EDITORIAL 09.09.09

Please contact the list owner of subscription and unsubscription at: editorial@samarth.co.in

 

media watch with peoples input                an organization of rastriya abhyudaya

Editorial

month september 09, edition 000293, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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

http://editorialsamarth.blogspot.com

 

THE PIONEER

1. CONTESTED INQUIRY
2. MURDER MOST FOUL
3. FLAWED RESPONSE TO INCURSIONS-CLAUDE ARPI
4. ISLAM RESPONSIBLE FOR PARTITION-MANOJ PARASHAR
5. EXAMS AREN’T THE ISSUE-RUDRONEEL GHOSH
6. NEO-FASCIST RHETORIC-GWYNNE DYER
7. DEALING WITH GLOBAL WARMING-CHARLES J HANLEY
8. WATER MAFIA THRIVES ON OFFICIAL APATHY

 

TIMES OF INDIA

1. QUIT STALLING
2. CAR GAZING
3. WHOSE SIDE ARE WE ON?-RAJIV KUMAR
4. 'IT'S WORTH UPHOLDING IDEALS THAT ARE GOOD FOR MANKIND'-PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE-MARGUERITE THEOPHIL
5. NUCLEAR REPUBLIC-JUG SURAIYA 

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. UPGRADING THE SYSTEM
2. DON’T FEEL AT HOME
3. LEARNING DIFFICULTIES-SAGARIKA GHOSE
4. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN-CHRIS PATTEN
5. NOWHERE TO HIDE-LALITA PANICKER

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

1. BITTER SUITE
2. SCRAPING THE DUST BOWL
3. THE DELAYERS-MIHIR S. SHARMA
4. AHMEDINEJAD, BALANCED-ALIA ALLANA
5. PAY IT FORWARD-SANDEEP JUNEJA
6. THE GREAT GAME FOLIO-C. RAJA MOHAN
7. VIEW FROM THE LEFT-MANOJ C G
8. FROM INDUS TO INDIA-DILIP K CHAKRABARTI

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. HOTEL NO-REFORM
2. PILOTS LOSE THE PLOT
3. WHEN WILL WE RETHINK THE RBI ACT?-AJAY SHAH
4. BULLS ON TOP, BUT BEARS LURK BELOW-MADAN SABNAVIS
5. WHAT’S FOREIGN IN DIRECT TAXES CODE?-NICO DERKSEN

 

THE HINDU

1. GOING AFTER SECRET FOREIGN ACCOUNTS
2. BLOW TO MEDIA FREEDOM
3. INTERNET GAINS VS WALL STREET INNOVATIONS -PRABHUDEV KONANA
4. RETHINKING MEDICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA -P. ZACHARIAH
5. MIGRANTS AT SEA ARE NOT TOXIC CARGO -NAVI PILLAY
6. LUSH LAND DRIES UP, WITHERING KENYA’S HOPES -JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
7. BEMUSEMENT AT LONDON MAYOR’S RAMADAN PLEA -HASAN SUROOR

 

THE ASIAN AGE

1. ENCOUNTERS A BLOT ON OUR DEMOCRACY-JINNAH AND KASHMIR
2. GDP AND INDIA’S HUNGRY UNDERBELLY
3. DON’T FORGET BRITISH ZEAL TO DIVIDE INDIA-P.C. ALEXANDER

 

THE TRIBUNE

1. BY RESTRAINT, NOT PASSIONS
2. TIGHTEN THE BELT, PLEASE
3. JASWANT STAYS PUT
4. KATHMANDU TO COPENHAGEN-BY B.G. VERGHESE
5. THE LIVING DEAD-BY SHELLEY WALIA
6. ENGAGING WITH ASEAN-BY BHARTI CHHIBBER
7. WHY THINK TANKS ARE IGNORED-BY SATISH MISRA AND NEIL PADUKONE
8. NOBODY MUST BE TALLER THAN THE PRESIDENT, SARKOZY AIDES INSIST-BY JOHN LICHFIELD 

 

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

1. PAKISTAN’S DUPLICITY
2. TIMBER SMUGGLING
3. APSC: A REPOSITORY OF CORRUPTION-SAIKH MD SABAH AL-AHMED
4. SRI SRI MADHAV DEV – A GREAT SAINT-DR DIBAKAR CH DAS

 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. LEARNING FROM LEHMAN: A YEAR LATER-MK VENU
2. ENCOUNTER KILLINGS
3. GETTING THE RECOVERY WRONG
4. MYSTIC EXPERIENCE OF UNION & SEPARATION

 

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1.      ENCOUNTERS A BLOT ON OUR DEMOCRACY

2.      DON’T FORGET BRITISH ZEAL TO DIVIDE INDIA - BY P.C. ALEXANDER

3.      THANK GOD, OBAMA IS NOT LIKE TED KENNEDY - BY TIM STANLEY

4.      JINNAH AND KASHMIR -BY JAGMOHAN

5.      GDP AND INDIA’S HUNGRY UNDERBELLY -BY SUMAN SAHAI

6.      DIRTY-TRICKS BRIGADE -BY KAMRAN SHAFI

 

THE STATESMAN

1. IT’S OVER ~ INFORMATION HIGHWAY CAVES IN
2. CLIMATE AND DEVELOPMENT ~ RENEWABLE ENERGY AS AN OPTION-KP BHATTACHARJEE
3. ‘MOST PEACEFUL’ ~ GO SELL THAT TO THE SOLDIERS
4. WOMEN TABLA PLAYERS: SOLO YES, ACCOMPANISTS NO!
5. POTENT COCKTAIL ~ MAOISTS & RELIGION MUDDY NEPAL IMAGE

 

THE TELEGRAPH

1. HARD LANDING
2. GHOSTLY CURTAIN
3. THE BOOK AND THE BJP -KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN
4. TO FIND FRESH PASTURES -SUMANTA SEN

 

DECCAN HERALD

1. THE BBC’S DISGRACEFUL BNP STUNT-BY DENIS MACSHANE,THE GUARDIAN
2. OF DOGGIES THAT GO TO HEAVEN-BY JANARDHAN ROYE

 

THE NEWYORK TIMES

1. ‘CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF FRAUD’
2. THE CRISIS, A YEAR LATER
3. FREE MAZIAR BAHARI
4. JUSTICE ON THE FARM
5. OBAMA’S AUDIENCE SPEAKS FIRST -BY ANNA DEAVERE SMITH
6. LESS SPOCKY, MORE ROCKY -BY MAUREEN DOWD

 

I.THE NEWSE

1. BIG BROTHER
2. CANTONMENTS
3. HUNGER SECURITY
4. A CONSPIRACY AGAINST MY FATHER-(PART II)MUHAMMAD IJAZ UL HAQ
5. WARS OF LIBERATION-DR A Q KHAN
6. PAKISTAN AFGHANISTANISED-MOSHARRAF ZAIDI
7. A CIVIL-MILITARY EQUATION-MASOOD SHARIF KHAN KHATTAK
8. CRY OF THE ANCIENT MARINER-ANJUM NIAZ
9. POST-BAITULLAH TTP-SALEEM SAFI

 

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

1. THE PRICE INDIA HAS TO PAY
2. WHERE ARE OIC, ARAB LEAGUE, ETC
3. US ARMING THE WORLD TO TEETH
4. CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY — II-MUHAMMAD IJAZ UL HAQ
5. TEHREEK-I-TALIBAN PAKISTAN, ULTIMATE FACE-FEYYAZ M PASHA
6. ANNUAL CONFIDENTIAL REPORT-PROF LAEEQ A KHAN
7. THE 1965 WAR — REVISITED-COL GHULAM SARWAR (R)
8. HEAVEN ON EARTH..!-ROBERT CLEMENTS

 

THE INDEPENDENT

1. HUMAN TRAFFICKING
2. UGLY TRAFFIC SNARL
3. SOMEONE’S LIL’DAUGHTER...!

 

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. POPULAR PM, OR A TRUE REFORMER?
2. A LUDICROUS LAW
3. VIGILANCE IS VITAL

 

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. STATES GET FLU AS CANBERRA SNIFFS
2. ON THE LINE AHEAD, ANOTHER BUGABOO

 

THE GURDIAN

1. AFGHANISTAN: MAKING THINGS WORSE
2. PUBLIC FINANCES: DEFICIT OF DEBATE

 

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. SHAPE OF DPJ RULE EMERGING
2. A SPANISH MEDICAL DOCTOR'S AFRICAN EPIPHANY-BY CESAR CHELALA
3. IN HATOYAMA'S 'FRATERNITY,' PEOPLE THE END, NOT MEANS-BY YUKIO HATOYAMA

 

THE JAKARTA POST

1. BANK CENTURY BAILOUT: WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY?
2. PUTERA SATRIA SAMBIJANTORO
3. DREAMS COME TRUE?

 

THE KOREA HERALD

1. MIGRANT WORKERS
2. NEW GNP LEADER
3. WHAT WE EXPECT FROM NEW PREMIER -KIM SEONG-KON

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

1. FOR WANT OF A PRACTICAL POLICY AND PEOPLE
2. UDA’S CORRUPTION AND HARASSMENT TO DEVELOPERS!-
3. BY E.H. PEMARATNE ATTORNEY AT LAW /TOWN PLANNER

 

CHINA DAILY

1. JUSTICE HOLDS THE KEY
2. PROCESS OVER PERSONS
3. VITAL SIGN FOR SECURITIES MARKET
4. GROWING DEBT MAKES OBAMA'S ECONOMIC TASK TOUGHER

 

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

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

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

CONTESTED INQUIRY

JUMPING THE GUN ON ISHRAT KILLING

Ametropolitan magistrate in Gujarat has come to the conclusion, in roughly three weeks and without going through the process of collecting evidence, that the police faked the ‘encounter’ with four ‘terrorists’, among them a young college student, Ishrat Jahan, to secure promotion and appreciation. The incident occurred on June 15, 2004, in the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The police claim that they had real time, actionable intelligence input that Ishrat Jahan and the three men who were travelling in a car, had entered Gujarat from Mumbai to carry out terrorist attacks, including the assassination of Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The three men were Javed Gulam Mohammad Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, a Hindu who had embraced Islam to marry a Muslim woman, held two passports and was wanted for crimes committed in Mumbai, and two Pakistanis, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani. They were believed to be Lashkar-e-Tayyeba operatives; nobody came forward to claim the bodies of Ali and Gani. Within days, the LeT had admitted that all four were its members and had been martyred. The Metropolitan Magistrate, Mr SP Tamang, has claimed in his 240-page hand-written report that all this is fiction; that the police killed the Ishrat Jahan and the four men in cold blood; and, that the killings were later shown as an ‘encounter’.

Three points need to be made about Mr Tamang’s report. First, it has been produced with amazing speed; second, the policemen who have been named were not questioned; and, third, the due process of conducting a magisterial inquiry was not followed. That apart, on August 13, the same day Mr Tamang was asked to probe the deaths, the High Court set up a Special Investigation Team, comprising senior police officers, to conduct a similar inquiry. The SIT is still at its job, but Mr Tamang has completed his report and given it to the media. The Gujarat Government has contested Mr Tamang’s claim and, apart from declaring its intention to contest the report, has let it be known that the intelligence input came from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which has also submitted an affidavit in the High Court reiterating that the four were linked to the LeT and they were on a terror mission, including assassinations. The Congress-led UPA was in power at the Centre when the encounter happened; hence, the Gujarat Government could not have ‘manipulated’ the Home Ministry’s affidavit.

The political reaction to Mr Tamang’s claim has been predictable with the Congress seeking to gain political mileage out of it by slyly dragging Mr Modi’s name into the affair. This is reprehensible, not least because the last word has not been heard on the killings. With the High Court setting up an SIT, the probe conducted by Mr Tamang should have been called off; instead he has sought to pre-empt, if not influence, the SIT’s inquiry. This is patently unacceptable. An issue as serious as ‘fake’ encounters or extra-judicial killings by the police, which deserve to be condemned in unequivocal terms and have no place in a civilised society governed by law, should not be trivialised in so cavalier a manner as has been done by Mr Tamang. If indeed Ishrat Jahan and the three men were innocent victims, then the guilty policemen must be brought to justice and given exemplary punishment. But a flawed report is not the way to go about this task, nor does partisan politics help reveal the truth.

 

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

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

MURDER MOST FOUL

CBI BOTCHED UP AARUSHI PROBE

The latest revelations in the infamous Aarushi-Hemraj murder case have further exposed the rot that plagues our criminal justice system. After the confirmation that Aarushi’s autopsy samples were tampered with — her vaginal swab was swapped with that of another female — it now appears that the CBI, which was asked to investigate the case, had adequate reasons to believe that crucial evidence related to the crime had been mishandled as much as eight months ago. For, late last year the country’s ‘premier’ investigative agency had found some original medical papers of Aarushi’s autopsy missing from the district hospital in Noida where the test slides of Aarushi’s vaginal swabs were also prepared. Given the nature of the crime — murder with possible rape — analysis of the correct samples could have been critical to nabbing the culprits. But the Central Forensic Laboratory in Hyderabad has established that the sample slides do not even contain Aarushi’s DNA. And since Aarushi’s body has long been cremated — on May 17 last year, exactly a day after the autopsy — there is no way to verify the samples. On the other hand, Hemraj, the other victim in the double murder, was cremated without anyone drawing his DNA samples. Yet the CBI has done little to go after those responsible for spiking the investigation. It has belatedly formed an internal committee to look into the mishandling of evidence in the case. Meanwhile, Dr Ritcha Saxena, who is supposed to have made the pathological slides for Aarushi’s swabs, has long gone into hiding.

Cases like the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case or the Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo murder cases are classic examples of how our criminal justice system can easily be subverted if one has the resources. Crucial evidence can be tampered with, witnesses can be ‘bought’, and investigations can be derailed with the slightest of external influence. Let alone the local police, that the CBI too cannot seem to be able to prevent botching up of investigations under its scanner is truly worrisome. It is no secret that corruption is the cancer that is eating away at the vitals of our criminal justice system. Greasing a few palms has become the difference between establishing guilt and getting away with murder. Unless corruption is fought tooth and nail things will only go from bad to worse. The Aarushi-Hemraj murder case, despite being a high-profile case that was significantly tracked by the media, is yet to see justice even after more than a year. If this is the state of affairs with this case one can very well imagine the status of those thousands of criminal cases that go unreported. Revamping the criminal justice system is a solution. But words need to be backed up with action.

 

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

            THE PIONEER

COLUMN

FLAWED RESPONSE TO INCURSIONS

CLAUDE ARPI

Incursions by the Chinese Army into Indian territory are making headlines in the media again. This is good. Not because the Chinese persist with trespassing into Indian territory, but because media coverage brings to light such disturbing happenings. Instinctively, not to say genetically, India’s political leadership prefers to hide the truth, to not “hurt our Chinese neighbours’ feelings” or “makes things worse”.

Keeping with India’s diplomatic tradition, Foreign Minister SM Krishna said after recent incidents of Chinese incursion, “With China, I think the boundary has been one of the most peaceful. So, there is no issue on that.” He added that there “is a built-in mechanism which is in place and which takes care of such incursions. India has so far acted with restraint, maintaining that the Line of Actual Control with China is not very well defined”.

We could ask the question: Why is the LAC not well defined? What is the point of successive National Security Advisers meeting their Chinese counterparts (they have met on 13 occasions since 2003) if they are not even able to define an ‘actual’ line? Apart from the fact that it proves the insincerity of the Chinese who are not ready to take the first step to calm the tensions, the exercise seems a waste of public money.

This time, the Army has had the courage to acknowledge the facts. The Army chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor, has admitted that New Delhi lodged a protest with Beijing following the incursion by a Chinese helicopter into Indian territory and the painting of some rocks along the presumptive LAC in red.

According to reports in the media, “the army is gathering evidence from the spots where Chinese troops had painted the rocks red”. What does ‘gathering evidence’ mean? Does it imply that the Army is not aware of what is happening on the LAC? If true, it is a serious and worrying lapse. This reluctance of India’s politicians and officials to acknowledge the truth is not new. It is probably a genetic feature of the Indian Foreign Service.

In May, when I spent some time in Munsyari, the last town before the India-Tibet border in the Kumaon Hills, I located the ‘historian’ of the area. Till the 1962 War, this tehsil used to be the main centre for business with western Tibet. Most of the Bhotias, the local tribe, lived on trade. Caravans used to depart from Milam, a village in Johar Valley, north of Munsyari, and proceed to the trade markets around the Kailash-Mansarovar area.

The old ‘historian’ told me a story which flabbergasted me. A gentleman native to the area, called Lakshman Singh Jangpangi, had joined the Foreign Service in the 1940s as a senior accountant posted at the Indian Trade Mart of Gartok, east of Kailash. In 1946, he was promoted to the important post of British Trade Agent. When India became independent, he continued to serve in the same position till he was transferred to Yatung in 1959.

I was told that Jangpangi, who from Gartok had a panoramic view of what was going on in western Tibet, had informed his Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) that the Chinese had started to build on the arid Aksai Chin plateau. That was in 1951-52. Crossing the Indian territory, the road only became the address for official correspondence with the Chinese Government seven years later. It was finally debated in Parliament in 1959. Probably, the Government did not want to ‘hurt Chinese sentiments’; or it believed that the issue would be solved with the passage of time.

The most ironic part of the story is that Jangpangi was awarded the first Padma Shri given to a Kumaoni ‘for his meritorious services’. Was it for breaking the news or for having kept quiet? We will probably never know.
Today, if a courageous historian requests the Government to declassify the relevant file, he will be quoted Article 8 (1) (a) of the Right to Information Act: “There shall be no obligation to give any citizen, information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state.”

Incursions by the Chinese continued in the 1950s in Garwal (Barahoti), Himachal Pradesh (Shipki-la) and then spread to Ladakh and NEFA. Mao’s regime could have only felt encouraged by the Government of India’s feeble complaints. New Delhi was probably satisfied with its seasonal protests and the immediate denials by Beijing. Hundreds of such complaints have been recorded in the 14 Volumes of the White Papers published from 1959 to 1965 by the Ministry of External Affairs.

A telling incident is worth recalling. In September 1956, a group of 20 Chinese soldiers crossed over Shipki-la pass into Himachal Pradesh. A 27-member Border Security Force team met the Chinese the same day. The BSF team was told by a Chinese officer that he had been instructed to patrol right up to Hupsang Khad (four miles south of Shipki-la, the acknowledged border pass under the Panchsheel Agreement).

However, the BSF team was advised “to avoid an armed clash but not yield to the Chinese troops”. New Delhi did not quite know how to react. A few days later, Nehru wrote to the Foreign Secretary, “I agree with (your) suggestion … it would not be desirable for this question to be raised in the Lok Sabha at the present stage”.

The policy of the Government of India was to remain silent on this issue and eventually mention it ‘informally’ to Chinese officials. Finally, the Ministry of External Affairs informed Beijing: “The Government of India is pained and surprised at this conduct of the Chinese commanding officer.” That was 53 years ago. Is the situation any different today?

There is another irony. The Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, Mr Omar Abdullah, has said that India has the right to respond: “It is our right to respond in case of ceasefire violations.” Of course, he was speaking about Pakistan and the other corner of his State. He would not have dared to use these words with China.

It is rather depressing. I have an Indian friend, knowledgeable in defence matters, who always tells me that one should not worry, that genes can evolve, even Darwin had said so. Is it just a matter of one or two generations before Indians get to acquire Chinese genes? Let us see.

 

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

 

THE PIONEER

COLUMN

ISLAM RESPONSIBLE FOR PARTITION

MANOJ PARASHAR

This refers to the article, “From Jinnah to Hafiz Saeed” by G Parthasarathy (September 3). In his book Jinnah: India- Partition-Independence, Mr Jaswant Singh has not only misinterpreted Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s role but also missed valid reasons behind the country’s partition. Contrary to his views, it was Patel who united over 560 princely states single-handedly. A person who believed in uniting could never promote disintegration. Patel was the first leader of the Congress to opine that there was no solution to the communal disturbances escalated by the Muslim League except partition of the country.

After the ‘Direct Action Day’ called by the Muslim League which resulted in unprecedented communal carnage in Bengal and Bihar, Patel assessed that India was like a ship on fire in mid-ocean with ammunition in the hold. He soon realised that it was futile to hope for reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims.

It was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who organised the first anti-Hindu and anti-Congress organisation called the United Friends of India. The emergence of Hindu leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Swami Vivekanand, Aurobindo Ghosh and Veer Savarkar, which led to the Hindu renaissance, made the Muslims feel that it was impossible to capture supremacy in India. Nor could India with a revivalist Hindu majority be made Dar-ul-Islam.

On the pretext of safeguarding the interests of the Muslim community, the Muslim League was founded by some Muslim landlords in 1906 in Dhaka. They joined hands with the British against the Hindus and the Congress and in return, the British policy of favouring the Muslims found expression in the Indian Council Act, 1909 which brought about separate electorates for Muslims.

Thus, the spirit of separatism and non-co-existence among Muslims encouraged Mohammed Ali Jinnah to declare that Hindus and Muslims were two nations. Further, driven by the Islamic principle of ‘Sovereignty rests with Allah’, the Muslim League, under the leadership of Jinnah, demanded a separate state.

Evidently, no individual but the divisive nature of Islam is responsible for the partition of the country. As a result of India’s failure to execute post-partition deportation of Muslims to Pakistan from its soil, the pre-1947 conditions are again taking shape in many parts of the country. While the population of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh has decreased drastically, the rapid increase of Muslim population has caused demographic changes in many parts. It is time we learnt from history.

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

THE PIONEER

OPED

EXAMS AREN’T THE ISSUE

WE NEED TO OVERHAUL OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM TO ENSURE STUDENTS LEARN TO LOVE KNOWLEDGE AND ACQUIRE SKILLS. FOR THIS, EVERY CHILD MUST HAVE ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION WHICH CANNOT BE THE PRESERVE OF ELITIST SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES ALONE. ONCE THIS HAPPENS, EXAMS WILL CEASE TO MATTER AS THE FOCUS WILL SHIFT TO TEACHING AND LEARNING

RUDRONEEL GHOSH

The decision to scrap the Class X board examination by the Human Resource Development Ministry has drawn both praise and criticism. Nonetheless, most people’s understanding of this seemingly radical move seems to be superficial at best. For, the entire debate about scrapping the Class X board exam has essentially boiled down to reducing stress on our students. However, to argue that stress is the reason why we should do away with this public examination is completely missing the point. After all, the basic purpose of an education system is to prepare future generations for the ‘big bad world’. And learning how to cope with stress is an important life skill. Yet the shortcomings of an education system that has examinations as its core are self-evident.

There are three things that our system of rigorous exams seeks to achieve: First, it seeks to serve as a mechanism for evaluating the progress of students. Second, it seeks to serve as a tool to make students learn. And third, it seeks to measure the capacity or the ability of students on the basis of which they will be judged in life. It is because the system fails on all three counts that the current tradition of examinations must be replaced with an effective evaluation system right from primary school to college level.

The present system of exams as a tool to evaluate the progress of students is completely outdated. If a child is unable to ‘score’ regularly it means one of two things — either he or she is unable to grasp the concepts being taught in the classroom or the child doesn’t have the motivation to learn and sit through formulaic tests. In both cases the blame lies with the teacher, not with the student. It is the job of the teacher to gauge the aptitude of each and every student in class and then work with them individually and inspire them to learn. Some students might require more effort than others, but that is the challenge of teaching. The most fundamental problem with our examination system is that it shifts the blame for a child’s inability to learn from the teacher to the student: If a student gets less than average marks in a test it is his or her fault; he or she is not paying attention; he or she must do more to keep up with the class.

No student wants to be branded as a laggard. So if a child fails to keep up in class, blame must be appointed to the teacher. What is worse is that with something like the board examination we are branding a student for life. It is on the basis of the board examination marks that he or she will get admission into ‘good’ colleges or, in other words, be viewed as ‘intelligent’ or ‘unintelligent’. This is bunkum.

The other thing that our exams do is make learning all about getting marks. Learning is supposed to be driven by the quest for knowledge and curiosity, and not by the fear of scoring less in an exam. In any case, the latter only promotes rote learning which might help a child get a passing grade, but will not help him or her truly grasp a concept or an idea.

What we need is far-reaching reforms in our education system that bring back the focus on teaching and learning. Doing away with the present pattern of exams altogether is only one of the many steps that we need to take. We need better teachers across the board, and quality schools and colleges in every town and village of the country. Plus, we need far greater uniformity among our institutes of learning to do away with the wide disparities in standards.

Every child in this country should have easy access to quality education. It is the responsibility of the Government to ensure this. After finishing his or her school education if a child in Vidharba wants to pursue engineering, he or she should be able to walk into an engineering college in his or her locality that will provide the same standards of education as an engineering college in New Delhi. Also, the child’s admission into the college shall be accepted purely on the basis of his or her interest and not on the basis of marks scored in an exam. Only when the child has completed the course or the training could he or she be tested to be recognised as a qualified engineer to join the job market. The same holds true for those aspiring to pursue medicine or other technical fields.

 

If all this sounds idealistic it is because it is. Nonetheless, we need to work towards this ideal system. Only when we have enough quality schools and colleges backed by a comprehensive system of vocational education to cater to each and every child that we will be able to do away with useless exams and bring back real learning.

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

THE PIONEER

OPED

NEO-FASCIST RHETORIC

WEST IGNORES EFFECT OF GLOBAL WARMING ON POOR COUNTRIES

GWYNNE DYER

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, is a ‘soft’ fascist who does not rant in the 1930s style. But he came pretty close to the old style two months ago when, newly elected to the European Parliament, he called for “very tough” measures to stop illegal African migrants from entering the European Union by crossing the Mediterranean in boats.

Interviewed afterwards by the BBC, he said: “Frankly, they need to sink several of those boats.” The interviewer interrupted him, protesting that the European Union does not murder people. “I didn’t say anybody should be murdered at sea,” Mr Griffin replied. “I say boats should be sunk, they can throw them a life raft, and they can go back to Libya. But Europe has sooner or later to close its borders or it’s going to be swamped by the third world.”

It’s standard neo-fascist rhetoric, and the people who use it are still shunned by the mainstream of European politics. But if the Copenhagen climate summit in December does not make a serious start at getting climate change under control, that may be mainstream rhetoric in Europe in 20 years’ time.

The poorer countries closer to the equator will be hit first and worst by global warming, As their crops die from too much heat and too little water, huge numbers of climate refugees will head north — out of Mexico and Central America to the United States, out of Africa and West Asia to the European Union. Griffin-style talk will start to sound reasonable, and the southern borders of Europe and the US will become fortified zones.

So there is some comfort to be had from this week’s offer by Japan’s Prime Minister-elect, Mr Yukio Hatoyama, to cut his country’s emissions to 25 per cent below the 1990 level by 2020.

That is a huge advance on the previous Japanese Government’s offer of a eight per cent cut by 2020. It brings the country into the zone of 25-40 percent cuts by 2020 that was set as a target for developed countries by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Since the European Union has already adopted a target of 20 per cent emission cuts on 1990 levels by 2020, with a promise to go to 30 per cent cuts at the Copenhagen talks if other industrialised countries do the same, there now seems to be a serious offer on the table. Unfortunately, there is also a catch.

The catch is that Japan’s 25 per cent offer and the EU’s 30 per cent offer both depend on other developed countries — by which they mean the United States — adopting a similar target. But US President Barack Obama isn’t promising any cut at all on the 1990 level of US emissions. He’s just offering to get back to that level by 2020, using as an excuse the fact the growth of US emissions during eight years of denial under the Bush Administration.

It doesn’t really work as an excuse. Japan is also significantly over its 1990 level at the moment. To get 25 per cent below that level by 2020, it has to cut total emissions by almost a third in the next 10 years. The real reason Mr Obama cannot offer a similar cut is political.

As IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri said last March: “He (Mr Obama) is not going to say by 2020 I’m going to reduce emissions by 30 per cent. He’ll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step.” Many Americans are just emerging from denial or have yet to do so, and Mr Obama cannot drive the process of change faster than the public will accept.

Both the Europeans and the Japanese know that the United States is not going to offer deep cuts at Copenhagen, so they will not have to deliver on their own offers. And if the industrialised countries do not commit to really deep cuts, then rapidly developing countries like China and India will not accept even the fuzziest constraints on their own emissions.

So what can be accomplished at Copenhagen? Not much in terms of hard targets, probably, but the game does not end there. This problem won’t go away, and we will all be back around the negotiating table before long. Meantime, there is one really valuable thing that Mr Obama could achieve at Copenhagen.

The game of percentage cuts on past emissions is fundamentally stupid. To avoid the risk of runaway heating, we must never exceed an average global temperature two degrees C (3.6 degrees F) higher than it was in 1990. That equates to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we are already at 390 ppm. So you can work out quite easily how much more CO2 we can afford to dump into the atmosphere in the rest of this century.

That’s the right target, and making it official would transform the negotiating process. We would then be dealing with real numbers, and the negotiations would be about dividing up the remaining permissible emissions between the various developed and developing countries.

It was Mr Obama who pushed all 20 high-emitting countries into accepting two degrees celcius as the never-exceed limit on global warming at the G8/G20 summit in Italy, so we’re already halfway there. Maybe at Copenhagen he’ll drop the other shoe.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist.

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

THE PIONEER

                                                        OPED

DEALING WITH GLOBAL WARMING

RESIDENTS OF A SMALL VILLAGE, TUKTOYAKTUK, IN NORTH-WEST CANADA, ARE FEELING THE HEAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE. BUT INSTEAD OF COMPLAINING, THEY ARE TRYING TO REVERSE THE TREND, SAYS CHARLES J HANLEY

Caught between rising seas and land melting beneath their mukluk-shod feet, the villagers of Tuktoyaktuk are doing what anyone would do on this windy Arctic coastline. They’re building windmills.

That’s wind-power turbines, to be exact — a token first try at “getting rid of this fossil fuel we’re using,” said Mayor Merven Gruben.

It’s a token of irony, too: People little to blame, but feeling it most, are doing more to stop global warming than many of “you people in the south,” as Gruben calls the rest of us who fill the skies with greenhouse gases.

They’re feeling climate change not only in this lonely corner of northwest Canada, but in a wide circle at the top of the world, stretching from Alaska through the Siberian tundra, into northern Scandinavia and Greenland, and on to Canada’s eastern Arctic islands, a circle of more than 3,00,000 indigenous people, including Gruben and the 800 other Inuvialuit, or Inuit, of the village they know as ‘Tuk’.

Since 1970, temperatures have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average. People in Tuk say winters are less numbing, with briefer spells of minus-40 C (minus-40 F) temperatures. They sense it in other ways, too, small and large.

