing of helicopters, the deliberate destruction of one of them to obviate the danger to the heroic American squad undertaking this operation and the enactment of the encounter in the bedroom, the execution and removal of the body. The theory acknowledges that a watery grave was the final resting place of OBL (fish be upon him!). The conspiracy theory is ingenuous in its construction, disingenuous in intent. The world has so far conjectured that the Pakistani Army either colluded in Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad and that elements of the Armed Forces knew all along that they were sheltering the terrorist, or that the Pakistani Army had a failure of intelligence and really didn't know that Bin Laden was sheltering in their backyard. The Army Chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has taken the hit. The Pakistani government pleads ignorance of Bin Laden's presence and pleads guilty to a failure of intelligence. As the slogans on the rickshaws in Pakistani cities after the incident said (in various ways in Urdu and Punjabi): "Shoosh, be quiet, the Army is asleep!" Either way, Pakistan's American sponsors, or American allies in the international line-up against Islamist terror, will be displeased, sceptical and are even now asking hard questions. An internal enquiry, already enquiring, may come to some conclusions. These may contain some truth or they may prove to be a complete obfuscation, known in the enquiry trade as "a fix and a whitewash". The Pakistani government's favoured option is inefficiency rather than connivance and the international double-cross it implies. Our conspiracy theory overrides both. It's the Americans who, suspicious of Pakistan's feeble commitment to the anti-terror cause, set out through this Machiavellian plot to bring disgrace or suspicion upon the Pakistani Army. The Army is therefore neither guilty of double dealing nor of inefficiency. Allowing American helicopters to use its skies has been sanctioned before. To her credit, Carey Schofield's Inside the Pakistan Army, an account of the eight years that this English writer spent in the ranks and on the frontlines of conflict in that country, bravely starts her book with a bald statement of this dilemma. It must have been difficult for a writer, whose commitment to and affection for the institution, operations, personnel and spirit of the Pakistani Army is more than clear, to acknowledge in her introduction that she leans to the failure of intelligence option. Inside the Pakistan Army is the first portrait of an institution which has governed the 63-year-old country for two-thirds of its existence and has to be seen as a chief bastion against the spread of Islamism in the South Asian theatre. It features interviews with the major players as the themes and narratives unfold. It ought to interest the specialist and the lay reader. In a breathless introduction Schofield outlines the several paradoxes the Pakistani Army presents. Is it complicit with and encouraging terror or fighting it? Through several narratives of Army offensives against insurgents, mainly in the tribal regions, she comes to the compelling conclusion that several commanders of the Army — she boldly names them — approved of a policy of buying off the warlords of the insurgency. Others, such as Gen. Faisal Alavi, whose tragic story she presents in detail, the head of the Special Forces, Pakistan's Force de Frappe, believed that paying warlords would only strengthen them and reinforce their ambition of de facto rule over the tribal regions and territories. The danger of the establishment of a Shariac state was evidenced when the Islamists took over Swat and began seeping southwards, even threatening Islamabad. Alavi, in pursuit of his conviction that the Army if better equipped, trained and led could and had to beat the insurgents, set up official co-operation with the US and the UK special forces, such as the SAS, making material and strategic alliances. While he was at this task briefly in Hereford, rival factions within the Army connived to have him sacked. They influenced Gen. Pervez Musharraf to believe that Alavi had in some serious way broken ranks and been disloyal. Moreover that he had brought the Army into disrepute through his liaison with a Pathan lady who seems to have been a "broad Generaliser", so to speak. Mr Musharraf dismissed Alavi and soon after the protection afforded to him as SF commander was removed, he was ambushed and murdered. Schofield's account deliberately avoids the larger question of why Pakistan has not generated its own form of sustainable civil democracy. Is the Army the only competent and coherent body that can rule a country conceived as Pakistan was? Is that competence and coherence, not least through the evidence of this book itself, in question today?

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

HAILING PARLIAMENT

ACTIONS MUST MATCH WORDS

WAS it hypocrisy or a realisation of the responsibilities that devolve upon them? The jury of public opinion is "out" on that one. While it was indeed reassuring that parliamentary leaders of all political parties joined ranks in asserting the primacy of the legislature and its prescribed processes that were being made light of in the demands from Team Anna for expeditious passage of its version of the Lokpal legislation, it will take more than lofty statements to restore aam aadmi's confidence in Parliament and its institutions.
It would not help if note was taken that the very next morning Question Hour came a cropper in both Houses. It is a sad reality that just as the government remained insensitive to public outrage over the corruption, legislators fail to understand that their (mis)conduct has similarly disgusted the citizens. What makes that even more unacceptable is that when nothing that is politically controversial is on the agenda the quality of debate is capable of rising high ~ as in the Rajya Sabha during the impeachment motion. Yet, it is simultaneously true that in the absence of potential political fireworks the attendance dwindles, the proceedings are listless. The apex legislature, it is obvious, has been reduced to a political boxing ring.
More than once during the "live" discussions on TV over the last few days, participants made it clear they found no reason to have respect, or faith, in MPs when much of their energy was squandered on forcing adjournments, shouting slogans and trading personal charges. Bringing intelligence and application to bear when approving legislation, or serious debate on issues of national importance was not on the priority list. That persons w

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

EDITORIAL 27.08.11