“The mosquitoes got bigger,” the mayor’s aunt, Tootsie Lugt, 48, told a visitor to her children-filled house overlooking Tuk harbour.

Her father, one-time fur trapper Eddie Gruben, spoke of more outsised interlopers from the south.

“Them killer whales, first time people seen them here in the harbour, three or four of them this summer,” said the 89-year-old patriarch of Tuk’s biggest family and biggest business, a contracting firm.

Plants and animals are a tip-off everywhere. In northeast Canada, the Nunatsiaq News advised readers the red-breasted birds they spotted this spring were American robins.

But the change runs deeper as well, undermining ways of life.

The later fall freeze-up, earlier spring break-up and general weakening of sea ice make snowmobile travel more perilous. A trip to the next island can end in a fatal plunge through thin ice.

The unpredictable ice and weather combine with a changing animal world to make hunting and fishing more challenging, and to crimp the traditional diet of ‘niqituinnaq’, ‘real food’ — of caribou, seal and other meat staples.

The resilient Inuit — Eskimos — of the past simply moved on to better places. But since the mid-20th century these ex-nomads have been tied to settlements, with all the buildings, utilities, roads and trouble that represents in a warming world.

At Tuk’s graveyard, for example, white crosses stand akilter where the permafrost has heaved and sunk below. “In another 20 years I’ll be burying my relatives again,” Gus Gruben, 45, the mayor’s brother, said sadly as he surveyed the graves of forebears which will someday have to be moved.

Just meters (yards) away, the sound of Tuk eroding could be heard: The steel-gray Arctic Ocean crashed against a beach barrier of small boulders.

The hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk grew up in the 20th century on a spit of gravelly land hooking out into the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea, at latitude 69 degrees north, 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) from the US border, beyond the continent’s treeline and amid a tundra landscape of numberless lakes framed by drier land overlaid with moss, lichens and shrubs.

Today’s Tuk is a jumble of homely wood-frame houses, in white or pale blue or red, beneath power lines that sag alongside dirt roads leading to the peninsula’s tip, ‘The Point’, just past Our Lady of Grace church. The little chapel of peeling white paint and a doorway topped by the proud antlers of a long-ago caribou buck.

Like much of the Western Arctic coast, the land here has been sinking for centuries, an aftereffect of the Ice Age. In recent memory, before stopgap barriers were built, the sea each year was taking away about a meter (3 feet) of Tuk’s beach. Gus Gruben remembers waves spraying through classroom windows in the 1970s, before the school was moved from its spot near the graveyard. Climate change now adds to the problem.

To be concluded

 

. ***************************************

THE PIONEER

                                                        OPED

WATER MAFIA THRIVES ON OFFICIAL APATHY

IN WESTERN RAJASTHAN MUSCLEMEN SELL WATER FROM COMMUNITY SOURCES, REPORTS DILIP BIDAWAT

The very mention of Rajasthan conjures up images of desert, vast expanses of yellow sand stretching into the horizon. A water-starved terrain, here inhabitants know too well how precious water is and how impossible life could be without it. Over generations, the people here have learnt to cope with the water scarcity by nurturing and using the traditional sources of water. In the arid region of western Rajasthan, rainwater collects on the surface of ponds, tanks and lakes and groundwater is found in some areas which is used carefully by village communities over the long dry summer spell of nearly eight months.

Not anymore. The access to the surface and groundwater has now new owners and has been gradually going out of the realm of common property rights. An army of water ‘suppliers’, comprising of tractor-owning farmers, who now transports water tanks to villages, has grown. These self-styled water lords first help themselves to the readily available surface water and suck out the village ponds and lakes into their water tanks. These water lords are so influential economically, politically and socially that no one dares to stop them from taking water from traditional community sources and selling it as a commodity.

Once this is done, they turn to farmers who have dug their personal wells or tube wells to pump up groundwater for domestic purposes and to irrigate their lands. The tube-well owners first fulfil their own needs then sell excess water to these tractor-owning farmers. This sets in motion the entire chain of transactions which in western Rajasthan has made water from a resource freely available to the entire community to a commodity.

Such a blatant trade makes a mockery of the Government’s claims, its woeful neglect and failure of its myriad schemes to make water available to all. On the ground, the abysmal condition of water systems is a testimony to the people’s frustration and indeed their helplessness at the hands of these water merchants, who literally harvest the anguish of the people to feed their trade. Today private water trade is flourishing in areas of Jodhpur, Barmer and Pali districts of Marwar.

Emboldened by the lack of Government authority, the trading lobby has, in fact, turned aggressive, going right into the Government’s arena. Water traders in Agadala, Surajbeda, Dabad Bhatian, Durgapura, Baghawas villages of Jodhpur and Barmer districts thwart Government water schemes. Of course, this is done through an intricate system of corruption. Concerned Government employees are bribed, which lead to apparent technical faults in water supply systems. The water trade flourishes under the nose of the local authority.

Water traders like many other interested parties love a ‘good drought’ when rates rise two-fold. A family of five to six members with two cattle has to buy approximately one tanker of 3,000-4,000 litre capacity a month, which costs Rs 300-800. It’s a far cry from the unfettered use of natural resources for village communities. Tanker owners pay roughly Rs 50 to Rs 150 to tubewell owners to fill a tank. Of course, the water from common surface areas is freely available thus making the profit margins even higher.

Interestingly, the Government too has a system to provide water through tankers during the summers and drought periods. Tenders are announced and tanker-owners are given contract. But according to villagers, this system is discriminatory. There is no system in place for community distribution and monitoring of water. The distribution invariably excludes Dalit and poor communities who are left to buy water from their meagre sources.

Most villagers suffer from a combination of limited water resources, dysfunctional Government water supply systems and an influential tubewell, tanker owner lobby which appropriate the existing sources of water in the villages. Most villagers have to buy water from eight to even 12 months in a year.

Caught between Government apathy and the avarice of the water merchants, countless villagers are either forced to spend a few thousand rupees every year on water or else migrate to other lands.

In Dabad Bhatian village, Barmer district where the Government supply has been defunct for two years, most young men have gone to Gujarat in search of employment leaving behind women, children and the aged. Here influential tanker lobby sucks out all the water from the only village tank, leaving the hapless villagers no option but to buy water throughout the year. The gravity of the water crisis in Jodhpur, Barmer and Pali can be gauged from a simple projection: If the tanker-owners stop supply for three days, the whole area would not have a single drop of water. The expense for each family on water works out to a sizeable chunk of their earnings from Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000 a year. In Surajbera of Balatora block in Barmer, villagers spend Rs 7-8 lakh per year to buy water.

Clearly, Government’ apathy has made water a mirage in the deserts of Rajasthan.

 

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

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

TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

QUIT STALLING

 

Five years after the Gujarat police claimed that it had busted a terror plot to assassinate chief minister Narendra Modi and killed four terrorists in an encounter, an Ahmedabad magisterial court has poked holes in their story. The court ruled on Monday that the operation was a fake encounter staged by senior police officers to win promotions and the chief minister's appreciation. Among those accused are 21 policemen including the then Ahmedabad police commissioner K R Kaushik, crime branch chief P P Pandey and DIG D G Vanzara. If charges are proved the guilty deserve exemplary punishment.

That this case is not an exception and previous cases also involved senior police officers indicate that the rot has set in deep. Vanzara, for example, is already serving a jail term in another fake encounter case. The political class must share the blame for allowing sections of the police to run amok violating all norms of policing. Modi, for example, had justified the killing of Sohrabuddin Shaikh in a fake encounter by Vanzara and his team as the former was accused of being a terrorist. Shaikh was only a history-sheeter, while his wife, Kauserbi, was killed because she was witness to her husband's murder.

Similarly, going by the probe findings in the Ishrat Jahan case, it's worse than a case of mistaken identity, but rather an instance when protectors of the law cold-bloodedly arranged the killings. A culture of immunity for human rights violations would have led senior police officers to believe that rewards were to be had, if a case could be made that the chief minister was being protected by arranging the killing of innocents. The politicisation of Gujarat police is a serious issue that demands urgent attention. The Special Investigation Team probing the 2002 riot cases reported the involvement of police officers in derailing investigations. Before the SIT made the charge, civil society groups had accused sections of the state police force of protecting the interests of rioters. Officers who bucked the trend had to face the wrath of the establishment.

The challenge in Gujarat is both political and administrative. Institutional checks and balances must be introduced to weed out fake encounters. The sanctity of due process in enforcing law and order must be made clear to the police force. Modi has been accused of using national security as a bogey to promote communal agendas for short-term political gain. That impression is reinforced by the Gujarat government's rejection of the findings of the judicial inquiry report. If Modi wishes to refute this impression he must not adopt stalling tactics, but rather move with dispatch on the results of the probe and make sure that the guilty are brought to book.

 

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

 

 

 

TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

CAR GAZING

 

Gas-guzzling monster roadsters no longer have right-of-way. All over an increasingly ecologically conscious planet, people are turning to compact cars for their virtues of fuel efficiency and environment- and pocket-friendliness. According to industry reports, India's auto sector seems the biggest gainer of this small-is-beautiful change in consumer tastes. India's total auto exports were up 18 per cent between January and July while China's dropped 60 per cent, causing India to surpass China. South Korea and Thailand also saw a slump. India's show is no small feat. For one thing, export-driven China is a manufacturing juggernaut, making everything from toys to trucks. Two, India's auto industry is a growth-driver. For its exports to shine even during a slowdown spreads cheer to the economy as a whole.

As a small car hub, India has many lures when competing for investment: cheap and abundant labour, cheaper raw materials, a dynamic market, tax incentives and easier FDI rules compared to, say, China which insists on joint ventures. It also scores over China - still associated with big car rollouts - in R&D. Besides, it provides access to a high quality vendor base made up of component suppliers catering to a global clientele. China's reputation for intellectual property theft may prove a dampener for the Chinese auto industry.

The good news is that India's image as an Asian production hub has brightened to the extent of rivalling hot spots like South Korea and Thailand. And the Indian auto industry has leveraged the current recession well, with global automakers trimming costs and switching the focus to smaller, more affordable fuel-friendly vehicles. India has grabbed global eyeballs with Nano's debut as a pointer to its top quality manufacturing expertise. Not surprisingly, Made-in-India figures prominently in the entry and/or expansion plans of the global car industry's who's who, be it Ford, Nissan, Hyundai or Toyota.

Despite its consumption-led economy, however, India has a poorly penetrated domestic car market: seven vehicles per 1,000 people. Nonetheless, its market is growing rapidly. Plus India has seen healthy car sales even during a slowdown, with rural demand buoyancy acting as a major spur. This, combined with the boosted exports volume, should further rev up the auto sector. It's already being said that India could share the honours with Japan as the world's largest small car manufacturer by 2016. Way to go. But for that to happen the Indian auto industry must focus on hybrid and electric vehicles as well, which is increasingly where the action is going to be.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

WHOSE SIDE ARE WE ON?

RAJIV KUMAR

 

Security hawks, the media's foreign policy experts and the political class had a field day after July's Indo-Pakistani joint statement. Particularly for the BJP, whose astute leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee once took the boldest of steps to liberate India from its Pakistan obsession, nationalism seems confined to overtly displaying our superiority over a smaller neighbour, one fighting with its back to the wall against destabilising forces. Good foreign policy, however, has to be more nuanced so that our long-term national interests are served.

To better appreciate complex diplomatic endeavours, we must start by taking note of some facts. First, India accounts for about 80 per cent of South Asian GDP. Being so dominant, it has to bear an asymmetric responsibility for achieving stability, peace and prosperity in South Asia. This must be the bedrock of our neighbourhood policy. Second, we cannot choose our neighbours and should work with whoever we can to help Pakistan defeat the jihadis. Otherwise, there will be negative outcomes for our own experiment at building a pluralistic, multi-ethnic and democratic society. Third, the strategic balance between the two countries must surely rule out any ideas of a decisive military victory. That road leads only to mutually assured destruction. We may well have to bite the bullet one day, but it is best avoided.

Fourth, there is not one monolithic Pakistan we can engage with. A choice must be made. There is the Pakistan of the armed forces which treats the country and its people as a fiefdom to be exploited for personal benefit. There is another Pakistan toiling in poverty, deprivation and backwardness for which succour from daily injustices is welcome from any quarter. Fundamentalists, meanwhile, see themselves as guardians of the Pakistani state and true representatives of the Islamic republic. They see victory within their grasp because they have duped the army into believing that it can calibrate the growth of jihadism.

There is also the Pakistan of the rising middle class which wants modernisation but equates it with neither westernisation nor Islamisation. They are as horrified as we are at a video showing Taliban goons caning a woman and yet like us do not want to succumb entirely to the Coca-Cola culture. The sufi and pir traditions to which prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and brave journalists, judges and lawyers belong are also part of this Pakistan. The small, almost inconsequential section of westernised, 'liberated' men and women is yet another Pakistan. There is also the Pakistan of the Mohajirs who see themselves as increasingly marginalised and resent that. Finally, there is the Pakistan whose political leaders represent growing popular aspirations for freedom and rule of law.

India must choose which Pakistan it wants to support, and which it wants to isolate and hopefully defeat over time. Clearly, we must work to erode the credibility and legitimacy of Pakistan's armed forces establishment whose very reason to be is its festering animosity towards India. Islamic fundamentalists are the second group to be opposed. It is not mere coincidence the two are aligned in vicious opposition to India and subvert by coordinated, violent means any move to improve bilateral relations. Pakistan-bashing, on which some sections of India's political spectrum and media thrive, strengthens the hands of these two groups. Nothing serves their purpose better than a bellicose India flexing muscles and vocal chords against Pakistan which they claim to represent. The reaction to Sharm el-Sheikh must have been music to their ears.

The Pakistan to be supported is today most effectively represented by Gilani. He comes from a sufi family, is a thorough professional with well-established credentials for integrity. He is seen as distinct from his president who comes from a completely different background and perhaps with his own agenda. Gilani represents the aspirations, weaknesses and strengths of the Pakistani middle class which desires better and open relations with its counterparts across the Wagah border. Sharm el-Sheikh was manifestly designed to support him and prevent him from relying completely on Rawalpindi, the jihadis or Asif Zardari for his political survival.

India must continue to make bold attempts to improve ties and strengthen Pakistan's elected leadership to give it the wherewithal to begin confronting religious fundamentalists and resisting the armed forces establishment, the two worst enemies of the Pakistani people. At Sharm el-Sheikh, India gave away nothing in real terms. It only provided Gilani an opportunity to claim a breakthrough with his own hawks. If the strategy works, we would have an interlocutor with credibility and some capacity to resist the two groups most inimical to our interests.

What possible end can be served if Indo-Pak relations remain stalemated? Those who criticise initiatives to engage Pakistan should then suggest a more effective means of improving ties and collaborating with it to fight jihadi terrorists who, as agreed by the two countries earlier, are a menace for both.

The writer is director, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

'IT'S WORTH UPHOLDING IDEALS THAT ARE GOOD FOR MANKIND'

 

The Indian government recently extended the residentship of controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen. She spoke to Susmita Mukherjee about her 15-year-long exile and search for a home:

Your residentship in India has been extended. Are you happy?

I was granted residentship five years ago. Every six months it gets renewed. It is obvious that a Bengali would be happier living in Bengal. My friends from Bengal visit me in the capital.

The last time you were in Delhi, you had to live as if you were under house arrest. Is it better now?

I am grateful to Madanjeet Singh, freedom fighter and a secular humanist, who made my return to India possible. After the famous or infamous 'safe house' episode, now life is more relaxing as there are few restrictions. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said, "We recognise Taslima Nasreen's rights to remain in a country of her choice... She shall also have the option to choose the city". I hope the promise is kept.

You had pinned hopes on Sheikh Hasina helping you to return home. That did not happen. Have you at any time thought that you ought to have taken a less controversial path?

I tried my best to go back to my motherland. India has been my one and only refuge. I hope i can continue to live in India. If India refuses me, i will be dead. I have nowhere to go, no place to call my own. The West is not a place where i belong.

I didn't create any controversy, people did. A healthy debate is always welcome. It makes a society more democratic, liberal and civilised. I am still struggling to believe that if my ideas are not in consonance with those of extremists, i have to lose my home. I hope i'll be able to see the right to freedom of expression respected in my lifetime. It's integral to democracy. Whatever i wrote was done to create consciousness. I am not anti-Muslim. I am pro-human. I will always be with the oppressed whether they are the Hindus in Bangladesh, Muslims in Palestine, Gujarat, Jews or Christians in Pakistan. I think it's worth upholding ideals that are good for mankind.

As a writer do you think it is your responsibility not to hurt the sentiments of people?

I never intended to hurt sentiments. I write for women's rights. Misogynists abhor feminists everywhere. The reaction of fanatics also hurts my sentiments. I believe in my right to express my ideas, as well as the rights of those who oppose me. In a civilised society there should be room for debate and dialogue. But you cannot have people crying for your head, attacking you physically. I am willing to be enlightened by my critics.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

ON WAITING

PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

MARGUERITE THEOPHIL

 

As a species, we just don't do waiting very well these days, do we? We live in a fast-paced world, eat fast food, drive faster cars. Everything and everybody yells at us: Get there sooner, be there now. Getting things done fast often has its advantages. What's more, we have every conceivable instrument to help us do so, and it doesn't really help that neuroscientists remind us that our brains aren't designed to function anywhere near as fast as our technologies. All this makes waiting that much more of a dying art form. An art form? Surely you jest! Isn't it an inconvenience or unfair hardship imposed by a thoughtless, self-absorbed, arrogant or inefficient person or system? We are almost always in the process of, becoming, getting, achieving, going places, wanting the next thing. So not only does waiting involve having to delay all that, it also means having to fill any waiting time involved creatively and meaningfully. What do we do with just ourselves and time to kill? And did we hear the word meaningful? Give us a break! In this age of instant everything, it would appear that waiting has no place.

When comedian Yakov Smirnoff arrived in the United States from Russia, he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. One of his routines included this story: ''On my first shopping trip, i saw powdered milk you just add water and you get milk. Then i saw powdered orange juice you just add water and you get orange juice. And then i saw baby powder, and i thought to myself, ''Oh my, what a country!'' A poster in my office says, "Wait for the sunrise; there'll be another day. Wait for wisdom; it will come with experience. Wait for growth; it happens in the fullness of time." Being an impatient person myself, it calms and slows me down. Being an impatient person, though, the same poster simply annoys my much younger colleague immensely! But the simple truth is that even at a less profound and more prosaic level, life involves a lot of waiting. At bus-stops, airports, banks, restaurants, the doctor's clinic, the check-out counter, in front of an elevator or in traffic you wait. And with a planet of over six billion people and counting, as someone once said, "Those lines aren't getting any shorter, folks."

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

SUNVERSE

NUCLEAR REPUBLIC

JUG SURAIYA 

 

Are you pro-bomb or anti-bomb? That nuclear bomb business again? Don't be such a bore, yaar. For most of us, the Bomb is a bore. The trouble is, it could be by far the deadliest bore in the world. The pro-bomb/anti-bomb controversy has come to the fore once again in the wake of a former DRDO scientist's claim (backed by Homi Sethna, the 'father' of the Indian N-bomb) that Pokhran II was a 'fizzle'.

 

Some in India's scientific establishment are lobbying to conduct another nuclear test, to demonstrate to ourselves and, more importantly, to Pakistan that we possess a 'credible' nuclear deterrent. While India is not a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the conducting of another test would be in contravention of the Indo-US nuclear deal, which has earned India nuclear 'respectability' in the international community. To conduct another test would be to jeopardise that status. Moreover, many scientists believe that supercomputer simulation has made field-testing obsolete.

 

However, Pakistan (with the help of China and North Korea) has significantly enlarged and upgraded its nuclear arsenal. This seems to add weight to the pro-test argument. As India is supposed to be a democracy unlike totalitarian China, or military-run Pakistan the decision to test or not ought to be a political one. But will it be? In a democracy a political decision is one that ought to be taken after an informed public debate. However, in the case of nuclear weapons there is so much technocratic jargon involved that most of us shy away from any discussion on the subject. We're not qualified; let the experts handle it.

 

But nuclear bombs are far too serious an issue, for all of us, to be left to 'expert' decision. After Pokhran II, Arundhati Roy voiced passionate dissent by publicly dissociating herself from a nuclear India by declaring herself to be a 'republic of one', a declaration made economically feasible thanks to the royalties she had earned from her globally best-selling God of Small Things.

 

It was an impassioned outburst, but it distracted attention from the fundamental premise of anti-nuclear protest: universal solidarity. This is the crux of the anti-nuclear argument: that there will be no republics left of one or anything else if by design or default, someone, somewhere, triggers a nuclear Armageddon.

 

In his The Fate of the Earth the classic textbook on the physical and philosophical ramifications of a nuclear holocaust, first published in 1982 in the New Yorker, and repeatedly reprinted in book form American writer Jonathan Schell describes how even the abstract contemplation of nuclear annihilation leads to the withering away of "the common world" which we share with both past and future generations, as inheritors of the past and trustees of the future. Annihilation, or extinction, cancels past, present and future.

 

We cannot even think of extinction as total emptiness, as emptiness connotes an absence and in extinction there can be no absence as there is no presence. In the face of extinction, all categories of thought and feeling are nullified. "It thus seems to be the nature of extinction to starve thought, and the mind...descends into a kind of exhaustion and dejection", says Schell, and attributes public apathy to the nuclear peril to this mental enervation. Nuclear policy? What a bore, yaar.

 

It is a bore. But, according to Schell and many others like him, "the alternative is to surrender ourselves to absolute and eternal darkness...in which no nation, no society, no ideology, no civilization will remain; in which never again will a child be born, in which never again will human beings appear on earth, and there will be no one to remember they ever did".

 

So, pro-bomb, or anti-bomb? Republic of one? Or republic of six billion, worldwide? The choice is yours. Or could be if you choose to make it yours.

 

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

 

 

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

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

UPGRADING THE SYSTEM

 

For a society obsessed with exam percentages and academic goalposts, the Centre’s announcement that a new evaluation system will replace the Class X board exams in Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools is a welcome move. In fact, in 2005 the National Curriculum Framework had suggested replacing the examination-based board system with a grade system.

 

The new grading system will have two sets of assessments: one based on continuous and comprehensive evaluation comprising internal exams and second on extra-curricular activities like interviews, quizzes, project work and co-scholastic activities like life skills and sports. In other words, the new system will focus on an all-round holistic development of students, hopefully bringing back some of the joy to learning.

 

There’s no doubt that this fresh infusion of ideas will do a world of good for the secondary education system, which has been overlooked by successive governments except when there was a political need to change the ideological tone of textbooks. However, merely doing away with the board exam system will not get us the due benefits; certain ancillary issues need to be tackled too: better textbooks, school infrastructure and intensive training of teachers and sensitisation programmes for parents. In fact, teachers and parents would need to adjust to the new system faster and re-orient their attitude towards learning and exams.

 

Over the years, the marks-oriented educational system has put huge pressure on students and many have fallen victim to their own as well as parents’ expectations. A wider challenge lies ahead for government-aided schools where there are more pressing needs like good teaching staff, and basic requirements like blackboards, books, playing fields and sanitation facilities. The HRD ministry needs to look into these without delay so that these students don’t miss the reform bus yet again.

 

India is often called a knowledge economy and the country most likely to reap the demographic dividend. If it wants to enjoy the long-term benefits of these two positives, it is imperative that we improve our educational system with the requirements of the age. The grading system is just for the CBSE for the time being: if it works, it could push other boards to change their systems. There will be many teething problems. But this initiative sends a very strong positive signal that the government means business when it comes to reforming the education system. It may be far from done, but it is certainly well begun.

 

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

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

DON’T FEEL AT HOME

 

The government has taken its austerity drive so much to heart that it has decided not only to keep a sharp eye on the public wallet but also on private ones. So, the Minister for External Affairs S M Krishna and his deputy Shashi Tharoor, who had both been staying in five-star accommodation at their own expense in the Capital, pending the renovation of their new homes, have been ordered to pack up and move to more modest surroundings.

 

This extraordinary show of parsimoniousness, articulated by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, would suggest that the State is otherwise scrimping on expenses.

 

We can understand the outrage and this peremptory order to shift base were Mr Tharoor and Mr Krishna living off the fat of the land. But no, they were coughing up from their own resources. Now if someone wants to splash out a bit to get on with his work, why should the government get so hot behind the collar? If indeed austerity begins at home, our ministers should not be living in tony Lutyens’ Delhi at all. At a time when we are assiduously building up Brand India, it might look a little off-colour to cramp visiting delegations and dignitaries into down-at-heel premises.

 

If India is to be seen as a potential great power, surely we have far more pressing things to do than look into what ministers are doing with their private money. This gesture suggests that we still have to shake off our tired old shibboleths that we must be seen to be renunciatory in public life. It may have worked for the Mahatma, but as Sarojini Naidu famously remarked, it cost the nation millions to keep Gandhiji living in poverty.

 

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

 HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

LEARNING DIFFICULTIES

SAGARIKA GHOSE

 

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal’s education reforms, particularly for schools, have electrified students, teachers and parents. The Class X board exam will now be optional for Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools, grades will be introduced instead of marks, and there will be continuous evaluation in schools. These reforms were urgently necessary and Sibal is certainly one of the UPA’s best-performing ministers.

 

Yet reactions have been mixed. A group of parents told me recently that Sibal’s advisers on school reforms are ‘idealistic jholawallahs’, far removed from Indian realities. Is the emphasis on ‘de-stressing’ the Indian student, ‘de-traumatising’ the education system, making a child free from the ‘pressures of competition’, an overly romantic and idealistic vision? Are children of elite schools to be pampered into believing that underachievement, indiscipline and sloth are actually signs of a child’s own ‘individual creative genius’?

 

Recently a member of the Central Advisory Board of Education asserted that cut-throat competition was just a small middle-class phenomenon and the majority of Indian children don’t need to be equipped to deal with competition. Is this true? A visit to a slum would show the frenzied competition for upward mobility that exists at all levels of Indian society today.

 

Many parents fear that Sibal’s reforms are failing to put in place systems through which children can actually rise to the challenge of rigorous assessment and competition. Instead, they’re simply lulling children, particularly the spoilt brats that attend urban CBSE schools, into purposelessness and laziness. The Class X board exam, and its certificate, may be irrelevant for the rich but is extremely important for the poor who need to leave school and seek a job. A child has the right to take a standardised test and to leave school with dignity on the basis of a competitive examination that has tested him against all his peers, irrespective of social origin.

 

In fact, after the decision first became known, a majority of students and parents said they wanted to take the Class X board exam, because not taking it would blunt their competitive instincts and encourage complacency. Sadly, in a country with a surfeit of talent and limited job options, we’re conditioned to think that exams are the only determinant of success. Of course this needs to change. But scrapping an exam is not going to solve the deeper crisis.

 

The most tragic fact of our education system is the apartheid that it embodies. There is near total segregation of rich and poor. The rich go to ‘good’ private schools and the poor have to make do with terrible government schools. It is a system that is as unjust, and as much a daily violation of democracy, as apartheid. Government schools are synonymous with bad quality and such is the distrust of their quality of education that even wage labourers will slave and sweat just in order to enroll their children in private schools. This naturally opens the field for various fly-by-night operators to reap profits by exploiting the poor’s yearning for ‘private’ education.

 

 Sibal’s greatest challenge is to fight the apartheid, or at least minimise it. To de-segregate our education system without sacrificing quality. Making an exam optional is only an easy option, a cosmetic measure. Here are some out-of-the-box solutions for making quality education available to all.

 

At the centre of quality education is that rare species: the excellent, committed teacher. Sibal should create a well-paid elite service of teachers like an IAS for teachers. School teaching is simply not glamorous or well-paid enough to attract India’s best talent. There is no independent standard-setting body to regulate the quality of teachers. Without brilliant and talented teachers, education reform will come a cropper. But where will these exceptional  teachers come from?

 

India has a vast cadre of retired government servants and professors. Why not create an All India Teacher Service that is open to every retired top civil servant or former professor or ex-serviceman, to join if he wants? Once he joins, he is given teacher training and then ‘posted’ to a district school, which he is entrusted to guide towards excellence. Why not let India’s entire retired workforce aged between 55 and 65 plunge into a second career: teaching India’s young.

 

Second, take forward Rajiv Gandhi’s idea of Navodaya schools or schools of excellence in tehsils and district towns. Let’s have thousands more of these schools where education is made interesting, the curriculum is imaginative and, above all, teachers are top notch.

 

Third, schools must be made accountable, both to their students and to the education system. Their duty should be to make sure the scholastically inclined are guided towards academic excellence, and the creatively inclined are guided towards equally rewarding non-academic careers. Every student must have the right to be tested and guided by the school. Above all, a school must not fight shy of developing talent. It’s not a virtue to be an academic non-performer — to encourage the excellent is not a crime.

 

Let’s not make education an arena of ideological talk where we swap idealistic platitudes like “competition is terrible” or “there is no such thing as a bright student or a dull student”. Instead, let’s rope in private players, civil servants, former servicemen, maybe even NRIs, to create a 21st century crack team of teachers, a Greyhound unit of pedagogical commandos who will roam India’s backwaters and fight the evil of mediocrity. Mr Sibal, you’ve already shown that anything is possible.

 

Sagarika Ghose is Senior Editor, CNN-IBN

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

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

HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

CHRIS PATTEN

 

Groucho Marx has always been my favourite Marxist. One of his jokes goes to the heart of the failure of the ideology — the dogmatic religion — inflicted on our poor world by his namesake, Karl.

 

“Who are you going to believe,” Groucho once asked, “me, or your own eyes?” For millions of citizens in Communist-run countries in the 20th century, the “me” was a dictator or oligarchy with totalitarian powers. It didn’t matter what you could see with your own eyes. You had to accept what you were told the world was like. Reality was whatever the ruling party said it was.

 

Groucho posed two insuperable problems for the ‘whateverists’ of communism. First, reason would surely tell you before long that the communist idyll — the withering away of the State and the triumph over need — would never come. Communism, like the horizon, was just beyond reach. It would be interesting to know how many of those at Beijing’s Central Party School — the party’s main educational institute — believe the Chinese state is about to wither away, or ever will.

 

The application of Groucho’s question was that citizens of Communist countries soon learned that their loss of freedom wasn’t compensated by greater prosperity. In his magisterial book The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown notes how travel abroad opened Mikhail Gorbachev’s eyes to the failure of the system that he had lived under all his life. So, in the political sphere, reason has trumped both faith in an unattainable goal and self-delusion about the consequences of its pursuit. Authoritarian party-States, like China and Vietnam, survive, but their legitimacy depends on their ability to deliver economic growth through State-managed capitalism.

 

Democracies allow people to use their reason to make choices based on evidence of their own eyes. When you don’t like a government, you can turn the rascals out without overthrowing the whole system; in an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, way. But debate in democracies is not always based on reason, nor does democracy make people more rational. Sometimes reason does prevail. This is what appeared to have happened in the last Indian election. The election of President Barack Obama was also plainly a supremely rational moment. But reason doesn’t seem to be getting much of a hearing during the current healthcare debate in the US.

 

Outsiders, even admirers, have often wondered how the world’s most globalised country can be so irrationally insular on some issues. We scratch our heads about America’s gun laws. We were astonished during President George W. Bush’s first term at the administration’s hostility to science, reflected in its stance on climate change and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Opposition to healthcare reform is a similar cause of bemusement.

 

We know that despite its great wealth — and groundbreaking medical research — America’s healthcare system is awful. It is hugely expensive. Its costs overwhelm workplace health-insurance schemes. The poor go unprotected. Too many of the sick are untreated. Overall health statistics are worse than those in comparable countries.

 

Yet Obama’s attempts to reform healthcare have run into hysterical opposition. His proposals would lead, it is said, to the State murdering the elderly, and introduce Soviet communism into the US, like what apparently exists in Canada and Britain, with their State-sponsored health systems. Communism in Toronto and London? Or just better, cheaper, more reliable healthcare for all?

Reason seems to be having a hard time of it in the US just now. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Groucho Marx was an American citizen.

Project Syndicate

 

The author is Chancellor, Oxford University(The views expressed by the author are personal)

 

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

 

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

COLUMN

NOWHERE TO HIDE

LALITA PANICKER

 

The long arm of the law seems to be increasingly catching up with law-enforcers as the judicial probe into the sensational 2004 ‘encounter killing’ of Ishrat Jahan and three others in Gujarat reveals.

 

The four, according to the state police who eliminated them, were members of the militant outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyeba who were on a mission to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

 

Forensic evidence has given lie to the theory that they were killed in a frenzied chase. Instead, they were shot dead in cold blood.

 

This will be another blow to the ‘encounter’ culture, once made famous by the Mumbai police in their drive against the underworld. In fact, at that time, the so-called police encounter specialists were feted despite having acted outside the purview of the law. Encounter killings got further legitimacy, even a degree of public approval, after they were seen to have been effective in countering insurgencies in places like Punjab.

 

Apart from this case, the 2007 Sohrabuddin Sheikh case and the more recent killing of an MBA student in Uttarakhand have put the police on the mat as never before. There are several reasons why the police and their mentors are not able to get away with extra-judicial murders as easily as before. For one, there is a vigilant media that now has its reach in almost every nook and cranny.

 

Now many may dismiss the media’s intrusive role at times, but this does ensure that awareness about issues like fake police encounters reach as many people in as little time as possible. Civil society, too, is not as passive today as before. We have seen how persistent public pressure led to re-opening of controversial cases like the murders of Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo.

 

Many of these encounter killings were done with an eye on bigger rewards in terms of promotions and accolades. The fact that such a policy is yielding diminishing returns suggests a welcome cleansing of our law-enforcement system. With good governance having become a winning formula in recent times, it is increasingly becoming counterproductive for powerful politicians to shield guilty officers.

 

But, for Modi who has been trying, successfully, to re-cast himself as development-driven, this could not have come at a worse time. The damage can only be contained if the guilty are given exemplary punishment and that too without further delay.

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

BITTER SUITE

 

When you do not practise what you preach, you should either change your habits or get off your pontificating high horse. It is reasonably assumed that you cannot, or should not, persist with the dichotomy. That two high-profile UPA ministers, one of cabinet rank, have been staying at five-star hotels for more than three months is not, this newspaper will maintain, a case for moral or legal rebuke. Anybody with the requisite means is within his rights to stay at a five-star hotel or build a palace unto himself. But External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna at the ITC Maurya and his MoS Shashi Tharoor at the Taj sit against the stark backdrop of Congress exhortations on “austerity” and “sacrifice”. Congress MPs are being asked to part with a fifth of their salary for drought relief (itself a meagre amount, but that’s another matter) as their colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs are running up, presumably, bills that beggar those salaries manifold. Perhaps it’s pertinent to ask who should be more embarrassed — the two ministers or the party itself?

 

It’ll be argued that Krishna and Tharoor are paying out of their own pockets and not squandering taxpayers’ money. It’s also claimed that they are awaiting their official residences to be ready. But these miss the point. What these ministers, and by extension the party, seem to have forgotten is the responsibility and limits that public service imposes on one — beyond paying lip service, that is. There’s justifiably a strong element of symbolism and show associated with elected public office. How does it sound to the Indian public and to the diplomatic world that India’s foreign ministers currently reside at this or that hotel in their official capacity, or that the senior one is holding meetings in his hotel’s coffee shop?

 

But if the two ministers are a fit case for any lessons, it’s in propriety, not austerity. If the party needs a lesson, it’s in the need to debunk its specious rhetoric of sacrifices for the aam aadmi. “Austerity”, in its latest avatar, is a chimera that the Congress has manufactured, rather anachronistically, to package itself as the party of the masses, partaking of their drought-induced suffering. What the party overlooks is how the aam aadmi prefers sincerity and action; how increasingly impatient he is with political posturing. It profits both elected representatives and constituents if high- and hollow-sounding words and small acts of frugality are substituted or supported by more consequential delivery mechanisms. In fact, the Congress can practise all the austerity it wants — just stop bleeding-heart preaching on the values of the same.

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SCRAPING THE DUST BOWL

 

Bundelkhand, that barren and mute land splayed across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, has suddenly acquired powerful political champions. Reeling under drought for over five years, Bundelkhand’s ecology and terrain set it apart from the rest of UP and MP, and its highly specific problems cannot be force-fit into state-wide prescriptions. Bundelkhand has no control over its own few resources, and its misery is largely lost on Lucknow. Uttar Pradesh is a state of elephantine dimensions, and it desperately needs to be carved into smaller geographies to ensure that each of these parts get administrative attention. Both Mayawati and Rahul Gandhi are agreed that the Bundelkhand area requires special intensive care. But instead of benefiting from their agreement, it is now emerging as bitterly fought-over turf for the Congress and BSP.

 

Statehood for Bundelkhand has been relegated to loud political point-scoring between the Congress and BSP because its poor, drought-stricken population hasn’t had a strong enough political voice. Funds allocated per capita do not factor in the infertile region’s special needs. It is administratively and politically ignored because its population density is a fraction of the UP average, and it sends a relatively tiny number of MLAs to the state assembly. Located on the border between two vast and unwieldy states, its issues appear remote to both state capitals. Unlike the agitations for Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, Bundelkhand raises no banners for itself. Perhaps it is too busy subsisting from one day to the next. The news from the region is full of farmers’ suicides, of the selling of wives and daughters to stave off debt, of acute water scarcity and forced migration.

 

Rahul Gandhi’s appropriation of the Bundelkhand cause has served Congress interests. But at least it has also focused national and regional attention. Gandhi requested the prime minister for a special package for the drought-afflicted area, and urged for a separate Bundelkhand development authority — a proposal that has met with fierce opposition from Mayawati and Shivraj Singh Chouhan for attempting to undercut state authority. But in any case, Gandhi’s visits to Bundelkhand have been matched by Mayawati, and the war of words between the Congress and BSP has been ratcheted up in recent months. One can only hope that this tug of war results in some tangible benefits for a long-forgotten part of India.

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

THE DELAYERS

MIHIR S. SHARMA

 

When, years from now, the errors and follies of the economics profession are disdainfully listed, the object of greatest derision will not be the finance theorists for whom efficient and complete markets were as real as “actually existing socialism” was to fanatics of a different stripe; it will not be regulators who thought regulation was uncool. No, the biggest failure of economics in these two decades will have been on climate change.

 

After all, we economists may already have screwed up the planet beyond repair. The Kyoto agreement, fashionable now to deride, was nevertheless the best hope to move the United States’ emissions to a permanently lower level; but a well-publicised revolt by Bill Clinton’s economists, who claimed the benefits would not outweigh the costs, effectively stalled its ratification.

 

That’s a phrase that economists use often: the balancing of benefits and costs. On almost every occasion, it is useful. Why is this one of the occasions where it is not?

 

Mainly because we have real trouble quantifying — especially in terms of money — the costs of climate change. Economists chronically undercount things they can’t monetise. So those things are ignored or minimised. Strangely, the years of worrying about how to account for non-monetary household work in national income haven’t taught us anything. So we scoff at “exaggerated” future costs from warming. For years mocked as dismal killjoys by everyone else, we have picked on solemn, doom-prophesying climate scientists like the second geekiest kid at school sneers at the geekiest. A profession central to which is working out the cost of the opportunity foregone has a massive failure of imagination when it comes to climate change costs.

 

A classic example: a much-discussed article written recently in The Washington Post by Marty Feldstein of Harvard, the head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, in some ways the dean of the US economics profession. A new emissions-reduction bill “would have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households,” Marty warns. Except he’s wrong. As practically everybody noticed (except his editor at the Post) “the trivially small effect” compared future emissions after the bill with emissions now — instead of projected future emissions without the bill.

 

Feldstein needs to take a tip from Harvard economics’ other Marty, Marty Weitzman. Weitzman’s isolated one reason why economists fail at this particular large-scale cost-benefit analysis. If, (i) global warming might feed back into itself raising temperatures further; (ii) how much we care about the future is uncertain; and (iii) we add everything up, mathematically we have to wind up with infinite costs. Normal translation: regular macro-level cost-benefit analysis doesn’t work here. Economist translation: it all depends on arbitrary choice of parameters! Throw in whatever numbers we want! For economists, that’s like summer vacation. And if the numbers are arbitrary, then why take the problem seriously?

 

But an underpowered imagination about costs isn’t the whole story. There’s also overpowered imagination about technology. For economists in love with growth models, technological change explains everything. So climate change “delayers” will assume that technological innovation — and tech transfer — will come along to fix it all. This is an article of faith, rather than an intelligent guess: if you ask them for an occasion outside the movies when technology has come in advance of the crisis rather than well after, they won’t answer. And they’ll spend more time than anyone thinks is warranted on absurd, patently uneconomic plans to change the earth’s reflective index or building giant solar arrays.

 

So first: you can’t make sensible comparisons if you add things up, so there’s no problem. And second: even if there is, innovation will take care of it without us breaking a sweat. Both are classical signs of fanaticism in economics. And both make basic, Economics 101 errors.

 

There are other examples of a deeply-ingrained fanaticism getting the better of common sense. Take the furore surrounding the Stern Report, a big cost-benefit analysis that argued acting now on climate change was economically wise.

 

But economists undermined the report politically by attacking Stern’s choice of the “rate of time preference” — how much we in the present value the future. In particular, they said Stern committed the cardinal sin of not using the rate at which the markets valued the future, because the financial markets are efficient about information like that. (Seriously. This is true.)

 

Then there’s a more recent paper, by Dell, Jones and Olken, of Feldstein’s NBER. In some ways sensible, it tried to disentangle who lost more and who less from climate change, to make the point that climate change shouldn’t be seen only in GDP terms. Worthy aims. But the paper’s been torn apart by climate scientists, with good reason. First, it says the link between temperature and GDP is “linear” — because that’s what it’s been in the past. But climate change by definition is a break from past trends. A failure of imagination again. Then there are the footnotes! One admits that they completely ignore the effect of rising sea levels. Another classifies China and India as “rich” countries that escape the worst economic effects. And this isn’t some fly-by-night working paper either; it was one of the more-talked about presentations at the American Economic Association meeting in 2009.

 

There are two consequences to this culture of wilful blindness.

 

The first is that being taken in by pious platitudes that all that awaits a climate change deal is for “China and India” to cut till it hurts would be an act of truly awesome naïveté. Those who make that claim, and have been making it for these lost decades, are exactly the same as those who would, using the blinkered methods outlined above, choose to deny the problem or delay response. (Feldstein’s Post piece ends with blaming “India and China.”) If you believe the economists, there’s always tomorrow, so you go first, please. Don’t let them define the debate. Don’t give an inch if you’re expecting anything in return. (You want to cut unilaterally, that’s a different argument.)

 

The second is that arguing about macro-costs and benefits and growth paths won’t help. Get micro-economists on the job instead. Get them meticulously working out how much it’ll cost to green each sector, to get rid of open coal fires, to bribe farmers into not burning agri-waste. (Then demand someone pays for it.)

 

But don’t trust the economics profession on climate change. On everything else, sure — we’re a helpful, well-informed lot. But not on this.

 

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

AHMEDINEJAD, BALANCED

ALIA ALLANA

 

The man annoys as much as he amuses, but as his power faces its stiffest challenge yet, one wonders if Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is still capable of pushing the odd and unacceptable views on the international community that he has in the past. As his new cabinet took office three months after Iran’s fateful elections, the Security Council met to discuss the country’s nuclear programme. Now there have been statements from his cabinet that they have drawn up a fresh series of proposals and are willing to come to the diplomatic table, but it accompanies the heard one-too-many times statement: “nuclear programme is our inalienable right.” Peaceful, they say, but what of reports of uranium enrichment? And if they are baseless then why limit access to sites? True, haphazard behaviour was to be expected; look at Iran’s track record.

 

But Ahmedinejad can no longer blindly misbehave. Divisions within Iran’s political elite and with top clerics at Qom and Najaf are evident — especially if you follow key cleric Rafsanjani’s actions both prior to and immediately after the election. Further, note how many members of the clergy were missing from his inauguration; recall the weird embrace between him and Ayatollah Khameini, a vast difference from the affectionate hug they’d shared last time. The president, previously powerful, now has a bit of a balancing act to perform, appeasing rival factions.

 

One lesson from the elections’ aftermath is that a formidable lobby would gladly usurp his power and position. He now must court not simply powerful clerics who sense their authority slipping away, but even his core support base, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC.

 

The insider politics of Iran’s political establishment is more defined now than ever before. In a nutshell, the powers of the presidency are being checked. Those taking this on? A family called “Iran’s Kennedys”: the influential and Khomeini-approved Larijani brothers, who command the reins of two out of the three branches of government.

 

The most formidable challenge comes from Ali, the eldest — though it’s Sadegh who now heads the judiciary. Ali stood for president, and then was Ahmedinejad’s chief nuclear negotiator until he quit due to “irreconcilable differences”. Now, as the speaker of parliament, he has vetted Ahmedinejad’s cabinet choices and blocked some appointments. Sadegh, too, has the authority to make Ahmedinejad’s life difficult: the judiciary he runs has oversight over the political arrests made after the election protests, and over the accompanying accusations of rape and torture.

 

The conservative Larijanis favour some sort of rapprochement with the West as do many other, more moderate, clerics. But what of the military men?

 

Post election, the motives of the IGRC surfaced for the first time. They regard themselves as the true keepers of the Iranian revolution, a calling hallowed through their service in the Iran-Iraq war. It is their support that has allowed Ahmedinejad to grow. He comes from their ranks, and — although the facts are vague — it is generally believed they pushed him to the presidency in 2005. In his new cabinet, defence and intelligence are the IRGC’s. Their current loyalty to him is evident through their involvement in restoring “order” after the disputed elections. General Yadollah Javani, political head of the IGRC claimed that “today, no one is impartial. There are two currents; those who defend and support the revolution and establishment, and those who are trying to topple it.”

 

One questions: who are the ones trying to topple it? Are the reformists the ones that threaten the principles of the revolution? But what of the reformists’ own churning? The simple answer is that the entire political climate in Iran is undergoing radical changes. Karim Sadjadpour of Carnegie maintains that shifts in the political spectrum can be seen at various levels of the bureaucracy. For instance, “ten years ago, the Larijanis would have been considered arch-hardliners; but the spectrum has moved so far right in recent years that now, compared with Ahmedinejad, they appear somewhat moderate.”

 

So, ultimately it looks like the guards against the clerics. And it’s Ahmedinejad’s uneasy role to reconcile the two opposing factions.

 

So, as 5+1 talks resume, remember Ahmedinejad is no longer the supremo dictating terms inside Iran we’re accustomed to thinking him — but rather point man for a divided elite, shuffling between two powerful factions.

 

alia.allana@expressindia.com

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

PAY IT FORWARD

SANDEEP JUNEJA

 

Like most people, I also believe that India will soon resume its high growth path — but to sustain this growth and to become a major technological power, it needs world-class universities. By world class, I mean universities where the teaching quality is excellent, where the faculty members are the internationally recognised leaders in their areas of expertise, where fundamental innovative ideas are generated by students and faculty that positively transform broader community life. As I discuss later, I think IITs are better placed than most universities to become world class and it is in the country’s strategic interest to invest heavily in them. This requires the kind of vision that Nehru showed in setting up these institutes in the first place. Bold, thoughtful leadership willing to take calculated risks and place long term bets on higher education, particularly in the IITs can help take India to the next level.

 

First of all, it should be recognised that creating world class universities is a difficult process that essentially requires the ability to attract and retain a critical mass of top quality faculty and students. This of course is easier said than done. Many countries including China are pouring in enormous resources to achieve this, but with varying degrees of success.

 

The IITs, while far from being world class institutes, do have unique advantages that with appropriate structural changes, better position them to become strong research universities. These include the presence of an outstanding undergraduate feeder stream. While the best universities in US, such as Harvard and MIT select about one in six applicants, at IIT we have a selection ratio of the order 2-3 per cent of the total undergraduate applicants. The IITs, if they can attract high quality faculty, can initiate a positive feedback loop that helps attract a small fraction of top undergraduate students to do graduate level research at these institutions, which in turn stimulates research activity and makes it more appealing to attract top faculty. The other advantage that the IITs have is the consistent presence of large number of alumni in leading US universities as faculty or PhD students who may have a natural preference to return to the IITs if offered the right environment, including a competitive remuneration. The third advantage is that the IITs are a well recognised brand name. Its alumni have achieved recognition as top achievers in the corporate world as well as in the academia. This helps IITs tangibly in terms of endowments, and intangibly in further attracting talented faculty and students. One important advantage that the Indian higher education institutions have over institutions in countries such as China is that our command of English gives us an advantage in dealing with the primarily English language-based international scientific community.

 

Briefly, the structural changes that IITs need include better remuneration and research grants, more autonomy that facilitates improved decision making and creation of a strong, accountable meritocratic system. Finally, a strong visionary leadership that can take bold initiatives to attract and retain outstanding researchers. My worry with the current expansion plans is that while a success of a university depends critically on hiring high quality people, due to urgent teaching needs we may hire people with ordinary credentials who may be poor future leaders for these IITs.

 

Does the current faculty deserve the salary rise that they are demanding despite largely ordinary research output? First of all, it is important to acknowledge that there are a few departments where the research output is quite impressive. It is also important to note that most faculty at IIT are heavily loaded with increasing teaching requirements that negatively affects their research output; so higher salaries are not undeserved, and in any case, free them for research by helping in increasing recruitment. Having said that, I think it is important that IITs move towards a system that incentivises and demands performance, and discourages non-performers, for instance, through the tenure system. There is also substantial deadwood in the IIT system for whom salary increase without corresponding increase in productive activity is inappropriate.

 

To summarise, I am all for the government making strong investment in the future of the IITs. This promises large returns for the country. A good start would be to take the demands of the IIT faculty and the Govardhan Mehta report seriously. In turn, IITs need to be provided greater autonomy so that they can impose a stronger merit-based incentive structure.

 

The writer is an associate professor at TIFR, who has taught at IIT Delhi for many years.

 

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

                

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE GREAT GAME FOLIO

C. RAJA MOHAN

 

Big powers playing the Great Game tend to underestimate the political wiles of their local partners in Afghanistan. The British (in the 19th century) and more recently the Russians (in the 1970s and 1980s) were constantly surprised by the Afghan rulers. Contrary to the perception that outsiders dictate terms to them, it is the Afghans who excel at manipulating the intruders. Afghan rulers often outlast their external benefactors.

 

US President Barack Obama appears to have ignored these lessons in dealing with the Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. As it took charge in early 2009, the Obama administration made no secret of its dislike for Karzai, who it thought was not held accountable by President George W. Bush. Sensing that the Obama administration might dump him, Karzai outflanked Washington in the last few months. Washington now finds itself in a spot — signalling interest in alternatives to Karzai but unable to engineer, shall we say, a ‘regime change’ in Kabul.

 

In a recent interview to the French daily Le Figaro, Karzai presented himself as an Afghan nationalist standing up to the Americans. “It is in no one’s interest to have an Afghan president who has become an American puppet,” Karzai declared.

 

Responding to corruption charges against his friends and family, “the Americans attack Karzai in an underhand fashion because they want him to be more amenable. They are wrong. It is in their interest ... that Afghanistan’s people respect their president,” Karzai said, referring to himself in the third person. He reminded Washington that they have no alternative but to support him, irrespective of the charges of electoral fraud. “As far as the elections are concerned, there was fraud in 2004, there is today, and there will be tomorrow”. “Alas, it is inevitable in a nascent democracy,” Karzai added.

 

TALIBAN TALKS

Amidst the Western exhaustion with the war and mounting Afghan anger against air attacks that kill large numbers of civilian population, Karzai has called for a change in the NATO military strategy and reaffirmed his readiness to engage the Taliban.

 

Karzai told Le Figaro that he welcomed a recent review of military strategy undertaken by US General Stanley McChrystal, who is emphasising the importance of protecting the Afghan people and end the obsession with killing the Taliban fighters.

 

Asked about a possible dialogue with the Taliban, Karzai said he is prepared to begin talks with the militant group within the first hundred day of re-assuming office. Karzai also confirmed that Saudi Arabia is actively involved in promoting such a dialogue and that the Obama administration is quite favourable to talks with the Taliban.

 

The Afghan president, however, insisted that his government will talk to only those Taliban who renounce their links with the al Qaeda and support the Afghan constitution. Talks with the Taliban might not amount to much, since it has no incentive to engage the international community that is in utter disarray.

 

That brings us to a paradox. The Taliban will be under pressure to talk only when the US troops gain the upper hand. If the US does pin down the Taliban and its friends, Washington will have no reason to talk to them. Put simply, talks with the Taliban are no substitute to defeating it on the battlefield.

 

GERMAN FOLLIES

The American disenchantment with the Europeans in general and the Germans in particular has deepened last week over a botched NATO bombing raid that killed scores of civilians.The strike was called in by a senior German officer. The German government claimed the officer feared two hijacked oil tankers, stuck in a riverbed, may be used for a suicide bombing of the German base at Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan.

 

Gen. McChrystal had in fact issued orders recently that US and NATO troops must call for air raids only as a last resort. He has been urging the troops to move out of their camps, do more foot patrols, and engage the people of Afghanistan.

 

American armies in Afghanistan have been bitterly complaining about the European soldiers for their reluctance to show up where and when it matters. On the bombing raid, the Americans are saying the German officer should have sent his troops into the riverbed to check things out rather than call for air attacks that have caused so much political damage.

 

The writer is Henry A Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Affairs, Library of Congress, Washington DC

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

VIEW FROM THE LEFT

MANOJ C G

 

The lead editorial in the latest issue of CPM mouthpiece People’s Democracy calls the Planning Commission’s agenda paper on the economic situation misleading, for indicating that India’s GDP grew at 6.1 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal year and projecting that the worst is over for the country and it has been able to overcome the impact of recession.

 

“Much of the resilience that the Indian economy has shown against the global recession has been due to greater governmental spending as well as healthy private consumer expenditures. The government’s share of expenditure increased from 9.6 per cent of GDP to nearly 10 per cent this year...This is mainly due to the fact that the 15th general elections were held during this period. The expenditure’s connected were larger than any stimulus package could have generated and importantly they directly reach the people without any middlemen or losses suffered due to faulty delivery mechanisms.”

 

This, however, it says is only a one-time expenditure and hence to be optimistic that such levels of spending will continue for the rest of the planned period would be highly erroneous. Besides, private consumer expenditures fell from 58 per cent to around only 56 per cent in April-June this year.

 

The article talks about the drought situation, which is estimated to lead to a decline in nearly 30 million tonnes of foodgrain production resulting in a dip agricultural GDP and further rise in prices and the not very encouraging import-export situation. The RBI has also in its annual report for 2008-09 forwards a lower estimate of a 6 per cent GDP growth rate for this year.

 

“It is therefore clear that while the economic optimism may create a ‘feel good factor’ it is far removed from a real assessment of our economic fundamentals...

 

What we need is an approach that puts people before profits. This can only happen when the government directly hikes public investment substantially. This would generate employment at a time when unemployment is on the rise due to the global recession,” it says.

 

SPEAKING UP FOR TRUTH

It seems the CPM still takes the views of former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee very seriously. An article in the edition (goes without saying that it was written by a political commentator) rebuts Chatterjee’s assertion that that Left had some foreknowledge that the cash for trust vote scam would come up in parliament. “It has become the practice of Somnath Chatterjee to level baseless charges against the CPM and the Left ever since he decided to cross over to the government side.” it says.

 

As for the cash for vote scam, it says the real “despicable attempt was the large scale bribery using illegal money by the agents of the ruling party to save its government. Hundreds of crores of rupees were spent to purchase MPs belonging to the opposition. 19 MPs belonging to the opposition defected to the ruling side.”

 

It says, “Chatterjee should have been worried about this brazen suborning of MPs and the farce it made of democratic norms, but strangely he has remained quiet about this assault on the dignity and values of parliamentary democracy while he was the speaker. While everybody knew about attempts to bribe MPs in the run up to the trust vote, “why did the then speaker not speak out against these immoral and criminal acts? He should have demanded a police investigation into the whole business of bribery of MPs.”

 

“The committee set up to investigate the affair of the cash produced in the House had recommended further investigation in the matter to pin down those responsible for wrongdoing. One would have thought the speaker would have asked for a CBI enquiry into the matter. But then that would have been very inconvenient for the powers that be,” it says. Interestingly, it also reminded Chatterjee how he had condemned attempts by the Narasimha Rao government to buy opposition MPs to defeat the no-confidence vote in 1993. “He had strongly condemned those illegal acts and demanded action — a case in which the former prime minister had to face trial,” it says.

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

FROM INDUS TO INDIA

DILIP K CHAKRABARTI

 

Professor K. P.N.Rao and his associates assert, on the basis of their recently published computer studies on the Indus script, that this script has statistical regularities which are in line with other natural languages. Thus, the various signs of the Indus script cannot be explained away as only symbols of different sorts. The latter opinion was expressed by an American group sometime back and apparently taken seriously enough by Rao and his colleagues to undertake their own analysis. That the Indus script represents a language is amply shown by the way its signs were found scratched from the right to the left on an inscribed potsherd from Kalibangan and the way in which the signs were arranged on the seals of Mohenjodaro. Further, the rarity with which many of these signs occur is almost a certain indication of the fact that much of the textual corpus of the Indus civilisation was written, on the analogy of the Indian tradition which continued down to the end of the nineteenth century, on perishable materials like palm and birch leaves.

 

The basic problem, however, lies elsewhere. There is a conscious attempt in certain quarters to disassociate this civilisation from the later mainstream tradition of Indian/ Vedic culture. Historically, the beginning of this attempt can be traced to the period around India’s Independence when Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the impetus for this civilisation came from Mesopotamia. Earlier, when India was a jewel in the British crown, there was no compulsion to depict it as an offshoot of Mesopotamian or other contemporary civilisations. The early excavators had no problem hypothesising that this civilisation was deeply rooted in the Indian soil and that many of its features could be explained with reference to the later Indian civilisation.

 

The current attempts to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition has assumed many forms. The term ‘Indus valley civilisation’, which is being increasingly common, suggests that this civilisation was primarily a product of the Indus valley alone, which is far from being the case. The civilisation is also bandied about as the product of what is dubiously dubbed as the ‘middle Asian interaction sphere’ and not as a product of a vast region of the sub-continent. Its chronology has been needlessly shortened, suppressing a long and continuous developmental span of about 2500 years in the modern Indian section of its distribution area. The civilisation is also visualised at the end of a straight arrow-line of wheat-barley-based development beginning in Baluchistan at c.7000 BC, completely ignoring the contribution which came from the east — from the early farming and metallurgical developments in the Aravallis or from the rice-cultivating tradition that began in the Ganga plain and its Vindhyan periphery in the seventh millennium BC. The famous Sramana image from Mohenjodaro, which shows the bust of a shawl-wearing man with a meditative expression, is now advocated as belonging to an artistic tradition of north Afghanistan and beyond. Notorious Hindu-baiters are aghast at the thought that anything related to Hinduism could occur in that civilisation, whereas the first excavators’ frame of reference for the study of the religion of this civilisation was Hinduism. That Siva was worshipped in this civilisation is proved not merely by the phallus-shaped stone objects found at Mohenjodaro and Dholavira but also by the find of an indisputedly Sivalinga set in a Yonipatta at Kalibangan. If anybody is interested, Bhang and Dhatura , both favourites with a class of Siva-worshippers, occur in the Indus civilisation.

 

The battle raging these days is whether there can be a relation between the life depicted in the Vedic literature and this civilisation. Without trying to pull down this debate to the all-too-common Indian level of ‘progress versus reaction’ syndrome which implies that that any talk in favour of Veda-Indus civilization relationship is a ‘right reactionary’ proposition ( a la Irfan Habib), we note that scholars of the stature of M.S.Vats, R.P.Chanda, B.N.Datta and P.V.Kane had no difficulty in arguing for a relationship between the two.

 

The opinions which we have noted above and which try to disassociate the Indus civilisation from the mainstream Indian tradition are endemic in modern First World archaeological literature on the subject and its followers in India. First World Archaeology, as my long familiarity with it tells me, suffers from a sense of inordinate superiority in relation to the archaeologists of the Third World. By allowing it to enjoy a free run in the country as the present archaeological policy of the government does and by allowing it to set up ‘Indus Centres’ in Vadodara or Pune, grievous damage is being caused to national archaeological scholarship in India.

 

The writer is emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology, Cambridge University.

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

HOTEL NO-REFORM

 

UPA-II has now been in government for more than 100 days, which, interestingly enough, was an entirely self-appointed target to initiate and implement a number of key policy changes. But who’s doing economic reform? UPA-I had the unique luxury of effecting minimal policy initiatives, yet presiding over four years of near 9% growth. The global climate, flush with investment funds and booming markets, facilitated that growth more than anything else. Now, however, the global climate has changed decisively and is unlikely to match the climate of 2004-2008 for much of UPA-II’s term. So, if UPA-II aims to get India back on the 9% trajectory over the next four years, it will have to be much more proactive and reformist this time around. Plus, it is almost an imperative for the big-spending UPA government to achieve higher growth in the absence of which the fisc is bound to land in a deeper mess than it already is.

 

At least pass the Bills. The government, for example, ought to have passed the Pension Bill in the last session of Parliament. Without the Bill being enacted into law, the pension regulator has no teeth. In this age of fragile finance, that is a terrible risk to take. Apparently, some changes are being made. If so, the winter session should be the absolute final target for passing the Bill. Another Bill that ought to have passed is the redone and much improved Companies Bill—designed to raise the standard of corporate governance—that was ready for parliamentary passage towards the end of UPA-I’s tenure. One of the advantages of returning an incumbent to power is that policies can be easily carried over because of continuity. But the government hasn’t utilised that advantage, nor has it utilised its honeymoon period to get difficult things done. The crucial Land Acquisition Amendment & Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill has been stalled largely because of Mamata Banerjee. Without the passage of this Bill, the process of land acquisition will remain stalled. Surely, the government cannot allow this important Bill to languish for a significant part of its term because of opposition from one ally—the industrialisation process, so important to attain a higher growth trajectory, will slow down if land acquisition issues are not properly sorted out. The 10% cut in non-plan spending is being touted as UPA-II’s recognition of fiscal imperatives. But real reform is bigger, starting with what form FRBM will take. The budgeted reduction in the deficit seems too good to be true at this moment. UPA-II is living in a no-reform hotel; hotel being an apt metaphor for a government two of whose ministers have chosen hotel accommodation over official residences. Senior Congress figures are rightly unhappy with this. They should also be unhappy about non-reform.

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

PILOTS LOSE THE PLOT

In a cheerless display of white-collar unionism, striking Jet pilots disrupted air services across the country by going on a wildcat strike. A newly-formed pilots’ grouping called the National Aviators’ Guild (NAG) had protested the sacking of two pilots who were reportedly instrumental in forming the union. But after the regional labour commissioner said no disruption was allowed while conciliation proceedings were in process, NAG withdrew its proposed strike from midnight Monday. Defying the spirit of that promise, hundreds of Jet pilots reported sick on Tuesday. As passengers were put through unnecessary aggravation, there was plenty of blame to go around, both at the union and management. Jet, of course, had passed through a similar maelstrom around a year ago. As the economic crisis started piling up troubles on the airline sector, Jet pink-slipped 1,900 employees without notice. The ensuing hullabaloo, with everyone from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena to the labour ministry weighing in on the employees’ side, saw them being reinstated. Because the flash-strike called at that time happened to be on the winning side, it never got punished. White-collar unionism is not peculiar to the airline sector. After all, this year kicked off with a strike by more than 50,000 officers of India’s state-run oil companies, seeking higher salaries. The government did act tough, made it clear that those who wouldn’t work would go to jail, but it was three days before the strikers took the threat seriously. Meanwhile, the effect of disrupted fuel supplies reverberated through the entire economy.

 

The International Air Transport Association has recently upgraded its estimates for airlines’ total losses in the first half of 2009 to $6 billion, double the projections put out in December. Passenger and freight volumes are now beginning to recover, but the Great Recession has obviously hit the industry hard. In the midst of all this churn, we have been arguing that all airlines in India need to rework their business models in the context of a changed economic scenario. It’s because they had overextended in the period of boom that private players have been paying the price in the slump. We haven’t favoured a government bailout for Air India, either. All airlines need to work on alternate strategies like sharing infrastructure, leasing out aircraft and rationalising routes. But as the sector tackles these challenges, the one that it needs protection from is white-collar unionism. If this involves taking tough action, so be it. The message has to go out that irresponsible white-collar activism will not be tolerated.

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WHEN WILL WE RETHINK THE RBI ACT?

AJAY SHAH

 

The starting point of modern thinking on monetary policy is the issue of central bank independence. Watching the world across the centuries, a pattern has been found that non-independent central banks distort monetary policy to support the incumbent political party. When elections are approaching, rates tend to be dropped. This makes households feel a bit happier and more inclined to vote for the incumbent. This threatens the fairness of elections. And after elections, it tends to kick off higher inflation. Non-independent central banks are thus associated with election-induced fluctuations. Instead of monetary policy being a force for stability, it becomes (to some extent) a source of shocks for the economy, and of unfairness in elections.

 

Major countries have chosen a remarkable solution: politicians relinquish control over the central bank. This is a truly rare . In almost all other elements of government, democracies work by holding politicians accountable in elections, and giving politicians the reins in public administration. Two issues follow hard on the heels of independence. First, independence goes with a narrowing of the functions of the central bank. There is no economic case for having independence from politicians for functions such as running the payments system, regulating or supervising financial markets or banks, running a bond exchange and depository, manning a system of capital controls, etc. The rationale for independence is limited to one small problem: that of setting the short-term interest rate. Hence, giving RBI independence requires narrowing down its functions to the core where economic logic suggests independence. Other functions need to be placed in conventional agencies, controlled by accountable politicians.

 

The second issue is that of accountability. The standard route of accountability through elections is being eschewed in this unique problem. But a central bank cannot be handed over to a set of unelected officials with no accountability. This would induce abuse of power, where the agency will focus on its own interests at the expense of the country.

 

The solution involves transparency, predictability and inflation targeting. The agency must be fully transparent about everything that it does. It must use rules rather than discretion: Unelected officials cannot be permitted to wield discretionary power. They must write down a monetary policy rule, discuss this in public, and live by it. The third element of accountability is inflation targeting. Independent central banks must have a quantitative monitorable target. Setting an inflation target for the medium term binds the agency to achieving a goal, as opposed to arbitrary exercise of power without accountability.

 

All this reasoning is rooted in the basic hygeine of good public administration. Once we accept the starting premise—central bank independence is desirable—careful thinking about public administration leads us to the remaining conclusions: narrow the functions placed in a central bank to only those where independence is required (i.e. setting the short-term interest rate), have full transparency, have a monetary policy rule, and require inflation targeting.

 

In historical sequence, the above reasoning led the way in monetary policy reform. It was a bit later that the best monetary economists started closing their models by putting in an inflation targeting central bank. They found it works very well. So in this strategy for monetary policy reform, we have a happy consensus between the common sense of good administrators and the state of the art of monetary economics. Central banks of the bulk of OECD are now de facto or de jure inflation targeting, and good emerging markets have also made the switch. De jure inflation targeting is particularly important in countries with weak institutions, where the behaviour of an agency that is not tied down by law can be more erratic.

 

The Indian monetary policy debate is about the key ideas of the successor to the RBI Act of 1934, which was drafted by the British in the 1920s. The authors of this act never envisioned the conditions of 2009, either in terms of the Indian economy, or our knowledge of monetary economics. In this debate, RBI staff are interested parties and have to recuse themselves.

 

Operationalising inflation targeting involves addressing many practical problems. A focus on these practical problems is premature. All these practical problems can be solved—as has been done myriad times in other countries—once the principle is accepted. The existence of these practical problems does not invalidate the basic strategy.

 

One periodically encounters criticism of low inflation as the prime goal of monetary policy. However, anyone who proposes that inflation targeting is not the answer has to come up with an alternative accountability mechanism, for no democracy can have an independent central bank without accountability. In addition, advocates of novel schemes have to explain why India should be a guinea pig for something not found in good countries.

 

The author is an economist with interests in finance, pensions and macroeconomics

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

BULLS ON TOP, BUT BEARS LURK BELOW

MADAN SABNAVIS

The bath tub inspired not just Archimedes but also Alan Greenspan who coined the phrase ‘irrational exuberance’ centuries later in 1996, before he had to deliver his black-tie dinner speech titled ‘The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society’ at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. It is now well known that these words brought down the markets in Tokyo and Hong Kong by 3%, London and Frankfurt by 4% and the US by 2%. We are, therefore, careful with words today. But, these words would really best describe what we are seeing in BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex where NSE is located) and Dalal Street (which houses BSE) these days.

 

The Sensex has soared to cross 16,000—this mark has been reached after 361 trading days; it was last seen at this level on 2nd June 2008. Since April 1, the Sensex had soared by 62% to reach 16016 on the 7th of August (16123 on 8th) while the Nifty has gained 56%. Those who back stock markets as being reflective of true sentiments would say that conditions are looking bright with a monsoon revival, commitment of the world to move out of the recession, foreign funds gushing in and IPOs meeting with stupendous success.

 

Stock market movements are always justified to reflect developments that may be coincidental. That is how the spirit is kept up and that’s how money keeps moving the market in a certain direction. We already have broking firms pointing at the sky because by doing so the sentiment is built up and people invest more, thus keeping the spiral moving. It should be remembered that markets boom when more money pours in. This is not so much fresh money being generated but merely transfer of funds from buyers to sellers in such a cycle. There is no new wealth being generated as such and hence the basic question is whether or not this is sustainable?

 

To answer this question we need to check the factors that may be causing the indices to increase—the fundamentals. The economic fundamentals have not changed, and while growth has been encouraging in Q1, the government has admitted that growth in Q2 and Q3 would not be that good. The monsoon has failed and it is now accepted that farm output will be down and inflation higher. In fact, even as the possible drought scenario had spread from the beginning of July, the Sensex had bounced by 9.4% till date. Further, the Sensex has climbed by 5% since 21st August when the FM uttered the dreaded D (drought) word. This really means that monsoon news does not matter for the stock market. If this is so, then the news that there has been a revival of the monsoon cannot be a factor driving sentiments. Against this backdrop one could expect fiscal intervention—the fiscal response will entail outlays that can impact the deficit as well as interest rates ultimately. Hence the near-term environment is not too conduciveto enthusiasm.

 

While industry has shown signs of growing, corporate profits in Q1 are more due to cost cutting and weak commodity prices rather than topline growth. And given the present upward trend in commodity prices, such a scenario may not be sustainable. Also growth in credit so far has been tardy and does not warrant euphoria.

 

The other factor which has been quoted as being responsible for these price movements is that foreign investors are taking greater interest. However, this is not really borne by Sebi data which shows that in September so far, there had been an inflow of just $ 19 million in equity up to 8th September.

 

The impact of the G20 resolution to continue with the economic stimulus measures also needs to be viewed with caution. The fact that all countries are keen to move out of the recession was known to all as governments and central banks have provided several relief measures to their financial sectors as well as invoked tax cuts and enhanced expenditures to keep their economies moving. Hence, the present resolution is only a continuation of a resolve and not any specific measure(s) to actually provide a further boost to the world economy.

 

Lastly, the success of IPO is a bit contrived. A bull market run by irrational exuberance instills faith in investors who go out shopping for deals, and IPOs provide an option. The absence of alternatives with interest rates being low has made investors turn to the bourses.

 

All this means that while the present impetus may be attributed to positive sentiments emanating from various announcement effects, the underlying conditions do not appear to be too sanguine in terms of growth or inflation. The fundamentals as of now do not inspire confidence and there is a limit to which sentiment, either rational or irrational, can keep the spirits up. A correction may be expected soon.

 

The author is chief economist of NCDEX Ltd. These are his personal views

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WHAT’S FOREIGN IN DIRECT TAXES CODE?

NICO DERKSEN

 

Under the direct taxes code (DTC), a company incorporated outside India (foreign company), whose affairs are “partly” or wholly controlled and managed from India, would be considered as a tax resident of India. Hitherto, a foreign company may be considered to be resident in India only if the “whole” of the control and management of its affairs are located in India. If, on the basis of control and management, a company is regarded as resident in India, it will expose itself to tax in India on its global income.

 

The proposed change could have far-reaching, even unintended, implications. For example, several Indian companies now have a subsidiary overseas. It’s common to have nominee directors of the Indian company on the board of the overseas subsidiary. They may be routinely participating in conference calls relating to overseas subsidiary while they are based in India. Further, the Indian headquarters may be playing a role in framing business or risk management policies of the subsidiary.

 

Whereas it may not be difficult to demonstrate that whole of control and management of affairs is not in India, the above situations could cast an enormous onus on the taxpayer to defend that there is no “part” control and management, either. Further, as the DTC does not define what control and management of affairs means, many borderline cases may lead to unwarranted litigation.

 

Tax treaties entered into by India generally provide that in case a company is tax resident of both countries (there is a tie), the company would be considered a resident of the country where its affairs are “effectively” controlled and managed. Judicial precedents have held that the control and management is situated at the place where “the head and brain and directing power” of the company’s affairs is situated. Indian courts have also held that the question as to where the control and management lies is to be decided in light of actual or factual exercise or control. Further, the question of control has to be viewed in light of facts in each year and hence, control in earlier years is irrelevant.

 

This article is co-authored by Sushant Nayak. The authors are senior tax professionals with Ernst & Young, India

 

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

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

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

GOING AFTER SECRET FOREIGN ACCOUNTS

 

Public interest in getting back the money stashed away illegally in Switzerland and certain other centres by Indians seeking to avoid taxes has never before been so high. While public perceptions have remained strong over the years, the issue continues to defy workable solutions. A major reason is that there is hardly any accurate information about the quantum of money salted away or the identity of the depositors. There are, as of now, vague estimates of the amount kept away — these range from Rs.30 lakh crore to Rs.70 lakh crore. The wide range is an indication of the complete absence of reliable official data. Banks in countries such as Switzerland have for long been wedded to secrecy as far as customer information is concerned. In fact, it is this secrecy along with some other positive features — notably, the extremely stable political and economic environment — that has made these countries most attractive for overseas investors. Adding to the complexity is that not all transactions by Indians with banks in these tax havens need be violative of Indian laws. Over the years, India’s foreign exchange rules have been liberalised substantially. It is possible for many categories of individuals and companies to maintain foreign exchange accounts abroad. Capital transfers are freely allowed up to $200,000 a year.

 

Indications are that the flow of money to tax havens has increased despite fewer exchange controls and the sharp cuts in personal tax rates. For India, like many other countries, tax evasion by the wealthy poses a threat to public finance. A growing international backlash against tax evasion has prompted many countries including India to take steps to pierce the veil of secrecy. G20 countries have declared their resolve to compel tax havens to adopt international codes of conduct and information-sharing. India will begin its first round of negotiations with the Swiss authorities in December but it is conceded by both sides that getting information from Swiss banks will not be easy. To begin with, the Government of India needs to have a proper bilateral treaty of the type the Swiss government has recently entered into with some 90 countries. In addition, it needs to buttress its case through hard facts and evidence. A recent deal struck between the United States and Switzerland allows the U.S authorities access to 4,450 secret accounts in a leading Swiss bank, UBS. The deal, which was hailed as a blow for fairness in taxation, was won after the U.S authorities could prove that the Swiss bank was complicit in wealthy Americans evading taxes.

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

THE HINDU

                                            EDITORIAL

BLOW TO MEDIA FREEDOM

 

The August 31 verdict of a Colombo High Court sentencing the veteran journalist and columnist J.S. Tissainayagam to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment under the country’s draconian anti-terror law has raised concerns across the world on the state of freedoms in the country. The punishment is extremely disproportionate to the alleged crime of writing articles criticising the military in his North Eastern Monthly magazine. Tissainayagam, an ethnic Tamil who wrote in English and was a regular newspaper columnist, was arrested by an anti-terrorism division of police in March 2008. He was not formally charged or produced in court until August 2008, when he was indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The court made a determination that his column, which was a mere expression of opinion on the government strategy in the war against terror, was intended to cause racial or communal disharmony. His raising money to run his magazine was construed as raising funds for the promotion of terrorism. The shock over the judgment is understandable as it is the first case in which a journalist had been charged and convicted under the PTA of 1979 and has come in the post-Prabakaran Sri Lanka that eagerly awaits reconciliation, after the military defeat of the LTTE in May this year.

 

Even before the court pronouncement, the case of Tissa made international headlines. On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, United States President Barack Obama referred to the lack of media freedom in many parts and to the case of Tissainayagam along with another as “emblematic examples of this distressing reality.” Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that has consultative status with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), has called on the Council to intercede on behalf of the jailed Sri Lankan journalist. The incarceration and prosecution by the state and the court’s judgment have the effect of intimidating reporters and editors who may want to question the government’s anti-terror campaign and strategy. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has earned all-round praise for his successful military campaign against the LTTE, should heed democratic voices and intervene urgently in the matter to set Tissainayagam free. Even in difficult times, the Sri Lanka Parliament had in 2002, during the tenure of Ranil Wickramasinghe and Chandrika Kumaratunga, repealed law relating to criminal defamation. The core post-war theme espoused by the government is, “let’s forget the past and rebuild the battered nation.” The Tissa episode is an opportunity for the government to move towards reconciliation as well as to ensure that basic freedoms are protected.

 

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

THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES   

INTERNET GAINS VS WALL STREET INNOVATIONS

THERE ARE CONTRASTING VALUE SYSTEMS AT PLAY IN THE UNIVERSALLY BENEFICIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB AND THE SKEWED FINANCIAL REWARD STRUCTURE THAT RULES THE MARKETS.

PRABHUDEV KONANA

 

The Internet has turned 40. So much brain power has gone into creating this fascinating innovation. According to Internetworldstats.com, globally there are nearly 1.7 billion Internet users. The fastest growth rates have come from the Asian countries. China leads with 330 million, followed by the U.S. with 220 million. India has only 80 million users and a population penetration of a meagre 7 per cent. However, going by the trends, there are great opportunities for growth and investment.

 

Although it is hard to estimate the extent of job creation due to the Internet, it has made thousands of millionaires and billionaires. We must thank a number of researchers and scientists who made it possible. At least one person needs special mention for his contribution to making the Internet available to the masses – Tim Berners-Lee, currently a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He invented the World Wide Web (WWW) to serve the scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN.

 

What is even more important is that Professor Berners-Lee and CERN relinquished all intellectual property rights to WWW software and related technologies for the greater good. Had he chosen to patent and exploit the innovation for personal gain, he could be competing for the wealthiest person on earth.

 

Also, the adoption of the Internet and WWW would not have had the impact that it has had. The innovations in communication technologies and software would have been impeded. The demand for IT workforce in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world would not have skyrocketed. The massive demand for the IT workforce gave an incredible opportunity for Indian firms to tap the global market.

 

All those who condemn the role of governments should take a deep breath to acknowledge the role of U.S. and European governments and their research funding agencies for the new wealth. The long gestation period involved in bringing a commercially viable innovation into the market often requires some form of governmental support. The private sector by itself has little incentive to look several decades ahead to make investment choices.

 

All those entrepreneurs who made the Internet and WWW ubiquitous deserve praise as well. Entrepreneurs with ideas and perseverance toil for years in garages, living a frugal life, to make their dreams a reality. Many do not see success. Only one in 10 new ventures makes it big. Most of them die for lack of funding or competition or simply owing to bad timing. But many move on to the next venture to try again. So, as the Internet turns 40, it is time to acknowledge those entrepreneurs who toil to make their dream come true while creating jobs and wealth.

 

Contrast this with what goes on in Wall Street or investment banking all over the world. In 2008, John Paulson, the decorated hedge fund manager, walked away with $3.7 billion as the market imploded. He had bet on the financial sector to collapse under the enormous leverage and the comical financial engineering. He shorted (that is, borrowed stock from others, often without permission from actual owners, and sold in anticipation of buying back and returning the stocks once prices fell) financial stocks and hit the bull’s eye as Lehman, Bears Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Washington Mutual, Citi, and other behemoths died or had near-death experiences. Excessive shorting probably contributed to the rapid collapse in stock prices and a run on these banks. After the dust settled, mostly thanks to government bailout amounting to trillions of dollars, Mr. Paulson is back buying shares of any leftover institutions at amazingly low prices to ride back up again. He made his wealthy investors even wealthier and did an outstanding job of it.

 

But something is amiss when we contrast that to Professor Berners-Lee’s contribution. Mr. Paulson’s reward to some extent basically killed jobs and destroyed wealth in a dramatic fashion for a large number of people, while enriching a few.

 

The capital markets, the bedrock of capitalism, are about allowing human ingenuity to seek capital to create wealth and prosperity through greater employment. But the same market is being used to transfer wealth to a few, and destroy jobs and others’ wealth along the way. The rewards are disproportionate to the value created to society or in comparison to those minds that enable wealth-creation.

 

Of course some would argue that Mr. Paulson deserves his reward, and that shorting, in general, is a risk management tool. Some, including academic researchers, argue that shorting makes markets efficient and that prices reflect market information. This may have some support, but shorting existed for a long time and it has not prevented bubbles. While efficient market hypothesis sounds appealing, it does not explain how so many economists and financial “experts” missed the ridiculous leverage and lack of risk management. The unregulated market probably exploited the system for short-term gains that aligned with individuals’ perverse incentive system.

 

Some pundits creatively term the financial carnage as creative destruction of old-time behemoths that have no business to exist in this modern complex business environment. The process of creative destruction – a term coined by the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter – explains that in a capitalistic system, by its very nature industries incessantly mutate with technological evolution and revolutions and with access to new markets and resources. During this mutation, existing players die and new ones are born. That explains why a large fraction of the industrial behemoths of the early 1900s do not exist now, but new ones thrive. At the same time, powerful players were brought to their knees. But it is a mistake to equate the highly leveraged, greed-driven decisions of investment bankers that put short-term rewards ahead of long-term benefits with creative destruction which naturally occurs in a capitalistic system.

 

It is hard to justify the reward structure of hedge funds and investment bankers vis-À-vis the human ingenuity that created the Internet that had such profound social benefits. It is of course dangerous to club all types of rewards in the financial sector as undeserving. For instance, huge rewards in private equity investments that support the process of mutation and drive innovations in a changing world can be justified for their role and risks. They do create efficiencies and job opportunities and drive economic growth. Investors taking a risk with new initial public offers (IPOs), participating in new equity, or buying corporate bonds that support operations of businesses also deserve rewards.

 

Capitalism thrives on access to capital and investors who provide the resources need to be rewarded. However, rewards such as those that Mr. Paulson got are mind-boggling since those gains do not support the foundations of capitalism. Maybe we have to coin a term “outvestment” rather than “investment” and have the process taxed differently. This digression from the Internet and entrepreneurs to the financial reward structure was deliberate, to make a comparison to highlight the contrast in the value systems. While so many entrepreneurs fail to have access to capital for innovative purposes, the financial markets have become a place for “fast money” and “mad money” rather than one to support access to capital for productive use. The so-called financial innovations that involve rapid trading, swing trading, excessive speculation, and shorting treat the financial markets as a giant gambling machine. The reward structure gives the illusion to the next generation that fast money on Wall Street is better than engineering and science where rewards take a long time and may not be guaranteed. There is increasing criticism that the best and the brightest are attracted to these quick rewards on Wall Street than to pursue other disciplines.

 

Like capital, greed is a key ingredient for capitalism to flourish. It is disingenuous to assume that greed can be eliminated with regulations. However, the incentive system and how governments tax gains must be revisited. Businesses and entrepreneurs that take risks to invest in R&D and create economic growth that benefits society must be rewarded, perhaps through incentives such as lower taxes. The entrepreneurial spirit must be rewarded even if a few individuals become obscenely rich. The good news is that many such billionaires have given, or are giving, most of their wealth back to society. Gains from investments to support the definition of “capital,” as in new IPOs, new equity participation, and bonds, must be treated differently from gains made from “outvestment” and excessive trading that treat markets as casinos.

 

There will be many who will object to lower taxes even for businesses that invest in R&D and create jobs. But we should not equate tax incentives with reckless subsidies at the expense of the poor and the powerless. Rather than endlessly extending tax exemption to profitable companies, tax benefits should be based on new investments and job creation.

 

There are lessons to be learnt for India as it continues to prosper. The financial markets must be governed judiciously to avoid reckless behaviour from perverse incentive systems. Taxation should reward wealth creators and penalise those who treat the market as a giant casino. There needs to be greater fiduciary responsibilities for investment bankers, analysts and money managers when their advice leads to excessive losses.

 

( Prabhudev Konana is William H. Seay Centennial Professor and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and can be contacted at pkonana@mail.utexas.edu)

 

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

 

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

RETHINKING MEDICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA

WITHOUT SOME QUITE FEASIBLE CHANGES IN MEDICAL EDUCATION, WE ARE NEVER LIKELY TO ACHIEVE AFFORDABLE, ACCESSIBLE AND UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE.

P. ZACHARIAH

 

Perhaps the most coveted professional education in India is in the field of Medicine. It is also the most expensive and of the longest in duration. The chances of an Indian becoming a doctor is less than one in a thousand. But the availability and the dependability of this one person could make life and death differences to the remaining 999. They are entitled to expect that this privileged medical graduate is well equipped to meet their health needs.

 

IMPORTANCE OF PRACTICE VENUE

A distinctive feature of medical education is that a very large part of it occurs in practice situations. Rightly so, since the attitudes and the capabilities of physicians are greatly influenced by the practical training they receive and by their professional mentors. Thus there is an inescapable link between the texture of health care in a country and the milieu in which its physicians are trained. When there are grievous deficiencies in the health care system, it is legitimate to enquire whether these may be related to the practice settings in which its doctors are trained.

 

It is a curious fact that the medical care system is like an iceberg. The part that gets the most recognition is the relatively small tertiary care segment with advanced technology and highly specialized medical personnel. But in truth this narrow apex of the profession makes little difference to whether every pregnant mother will deliver safely, whether every child will grow into a healthy adult or how long that adult will live without morbidity. Admittedly the achievement of these goals depends not only on medical care. But to the extent that physicians mediate these desired outcomes, the foremost prerequisite is the availability of multicompetent physicians within easy reach of one’s home and one’s purse, and capable of resolving most of the common medical needs and emergencies. This combination of skills and attitudes does exist; it is referred to, in India, as Family Medicine (FM). These physicians are the backbone of the primary and secondary levels of health care, the vast submerged part of the medical iceberg. When this segment functions well, fewer demands need to be made on the scarce and costly tertiary care centres, thus enabling the whole health care system to function more effectively, efficiently and economically. Obviously, in such an optimal health care system the bulk of the medical professionals will need to be stationed in its primary and secondary levels. But this sector is the Cinderella (the neglected princess) of Medicine in India. FM is the last choice of aspiring young physicians. And many of those who do end up in it are ill equipped to fulfil their vital role. To understand this anomaly, we have to go back to the question of the clinical settings where our doctors are trained.

 

Our present medical education is the exact opposite of the medical iceberg described above. The major part of every medical college is the so called teaching hospital which by definition is dedicated to tertiary care. All the faculty in it are required to be specialists. The colleges are not required to have departments of Family Medicine. As against the arduous specifications for the tertiary level teaching hospitals, there are no stringent stipulations for primary and secondary level health facilities dedicated to student teaching. Our budding doctors never see the challenge and the potential of competent family medicine at its best. Instead, they are brought up to think that FM is like manual labour, what any one can do but no respectable person wants to do.

 

We are in the midst of a long overdue effort to revamp the oversight of medical education in our country. But whatever the final shape of the regulatory mechanism, it owes it to our ordinary citizens to bring about some basic but quite feasible changes in medical education. Every medical college must be required to have a large and well developed department of Family Medicine. Its faculty must have the academic competence to develop this discipline on par with the other medical specialities. They must also be sound clinicians capable of handling by themselves 90% of the common medical ailments and emergencies and also deciding when patients need specialist care. Every medical college must have sufficient primary and secondary level health care services where these faculty can demonstrate this kind of optimal delivery of FM. And the curriculum must be restructured to ensure that at least 25 per cent of the clinical experience of students and interns occur in these settings.

 

LIKELY QUESTIONS

Will these changes make undue demands on the running costs and man power of medical colleges? Compared to the high cost of present medical education and its tertiary care centres, these additions will be very affordable in costs and man power. Will these changes result in professionally inferior graduates? There are a few institutions in different countries which have implemented these changes. Their experience shows that, in national examinations and in selection for postgraduate training in specialities, their graduates rank equally with those from the traditional colleges.

 

We will also need to upgrade and update the skills and competence of the tens of thousands of physicians who are already engaged in primary/secondary care in the government and private sectors, often with inadequate or outdated skills in family medicine. This would require continuing medical education programmes on a vast scale, tailored to their circumstances. For this as well as for the academic development of the neglected discipline of FM and the training of faculty for the new FM departments, it would be good to establish a network of Institutes of Family Medicine across the country based in innovative medical colleges. And since this field is so vast and so different from other medical specialities, and so neglected, we will do well to create a separate National Board of Family Medicine (like the Royal Colleges of General Practice in U.K., Canada and Australia) to develop and accredit these postgraduate programmes in FM.

 

THE BECKONING VISTA

We need to believe in the possibility of a healthier society where every one will receive appropriate health care according to need. The proposed changes in medical education alone cannot take us to that day. But without these changes, we are never likely to achieve affordable, accessible and universal health coverage. Cost, feasibility or possible lowering of quality are not the impediments to these long overdue changes in medical education. What is required is a clear understanding of these issues by the general public, sustained political will and a willingness on the part of the medical profession to embrace this social responsibility. We can no longer leave it to the medical profession by itself to address this issue. Civic society and the media need to add their voice to those of concerned medical activists to bring about these quite practicable changes.

 

(Dr. Zachariah was formerly professor in the Christian Medical College, Vellore.)

 

 

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

 

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

MIGRANTS AT SEA ARE NOT TOXIC CARGO

THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO RISK THEIR LIVES IN ORDER TO CROSS INTERNATIONAL BORDERS IN SEARCH OF A BETTER LIFE PRESENT ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS HUMAN RIGHTS PROBLEMS TODAY.

NAVI PILLAY

 

Human beings adrift at sea are not toxic cargo. From time immemorial, human instinct was to save lives endangered at sea. Instead, today, on the assumption that boats in distress carry migrants and refugees, other ships pass them by, ignoring their pleas for help. Port authorities force them back to sea to certain hardship and peril if not death as though they were turning away ships laden with dangerous waste.

 

In the latest shameful incident last month, scores of migrants died of hunger and thirst while attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. Reportedly, Maltese authorities had spotted their boat in distress. They provided food, water and fuel, as well as life vests, and alerted their Italian counterparts. The emaciated passengers were left to go on with their trip. Only five of them overcame this ordeal and were finally rescued by the Italian Coast Guard. The Maltese government maintains that its officials had complied with international agreements. But their acts fall woefully short of international human rights obligations and standards of conduct at sea.

 

In that very busy and heavily patrolled stretch of water between northern Africa and Italy, only one vessel stopped to provide sustenance to the shipwrecked. Other seafarers did not seem to take notice of the 12-meter boat and its cargo of desperate human beings adrift for 20 days.

 

Human rights advocates have once again raised their voice in horror and protest, reminding governments and private concerns that the rescue of persons in distress at sea is not only an obligation under the international law of the sea, but also a humanitarian necessity, irrespective of the status of voyagers and the reasons for their voyage.

 

Human rights law is of paramount importance. First and foremost the right to life and security of persons must be upheld, for example, by providing food, water, and all the necessary care and protection to those who desperately need such sustenance to survive. Specifically, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and recent amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea, as well as the Search and Rescue Conventions and the implementing guidelines issued by the International Maritime Organisation, anchor the rules of conduct expected and required at sea.

 

Government disregard of international duties represents only part of the problem. There is no doubt that ruthless smugglers of people bear much of the blame for the thousands of deaths that occur each year in the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. It is literally vital that flag States exercise effective jurisdiction and control over their vessels by ensuring strict compliance with safety standards set out in relevant international instruments so that unseaworthy ship and boats remain ashore. They must also prevent and prohibit smuggling and trafficking of migrants. Further, States inspecting vessels suspected of involvement in smuggling or trafficking must treat all persons on board humanely and in a dignified manner regardless of their status. Instead, overcrowded vessels and their passengers are sometimes endangered by the methods employed by governments and regional organisations to intercept and turn back boatloads of migrants and refugees.

 

There must be an unequivocal recognition that no persons, including asylum seekers and migrants, inhabit a human rights limbo while travelling or upon reaching a destination other than their country of origin.

A failure to protect migrants’ human rights encourages boat captains and shipping companies to put calculations of the financial cost of salvaging poor and unwanted seafarers in distress above both their duty to rescue and human compassion. Every time a government refuses to allow those who have been rescued to disembark at the nearest port or the final port of destination, they increase the pressure on captains and shipping companies to avert their gaze when they see a migrant boat in trouble. It can cost companies millions of dollars if States refuse to let their vessels enter ports or offload cargoes because there are migrants on board. The disincentives for responsible behaviour became paradoxically clear when fishermen who helped seafarers in distress were made to face criminal charges, rather than praise for saving lives and fulfilling a duty clearly spelled out in international law and common humanity.

 

The millions of people who risk their lives and safety in order to cross international borders in search of a better life present one of the most serious human rights problems in our world today. States need to move faster and with more determination to give full effect to those international rules and standards of conduct that may save lives at sea. Above all, those who refuse help to seafarers in distress must be held accountable. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

 

(Navi Pillay is U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.)

 

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

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

LUSH LAND DRIES UP, WITHERING KENYA’S HOPES

A DEVASTATING DROUGHT IS SWEEPING ACROSS KENYA, KILLING LIVESTOCK, CROPS AND CHILDREN. NEARLY FOUR MILLION KENYANS URGENTLY NEED FOOD.

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

 

The sun somehow feels closer in Lokori, more intense, more personal. As Philip Lolua waits under a tree for a scoop of food, heat waves dance up from the desert floor, blurring the dead animal carcasses sprawled in front of him.

 

So much of his green pasture land has turned to dust. His once mighty herd of goats, sheep and camels have died of thirst. He says his 3-year-old son recently died of hunger. And Lolua does not look to be far off from death himself.

 

“If nobody comes to help us, I will die here, right here,” he said, emphatically patting the earth with a cracked, ancient-looking hand.

 

A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land.

 

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperilled. The fabled game animals that safari-goers fly thousands of miles to see are keeling over from hunger and the picturesque savannah is now littered with an unusually large number of sun-bleached bones.

 

Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe even Niger and Chad. These countries have become almost synonymous with drought and famine. But Kenya? This nation is one of the most developed in Africa, home to a typically robust economy, countless U.N. offices and thousands of aid workers.

 

‘WARNINGS SHRUGGED OFF’

The aid community here has been predicting a disaster for months, saying that the rains had failed once again and that this could be the worst drought in more than a decade. But the Kenyan government, paralysed by infighting and political manoeuvring, seemed to shrug off the warnings.

 

Some government officials have even been implicated in a scandal to illegally sell off thousands of tons of the nation’s grain reserves as a famine was looming.

 

So far, a huge, international aid operation to avert mass hunger has not kicked in, or at least not to the degree needed. The U.N. World Food Programme recently said that nearly four million Kenyans — about a tenth of the population — urgently needed food.

 

“Red lights are flashing across the country,” the agency said. But donor nations have been slow to respond, and a U.N.-led emergency appeal for $576 million is less than half financed.

 

Part of the reason may be the growing disappointment with Kenya’s leaders. They have been poked and prodded by Western ambassadors — and their own citizens — to overhaul the justice system, the police force and the electoral commission. The outcry followed a widely discredited election in 2007 that set off a wave of violence, claiming more than 1,000 lives. But Kenyan politicians seem more preoccupied with positioning themselves for the next election in 2012 than with cleaning up the mess from the last one. Few reforms have been accomplished and corruption continues to flourish, as the grain scandal currently under investigation has made painfully clear.

 

“At a time like this, we need donor confidence,” said Nicholas Wasunna, a humanitarian adviser for the aid group World Vision. But he said that donors may be put off by “the politics of what’s happening in the country.”

 

The arid lands of northern Kenya have been the hardest hit. In some villages, it has not rained in years. But the drought has become a problem nationwide.

 

Lokori is home to the Turkana, who cling tightly to their traditions. The women wear wreaths of beads and shave their hair into Mohawks. The men scar their backs in puffy patterns and wear disc-like bracelets that double as razors. They live in gumdrop-shaped huts scattered across the sandy plateau and herd animals to survive.

 

Even in a good year, life here is extremely precarious. But this year malnutrition rates among the Turkana have soared way past emergency thresholds.

 

Turkana children, dressed in little more than a sheet, are hiking 20 miles for a gallon of water. Turkana men are abandoning families, simply vanishing into the desert because they cannot face the shame of being unable to feed their children. Many people here now have nothing to eat but the chalky, bitter fruits that grow wild in the desert. They smash them open with rocks to get at the barely edible part inside.

 

World Vision is distributing emergency rations to the worst off areas. Meteorologists predict rains will be coming by October, and they may even bring the other extreme from present conditions. Another El Nino cycle is forecast, which after years of drought and earth baked to a rock-hard crust could bring the opposite problem: floods. — © 2009 The New York Times News Service

 

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

 

 

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

BEMUSEMENT AT LONDON MAYOR’S RAMADAN PLEA

HIS APPEAL WAS DUBBED “DIVISIVE” POLITICAL POSTURING TO WOO MUSLIM VOTERS.

HASAN SUROOR

 

Forget faux iftar parties. If the London Mayor Boris Johnson had his way, non-Muslim Londoners would be discovering the real joys of Ramadan by observing fast — at least for a day — and, what’s more, breaking it at a local mosque with their Muslim neighbours and friends. This, he believes, would help them understand Islam better besides promoting community relations.

 

Sounding more like his multiculturalist Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone than an insular Tory, Mr. Johnson said on a visit to the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre last week: “I urge people, particularly during Ramadan, to find out more about Islam... even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbour and break your fast at a local mosque. I would be very surprised if you didn’t find that you share more in common [with Muslims] than you thought.”

 

But if Mr. Johnson thought he would be cheered for his remarks, he must have been disappointed. First to spoil the party was The Times which carried the report of his speech with a picture of his holding a glass of beer. And the caption read: “Johnson: abstinence can aid understanding.” The mayor must have winced being shown guzzling beer while preaching the virtues of fasting when the truth (as pictures in other newspapers confirmed) was that he was really stone sober when he made those remarks.

 

Even without that picture, however, his fast-a-day appeal was met mostly with bemusement leaving only his hosts to applaud him. Critics said that while Iftar parties and Eid celebrations by non-Muslims served to highlight London’s cultural and religious diversity it made no sense to ask them to fast.

 

“Even as a vote-catching gambit, it’s laying it on a bit too thick,” one man said.

 

The National Secular Society dismissed Mr. Johnson’s appeal as “silly” and “divisive” political posturing to woo Muslim voters in a traditionally Labour stronghold.

 

“This message obviously seeks to flatter Muslim voters, but that does not make it any less of a silly overstatement. We can all get on together — Christians, Hindus, Muslims and atheists. But the moment religion becomes a political tool, it takes on sinister overtones,” Terry Sanderson, president of the Society said.

 

Critics found the venue of Mr. Johnson’s speech significant: it had been the scene of a walk-out by a government minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, recently protesting against gender segregation at a Muslim constituent’s wedding. So, were his remarks aimed at exploiting Muslim anger with the Labour Party?

 

The right-wing English Democrats party accused Mr. Johnson of trying to destroy Britain’s “indigenous culture” by seeking to promote Islam.

 

“Of course, as an open and tolerant society, if people want to practise other religions, then good luck to them. But the state should not be funding them because otherwise we will lose our culture,” party leader Steve Uncles said.

 

 

Mr. Johnson’s intervention sparked excited chatter on the net with most netizens opposing his idea. One blogger pointed out that instead of urging people to “pretend” to fast” a better way to promote understanding of Islam was to ask people to read the Quran.

 

Larrey Johnson, who described himself as a student of comparative religion, wrote: “I just saw that the Mayor of London has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbours, in order to promote ‘understanding between cultures.’ Here’s a better idea… Instead of fasting … go out and buy or borrow or even look up the Koran on the Internet. Read the book. Discover for yourself….Find out what Muslims really believe.”

 

Meanwhile, it is not clear whether Mr. Johnson was speaking off his own bat or simply echoing the official guidelines of Home Office Islamic Network on how non-Muslims should conduct themselves during Ramadan in order to “gain some knowledge and insight into the Muslim faith.”

 

The Network advises them to consider having a “a go at fasting for a day… [to] increase understanding and empathy for colleagues who are fasting.” And if they find this too challenging they should be “sensitive” when eating lunch near a Muslim colleague who is fasting.

 

Public sector organisations across the country have introduced similar guidelines ahead of a new proposed Equality Bill which would extend the notion of equality to include religious beliefs. Under the Bill, public sector bodies will be expected to monitor their employees’ beliefs to help promote religious equality at work, in the same way that they monitor race, gender and disabilities.

 

“At the moment we don’t monitor by religion. It is going to be requirement in 2011, and that then gets more difficult if we don’t prepare well in advance now,” the head of one public sector organisation said.

 

According to Rachel Krys, campaign director of Employers’ Forum on Belief, which seeks to promote religious equality at work, what is important is to show sensitivity towards people of another faith.

 

“Something as simple as not having biscuits at a team meeting would demonstrate sensitivity to what your Muslim colleagues are doing,” she said.

 

Some employers allow fasting Muslim staff “flexi-time” during Ramadan.

 

Not surprisingly, right-wing groups — including sections of the media — have attacked what they see as “appeasement” of Muslims.

 

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

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

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

ENCOUNTERS A BLOT ON OUR DEMOCRACY

 

Shakespeare’s famous line that there is "something rotten in the state of Denmark" applies with a bruising force to the goings-on in present-day India. If pervasive corruption, political skulduggery, hunger deaths, and disdainful disregard of poverty didn’t make up a shaming enough roster, we also mastermind human rights abuses of the most vicious kind from time to time. An example of this is the disclosure that elements of the Gujarat police travelled to Mumbai in June 2004, abducted a small group of young Muslims, including a 19-year old college girl, Ishrat Jahan, killed them in cold blood at point-blank range on the highway near Ahmedabad, set up the bodies with weapons strewn about, and announced to the world that they were a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba module from Pakistan plotting to assassinate state chief minister Narendra Modi. All this was done, it transpires, in search of glory — rewards, promotions and a craven attempt to get into the good books of the chief minister, whose anti-Muslim taunts are a byword of communal practice. A metropolitan magistrate in Ahmedabad has now blown the lid off the scandal after a probe ordered by the Gujarat high court. The shock is that the dramatis personae are the crème de la crème of the state police: the director-general, the crime branch chief, and DIG D.G. Vanzara, the "encounter specialist" of the state police force, senior IPS men all, not greedy or misguided staff of lower rank. Mr Vanzara and one of his colleagues being hauled up in this case are already under arrest for masterminding another fake encounter earlier — the case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, who were also killed in cold blood and falsely shown as terrorists.

 

Evidently, Gujarat under Mr Modi provides enough of a permissive communal atmosphere to lure police officers of the highest rank on a regular basis into such numbing criminality. But selective citing of Gujarat may not be analytically productive if our aim is to put an end to human rights abuses of this kind and to firmly put down official collusion by meting out exemplary punishment to those found guilty. These so-called encounter deaths are reported on a regular basis from nearly every state. We have just had Manipur. Not so long ago Delhi and Maharashtra have been in the news. The government personnel involved have been policemen and there has been no communal angle in many cases. Unfortunately, it is not always the police. Army and paramilitary personnel have also been found to kill innocent civilians on false pretexts in places like Kashmir and the Northeast. The infamous Chhatisingpora case in Kashmir is a good example. All those involved deserve condemnation. But that is not good enough. In order to ensure that uniformed personnel are not tempted by criminality of this nature, the government must withdraw any incentives that may be officially offered for being proactive in dealing with terrorists. There is a strong case for a review of this policy. Whenever shaming incidents of the type of Chhatisinghpora or the Ishrat Jahan murder take place, the political and social situation becomes fragile and sensitive. Our democracy is made to look small. The incidents are a slur on us all. It may be a good starting point for the parliamentary committee on home affairs to make a thorough study of these situations and make appropriate recommendations. At all costs, the image of our uniformed personnel must not be allowed to be besmirched by deviant elements.

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

JINNAH AND KASHMIR

 

Surprisingly, there is no mention of the Kashmir problem in Jaswant Singh’s book, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, though this problem throws light on Jinnah’s mind and motivation, his well-crafted approach and his over-powering ambition to attain his objective even if it involved loss of innocent lives.

 

A couple of years before Partition, Jinnah had formulated his strategy with regard to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the summer of 1944, he visited it, ostensibly for rest. But his real purpose was to establish contact with the two principal political outfits of the state — the National Conference, headed by Sheikh Abdullah, and the Muslim Conference, headed by Chowdhry Ghulam Abbas. He accepted invitations for receptions in his honour from both.

 

At the reception given by the National Conference, Sheikh Abdullah as well as Jinnah indulged in what may be called an "exercise in ambivalence". But at the reception held by the Muslim Conference, Jinnah came out openly in its favour. He said: "The Muslims have one platform, one ‘Kalma’ and one God. I would request them to come under the banner of the Muslim Conference and fight for their rights".

 

Jinnah also presided over the annual session of the Muslim Conference. In his address, he described Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference as a "band of gangsters". Later, when this outfit launched its "Quit Kashmir" movement against the Maharaja, Jinnah labelled it "an agitation carried on by a few malcontents who were out to create disorderly conditions in the state".

 

Jinnah urged the Muslims of the state to rally under the leadership of Chowdhry Ghulam Abbas and his Muslim Conference. This must have convinced Sheikh Abdullah that his political future would be bleak if Kashmir joined Pakistan. In his autobiography, Atish-e-Chinar, Sheikh has himself acknowledged the hostility which Jinnah displayed towards him: "At that time, Jinnah was intoxicated by power. He thought it beneath his dignity to talk to a poor and resourceless nation. When this equation of power went against him, he woke up in panic from his dream. But by this time, the snake had passed; only its line remained".

 

At the time the Indian Independence Act was passed, the political stage of Kashmir was crowded with a variety of actor. The National Conference dominated the Valley but had a limited influence in Jammu and Ladakh. It had developed close rapport with the leaders of the Indian National Congress, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru. Then there was the Muslim Conference which had been gaining ground after Jinnah’s visit to the state. The Maharaja was yet another force. The relations between him on one hand and Sheikh Abdullah and Pandit Nehru on the other were marked by mutual distrust and dislike.

 

All these actors were soon to play their part in the first act of the tragic Kashmir drama. The Maharaja was indecisive. Jinnah was impatient. Pandit Nehru was caught between his idealism and the stark realities of the situation. Sheikh Abdullah, with streaks of megalomania embedded deep in the layers of his mind, was nursing the ambitions to carve out a virtual "Sheikhdom" for himself and his coterie. Each one of these actors was pushed on the stage with illusions of his own importance and believed that the drama would end the way they desired. Consequently there was confusion and inconsistency. Mistakes were made and Kashmir soon found itself in the whirlpool of national and international controversy.

 

The first grave mistake was when Maharaja Hari Singh flirted with the idea of independence. Later Lord Mountbatten recalled: "The only trouble that could have been raised was by non-accession to either side, and this, unfortunately, was the very course followed by the Maharaja".

 

Jinnah and his advisers, however, lost no time in working out a plan to secure possession of the state through subterfuge, subversion and infiltration. While on paper a "stand-still agreement", operative from August 15, 1947, was executed by Pakistan with Jammu and Kashmir, in practice economic blockade was brought about, causing acute scarcity of essential commodities in the state.

 

On October 16, Dawn reported: "The Kashmir government is disintegrating. It has already suffered a loss of Rs 2 crores out of its total budget of Rs 4 crores. The tremendous inflation in the prices of necessities has created a feeling of feverish restlessness amongst the masses".

 

Earlier, Jinnah had sent his private secretary to Kashmir to build an environment favourable to Pakistan. According to M.C. Mahajan, the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, "Communal-minded persons and Muslim divines were worked up and asked to request the Maharaja to give accession of the state to Pakistan". According to the Tribune’s report of October 23, "West Punjab and Frontier Pakistani crusaders, masquerading as pleasure seekers, had poured into the Valley and, besides carrying on subtle poisonous propaganda, were organising ‘stabbers and fire-raiser’ squads. Menacingly, Jinnah caps were visible everywhere".

 

Around the same time, military skirmishes all along the border were manipulated to disperse state forces, the total strength of which was only nine infantry battalions and two mountain batteries. From October 22, large-scale infiltration of armed tribesmen began. They pillaged, plundered, raped and killed with impunity. Muzaffarabad and Baramulla soon fell to them. The latter was ruthlessly devastated. Of about 14,000 inhabitants, only 3,000 are believed to have survived. Jinnah did not utter a single word of condemnation against such beastly atrocities.

 

When, on October 27, Jinnah learnt that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India and the Indian forces had landed in Srinagar, he realised that his plan could not be executed with the smoothness he had earlier visualised. Flabbergasted, he ordered General Gracey to march into Kashmir with Pakistani troops. But General Gracey expressed his inability to carry out the orders without the approval of General Auchinlek, the supreme commander. Auchinlek told Jinnah that in case of a war between the two dominions, all British officers would have to be first withdrawn. Jinnah was left with no option but to cancel his orders. He asked for a meeting with Nehru and Mountbatten at Lahore.

 

Being ill, Nehru could not go to Lahore on November 1, where the two Governor-Generals met. During the course of discussions, Jinnah proposed withdrawal of all forces — the Indian Army and the tribal invaders. When asked how anyone could guarantee that the latter would be withdrawn, Jinnah, according to Alan Campbell Johnson, the press adviser of Mountbatten, replied: "If you do this, I will call the whole thing off". Unwittingly, he gave out that the entire invasion had been engineered by him.

 

Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

GDP AND INDIA’S HUNGRY UNDERBELLY

 

Finally there is acknowledgement on the part of the government that the country is indeed facing a serious drought and a crisis in food availability. For months we were treated to the Met department statements predicting some shortfall in the rainfall, nowhere close to the calamitous situation that those who work on the ground could see developing. Until recently, the government also assured that all was under control, that the country had sufficient food reserves and there was no cause for panic. Only now have the powers that be admitted that there is indeed cause for panic.

 

And now that a full-blown drought is upon us, the Planning Commission has given us estimations that though the failed monsoon will shave off some points from the economic growth projections, the impact on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will not be significant. The Planning Commission is not overly exercised over the drop in farm output which translates into less food for the poor, more hunger all round, more anaemic mothers and a greater number of low birth weight children who will never grow up to be fully healthy adults. The human suffering that results from a drop in farm output is invisible on the paper on which the Planning Commission calculates that the current reduction in agriculture production will "have some impact but not a very large one" since agriculture contributes less than 20 per cent to the economy.

 

This cynical callousness is what is at the root of the problem. The real reason why droughts, floods, hunger and deprivation in rural India are year for year, treated with the disdain that we have come to expect from policy circles. Agriculture is neglected because it is not part of the charmed circle that contributes to nine per cent growth rates and to the "Shining India" that is getting ready to become a global power. Already, the government and its many economists have begun to introduce the "feel good" factor. Oh! OK! so the kharif crop has gone to the dogs… but the failed monsoon will not have any impact on the rabi (winter) crop. So now we can quit worrying because the rabi harvest will bring enough and we can stop being bothered with all these dull agriculture issues.

 

The fact of the matter is that in over 60 per cent of India’s agricultural belt, there will be, by and large, no rabi harvest. Regions which are termed rain-fed, still do not have any irrigation facilities, 60-odd years after Independence. The farmers there can grow only crop in the year, that is in the kharif season, when the monsoons come. If the monsoon fails, like it did this year, then the next crop will come only next year, hopefully when the next monsoon comes. In between there will be hunger.

 

The government has set up a National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA) with a head holding some important rank but the irrigation cover in Jharkhand is all of three per cent. This plateau region, largely rural and populated by adivasis, is one in which there will be no rabi crop in most areas. The poor in Jharkhand and other regions like it, in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha and so on, which are dependent on monsoons, will know a worse hunger than they do in most years.

 

In these regions, it did not rain from June onwards. The farmers could not plant their rice or maize but because it did not rain, the famine foods that the rural poor come to rely on, did not come up either. The bitter gaithi, a tuber that dulls the worst of the hunger, did not grow, nor did the many green plants that spring up as weeds near the crop fields. Such leafy greens like chakor add a lot to rural diets, but they are largely missing this time.

 

In a survey that Gene Campaign is conducting currently in villages in Jharkhand, food stocks available with families will last another two months at the outside, if the family stretches the food. This usually means, the father eats some rice along with the starchy water it is cooked in, with some salt, the children get some of the rice with what little saag can be found and the mother, gets what is left over, not very much usually. The leafy weeds which are eaten as saag, are missing and there are no fish in the rice fields. Even the mud crabs and snails, which add protein to the family’s food, are missing this year because it has been so dry for so long. These families have not eaten daal for years , even when it was Rs 20 per kg. At the current prices of Rs 60 to 70 per kg, it is not even mentioned as a food.

 

A global power with such a large, vulnerable underbelly? Our policymakers must reflect seriously on the price the country will have to pay for the neglect of rural India. The disaffected youth that have abandoned the mainstream are not ideological maniacs, as yet. Most are just hungry and fed-up.

 

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

 

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

 

 

THE ASIAN AGE

COLUMN

DON’T FORGET BRITISH ZEAL TO DIVIDE INDIA

P.C. ALEXANDER

 

The question as to who was responsible for India’s Partition into two independent countries has been dominating media headlines for the past few weeks. Some writers and political parties have taken the stand that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was mainly responsible for India’s Partition, while some others have tried to pin the responsibility on Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. A surprising feature of these comments is that most of them are based on the assumption that the British only had a marginal role in the Partition when it happened in 1947 and that the main responsibility lay with India’s leaders.

 

It is true that after the assumption of power by the Labour Party in Britain in 1945, Britain had been genuine in its intention to quit India without destroying the unity of the country. But this change in the attitude of the British government towards India’s demand for Independence was a post-World War II development — Britain had been left too weak and debilitated to continue its role of imperial domination over India by use of force.

 

After the revolt of 1857, the British government had appointed a commission to examine what exactly went wrong in their assessment of the situation in India and what should be done to tighten their hold over the country. Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay in a note dated May 14, 1858, to the Governor-General had unabashedly advocated the policy of "divide and rule". He stated: "Divide et impera was the old Roman motto and it should be ours". Sir John Wood, another ardent colonialist, in a letter to Governor-General Elgin had said in plain words, "We have maintained our power by playing off one party against the other and we must continue to do so".

 

The division of Bengal in 1905 and the creation of a new province with a Muslim majority was one of the first measures taken in pursuance of the divide and rule policy. The grant of separate electorates for Muslims and the incorporation of this right in the Indian Councils Act of 1909 were indeed important landmarks in Britain’s efforts at isolating the Muslim community from the Hindus. From then on the course of Hindu-Muslim unity took an altogether new course of confrontation and alienation. By the time the Labour government expressed its support for the idea of Independence for a united India, the mischief had already been done and Jinnah found the field quite congenial to press his demand for Pakistan. If the British government had not openly resorted to its policy of divide and rule, Muslims would not have felt encouraged to make such a demand.

 

Therefore, "the first accused" in the crime of partitioning India was the British government itself. The "second accused", of course, is Jinnah who had returned from London in 1934 to take up the leadership of the Muslim League which was then in a state of steady decline. Jinnah was no longer the liberal-minded secularist whom most people in India had admired during the early phase of his political career. In the second phase of his leadership, he deliberately adopted the policy of using "hatred" as a political weapon in his fight against the majority community in India. He systematically and vigorously promoted sentiments of hatred against the Hindus among the Muslims and made them believe that their social and economic backwardness was the result of deliberate attempts by the Hindus to keep them as their subordinates.

 

However, there was one mistake in Jinnah’s calculations and that was that he had ignored the fact that the logic adopted for the Partition of India as a whole could apply also to the Partition of Punjab and Bengal where the non-Muslims were in a majority in several districts contiguous to India. Jinnah had become the victim of his own dangerous logic and had to eventually be satisfied with the "moth-eaten and truncated" Pakistan he could get from India. As far as partitioning of India on the basis of population figures of Muslims in certain provinces goes, the responsibility should lie with Jinnah along with the British rulers of India.

 

Now about the charges levelled by some writers against Nehru and Sardar Patel for agreeing to the creation of even a truncated Pakistan. No one denies the fact that Nehru and Sardar Patel agreed to the Partition of India after it became clear that Punjab and Bengal would also be partitioned on the same criterion. For Nehru and Sardar Patel, who had spent their entire adult life fighting for the freedom and unity of India, even a Partition limited to certain districts of Bengal and Punjab was a very bitter pill to swallow. But the policies of the British government and Jinnah had not left then with any other alternative. If the Congress Party did not agree to the Partition even on a limited scale, freedom itself would have got postponed indefinitely as the British would not have left India leaving a power vacuum at the Centre. Further, if Nehru and Patel had not agreed to this limited Partition of the country, they would have been accused of dereliction of duty in preventing conditions of anarchy in India.

 

Finally, a word about the alleged failure of Mahatma Gandhi in preventing the Partition. Gandhiji was asked a question by some visitors as to why he did not fast unto death for this great cause. Gandhiji himself told them that he had had no time to build an alternative leadership and that, therefore, it would have been wrong to weaken the present leadership under these circumstances. He went on to say with great mental anguish: "Who would listen to me? You (Hindus) don’t listen to me. The Muslims have given me up. Nor can I fully convince the Congress of my point of view". In other words, on the issue of Partition he had accepted failure. With absolute transparency this great votary of truth admitted that there was nothing that he could do to prevent Partition.

 

It is, indeed, a great irony that some commentators have chosen to criticise even Gandhiji for his failure to prevent Partition, ignoring the circumstances in which he found himself at the dawn of the Independence of the country.

 

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra

 

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

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

BY RESTRAINT, NOT PASSIONS

MAKING INDIA STRONG IS THE ANSWER

 

It is a matter of relief that both the Indian and Chinese governments have sought to lower the temperature on the border tangle by downplaying the news of the minor Chinese incursions in Ladakh. China is certainly emerging as a long-term security threat to India and to meet this we have to build our strength and capability. However, it will be unwise to whip up a frenzied atmosphere that has of late been built up by a section of the media and some opinion-makers. This can be counter-productive. The two countries have in place a mechanism to deal with any border transgression that comes to the notice of either party. It is just as well that such issues are settled by the officers of the two armies in both Eastern and Western sectors or at the level of diplomats, without undue publicity.

 

There is no denying, however, that the Chinese have shown greater foresight by consolidating their control over large tracts of barren land they took possession of in the Ladakh region when the People’s Republic of China came into existence in 1949. The Chinese have constructed roads, set up border posts and created border habitations in areas which used to be unpopulated in the Ladakh region. As for India, only in the last two or three years has it realised the importance of consolidating the status quo in the Eastern sector (Arunachal) by strengthening its military and administrative presence in the area through the construction of roads and inducting fresh military units to protect this area. More effort is needed by India to step up its vigil in both sectors as well as strengthen its infrastructure all along the border.

 

While it is prudent not to get worked up over minor border violations which take place from both sides, it would be foolhardy to lower our guard. Patrolling along the Line of Actual Control also needs to be intensified as External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna has promised he is doing in the Ladakh sector. At the same time, both sides need to step up efforts to demarcate the LAC so that incidents don’t take place out of misunderstanding or misinterpretation. It is better for both countries to maintain peace and tranquillity all along the border.

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

TIGHTEN THE BELT, PLEASE

GOVERNMENTS HAVE TO IMPROVE WORK CULTURE

 

THE UPA government has directed the ministries to cut wasteful expenditure by at least 10 per cent. Apart from facing pressures of a global meltdown, the government has been forced to slash taxes, spend more, raise salaries, waive loans and help troubled industries. Having exhausted its revenues, the government is on a borrowing spree to keep up the thrust on infrastructure building and schemes to boost rural employment and incomes. If the huge financial outgo has not resulted in a tight squeeze on expenditure, it is because governments the world over are spending more and encouraging citizens also to splurge so that economic growth does not slacken, demand for industrial products stays robust and a maximum number of jobs could be saved.

 

But there is a certain kind of expenditure which serves no purpose other than bleeding treasuries. Economists call it non-Plan or unproductive expenditure. It is the expenditure ruling politicians and bureaucrats incur to live and work in style. It is the taxpayer who foots their bill. The government directive has identified some such expenses as foreign travel, fuel expenses, administrative expenditure, publications, advertising and publicity. But if the government really wants to cut corners, it should limit its role to the essentials. A lot many departments and employees have become redundant after the demolition of the licence-permit raj and the introduction of computers and the internet. Follow the pay commissions’ suggestions to reduce the cost of governance by improving efficiency and output.

 

While the Centre, by and large, manages its finances fairly efficiently, it is the states which, barring a few, have been ruined by populist policies and poor governance. The states need to undertake drastic administrative reforms, use IT for better public communication and efficiency, privatise or wind up unnecessary public sector enterprises and rein in the expenditure on bureaucratic and ministerial luxuries and jaunts abroad. Cost-cutting need not be tied to a financial crisis; it should be part of a regular policy, governance and work culture in the governments.

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

JASWANT STAYS PUT

SPEAKER HAS TO TAKE THE CALL

 

Mr Jaswant Singh has caused another bout of migraine for the BJP by refusing to resign as head of the prestigious Public Accounts Committee despite a public “request” by Ms Sushma Swaraj, BJP’s Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha. The situation is unprecedented. So there is no clarity about what happens when the party which nominated him to the post expels him. In ordinary times, a leader would have quit on his own. But Mr Jaswant Singh has decided to squat. Under the rules, there is nothing on the basis of which he can be thrown out. That is why the BJP has been only requesting him, saying that the post belongs to the party and not to Mr Jaswant Singh, per se. There is indeed substance in the argument that the Speaker would not have appointed him if he did not happen to belong to the BJP, the main Opposition party, to which the post goes as per the convention. But the appointing authority is always the one which can undo the appointment.

 

The BJP boycotted the first meeting of the 22-member committee on Monday but that did not affect the quorum which requires just eight members to attend it. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi has already said that the PAC is a parliamentary body and the internal fight of the BJP does not affect parliamentary procedures. That means that even if the BJP members continue to stay away, PAC work will go on. The PAC is constituted by Parliament to monitor government expenditure. As such, Mr Jaswant Singh can very well stay put till next year.

Ultimately, it is the Speaker who will have to decide on the imbroglio. She has the powers to remove a committee chairman on the ground of his/her non-performance. But since Mr Jaswant Singh has no inclination of being a “non-performer”, Ms Meira Kumar may find the situation somewhat tricky. For the BJP the problem is that having expelled Mr Jaswant Singh from the party, it has lost its authority to keep him reined in to its discipline. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

KATHMANDU TO COPENHAGEN

THERE ARE INDEED LIMITS TO GROWTH

BY B.G. VERGHESE

 

THE common peril of climate change may hopefully bind the countries of the Greater Himalaya more than the common opportunities that they have scorned for many decades. The Greater Himalayan family of the Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindu Kush (HKH) region embraces SAARC and China, the guardian of the trans-Himalayan Tibetan “water tower” that includes the upper catchments of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra.

To discuss the emerging challenges and opportunities, experts, parliamentarians, professionals, NGOs and officials from these lands gathered at Nepal’s invitation last week along with the World Bank, ADB, DIFD and Danida, to discuss what might lie on the road “From Kathmandu to Copenhagen” and beyond. They shared concerns that warranted building a consensus and a common negotiating position when battle is joined at the December Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change that will set global standards beyond the current Kyoto Protocol, until 2020.

 

The HKH region is a global climate change hotspot and has an influence area that encompasses almost half of mankind. It will be impacted both early and severely because of its positioning in the global atmospheric circulation system and its large proportion of desperately poor who are most vulnerable. Therefore, while it is true that the developed world is historically responsible for global warming (though India and, especially, China are becoming major carbon emitters), any them-first attitude will overwhelm this region.

 

The maximum we can do must, therefore, be the minimum we should attempt. This will give us the moral high ground to insist that financial flows and technology transfers (even if IPR protected) must be assured on the accepted principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities that must be translated into operational practice. Climate change is a human right but, as Gandhi put it, rights (best) come from duties well performed.

 

The Kathmandu conclave pointedly noted that the developed world had spent enormously more on obscene corporate bailouts than in promoting sustainable development, and a mere pittance on adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. Poverty is neither a socially just nor an environmentally or climate-friendly condition. Therefore, rapid, sustainable growth is a strategic imperative and will itself assist demographic change. But this growth must be one with a low carbon footprint.

 

Climate change will particularly impact energy, water and food security. This presents both challenges and opportunities, as well illustrated by Nepal’s predicament. Nepal has a techno-economically feasible hydro-potential of around 45,000 MW or more but has harnessed little and suffers 16-hour a day power cuts. Like in Bhutan, hydro-development offers it a pathway to sustainable growth, poverty elimination, regional balance and market opportunity, lack of which have fuelled Maoism.

 

Some believe that with increasing glacial melt, glacial lake and debris dam outbursts, aberrant rainfall and cloudbursts and greater erosion that come with climate change, high dams would be short-lived and face safety hazards. Hence small is beautiful. But not prudently to convert its water into wealth would handicap Nepal, leaving it poor and unable to cope with the challenge ahead. Moreover, replacing 40,000 MW hydro- power with a thermal- equivalent that annually burns million of tonnes of dirty coal in India would entail adding to avoidable carbon emissions, aggravating the Himalayan trauma.

 

 

Where does the balance lie, especially in view of the importance of storing and regulating monsoonal flows to augment lean season river discharge? A drier climate is also likely to increase forest fires and consequent “black carbon” fallout thus enhancing snow and glacial melt. An interesting suggestion heard was that, with some remedial engineering, natural glacial lakes caused by retreating ice, can be shored up as natural dams and used to regulate flows. Clearly, there is much to be done to research adaptive and mitigative measures and to generate data to fill a yawning knowledge gap that inhibits action.

 

The trans-boundary character of HKH rivers mandates regional cooperation and a revisiting of old mindsets that have been overtaken by climate change. Nepal’s Prime Minister, Mr Madhav Kumar Nepal, urged multilateralism to manage the rivers that constitute South Asia’s “Lifeline”

 

The Kathmandu gathering agreed that while the HKH region must play its part in combating climate change, the onus was on the developed world to provide the necessary financial flows and clean and emerging technologies across private and corporate Intellectual Property Rights barriers to enable the South to leapfrog or “tunnel” through the inverted-U trajectory that the North is following to lower carbon emissions to cap global warming within an additional 2 degrees Celsius by 2015, which marks the limit beyond which lies catastrophe.

 

Within the HKH region, India and Pakistan must move to optimise the remaining potential of the Indus basin beyond the limits of the Indus Treaty, which have been reached, through future cooperation and joint exploration, exploitation and management as envisaged under the Treaty, by developing Indus-II. In the Central Himalaya, India has set up a National Ganges Basin Authority which could usefully collaborate with a Chinese-proposed study with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, of the Kailas Mountain Eco-system that waters the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra. Melting Tibetan glaciers and permafrost are also altering climate patterns affecting South Asia while HKH glaciology, meteorology and “sedimentology”, themselves little understood, need scientific study.

 

Further east, talk of massive diversion of the “Brahmaputra” by China northwards to the Gobi-Beijing plains is Utopian but there is good reason for a regional study with international participation and funding to explore the feasibility of tapping the estimated 54,000 MW potential of the river’s great U-Bend by tunnellng the 2500-3000 m drop from Tibet to Assam. Such an output could anchor an Eastern Himalayan- ASEAN-South China power grid and mitigate carbon loading through fossil fuel alternatives.

 

Finally, there was mention at Kathmandu, echoing Gandhi, of the need to adapt growth paths and lifestyles in both North and South to mitigate need and curb greed. There are limits to growth. The Bhutanese have wisely decided that at the end of the day, Gross National Happiness is worth more than an inflated Gross Domestic Product. Is anybody listening?

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

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

THE LIVING DEAD

BY SHELLEY WALIA

 

Seeing John Bayley, Professor of Literature, and his wife Iris Murdock, the philosopher-novelist in the common room at Oxford , I often felt it was difficult to discern that she was suffering from the terrible disease of Alzheimer’s. There she sat with an intelligent look of listening, occasionally chuckling at what was said and often nodding as if she was at the heart of the conversation.

 

It was distressing to realise that she was oblivious of the titles of her novels and half a dozen books on philosophy. I wondered if she was the same person who had once been so deeply in love with the Noble Laureate, Elias Canetti, and who Angus Wilson had outspokenly accused of ‘thriving on betrayal and promiscuity’.

 

I would often pass their cottage window on my way to the English Faculty. Covered with dark green ivy the sun outside the window beamed in contrast with the inside that lay drowned in gloom and dust, littered with precariously balanced heaps of books and unusual flashes of the odd unexpected treasure — ‘a bright pre-Raphaelite print, a plate of elderly chocolates.’

 

It all reflected the sacred and the profane, the dark hole of isolation, jealousy, self-hatred and moral “muddle” that her life and work had all added up to. And yet she lived her life to the hilt, never shying from the many affairs she tumbled into.

 

In this scruffy disheveled environment of her home Iris meditated on larger philosophical issues. She once wrote: ‘To do philosophy is to explore one’s own temperament, and yet at the same time to attempt to discover the truth.’ The brilliance and diversity of her work testifies to the fact that despite the massive underrepresentation, few women philosophers like her left such a mark of distinction, though often blamed for unexamined dogma and lack of objectivity.

 

Apparently, this set a new tone in a male dominated philosophical exploration replacing the discovery of truth from a biased standpoint.

 

As I look back at her final years, I wonder how a thinking mind can finally go blank. She was still ‘living’ in that summer of 1995 when I last saw her and yet it was clearly the end of a universe, of a consciousness and a body of knowledge that had influenced readers across the world.

 

Driving through Southwold in Suffolk, her favourite location for a holiday, I was reminded of her happier days as a member of the British Communist Party and a vibrant Fellow at Oxford. Like her novels, her life had been a ‘jolly good yarn’ except for the last few years that saw her being slowly left as more of a body than a mind. This indeed is the painful curse of Alzheimer’s.

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

OPED

ENGAGING WITH ASEAN

FTA INDICATES SUCCESS OF LOOK-EAST POLICY

BY BHARTI CHHIBBER

 

Recently India and the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed a free trade agreement (FTA) paving the way for setting up a common market. Beginning January 1, 2010, the agreement will gradually eliminate import duties on a number of manufactured products over the next six years.

 

Products from ASEAN 10 i.e. Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam will enter Indian markets and vice versa.

 

Of late Indo-ASEAN trade has seen a positive growth. In 2000-2001 India’s exports to ASEAN were about $2.9 billion and imports stood at $4.1 billion. In 2008-2009 they have increased to $16.9 billion and $23.4 billion respectively.

 

As of now bilateral trade between India and ASEAN is more than $40 billion, approximately 9.6 per cent of India’s total trade. With the passage of this FTA the target is to touch $50 billion mark by 2010.

 

Both sides will gain from this agreement. India will gain in the field of refined petroleum products, gems and jewellery, iron ore, steel, aluminium and non-electrical machinery such as boilers.

 

Similarly, ASEAN will also benefit in organic, inorganic chemical products, plastic products, readymade garments, electronic items, some raw textiles.

 

The pact opens a 1.7-billion consumer market to the member countries with a combined GDP of $2.3 trillion.

 

The agreement will drastically reduce or remove import duties on over 4,000 items of mutual trade between India and ASEAN.

 

Due to the negotiating problems and failures encountered at the Seattle Ministerial and Doha negotiations of the WTO many members are looking at bilateral and regional trade agreements as viable alternatives to multilateralism.

 

India is a founder member of the multilateral trading system and is balancing multilateralism with regional trade agreements. The Indo-ASEAN FTA is a step in this direction.

 

Moreover, India is also keen to lower its dependence on the United States and the European Union. The latter is India’s largest trading partner.

 

This agreement is seen as a major breakthrough after six years of intense negotiations. India and the ASEAN were to sign the trade pact in December 2008 to coincide with the ASEAN Summit. However, it was deferred because of political problems in Thailand.

 

As a result, to protect certain categories of domestic producers, both India and ASEAN have drawn up a negative list of products that will be outside the purview of tariff reduction regime.

 

India has kept 489 items outside the trade pact, mostly farm products, textiles and automobile components. Palm oil, tea, coffee and pepper are put under the highly sensitive list and import duties on them will be lowered to around 40-45 per cent by 2019. Under the India-ASEAN FTA, a 10-year period was being provided to prepare the stakeholders of the sensitive products to adjust themselves to the gradual lowering of the import duty.

 

Moreover, in the eventuality of a sudden surge in imports, which may hurt domestic industry, both sides are free to impose safeguard duties for four years. This flexibility remains up to 15 years.

 

As reported, the central government had also taken into consideration the suggestions made by a committee set up to study concerns of plantation growers as well as other stakeholders in the Indian industry.

 

The committee had recommended measures to safeguard the interests of plantation growers and other sections of Indian trade industry along with fulfilling its commitments under the FTA to progressively liberalise the tariff even in the case of sensitive items. A recent survey conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) pointed out that Indo-ASEAN trade could be pushed up to over $35 billion from the current $15 billion by 2010 with the signing of the Indo-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.

 

The tourism, infrastructure, energy, food security, ICT services, entertainment and multimedia and educational services were identified as priority sectors by the survey.

 

Assocham has further argued that in medical research, cooperation could focus on the prevention of communicable diseases and in the field of pharmaceuticals, ASEAN could work with India on strengthening its capacity and competitiveness in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, traditional medicines and biological products. Moreover, in the energy sector both India and ASEAN can cooperate and work in the direction of joint oil exploration.

 

India has offered ASEAN by far the most deeper tariff reductions than offered to any other preferential trade partner. On being fully operational, 80 per cent of the goods traded will be duty-free. Further, the agreement also has the most soft rules India has negotiated on third-country articles. Imports can be considered to have originated in ASEAN if any of its member states adds a mere 35 per cent value to them.

 

The lenient Indian stand in merchandise is keeping in mind our distinct competitive advantage in services. India hopes to have a comprehensive agreement on services by the time duties are abolished on goods trade. Negotiations on software and information technology services have been postponed to December, 2009.

 

Of the total $936 billion worth of ASEAN imports, services import account for $180 billion which is the primary focus of the Indian industry.

 

Also, it was felt that any further delay on India’s part in signing the FTA would give the upper hand to China, which is already trying to increase its influence in the Southeast Asian region.

 

Thus an Indian free trade pact with ASEAN as a regional outfit is highly welcome. It is indeed a success of India’s “Look-East Policy” enunciated earlier.

 

The writer teaches political science in the University of Delhi

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

OPED

WHY THINK TANKS ARE IGNORED

BY SATISH MISRA AND NEIL PADUKONE

 

Concerns have been expressed on the role and relevance of think tanks in India. A former US Department of State official, Daniel Markey, who has been studying India for some time, recently observed that India’s rise as a great power is constrained by the country’s own foreign policy establishment and lack of policy relevant scholarship by think tanks.

 

The Group of Ministers (GoM), set up after the Kargil war, had similarly pointed out that “there is a need to ensure that the government’s policy and decision making processes are informed by the findings of rigorous analyses and research”.

 

In the information age, think tanks play a decisive role in shaping public policy, public opinion and official decisions. It becomes all the more significant in the system of competitive politics and particularly in a democratic polity.

 

For India, which is transiting from a feudal cultural society to an industrial cultural society, the role of think tanks is all the more relevant. New ideas and approaches to the prevailing social, economic, political and religious problems will help in accelerating the transitional process.

 

In India, where elected representatives often have rural backgrounds and are under-exposed to the nuances of national and international affairs, think tanks assume greater significance. A systematic and structured exposure to think tanks will make elected representatives better policy-makers, law-framers and executioners.

 

Think tanks in India should evolve an appropriate strategy and plan for ensuring a structured interaction with not only elected representatives but also with political aspirants like student union leaders.

 

Every discerning politician or a bureaucrat knows fully well that ideas have consequences. Globally, policy framers look for advice and counsel of scholars from think tanks, which understand this reality and thus are able to shape policies and politics with their innovative ideas and approach.

 

Think tanks play an important role in the policy process, but that does not only mean interacting with the government; they have a critical audience among scholars, media persons, the private sector and the common man.

 

The reach and impact of think tanks could be gauged with the return of conservative politics in the early 80s of the last century and decreasing appeal of communism. The intellectual arguments and policy proposals that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the success of the West were prepared and articulated by think tanks.

 

The regimes of President Ronald Reagan in the United States , Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Helmut Kohl in the then West Germany are some of the concrete examples of the role that right-wing think tanks had played. This led to the privatisation of public sector enterprises.

 

Experts agree that think tanks can play a decisive role in helping India secure its rightful place in the international order. But “does India have the intellectual tools to meet” the challenges of internal strife, terrorism, proxy wars, a disturbed neighbourhood, the threat of conventional war in the shadow of nuclear weapons, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and piracy on the high seas? asks IDSA Director General N S Sisodia. The answer is an “emphatic NO”.

 

Though there are 124 think tanks in the country, most are of “indifferent standards”. In a global survey undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania in 2008, only the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA) figures at the 46th position on the list of 50 non-US think tanks.

 

India’s international studies and strategic affairs think tanks are sandwiched between a university system in crisis and an indifferent policy establishment. As Sisodia says, they suffer from both demand and supply constraints. There is hardly any demand for their output, either because it is not regarded as relevant or because key officials believe that they already know what is there to know, says Sisodia.

 

Over and above, there is a systemic problem with the majority of the Indian think tanks— reconciling theory with practice — as they consist mostly of retired bureaucrats and young academics. That is why think tanks often produce work which is easily ignored.

 

The Observer Research Foundation, for one, is striving to bridge this gap. The Centre for Policy Research (CPR), set up in 1973, has launched an “Accountability Initiative” with the objective of improving governance in the country in which citizens can participate even from their homes.

 

The work of the Tata Energy & Resource Institute (TERI) has touched crucial issues of urban planning and rural energy needs by suggesting innovative approaches to the existing problems.

 

But these initiatives need to be encouraged. The government should facilitate the flow of information by opening its archives to scholars and its minds to ideas from outside.

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

DELHI DURBAR

NOBODY MUST BE TALLER THAN THE PRESIDENT, SARKOZY AIDES INSIST

BY JOHN LICHFIELD 

 

President Nicolas Sarkozy is so sensitive about his height that his aides “cast” small women to appear beside him in public, according to Belgian TV.

 

A video clip, in which a tiny Norman woman says that she was selected to stand behind Mr Sarkozy during an “impromptu” factory visit last week, has become an overnight sensation on the French-language internet.

 

Such is the “buzz” (in French le buzz) surrounding the clip that the Elysée Palace felt obliged to put out an angry denial. Any suggestion that members of the public were vetted for size was “totally far-fetched and grotesque”, the Elysée said.

 

President Sarkozy is five feet five inches tall.

 

RTBF, the main French-language TV channel in Belgium, followed Mr Sarkozy on a visit to a factory in the Orne in lower Normandy last week to prepare a report on the lengths taken by the French government to shape its public image.

 

This follows a ministerial visit to a supermarket last month in which “housewives” who flocked admiringly around the Education Minister, Luc Chatel, turned out to be employees of the company.

 

Before the President arrived at the Faurecia car parts factory in the Orne last Thursday, female workers were selected to appear behind Mr Sarkozy according to their height, RTBF claimed.

 

After showing the President’s speech, in which he appears to be the tallest person in the crowd, RTBF interviewed an unnamed factory worker. “I’m told you were picked because of your size,” says the reporter, Jean-Philippe Schaller. “Yes,” says the woman. “No one must be taller than the President,” Schaller says. “That’s right,” says the woman.

 

Local trades union officials have since told the news website Rue 89 that the height of workers allowed to stand close to the President had been part of advance negotiations between the factory and the Elysée. The Faurecia company has declined to comment.

 

Schaller said that his report had been intended to show “the lengths that are taken to control the President’s public appearances, given the controversy surrounding the subject”.

 

Ever since a presidential visit to another part of Normandy in January, in which hostile demonstrators could be heard chanting in the background, the Elysée and the wider French government have been taking pains to manage their public image. But despite their best efforts, more trouble looms. A full-length movie on France’s favourite cartoon schoolboy is to appear later this month. Its title is Le Petit Nicolas.

 

 By arrangement with The Independent

 

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

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PAKISTAN’S DUPLICITY

 

Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, who master minded the terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26/11 killing as many as 180 persons had been let off from house arrest under the orders of the Lahore High Court for insufficient evidence though Government of India had supplied Pakistan government with voluminous evidence of his complicity. The sixth dossier was recently sent which was also summarily rejected by Pakistan compelling the Indian Home Minister, P.Chidambaram to term Pakistan’s action as atrocious. In his confessional statement Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive in Mumbai terrorist attack and now facing trial, stated that Hafiz Saeed visited their training camps. The JUD was formed as a front organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba when it was declared as a terrorist organisation by the UN Security Council resolution after the 9/11 attack. Subsequently the Security Council also termed the JUD as terrorist organisation after the Mumbai terrorist attack and directed Pakistan to impose certain restrictions on Saeed, the L-e-T operations commander Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and two others. Countries are bound to take action pursuant to the Security Council resolution.

Pakistan had to act under pressure from India and the international community and crack down on the JUD. Its offices were raided, sealed and several of its leaders were arrested including Hafiz Md Saeed.They were placed under house arrest. Lakhvi and others were facing trial in Pakistan which was proceeding at a snail’s pace. Involvement of State actors was not ruled out by the Indian Home Minister and therefore Pakistan did not appear to be sincere in pursuing the investigations against the culprits named by India. Initially India took a tough stand but India’s decision to continue peace dialogue with Pakistan after the meeting of India’s Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh and Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani in Egypt had let the pressure off the lid. Pakistan had been following an aggressive anti-India policy, converting American weapons to target Indian cities, building nuclear arsenal and aiding and abetting jehadi forces to target India. The democratic government did not appear to have control over the army or the ISI and the agencies were running parallel governments. In such a scenario it would be futile to expect Pakistan to reciprocate to India’s demand for trial and conviction of the 26/11 culprits in Pakistan.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

TIMBER SMUGGLING

 

The seizure of two big consignments of smuggled timber from a goods train and a truck in quick succession should serve to underscore the growing magnitude of the menace. The revelations could well be the proverbial tip of the iceberg concerning the thriving racket of timber smuggling in the State. The fact that vast tracts of forests are disappearing every year strongly points to this nefarious business. Invaluable assets as they are, forests are yet to be accorded a priority status and hence continue to be the least protected of all our resources. While a hard and sustained crackdown on the timber mafia is an urgent need, also imperative is to put in place an effective protection mechanism to check the depredation of forest wealth. Greater coordination between police and Forest department is another requirement under the circumstances. The Forest department too needs to be vested with more powers in matters of pre-empting forest crimes as also in investigation and post-crime procedures. Most of our forest offices, especially those manning reserve forests, are abysmally lacking in the required infrastructure such as vehicles, communication facilities, etc., which puts the timber mafia in an advantageous position. These issues need to be addressed at the earliest for protecting forest resources.

Illegal tree-felling has emerged as the most disturbing development in the State, which boasts of an astonishing biodiversity thanks to its forests. But the rapidly eroding dense forest cover has posed a serious threat to the sustainability of this unique heritage. And we can only quantify the magnitude of the loss, as it is impossible to estimate the benefits that forests bestow on mankind. The most regrettable part of this misfortune has been the total inertia of the State Government, allowing the mayhem on forests to perpetuate. Things have deteriorated to such a stage that one would be tempted to construe the inaction on the part of the Government as a tacit approval to the vandalism perpetrated on forest wealth. To revive any hopes for our depleting forest reserves, there is no other alternative but to accord top priority to forest protection. Along with augmenting conventional protection measures, efforts should be directed towards gaining the support of the communities living in fringe areas of forests. Making these people active stakeholders in the conservation process would be an effective deterrent against crimes like tree-felling and poaching.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

APSC: A REPOSITORY OF CORRUPTION

SAIKH MD SABAH AL-AHMED

 

"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power”. These gospelic lines from legendary Irish playwright and 1925 Nobel laureate, George Bernard Shaw, seems to have in a way, aptly and amply portray the profusely putrid state of affairs that has been perennially plaguing the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC); more so, in the last one-and-a-half decades, starting from the mid-1990’s, when the actual putrefaction really started in the true sense of the term. The APSC, it seems, (for all its infamous acts of omission and commission) has been going through its worst ever crisis in recent times; its hallowed reputation as one of the revered constitutional institutions since 1937 (and 1951) has nose-dived to shocking and unimaginable depths, its integrity eroded with public faith and confidence plummeting to nadir.

Before meticulously dissecting and then carefully delving into the messy state of affairs presently plaguing the APSC vis-a-vis its innate and ingrained causes with far reaching resultant ramifications, let us rewind backwards and bask in the glory, (even though momentarily!), of the hallowed history vis-a-vis its embryonic beginnings and also at the same time, venerate those great men-of-letters, who, with their unquestionable integrity and honesty, had adorned the (official) higher echelons in the APSC, especially till the mid-1990’s.

 

The Assam Public Service Commission came into existence on April 1, 1937 in accordance with the provision of the Government of India Act, 1935 with James Hezelett, a retired ICS officer from London, as its first Chairman (April 1, 1937-March 23, 1940). Till the framing of a new regulation in 1951, five more officers, mostly retired ICS officers, held the office of the Chairman for different periods after James Hezelett. They were EP Burke (March 24, 1940-October 31, 1943), JC Higgins (November 1, 1943-March 22, 1945), AJ Dash (March 23, 1945-December 12, 1945), K Cantillie (December 13, 1945), JC November 15, 1947) and Maulvi Saidur Rahman MA, BL, (November 15, 1947-November 24, 1947).

On India becoming a Republic on January 26, 1950, the regulations of the Commission were framed by the Governor of Assam in exercise of the powers conferred by Article 318 of the Constitution of India and the same came into force from September 1, 1951. In the same year, the Assam Public Service Commission (Limitation of Functions) Regulation was also promulgated in exercise of the powers conferred by the provision of Clause II of Article 320 of the Constitution. Kameswar Das, an educationist of repute, was the first non-official Chairman of the Commission (November 25, 1947-July 15, 1952) after promulgation of the APSC Regulations 1951.

Since July 15, 1952 onwards, after the retirement of Kameswar Das, the hallowed post of Chairman, APSC has mostly been graced by a number of illustrious sons of Assam. It must be mentioned here that a total of 26 personalities (including the present lady incumbent) from variegated fields have hitherto adorned the coveted post of Chairman, APSC. Prominent among them were JP Chaliha, Ikram Rasul, SJ Duncan, AN Bhattacharjee, B Khongmen, Dr HC Bhuyan, SN Barkatoky, R Thanhlira, RM Das, RN Basumatary, RK Bhuyan, AK Choudhury, Arif Ali, DN Barua, TK Bora, Dr TP Das, DC Borah, AK Borah and the present incumbent, Dr Geeta Basumatary, a zoology professor of Pragjyotish College, Guwahati, who was appointed by the Tarun Gogoi government on February 28, 2007. This apart, the APSC was also graced by a number of renowned personalities with integrity who were appointed as Members of the Commission at different periods of its hallowed history. Mention may be made of Prof Nurul Islam, former Principal, Cotton College, Dr K Alam, former Professor of Economics, Gauhati University, Dr Pabitra Kumar Choudhury, Kamleswar Bora, a retired IAS officer and former Vice-Chancellor, Dibrugarh University, Lalit Chandra Hazarika, an Indian Forest Service officer and former Chief Conservator of Forests, Assam, just to name an infinitesimal few.

Coming back to the present messy state of affairs that have been perennially hanging like a sword of Damocles over the APSC, especially from the mid-1990’s, it must be stated here in unequivocal terms that the rot sadly started with the appointment of Dr TP Das, a small-time doctor by profession from Barpeta district in Assam, as the Commission’s 23rd Chairman by the then Hiteswar Saikia government on August 1, 1994. Since then, there was no looking back on Commission’s ever decaying probity vis-a-vis accountability quotient, which only deteriorated with each passing day. It would not be wrong to say that corruption in the APSC had reached its zenith during the convoluted tenure of Dr TP Das. Taking a cue from the previous Hiteswar Saikia-led Congress regime, the outgoing AGP-government of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta appointed Amiyo Kumar Borah as the Commission’s 25th Chairman on February 28, 2001. It must be mentioned here that Amiyo Kumar Borah’s previous tenure as Chairman, Railway Recruitment Board, was also mired in deep controversy, a fact grossly ignored by the AGP-government while appointing him. Moreover, in the appointment of Members too, the then AGP-government seems to have committed a hara-kiri of sorts, by appointing ‘every Tom, Dick and Harry’ as Members, flouting all prescribed norms. This candid assertion could be gauged from the very fact that a certain person from the minority Muslim community, who was just a petty contractor-cum-businessman, and who introduced himself more as a writer-poet, was appointed as Member in the late 1990’s by the then AGP-regime of Prafulla Kumar Mahanta. It’s really a brazen mockery when such maggots with a fatuous character grace the august office of this hallowed institution. The moot question now is: What level of transparency could one really expect, when such nondescript-pygmies are appointed in the APSC to select the best brains for the State in particular, and the nation as a whole? Perhaps legendary English Historian Lord Acton’s famous quote, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”, would answer the above loaded proposition.

The APSC, for all its omnipresent misdemeanours, is now more or less sadly relegated to a shadow of its former hallowed self Managed by a cretaceous and impotent bunch of nincompoops, profusely consumed by personal ambition, disgraced with a plethora of innate inanities, the APSC has degenerated into an open market place where creamy white-collared jobs are up for open sale; its up for grabs, anyone who can afford to cough up huge astronomical amounts are only invited for the brazen bid. After all, any examination conducted by the APSC, especially the Assam Civil Service (ACS) Examinsation is just like an annual convoluted carnival; a sort of a lottery where luck and money rule the roost, rather than the single most important criterion of merit, which grossly remains ignored. It’s high time the overall cleansing process within the APSC starts in right earnest; the appointment of honest, apolitical and upright persons would be the first such step in this regard, or else the APSC, as it stands today; more of an embarrassing paradigm rather than a hallowed Constitutional body, is likely to slowly but surely wither away into oblivion as one of the most perennially recurring institutions of corruption. Give it a serious thought!

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

SRI SRI MADHAV DEV – A GREAT SAINT

DR DIBAKAR CH DAS

 

From time immemorial, the birth of great saint called Mahapurush has been a continuous process. In all the ages, from Christianity to the present age, the society has been experiencing to have such great saint or Mahapurush who have propounded religious as well as social ideology with a view to leaving peaceful messages among the people. Here, the fact is that the basic ideology of all the great personalities of the world carries almost the same purpose ie, establishing unity and integrity among various sections of the people through love, affection and humanity. So, as the only chief devout of his spiritual guide cum Guru, Sri Sri Sankar Dev, Madhav Dev played an important role in the religious and literary thought.

More than five hundred years ago, Assam had witnessed one such saint in Madhav Dev, popularly called Mahapurush who was a duty bound disciple of Sankar Dev, pioneer of the Neo-Vaishnavite religion to Naam Dharma. To speak the truth, his cooperation helped Sankardev enrich the Assamese art and culture.

Madhav Dev was born in the house of Harisingha Uzir near Leteku Pukhuri in village Narayanpur of North Lakhimpur in 1489. His father and mother were Gobindagiri and manorama Devi respectively. His another name was Ratnakar. During the stay in the house of Uzir, Ratnakar started his early education. As the family was very poor, Ratnakar had to suffer a lot in his early days. Govindagiri knew his son’s talents and therefore he brought Ratnakar to the native place Banduka and got him admitted into the premises of Rajendra. Within a very short period, Madhav Dev could achieve excellence in study. At the same time, he also became strong devotee of Sakta Dharma and had a great belief in Puja ie, worshipping Goddess Durga.

Madhav Dev’s ideas can be divided in two stages viz Pre-mani-Kamchan and Post Mani Kanchan, ‘Mani Kanchan Sanjog’ means the union of Sankar Dev and Madhav Dev. This union is really a mystic event. There was a fact behind this union of Sankar Dev and Madhav Dev. During the period of this union, Sankar Dev was 73 years old while Madhav Dev was 33. After demise of his father, Madhav Dev returned to his house but on the way when he heard that his mother was ill he decided to sacrifice a pair of white male-goats to the Goddess Durga for the cure of her disease. So, Madhav Dev asked his brother-in-law Ramdas who met Sankar Dev on the way in search of goats. But after meeting him, Ramdas changed his religious ideology and got devoted to Vasnative religion. He then returned to Madhav Dev without goats and told him every thing about the incident boldly appreciating his logical argument. At this news Madhav Dev got very much angry with Ramdas and sternly reproached him. Madhav Dev went to defy Sankar Dev. He then appeared before Sankardev and started a debate on the Vasnavite religion. Having been defeated, Madhav Dev surrendered to Sankardev and accepted Vasnavite religion considering him the only Guru. This entire incident which made them closer to each other is specifically known as ‘Mani kanchan Sanjog.’ It was after the Mani Kanchan Sanjog or since his divine union with Sankar Dev, that Madhav Dev’s ideas and thoughts came to light.

To speak the truth, a small article can hardly cover all aspects of his worldly wisdom and knowledge. It is really impossible to give a portrait of the multifaceted picture along with his empirical study of Ek Saron Nam Dharma in a scientific manner. Madhav Dev have us various messages to be practised and one such message which has been the key to the present situation is that he is an ardent follower of the principle prevention is better than cure and he could be able to practise it in his life. To him the means of preventing any evil is necessarily superior to and more important than those of cure. Here, Pluto, the Greek philosopher, who advocated for keeping the doctors out his ideal State through the means of prevention like moral education, physical exercise ie, gymnastic etc can also be referred. In his ideal State, there must not be any physical affliction or disease and Plato urged for adopting various preventive measures so that the people need not suffer from any disease. Similarly, it is Madhav Dev who had been adamant in this principle and he used to give scientific argument for its favour. In this regard, Madhav Dev as a disciple, had to defy his Guru Sankar Dev in regard to the question of his marriage. Sankar Dev wanted him to be his son-in-law making a tie with his daughter, Vishnupriya. With a view to getting him married Sankardev even tried a lot saying that worldly life was better and best suited to fight the evils. He further argued that lonely life was bitter and weak and thus insisted on the married life which might make him strong and energetic. But all his efforts and insistence were in vain. Madhav Dev was very much adamant in his principle. He vehemently refused to accept his Guru’s proposal because the knew it very well that there was bliss and happiness in one’s indifference to the family. He wanted to give the people a message that those who have acquired a lot get only temporary pleasure or worldly happiness. In this way, he assured that attachment to the family causes definite mental agony. So, to prevent the sources of worldly misery and wretchedness is better than to cure. This principle of prevention has been the most important and scientific approach in modern age. In one’s practical life, one must be ready to prevent any type of evil or calamity to save. Italian political scientist Mechiavelli also suggested in his famous book The Prince that the monarch or prince must take necessary step to curb the enemy so that the latter cannot rise or become strong. The principle of prevention has been followed by the authorities also ie, national, regional and local in respect of various matters especially relating to disease for the safety of human beings. Acceptance of preventive measures has been regarded as the best means. Mahapurush Madhav Dev has proved pragmatically in his own life and thus he is alive among us and we should adore him.

 

(Published on the occasion of death anniversary of Madhav Dev).

 

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

 

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

LEARNING FROM LEHMAN: A YEAR LATER

MK VENU

 

The first anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, and the consequent seizure of credit and liquidity flows among the top Wall Street banks, is upon us. At the time of the crisis, the balancesheet size of some ten troubled banks on Wall Street exceeded the combined GDP of all emerging Asian economies.

So the reverberations of Wall Street had to be felt across the global banking system. Last September, the world economy seemed to be hurtling down in a way that had initially raised the spectre of the Great Depression in America of the late 1920s.

After a while, the consensus view that finally emerged was that the world was possibly facing the worst recession since the Great Depression. Economists in reputed western research institutions studied recessions of the last 100 years and broadly concluded that the global economy would take two to three years to fully recover.

Of late, some of those who had completely missed the financial crises building up under their noses have begun to talk about a V-shaped recovery in the global economy! Mind you, this is based largely on the performance of stock markets which are supposed to reflect future trends in the real economy. However, such knowledge embedded in the markets can be imperfect, as we have learnt by now.

A small section of die-hard optimists is even talking about a V-shaped recovery in the US. The question is how much should one believe these economic forecasters who have gone so horribly wrong in the past. A recent edition of The Economist had rightly suggested that the biggest bubble of all was that of economic theory!

In some ways, the global financial crisis and its fallout are forcing economic agents to acquire new knowledge in regard to what might happen in the future. For both governments and central bankers, the past has ceased to be an accurate guide for determining future policy.

Commenting on the way the global stock markets were shooting up in recent months, the head of a Mumbai broking company said "there was absence of knowledge in the short run". What he had meant was that it was difficult to explain rationally why the stock markets were furiously running up even as company balance sheets were still bleeding.

The Mumbai broker may have been quite charitable in suggesting there was an absence of knowledge in the short run. Quite possibly, the world economy may well be faced with a situation where there is an absence of knowledge in the longer term as well. This is very clear from the way governments and central bankers have so far responded to the global economic crises.

In some ways, policy makers and central banks have done the only thing they could think of — inject massive fiscal and monetary stimuli. But this is old knowledge. For there is a consensus that the fiscal and monetary stimuli of $3 to $4 trillion across the world may be just about preventing the global recession from deepening further. There is immense comfort in the knowledge that we are not falling any further!

The US banking system appears to have seen its worst and the economy too has shown tentative signs of bottoming out. But is this recovery durable? No one wants to answer this question yet. To answer this question you need new knowledge. Old will not do.

The Fed chief Ben Bernanke had the humility to concede this point when he said his biggest challenge would be to rightly time the withdrawal of the massive liquidity injected into the system. This has to be done just about the time a sustained recovery is anticipated on the horizon. What if you don’t see a sustained recovery at all?

Indeed, if a sustained recovery is not seen in the US economy, it could well get into a long-term liquidity trap, of the kind Japan did in the 1990s. Many economists increasingly subscribe to this theory. Japan experienced a low growth trap for well over a decade as the government kept bailing out banks and injected enough liquidity to bring interest rates to zero.

Indeed, it was never anticipated that even at virtually zero interest rates investment and consumption would not pick up. This was new knowledge at that time.

Many believe the United States too is losing its memory and DNA of creative destruction on which it had built its robust capitalist economy in the mid-20th century. With a much expanded and politically empowered middle class, the United States has made creative destruction a difficult proposition now.

This can be seen in the way the US government has bailed out the banks and other inefficient parts of the economy such as the automobile sector. Much of EU is already in this mode. Indeed, Karl Marx had spoken about advanced capitalist societies developing socialist tendencies as the laws and regulations to protect workers became deeply institutionalised.

To understand this, you just have to compare the number of hours factory workers in the US and EU put in with that of workers in China, India or Brazil.

So what have these deeper tendencies got to do with the global financial crises and the consequent recession that gripped the world? The fundamental shift in the capitalist growth impulses from the developed North to the developing South has caused serious imbalances in the global economic system.

RBI governor D Subbarao recently said that not much has been done by nations to debate the fundamental imbalance in the global economic system which could in fact have been the primary cause of the Wall Street financial crises. This imbalance essentially made the United States merrily borrow from the rest of the world to consume.

Of course, in the past year or so some of this imbalance is partly correcting with the US current account deficit dropping and its savings rate going up. But is this enough?

The US needs to recover its real growth impulse by becoming a prime exporter of high technology goods — it is no more competitive in the manufacturing sector — if it wants to reduce its borrowing from the rest of the world.

If the US fails to do this, it will again be tempted to use finance capital as a steroid to create an illusion of growth. Wall Street helps in doing this. You don't sustain long-term growth with pure finance capital play. Finance capital works only when complemented by dynamic elements of the real economy. This was the big lesson of last year’s crises. Another crisis will surely occur if this lesson is not internalised.

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

ENCOUNTER KILLINGS

 

The latest revelation that top-ranking policemen in Gujarat murdered four citizens — including Ishrat Jahan, a teenage college student — in cold blood for 'selfish motives', should lead to total abrogation of the practice of 'encounters' in the country.

For, even as the backdrop of searing communal polarisation in Gujarat under Narendra Modi's watch makes this particular case all the more significant, and despicable, the issue itself is older and more widespread.

There are too many past instances of the police, in various states, resorting to fake encounters in the name of fighting terrorism or ordinary crime, often killing innocents in the process. And nothing can be more heinous, or signify a complete collapse of the most basic democratic ideals, than when those charged with the protection of citizens turn murderers.

True, India has been battling insurgencies and terrorists of many hues for long. Yet, a system that almost institutionalises the use of veritable death squads more befits ruthless dictatorships rather than a country flaunting its democratic values and processes.

And the latter can only be genuinely preserved by an insistence on the comprehensive enforcement of law and justice even for the most hardened killer or terrorist. The ongoing trial of Ajmal Kasab, for instance, is precisely what that means. The 'encounter' way of 'delivering justice' on the other hand, effectively reduces a state to the level of the terrorist.

That this method of countering crime or terrorism has become almost acceptable in public consciousness reflects a deep malaise in our polity. Given the lure of rewards for such 'kills', police forces (or other law enforcement agencies) have proven to be susceptible to targeting innocent citizens.

And in the case of Gujarat — this being the second fake encounter case involving the state police during Modi's rule that is being probed again — that malaise has only manifested itself in an extreme form.

True, the government has refuted the findings of the magisterial report — much as it did with earlier reports pointing to its complicity in the carnage of 2002. It is also a moot point what culpability all these probes will finally be able to establish. But the wheels of justice, even if slowly, must surely grind forward.

 

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

 

 

 

 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

COMMENT

GETTING THE RECOVERY WRONG

 

While China is fighting the global recession by ramping up investment, India is doing so by ramping up consumption. But both are doing the wrong thing, argues Prem Shankar Jha.

There is a curious symmetry in the strategies that China and India are following to fight the global recession. On second thoughts, asymmetry might be a better word, for while China is fighting it by ramping up investment, India is doing so by ramping up consumption. The symmetry lies in the fact that both are doing the wrong thing.

It is China that needs to push up domestic consumption to fight the recession and India that needs to invest heavily in its sub-Saharan infrastructure. Both countries know it; both are even making token efforts to do so. But neither has any heart in it. Therein lies the other element of symmetry.

China’s response to the global economic crisis was to announce, in early November, that it would spend an additional 4 trillion Yuan ($586 billion) by December 2010. The announcement was greeted with both relief and scepticism: relief because it offered a ray of hope of a revival of global demand, and scepticism because many doubted China’s capacity to find the money and accelerate the tempo of investment so dramatically.

The scepticism was understandable: a decade earlier, when China had last slipped into a recession, Premier Zhu Rongji had announced a $200 billion a year stimulus package. Wen Jiabao’s package was ten times larger. Indeed, Dragonomics, the Economist’s Beijing-based research arm, estimated that only $130 billion was truly new investment. The rest had already been sanctioned under various heads.

But China has utterly, and crushingly, confounded the sceptics. In the January to March quarter, the first full quarter after the announcement of the stimulus package, total spending under the package rose by 4.6 trillion yuan! How, one may well ask, can we make such an estimate so soon in a country known for fudging its figures?

The answer is much the same as it would be for India: the most unambiguous yardstick of a jump in spending is the aggregate rise in bank credit. In China this rose by 4.6 trillion yuan more in January to March 2009 than it had risen during the same quarter of 2008!

This was three times as much as the ‘normal’ increase in outstanding loans in the same quarter of 2008. But this year with prices falling and production slowing down sharply the normal increase in credit should have been much smaller.

In sum, China has come close to meeting a stimulus target set for 27 months, in three months! What is more, since investment projects take time to complete, the amount committed for spending on identified projects is much, much larger.

How has China achieved this miracle? The answer reveals both the short-term strengths and long-term weaknesses of its peculiar economic structure. China has been able to do this because the central government has only limited control over investment in the economy.

Much, if not the major part, of the investment is done by four tiers of local government: the provincial governments, prefectures, counties and urban municipalities/ townships. Not for the first time in the past thirty years, these have run away with the investment agenda.

What has made this possible is the central government’s directive to the banking system to provide funds liberally for the projects submitted to them by the local governments. According to the blueprint that the National Reform and Development Commission (NRDC) had prepared, two thirds of the investment had to be made by the local governments.

To maintain a degree of co-ordination they were asked to submit their projects to the NRDC, and to do it as soon as possible.

The provinces treated Beijing’s sense of urgency and their renewed freedom to borrow almost at will (that had been taken away, in theory at least, by banking reforms in 1997) to indulge in an orgy of wish fulfilment.

By the end of December, 18 provinces (out of 31) had already submitted projects worth 25 trillion yuan. The NRDC has winnowed the wish list but there is only so much it can do. As a result, the actual investment till March has been three times the 1.2 trillion yuan budgeted for till the end of 2009!

‘There is only one small hitch. Only 9% of this money is going to support the incomes of those who have been hit by the recession, or to boost rural consumption. 91% is going to ‘non-financial business companies’.

Three-fifths of this, in turn, is going into the creation of still more power and transport infrastructure, while another 12% is going into the technological modernisation of industry. In all, barely a fifth of the investment will reach the rural areas, where two-thirds of the people still reside.

India, by contrast, has poured money, also borrowed ruthlessly from the banking system, into consumption. Against a budgeted borrowing of Rs 132,000 crore in 2008-9, the government borrowed Rs 342,000 crore.

This year it has budgeted for Rs 401,000 crore and is likely to end up borrowing Rs 500,000 crore. Thus the net fiscal stimulus, i.e., the amount that the government would not have borrowed had there not been the excuse of the global recession will amount to about Rs 550,000 crore or $115 billion. Given that India’s GDP is only 40%t of China’s, the jolt being sought to be given to the economy is comparable. But of this, the share of investment is even smaller than the share of consumption in China: it is a paltry Rs 25,000 crore or 5 billion dollars. This is not even 5% of the total.

Nor is private investment filling the gap. On the contrary, the growth of aggregate bank credit has been a paltry 15% in the past year, a full 10% below what it was in 2007-08. Since most of this goes into meeting working capital needs, it is a safe bet that private investment has actually contracted in recent months.

Both countries are on the wrong track. China desperately needs to increase income levels and social security payments in the rural areas and among its migrant labour force, to stem a further rise in political discontent. India needs to at least quadruple its annual investment in infrastructure if it is ever to emerge as a first rate economic power.

If neither can do it, the reasons lie not in the understanding or aims of their leaders, but in the way that politics has locked their economies on potentially dangerous economic paths. Thereby hangs a tale that will take too long to tell in the space allotted to me, It must told another time.

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

COSMIC UPLINK

 

MYSTIC EXPERIENCE OF UNION & SEPARATION

 

Sunrise over Konya is awe-inspiring, particularly when one views it from the top of a 18-storey building. We’re searching for the silhouette of the tomb of the Mevlana — as the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi is known here. "It lies too far towards the East" the concierge informs us. "Take a taxi."

The visit to the green-turreted tomb of the Master turns out to be the most relaxing part of our whirlwind-tour of Turkey. The Mausoleum is also a museum which has among its treasures the first manuscript of the Masnavi. Widely regarded as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, this was composed during the last years of Rumi’s life.

The circumstances under which the 25,000-verse-long poem came into being are illuminating. One night, finding him alone, Husamuddin Chelebi, Rumi’s closest disciple, bowed and asked if the Master would compose something that "might easily be memorised and serve as a companion of the souls of the lovers (of the Faith and Union) so that they would occupy themselves with nothing else".

At that very moment, from the top of his blessed turban the Master is said to have taken out a piece of paper. On it were written the first eighteen couplets of the Masnavi, beginning with the lament of the reed. "If you will write them down I shall dictate the verses that are to follow," said the Master and Chelebi joyfully agreed.

That is how the Masnavi came to be written down over a 12-year period that ended with the Master’s death. The first manuscript of the Masnavi, finished within five years of the Master’s demise, is displayed in a room adjoining the tomb. It opens with "the story told by the reed of being separated" (in Coleman Barks’ 1994 translation).

Later, over a steaming cup of kahve in a café on Sultanahmet Street, a Turkish friend explains to us the nuances of the image. "The central metaphor of the reed-flute symbolises the music of the Mevlana’s own heart. Burning with love and yearning, it always longs for the Beloved. So it sings like the reed-flute," he explains.

Rumi, the poet of lovers, seems to experience separation and company, sorrow and rejoicing all at the same time and is wishful of sharing the flood of feelings for the beloved with the song of the reed’s plaintive notes, he adds.

We have something similar here from Bhakti poets ranging from Andal to Meera. The rain cloud symbolises longing for one; a crow for another. All maddened with Divine Love.

 

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

 

 

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

                                                                                                               DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

ENCOUNTERS A BLOT ON OUR DEMOCRACY

 

Shakespeare’s famous line that there is “something rotten in the state of Denmark” applies with a bruising force to the goings-on in present-day India. If pervasive corruption, political skulduggery, hunger deaths, and disdainful disregard of poverty didn’t make up a shaming enough roster, we also mastermind human rights abuses of the most vicious kind from time to time. An example of this is the disclosure that elements of the Gujarat police travelled to Mumbai in June 2004, abducted a small group of young Muslims, including a 19-year old college girl, Ishrat Jahan, killed them in cold blood at point-blank range on the highway near Ahmedabad, set up the bodies with weapons strewn about, and announced to the world that they were a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba module from Pakistan plotting to assassinate the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. All this was done, it transpires, in search of glory — rewards, promotions and a craven attempt to get into the good books of the chief minister, whose anti-Muslim taunts are a byword of communal practice. A metropolitan magistrate in Ahmedabad has now blown the lid off the scandal after a probe ordered by the Gujarat High Court. The shock is that the dramatis personae are the crème de la crème of the state police: the director-general, the crime branch chief, and DIG Mr D.G. Vanzara, the “encounter specialist” of the state police force, senior IPS men all, not greedy or misguided staff of lower rank. Mr Vanzara and one of his colleagues being hauled up in this case are already under arrest for masterminding another fake encounter earlier — the case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife, who were also killed in cold blood and falsely shown as terrorists. Evidently, Gujarat under Mr Modi provides enough of a permissive communal atmosphere to lure police officers of the highest rank on a regular basis into such numbing criminality. But selective citing of Gujarat may not be analytically productive if our aim is to put an end to human rights abuses of this kind and to firmly put down official collusion by meting out exemplary punishment to those found guilty. These so-called encounter deaths are reported on a regular basis from nearly every state. We have just had Manipur. Not so long ago Delhi and Maharashtra have been in the news. The government personnel involved have been policemen and there has been no communal angle in many cases. Unfortunately, it is not always the police. Army and paramilitary personnel have also been found to kill innocent civilians on false pretexts in places like Kashmir and the Northeast. The infamous Chhatisingpora case in Kashmir is a good example. All those involved deserve condemnation. But that is not good enough. In order to ensure that uniformed personnel are not tempted by criminality of this nature, the government must withdraw any incentives that may be officially offered for being proactive in dealing with terrorists. There is a strong case for a review of this policy. Whenever shaming incidents of the type of Chhatisinghpora or the Ishrat Jahan murder take place, the political and social situation becomes fragile and sensitive. Our democracy is made to look small. The incidents are a slur on us all. It may be a good starting point for the parliamentary committee on home affairs to make a thorough study of these situations and make appropriate recommendations. At all costs, the image of our uniformed personnel must not be allowed to be besmirched by deviant elements.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

DON’T FORGET BRITISH ZEAL TO DIVIDE INDIA

BY BY P.C. ALEXANDER

 

The question as to who was responsible for India’s Partition into two independent countries has been dominating media headlines for the past few weeks. Some writers and political parties have taken the stand that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was mainly responsible for the India’s Partition, while some others have tried to pin the responsibility on Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. A surprising feature of these comments is that most of them are based on the assumption that the British only had a marginal role in the Partition when it happened in 1947 and that the main responsibility lay with India’s leaders.

It is true that after the assumption of power by the Labour Party in Britain in 1945, Britain had been genuine in its intention to quit India without destroying the unity of the country. But this change in the attitude of the British government towards India’s demand for Independence was a post-World War II development — Britain had been left too weak and debilitated to continue its role of imperial domination over India by use of force.
After the revolt of 1857, the British government had appointed a commission to examine what exactly went wrong in their assessment of the situation in India and what should be done to tighten their hold over the country. Lord Elphinstone, governor of Bombay in a note dated May 14, 1858, to the Governor-General had unabashedly advocated the policy of “divide and rule”. He stated: “Divide et impera was the old Roman motto and it should be ours”. Sir John Wood, another ardent colonialist, in a letter to Governor-General Elgin had said in plain words, “We have maintained our power by playing off one party against the other and we must continue to do so”.

The division of Bengal in 1905 and the creation of a new province with a Muslim majority was one of the first measures taken in pursuance of the divide and rule policy. The grant of separate electorates for Muslims and the incorporation of this right in the Indian Councils Act of 1909 were indeed important landmarks in Britain’s efforts at isolating the Muslim community from the Hindus. From then on the course of Hindu-Muslim unity took an altogether new course of confrontation and alienation. By the time the Labour government expressed its support for the idea of Independence for a united India, the mischief had already been done and Jinnah found the field quite congenial to press his demand for Pakistan. If the British government had not openly resorted to its policy of divide and rule, Muslims would not have felt encouraged to make such a demand.

Therefore, “the first accused” in the crime of partitioning India was the British government itself. The “second accused”, of course, is Jinnah who had returned from London in 1934 to take up the leadership of the Muslim League which was then in a state of steady decline. Jinnah was no longer the liberal-minded secularist whom most people in India had admired during the early phase of his political career. In the second phase of his leadership, he deliberately adopted the policy of using “hatred” as a political weapon in his fight against the majority community in India. He systematically and vigorously promoted sentiments of hatred against the Hindus among the Muslims and made them believe that their social and economic backwardness was the result of deliberate attempts by the Hindus to keep them as their subordinates.

However, there was one mistake in Jinnah’s calculations and that was that he had ignored the fact that the logic adopted for the Partition of India as a whole could apply also to the Partition of Punjab and Bengal where the non-Muslims were in a majority in several districts contiguous to India. Jinnah had become the victim of his own dangerous logic and had to eventually be satisfied with the “moth-eaten and truncated” Pakistan he could get from India. As far as partitioning of India on the basis of population figures of Muslims in certain provinces goes, the responsibility should lie with Jinnah along with the British rulers of India.

Now about the charges levelled by some writers against Nehru and Sardar Patel for agreeing to the creation of even a truncated Pakistan. No one denies the fact that Nehru and Sardar Patel agreed to the Partition of India after it became clear that Punjab and Bengal would also be partitioned on the same criterion. For Nehru and Sardar Patel, who had spent their entire adult life fighting for the freedom and unity of India, even a Partition limited to certain districts of Bengal and Punjab was a very bitter pill to swallow. But the policies of the British government and Jinnah had not left then with any other alternative. If the Congress Party did not agree to the Partition even on a limited scale, freedom itself would have got postponed indefinitely as the British would not have left India leaving a power vacuum at the Centre. Further, if Nehru and Patel had not agreed to this limited Partition of the country, they would have been accused of dereliction of duty in preventing conditions of anarchy in India.

Finally, a word about the alleged failure of Mahatma Gandhi in preventing the Partition. Gandhiji was asked a question some visitors as to why he did not fast unto death for this great cause. Gandhiji himself told them that he had had no time to build an alternative leadership and that, therefore, it would have been wrong to weaken the present leadership under these circumstances. He went on to say with great mental anguish: “Who would listen to me? You (Hindus) don’t listen to me. The Muslims have given me up. Nor can I fully convince the Congress of my point of view”. In other words, on the issue of Partition he had accepted failure. With absolute transparency this great votary of truth admitted that there was nothing that he could do to prevent Partition.
It is, indeed, a great irony that some commentators have chosen to criticise even Gandhiji for his failure to prevent Partition, ignoring the circumstances in which he found himself at the dawn of the Independence of the country.

 

P.C. Alexander is a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

THANK GOD, OBAMA IS NOT LIKE TED KENNEDY

BY BY TIM STANLEY

 

Mr Barack Obama’s moving eulogy for Mr Ted Kennedy has invited comparisons between the two men. The two certainly share glamour, charisma and the devotion of their party. Arguably, it was Mr Ted who put Mr Obama in the White House by endorsing him in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Mr Obama has returned the favour by adopting his legislative agenda and is now trying to force through Congress Mr Ted’s vision for a national health insurance programme. Given the moral impetus that Mr Kennedy’s passing will give the bill, he may yet succeed.

In sum, it is tempting to suggest that Mr Obama’s “audacity of hope” reflects a new commitment on the part of American liberals to the ambitions and style of the Kennedy era. If this is true — if Mr Obama truly is trying to ape Camelot — then he could be making a terrible mistake. For the death of Edward Kennedy marks the end of a political era, not the beginning of a new one.

Mr Ted Kennedy lived in the shadow of his brothers. This was tragic on a personal level, but it also produced an anachronistic politics that poorly reflected the real demands of its time. For a start, Mr Jack and Mr Bobby Kennedy were not the knights in shining armour that the Camelot myth suggests. Mr Jack was a philanderer and was so wracked with disease that he lived on crutches. As a President he was markedly unsuccessful at getting his legislative agenda past Congress. It was also Mr Jack who put America in Vietnam. His commitment to “pay any price” and “bear any burden” in the cause of freedom was eventually paid in over 58,000 American lives.
Mr Jack’s brother Mr Robert, who entered the Senate in 1964 and ran for the presidency in 1968, was no less contentious a figure. Mr Robert was radicalised by the Vietnam War and his somewhat tardy discovery of racism and poverty among his New York constituents. But while his heroic battle for the presidency has been lionised by liberal historians, it was far more controversial than popular memory suggests. Mr Robert’s only consistent support came from ethnic minorities and national polls showed him being beaten by every one of his major opponents throughout 1968.

Mr Ted inherited Mr Jack’s charisma and Mr Robert’s liberal philosophy. For a few short months he seemed destined to become President, but it all came to an end on Chappaquiddick Island. Chappaquiddick, his collapsing marriage and his alcoholism all reflected the agony of trying to live up to an impossible standard of sobriety and idealism. Watching this young man attempt to solve all of America’s problems with one photo-op after another was an experience that rested somewhere between tragedy and farce. On one occasion Mr Ted was invited to Alaska to witness the plight of the state’s Eskimo population. He obliged. But on the way home, exhausted and bored by a week of taking tea in igloos, he got drunk on the plane. The senator charged up and down the aisle cheering “Eskimo Power! Eskimo Power!” and made a very public pass at an air hostess. The attendant press corps reported the incident in every gory detail.

The problem wasn’t just Mr Ted’s weak personality. America changed in the 1970s and the Kennedy brand failed to adjust. After the nightmare of Vietnam, the embarrassment of Watergate and the disappointment of the Great Society, Americans lurched to the Right. Evangelicalism flourished and voters began to coalesce behind the Moral Majority. In contrast, Ted was often accused by his conservative critics of embodying the worst instincts of what one historian called “the aimless, indulgent liberalism of the 1960s”. While he maintained a regular attendance at Mass, he largely turned his back on the moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. As late as 1972, he was still publicly opposed to abortion. But when feminist and pro-choice activists began flooding his state machine and tearing up the Democratic primaries, he switched with the wind.
But it wasn’t just Mr Ted’s morals that put him out of step with middle America. His vision of an ever-expanding government was increasingly unpalatable too. Americans have always resisted centralisation and bureaucracy, but in an era of inflation and spiralling taxes they were particularly unprepared to pay for Mr Kennedy’s expensive national health insurance programme. In 1980, Mr Ted was beaten by the moderate Democrat Jimmy Carter and Mr Carter was in turn beaten by the conservative Republican Ronald Reagan. America had rejected the politics of the 1960s. And yet the Camelot myth endured and liberals became so blinded by the idea of the 60s as an era of moon-shots and civil rights that they came to believe that the dream of social reform had been simply deferred.

But perhaps the most powerful reason why Obama should avoid comparison with the Kennedys is that they belong squarely on the wrong side of the culture war that has been raging in American since the 1960s. The Right has largely succeeded in depicting liberals as East Coast snobs, schooled in a European ideology that seeks to use the state to destroy the family and uproot faith and traditions. It is a remarkable feat to associate the champions of the underprivileged with decadence and largesse, but the Kennedys have become the poster-boys for this campaign of demonisation. In 1980, Jimmy Carter dubbed Mr Ted Kennedy “FRK” — “Fat Rich Kid” — and there was something about Mr Ted’s corpulence and wandering hands that suggested his liberalism was born of self-indulgence. Obama should remember that it was really his outsider status that won him the presidency, and not the machine politics of the Kennedy family. Importantly, he should consign the Kennedy ambitions of the 1960s to the dustbin of history. They were never terribly popular to begin with.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

JINNAH AND KASHMIR

BY BY JAGMOHAN

 

Surprisingly, there is no mention of the Kashmir problem in Jaswant Singh’s book, Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, though this problem throws light on Jinnah’s mind and motivation, his well-crafted approach and his over-powering ambition to attain his objective even if it involved loss of innocent lives.
A couple of years before Partition, Jinnah had formulated his strategy with regard to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. In the summer of 1944, he visited it, ostensibly for rest. But his real purpose was to establish contact with the two principal political outfits of the state — the National Conference, headed by Sheikh Abdullah, and the Muslim Conference, headed by Chowdhry Ghulam Abbas. He accepted invitations for receptions in his honour from both.

At the reception given by the National Conference, Sheikh Abdullah as well as Jinnah indulged in what may be called an “exercise in ambivalence”. But at the reception held by the Muslim Conference, Jinnah came out openly in its favour. He said: “The Muslims have one platform, one ‘Kalma’ and one God. I would request them to come under the banner of the Muslim Conference and fight for their rights”.

Jinnah also presided over the annual session of the Muslim Conference. In his address, he described Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference as a “band of gangsters”. Later, when this outfit launched its “Quit Kashmir” movement against the Maharaja, Jinnah labelled it “an agitation carried on by a few malcontents who were out to create disorderly conditions in the state”.

Jinnah urged the Muslims of the state to rally under the leadership of Chowdhry Ghulam Abbas and his Muslim Conference. This must have convinced Sheikh Abdullah that his political future would be bleak if Kashmir joined Pakistan. In his autobiography, Atish-e-Chinar, Sheikh has himself acknowledged the hostility which Jinnah displayed towards him: “At that time, Jinnah was intoxicated by power. He thought it beneath his dignity to talk to a poor and resourceless nation. When this equation of power went against him, he woke up in panic from his dream. But by this time, the snake had passed; only its line remained”.

At the time the Indian Independence Act was passed, the political stage of Kashmir was crowded with a variety of actors. The National Conference dominated the Valley but had a limited influence in Jammu and Ladakh. It had developed close rapport with the leaders of the Indian National Congress, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru. Then there was the Muslim Conference which had been gaining ground after Jinnah’s visit to the state. The Maharaja was yet another force. The relations between him on one hand and Sheikh Abdullah and Pandit Nehru on the other were marked by mutual distrust and dislike.

All these actors were soon to play their part in the first act of the tragic Kashmir drama. The Maharaja was indecisive. Jinnah was impatient. Pandit Nehru was caught between his idealism and the stark realities of the situation. Sheikh Abdullah, with streaks of megalomania embedded deep in the layers of his mind, was nursing the ambitions to carve out a virtual “Sheikhdom” for himself and his coterie.

Each one of these actors was pushed on the stage with illusions of his own importance and believed that the drama would end the way they desired. Consequently there was confusion and inconsistency. Mistakes were made and Kashmir soon found itself in the whirlpool of national and international controversy.
The first grave mistake was when Maharaja Hari Singh flirted with the idea of independence. Later Lord Mountbatten recalled: “The only trouble that could have been raised was by non-accession to either side, and this, unfortunately, was the very course followed by the Maharaja”.

Jinnah and his advisers, however, lost no time in working out a plan to secure possession of the state through subterfuge, subversion and infiltration. While on paper a “stand-still agreement”, operative from August 15, 1947, was executed by Pakistan with Jammu and Kashmir, in practice economic blockade was brought about, causing acute scarcity of essential commodities in the state.

On October 16, 1947 Dawn reported: “The Kashmir government is disintegrating. It has already suffered a loss of Rs 2 crores out of its total budget of Rs 4 crores. The tremendous inflation in the prices of necessities has created a feeling of feverish restlessness amongst the masses.”

Earlier, Jinnah had sent his private secretary to Kashmir to build an environment favourable to Pakistan. According to M.C. Mahajan, the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, “Communal-minded persons and Muslim divines were worked up and asked to request the Maharaja to give accession of the state to Pakistan”.

 

According to the Tribune’s report of October 23, “West Punjab and Frontier Pakistani crusaders, masquerading as pleasure seekers, had poured into the Valley and, besides carrying on subtle poisonous propaganda, were organising ‘stabbers and fire-raiser’ squads. Menacingly, Jinnah caps were visible everywhere”.

Around the same time, military skirmishes all along the border were manipulated to disperse state forces, the total strength of which was only nine infantry battalions and two mountain batteries. From October 22, large-scale infiltration of armed tribesmen began.

They pillaged, plundered, raped and killed with impunity. Muzaffarabad and Baramulla soon fell to them. The latter was ruthlessly devastated. Of about 14,000 inhabitants, only 3,000 are believed to have survived. Jinnah did not utter a single word of condemnation against such beastly atrocities.

When, on October 27, Jinnah learnt that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India and the Indian forces had landed in Srinagar, he realised that his plan could not be executed with the smoothness he had earlier visualised. Flabbergasted, he ordered General Gracey to march into Kashmir with Pakistani troops. But General Gracey expressed his inability to carry out the orders without the approval of General Auchinlek, the supreme commander. Auchinlek told Jinnah that in case of a war between the two dominions, all British officers would have to be first withdrawn.

Jinnah was left with no option but to cancel his orders. He asked for a meeting with Nehru and Mountbatten at Lahore. Being ill, Nehru could not go to Lahore on November 1, where the two Governor-Generals met. During the course of discussions, Jinnah proposed withdrawal of all forces — the Indian Army and the tribal invaders. When asked how anyone could guarantee that the latter would be withdrawn, Jinnah, according to Alan Campbell Johnson, the press adviser of Mountbatten, replied: “If you do this, I will call the whole thing off”. Unwittingly, he gave out that the entire invasion had been engineered by him.

 

Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and former Union minister

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

GDP AND INDIA’S HUNGRY UNDERBELLY

BY BY SUMAN SAHAI

 

Finally there is acknowledgement on the part of the government that the country is indeed facing a serious drought and a crisis in food availability. For months we were treated to the Met department statements predicting some shortfall in the rainfall, nowhere close to the calamitous situation that those who work on the ground could see developing. Until recently, the government also assured that all was under control, that the country had sufficient food reserves and there was no cause for panic. Only now have the powers that be admitted that there is indeed cause for panic.

And now that a full-blown drought is upon us, the Planning Commission has given us estimations that though the failed monsoon will shave off some points from the economic growth projections, the impact on the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will not be significant. The Planning Commission is not overly exercised over the drop in farm output which translates into less food for the poor, more hunger all round, more anaemic mothers and a greater number of low birth weight children who will never grow up to be fully healthy adults. The human suffering that results from a drop in farm output is invisible on the paper on which the Planning Commission calculates that the current reduction in agriculture production will “have some impact but not a very large one” since agriculture contributes less than 20 per cent to the economy.

This cynical callousness is what is at the root of the problem. The real reason why droughts, floods, hunger and deprivation in rural India are year for year, treated with the disdain that we have come to expect from policy circles. Agriculture is neglected because it is not part of the charmed circle that contributes to nine per cent growth rates and to the “Shining India” that is getting ready to become a global power. Already, the government and its many economists have begun to introduce the “feel good” factor. Oh! OK! so the kharif crop has gone to the dogs… but the failed monsoon will not have any impact on the rabi (winter) crop. So now we can quit worrying because the rabi harvest will bring enough and we can stop being bothered with all these dull agriculture issues.

The fact of the matter is that in over 60 per cent of India’s agricultural belt, there will be, by and large, no rabi harvest. Regions which are termed rain-fed, still do not have any irrigation facilities, 60-odd years after Independence. The farmers there can grow only crop in the year, that is in the kharif season, when the monsoons come. If the monsoon fails, like it did this year, then the next crop will come only next year, hopefully when the next monsoon comes. In between there will be hunger. The government has set up a National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA) with a head holding some important rank but the irrigation cover in Jharkhand is all of three per cent. This plateau region, largely rural and populated by adivasis, is one in which there will be no rabi crop in most areas. The poor in Jharkhand and other regions like it, in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Vidarbha and so on, which are dependent on monsoons, will know a worse hunger than they do in most years.

In these regions, it did not rain from June onwards. The farmers could not plant their rice or maize but because it did not rain, the famine foods that the rural poor come to rely on, did not come up either. The bitter gaithi, a tuber that dulls the worst of the hunger, did not grow, nor did the many green plants that spring up as weeds near the crop fields. Such leafy greens like chakor add a lot to rural diets, but they are largely missing this time.
In a survey that Gene Campaign is conducting currently in villages in Jharkhand, food stocks available with families will last another two months at the outside, if the family stretches the food. This usually means, the father eats some rice along with the starchy water it is cooked in, with some salt, the children get some of the rice with what little saag can be found and the mother, gets what is left over, not very much usually. The leafy weeds which are eaten as saag, are missing and there are no fish in the rice fields. Even the mud crabs and snails, which add protein to the family’s food, are missing this year because it has been so dry for so long. These families have not eaten daal for years , even when it was Rs 20 per kg. At the current prices of Rs 60 to 70 per kg, it is not even mentioned as a food.

A global power with such a large, vulnerable underbelly? Our policymakers must reflect seriously on the price the country will have to pay for the neglect of rural India. The disaffected youth that have abandoned the mainstream are not ideological maniacs, as yet. Most are just hungry and fed-up.

 

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

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

DIRTY-TRICKS BRIGADE

BY BY KAMRAN SHAFI

 

IT has been hugely cathartic for the lay people of the Islamic Republic (Pakistan) to hear anew the shenanigans of the most senior officials of our security establishment, from full generals to majors, spouted from their very own mouths.

Whilst there are many commentators advocating that the spooks who have suddenly crept out of the woodwork should hold their peace and not give their organisations, specially the Mother of All Agencies from whose bosom they all sprang, and the Army, a bad name by washing their dirty linen in front of the whole world, I say, “Go on lads, more of it”.

In the hilarious words of P.G. Wodehouse, let the… hit the… because it is extremely important, nay critical, that the pus is removed, once and for all. This country needs a new beginning and if it must tear itself apart to cleanse the deep, and now festering, wounds inflicted on it by those who consider themselves above all else, so be it.

Whilst it infuriates one to hear the sordid tales of yesteryears, sickening tales we knew well already, there are moments of utter hilarity as one sees the main players who laid the country low during their short and sorry stints on the stage of untrammelled and absolute power, try unsuccessfully to make a fool of the people. There was Gen. Aslam Beg who, I am sorry to say, belongs to my regiment, saying to his interviewer that he did not have even Rs 150,000 in the bank.

This, sitting on a chair that must have cost Rs 50,000, tens of crystal and other expensive doodads in the background, and in the foreground a jade piece that must have measured nine inches across, sitting on a carved table worth tens of thousands.

Which be as it may, why in heaven’s name do the “agencies” behave in the way they do when all of the evidence suggests that not one of their nefarious acts achieved even one of their goals. Other than destabilising the country, making its people fight one another, hurting innocent people personally and generally giving the country a bad name, of course.

The political leaders they set out to destroy came back stronger, despite their exertions of the meanest kind such as branding their current enemies’ “security risks”, such as casting the most personal aspersions. In the final analysis it is they, the “agencies”, that got egg on their faces and earned the opprobrium of the people.
Only the Rommels and Guderians can answer the question.

What we know from past and bitter experience is that they will not stop. Not even now, when their name has been dragged through the mud, not only in poor Pakistan that has been at their mercy for most of its life, but across the world. Which in and of itself begs the question why they persist in doing the wrong thing. Partly this has to do with a closed mindset, one that a friend calls the “PMA” (Positive Mental Attitude) mindset; partly it is wrong advice from people who live and thrive on conspiracies and dirty tricks and too-clever-by-half argy-bargy.

Look at the recent “minus-one” formula that suddenly reared its head and was the main subject of talk shows across the land; look at the Jinnahpur controversy that fast followed on its heels; and then at the story of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) doling out money to set up the IJI (Islami Jamhoori Ittehad) to counter the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Now, who doesn’t know all of the above from years ago? What was the whole point of bringing up these past and closed transactions so to say, at this time?

The “minus-one” formula has not hurt Asif Ali Zardari: it has only brought Yousaf Raza Gilani to his senses with the realisation that if there is no Asif there is no Yousaf. The ISI story has not hurt Nawaz Sharif; it has only brought the ISI into disrepute and, by inference, the Army. The Jinnahpur thingy likewise. If anything, all of this has brought the politicians closer as they realised that it was them against the establishment all over again.

Indeed, to make the point doubly clear, Nawaz Sharif has said in so many words that he respects the mandate of the PPP, that that party has the right to be in government for its full tenure and that he will do nothing to destabilise matters. As an aside, might one ask the President to do likewise.

But back to the dirty-tricks brigade. Who is advising it as it goes about bringing disgrace upon the country all over again? The name of Husain Haqqani, the bestest diplomat in the whole wide world and, it is alleged, a candidate for the top slot in a future caretaker set-up, popped up in the press just at the time that all of these ugly stories and rumours were beginning to fly.

It was said he, and we know him well, was in Dubai and then in Islamabad, flying on silent wings, whispering to listening ears. In bazaar gup there is mention of a house in F-6 where the Commando’s (Pervez Musharraf) friends gather upon an evening and plot their next moves. Money is no problem it is said, everything is there for the asking. May one beseech President Zardari another time: please Mr President, throw your all with the other political players. United you will stand; divided (may the Almighty forbid it) you will fall.

By arrangement with Dawn

 

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

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

IT’S OVER ~ INFORMATION HIGHWAY CAVES IN

 

IT isn’t merely that the spectacle of fantasy has been reaffirmed; West Bengal emerged in sackcloth and ashes as it turned its clock back on Monday. The information technology township in Rajarhat, on the upmarket periphery of Kolkata, has been scrapped in the wake of the cloak-and-dagger operations at Vedic Village. The fallout has been fatal for industrial resurgence, the setback collective, the culpability uniform ~ exemplified in the inter-department bickering, a Chief Minister and his bureaucrat acolytes seemingly impervious till matters came to the boil, the dubious role of the political class cutting across party lines and the murderous real estate lobby. The likes of Gaffar Mollah are merely symptoms of a system that wallows in the mire. Arguably, the government has wriggled out of the IT project to avert being sunk further into that mire. The original figleaf of a disputed football match would have been hilariously infantile were it not for the implications such as they are.
Between the first week of October 2008 to the first week of September 2009, the government has shot itself in the foot. It might be almost instinctive to draw a parallel with the denouement at Singur a year ago. Yet the nature of the misadventure is both the same and different. Fundamentally, the car project that wasn’t symbolised a state failure. It was precipitated by shoddy acquisition by government agencies and an organised Opposition. Vedic Village, in a starkly sinister sense, showcases the collapse of the market economy. WBIDC, a government entity, played the role of the facilitator in Singur and bungled in the process. In Vedic Village, the big ticket players bought the land from an impoverished peasantry, with the local toughs operating as middlemen. As it turned out, the land was grabbed at throwaway rates from the farmers and the undercurrent of discontent exploded a little over a fortnight ago. So much for direct purchase by the investor.
If the government was waiting for what the home department calls “specific complaints” it was largely because all parties ~ notably the CPI-M and to a lesser extent the Trinamul Congress ~ had a finger in the pie. Small wonder why Mamata Banerjee, who shrills for the government’s dismissal at every turn, has been relatively muted in her response. Her initial demand was for an investigation into the incidental seizure of arms and ammunition and not into the land deals. When negotiations turned out to be thorny, the ruling politicians tacitly condoned the irregularities by opting for out-of-court settlements. Indeed, these were deals that benefited the ruling party, the opposition, the land shark and the lumpenised tout... but not the peasant. The lid would long ago have been taken off a pretty kettle of fish had the disputes gone to court. The reputation of the land and land reforms minister, Abdur Rezaak Mollah ~ ever so anxious to protect the rights of farmers ~ and Gautam Deb, the housing minister, have suffered a battering for tacitly condoning the out-of-court deals and the acquisition of land above the ceiling.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

CLIMATE AND DEVELOPMENT ~ RENEWABLE ENERGY AS AN OPTION

KP BHATTACHARJEE

AT the July meeting of the G8 industrialised nations and the G5 at L’Aquila in Italy, all the countries had agreed on a consensus document on climate change. It didn’t, however, fix any goal for the developing countries for the reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050. This is a significant achievement on the part of the developing countries since their economic development would have slowed down had there been a fixed target.
In view of the fact that the Copenhagen summit on climate change is scheduled to be held in December, the leaders of the 18 countries had to reach a consensus on policy. They declared their “political will for reaching a comprehensive, fair, effective, agreed outcome, following the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities at the Coppenhagen summit”.

The expression “different responsibilities” is significant. India and China have maintained that the industrialised countries had “historical responsibilities” in the matter of containing the emission of greenhouse gases because they have been the biggest polluters since the Industrial Revolution. According to the World Resource Institute in America, India produces only 1.8 tons of emission per person, compared to 22 tons per person in the USA. In terms of absolute emission levels, India’s position is fifth in the list of major polluting countries after China, the USA, the EU and Russia.

AT THE CROSSROADS

Because of the high absolute emission level, the USA has persuaded India to reduce the burning of fossil fuel. This was buttressed during Mrs Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India. “No one wants to, in any way, undermine economic growth”. The USA continues to use fossil fuel by adopting clean coal technology. India has maintained that the country needs to use fossil fuel in order to maintain its economic development. However, Jairam Ramesh, the Union minister for environment and forests, has given the assurance that India will never allow its per capita emission figure to exceed that of the developed countries.

In the broader perspective, India today stands at the crossroads of sustainable economic development with minimal effect on climate. The country will consume about a billion tons of coal for electricity, transportation and industrial production. That means that the per capita emission will exceed from 1.8 to five or six. This will push the world farther away from sustainable development. India’s target should be to maintain the per capita emission level at two.

The national action plan on climate change has proposed several missions, such as boosting the production of renewable energy and increasing the energy efficiently in order to reduce carbon emission. However, not much of an effort has been made to reduce the cost of renewable energy. The per unit cost of this energy is about five to six times higher than the cost of electricity. This is one reason why people are generally reluctant to use renewable energy.

A new set of policies will be issued by the Centre to the states to reduce air pollution. Cars and auto-rickshaws are the major polluters in urban areas. While Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai have been able to enforce the rules by introducing more efficient models, Kolkata has lagged way behind. This is because of the state government’s failure to implement the order passed by the Calcutta High Court on 8 July 2008. It had directed that buses, mini-buses, taxis, auto-rickshaws, trucks and other goods vehicles ~ more than 15 years of old ~ must be phased out because they cause excessive air pollution. In the event, the state government took no action for a year. Very few vehicles have been replaced.

According to the records of the Public Vehicles Department, there are 86,209 public vehicles. Some taxi owners have taken the initiative to replace their vehicles or the engines; but that too has been stalled by the unions. Talks with the bus and transport owners have not yielded results.

Auto-rickshaws are major polluters in Kolkata. Out of 40,000 registered autos, only 2,500 had converted to the four-stoke engines till 31 January 2009. The state has been a mute witness to the irregularities. The fuel used by the two-stroke engine raises the pollution level, and its use must be banned. The government has not been able to supply an adequate quantity of LPG fuel. It devolves on the oil companies to ensure easy availability by setting up more filling stations. Last August, the state government had asked the oil companies to open more LPG outlets. The companies pleaded that the existing 12 outlets in the city are under-utilised. Till March 2009, they had set up only three additional outlets.

MORE OUTLETS NEEDED

Auto operators, who have converted their engines, complain about problems relating to refuelling, time factor and distance. The oil companies need to open 10 more outlets this year to meet the requirement. It is imperative for the Centre to make a large investment in bio-fuel in the interests of public and private vehicles. Several cities in Canada and America have developed bio-fuel for public vehicles. In the net, air pollution has been reduced. The Obama Administration has planned a major investment in the development of a bio-fuel research centre in California. India has come up with several proposals under the climate change mission. However well-intentioned, they may never get to be implemented without financial support.

The major thrust of the climate change mission is to ensure rapid development of renewable source of energy for power supply to millions of households and small-scale industrial units. Experts have mentioned the problem of storage and transfer of renewable energy to the transmission line. This can be overcome through the smart grid system which allows energy produced by any form of renewable energy to be automatically transferred to the smart grid transmission line. However, this system is yet to be commercially viable. The USA and several other countries are working on the project.

Non-renewable energy is very expensive compared to the cost of electrical units generated in power stations. If the cost of renewable energy is at par with the cost of a unit of electricity, then the majority would use renewable energy. Above all, renewable energy must be available easily available in all cities and towns.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

‘MOST PEACEFUL’ ~ GO SELL THAT TO THE SOLDIERS

 

ONLY if the word “peace” merely means an absence of gunfire will there be any acceptance of the external affairs minister’s benign description of the situation along the Line of Actual Control. For while there must be no knee-jerk, potentially escalatory, response to frequent reports of Chinese military incursions across that ever-contentious frontier, there can be no more fooling ourselves that the People’s Liberation Army is not implementing a concerted plan to extend the frontline deep into what India maintains is its territory. Doing so even as it continues with meetings of local commanders, plays host to Indian generals, and of course issues blanket denials of reports in the Indian media suggesting a breakdown of the agreement to maintain peace and tranquility on the LAC. Typically has the Indian government been ambivalent ~ as SM Krishna has just reconfirmed ~ but it is becoming apparent that the law of diminishing returns has set in on the alibi of “varying perceptions” (of the LAC). At one point in time it was felt that the Chinese forward-push was to acquire favourable ground positions should the boundary negotiations reach a stage when an agreed-line could be drawn on the map, but now the intentions seem a lot more sinister. The Indian calculation of 75 border transgressions so far this year, 223 in the previous year, adds up to anything but “most peaceful”. Also telling is that while senior military officers try to underplay the significance they no longer deny the violations on the ground and in the air too. A new pattern has emerged, soldiers deployed in the vicinity of the LAC ~ the men who face the facts ~ are getting quite vocal about incursions, perhaps to pressure their superiors into a response. As disturbing as the reports of military movement, admittedly in small numbers, is the revelation of a former MP from Ladakh that the Chinese soldiers are trying to get nomads from their side to follow the troops forward. There will be considerable speculation in political, strategic, military and diplomatic circles about the Chinese gameplan, but what is now palpable is that ~ despite the bid to put a positive spin on them ~ the series of meetings of the Special Representatives have registered little forward movement, and the Chinese could be flexing muscle. The Indian interlocutors will have to seriously re-think their action-line, the current one has short-circuited itself.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

WOMEN TABLA PLAYERS: SOLO YES, ACCOMPANISTS NO!

 

New Delhi, 8 SEPT: In the music world, it was one male bastion that fell quite some time back when women began learning and began giving solo performances of tabla. To be accepted by their peers as an accomplished tabla artiste, and ranked as an accompanist, however still remains a tough task for women players who say that the gender bias still exists.

 

“Being in a male dominated field performing artistes were not ready to accept a female accompanying them on the tabla. They actually thought it was below their dignity!” said 69-year-old Aban Mistry, one of India's first women tabla players.

 

A generation later and there has not been much change in the attitude towards women accompanists, says a new generation artiste. Anuradha Pal, a young tabla player says she had a tough time making a mark in the competitive music field as an accompanist. “Getting people to change their mindset is very difficult. Sometimes, a person who had heard me play the tabla would say, ‘though she is a girl she plays well’ (ladki ho ke bhi accha bajati hai),” says Pal who formed Stree Shakti, an ensemble of women musicians in 1996. Stree Shakti combines Hindustani, Carnatic vocal and percussion instruments and represented India at the prestigious Woodstock festival last year. “Have a strong back and be prepared to take on the rough and tumble. You must deliver more than what is expected of you,” says Pal when asked what would be her advice to girls keen to learn the tabla. 

However, women who play lead instruments like the sitar, veena and the sarod are more accepted than those playing accompanying instruments. “I have never faced any problem. I was always encouraged by everyone,” says sarod player Zarin Sharma, adding that there are all women music conferences which have been organised in Mumbai, Bangalore and Bhopal.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

POTENT COCKTAIL ~ MAOISTS & RELIGION MUDDY NEPAL IMAGE

 

IT is deplorable that some vested interests in Nepal should revive the politics of religion at a time when the leadership is struggling to provide an efficient government to fulfil the peace process. Last Friday’s incident at the Pasupatinath Temple ~ in which two newly appointed Indian priests were reportedly assaulted, stripped and their sacred threads cut off ~ deserves the strongest condemnation. Though the Nepalese Prime Minister’s adviser, Rajan Battarai, sought to explain that the priests were “not really beaten up”, and a Maoist leader denied any hand in the attack, the fact remains that the Maoists have of late become increasingly intolerant of anything Indian. In such a situation, it will be extremely difficult to deal with the Nepalese in a spirit of friendship and cooperation. One wonders what will happen when the Maoist leaders’ dream of bouncing back to power materialises. On 1 January, the Maoist government of Pushpa Kamal Dahal defied the Supreme Court’s interim order and appointed a Nepalese chief priest for the temple. The Communist Youth League and Maoist loyalists reportedly broke open the shrine’s main gate, escorted the priest and installed him. An official announcement said the post was filled after accepting the resignations of five Indian priests. In what clearly amounted to religious chicanery, Dahal ignored the fact that South Indian priests had been conducting the main rituals for nearly three centuries. Following widespread protests he had to backtrack. The latest incident has ostensibly caused considerable embarrassment to the government. Since Nepal is all set to break with tradition, it is worth considering the protesters’ demand that appointments be done through “open competition” among Nepalese and Indian priests and whether it reflects the sentiments of the majority. The two shaken Indian priests will be able to func.

 

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

 

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

HARD LANDING

 

Land, unlike capital or labour, is finite. In West Bengal, it is more scarce than in other states. Economic progress in the state is therefore all about the efficient use of land. Beyond the instant reactions to the scrapping of the IT hub in Rajarhat, there is a need for the state government and the society at large to revisit the land issue. If some major IT companies such as Wipro and Infosys are forced to drop their plans for fresh investments because of the government’s bungling of the proposed IT hub, it will be sad for a state that has been struggling to attract investors. But the setback could be turned into an opportunity to rethink the land question in a new light. Unfortunately, the handling of land issues is overshadowed in West Bengal both by partisan politics and by the absence of an efficient delivery system. The land transfers for the IT hub may have been mired in shady deals and in the involvement of a criminal-politician nexus. No doubt all such transfers should be transparent, and all transgressions dealt with in accordance with the law.

 

But the fiasco over the IT hub should now set the stage for getting real on more substantive issues. The most important of these relates to the best way of getting land for industries and public utility projects. There are two options — acquisition of land by the government and direct purchase of land from its owners determined by market forces. In Singur, the government adopted the first method and was foiled by its political rivals. Stung by the Singur failure, the government went for the second option at Rajarhat, which too has now come to nought. Clearly, the two attempts suggest that the first option is a better one since it offers better justice to those who have lost their land and leaves less room for land sharks and their accomplices to use force and other unfair means. But the terms for the acquisition of land by the government need to be updated, as the government is known to acquire land at much lower rates than what the market offers. Even if the buying and selling of land is left to the market, the State should retain a role for itself. In fact, the State should have the primary role in acquiring and developing land for infrastructure projects, especially the construction of the expressways.

 

It is equally important to ask how much land an industry should need. Especially in a land-scarce state like West Bengal, it is crucial to assess the economic returns from each acre of land. Leaders of industries, both in manufacturing and in the services, should also ask themselves if they need to rethink their land requirements. There is a strong case for vertical, rather than horizontal, expansion of land for future projects in West Bengal. Changing land-use patterns involves hard choices and West Bengal must be prepared to bear the pain that accompanies such transitions.

 

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

 

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

GHOSTLY CURTAIN

 

A nation’s history is often shaped by tricks of telling. Any account of the past involves remembering and forgetting in equal measure — which, in turn, become the perfect excuse for governments all over the world to serve up one version of national history over another. Vladimir Putin’s first decade as the Russian premier has been spent tweaking crucial moments, if not facts, related to his country’s chequered past. Moving away from Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost — the closest that Russia came to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission — Mr Putin’s rise saw the resurrection of controversial figures from the past often dressed in a garb of power and glory. The latest Soviet-era memento to have resurfaced in Russia is a plaque singing paeans to Josef Stalin. Reinstated in Moscow’s Kurskaya metro station, this monument not only makes the tyrannical years of Stalinism look idyllic but also, in the process, disavows the suffering of countless ordinary Russians who perished in the gulags.

 

Evidently, such thoughtless ‘revivalism’ is best dismissed as ignorant, but the worrying bit is that historical distortion often has its roots in present interests. Russia’s self-aggrandizing enterprise is motivated, to a great extent, by its desire to have the upper hand in the geopolitics of oil and natural gas. So the architects of modern Russia’s destiny are also keen on staying in the good books of the West by playing things safe. This agenda explains Mr Putin’s clever double take. Although he has invoked a particularly horrific ghost from the nation’s past, he has also made some shrewd concessions by way of making apologetic noises to Poland for his country’s earlier denial of its role in the Katyn massacres of 1940. Even as Russia labours to hang on to its supremacist zeal in its immediate neighbourhood — by threatening Ukraine and Kiev over gas supply and asserting its imperial designs on Georgia — it aspires to redefine Eastern Europe’s past as well as its present.

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

COLUMN

THE BOOK AND THE BJP

INDIANS CANNOT EVEN BEAR DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF HISTORY

KRISHNAN SRINIVASAN

 

The serious aspect in the long-running comedy of the Bharatiya Janata Party committing hara-kiri by stabbing itself in both feet with its trishul is the expulsion of Jaswant Singh for his book on Jinnah and the banning of it by the BJP- governed state of Gujarat. The author must have known that his party had ‘form’ on such matters, and he should therefore hardly have been taken by surprise. The BJP was only acting in character: it is no stranger to the banning and burning of books.

 

An unflattering article in Time magazine in 2002 about the various physical infirmities of the former prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, resulted in the burning of the magazine by party activists and a volley of criticism from most of the same politicians and journalists who now deplore the action taken against Jaswant Singh. The reporter concerned was probably saved from expulsion from India by the fact that the former prime minister’s limitations were common knowledge, and a widely-held suspicion that the article was instigated by a pro-Advani lobby that wanted Advani to replace Vajpayee.

 

Speculation about Shivaji’s paternity — that too, by a foreigner —provoked the then BJP prime minister in 2004 to ‘warn’ the author, caused an oriental research institute in Pune to be looted by party loyalists, the book to be banned India-wide, and the Maharashtra government to ask for the author’s arrest through Interpol. The same state government, apparently on a legal complaint by a Shivaji descendant, banned yet another book by the same author in 2006. Jaswant Singh, along with Arun Shourie and others who have now apparently discovered the merits of free speech, was complicit through association at the time, and has been hoist with his own petard. Despite the arguments of Amartya Sen and others, Indians are a far from tolerant people; the discriminations of the caste system are sufficient manifestation of that. But the Congress, being a big tent and unburdened by any obligatory ideology, can afford to show much more latitude than the BJP. Its record is by no means free of intolerance of the written word, allegedly on the grounds of ‘public order’, as in the case of The Satanic Verses, but it has prudently not resorted to bans on many works strongly critical of the lives and actions of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and the critics have been quietly rehabilitated in the bosom of the party.

 

A welcome discussion of the meaning of history has arisen as a consequence of Jaswant Singh’s predicament. History is the transmission of ideas about identity and common experience through the interpretation of the past in which perception and myth can play just as important a role in the construction of identity as do literal fact and reality.

 

It is argued that with 70 per cent of the Indian population under the age of 40, it is the future and not the past that should be of pressing concern, but this is gravely missing the point. History is now; we are all affected by incidents, stories and images of the past that, consciously or not, we carry over into our lives, and these perceptions may be disturbing or exalting. Nations, like people, are wounded or inspired by incidents at birth and early life, and reshape and enrich them as inherited myths to serve as warnings or exemplars. In this transmission of information and its interpretation, we learn not only about the past but about the present and ourselves. The past is not a dead subject but a continuum, a memory to which all of us belong. That is why revolutions have ultimately to rewrite history, because history has to make sense not only of the past but also of the future. This is what makes the events and personalities attending the Partition of India especially reverberative; and even more so to those whose ideological raison d’être rests upon a specific interpretation of such personalities and events. However, in re-evaluating events and personages, there can be no room for nostalgia. In the historian’s retelling of even familiar episodes, there will be change, and nothing can ever be the same as it was before in the reinterpretation of our received assessments — otherwise there would be no purpose in the retelling.

 

India over the past millennia has hardly been a solid, unchanging entity, and it is good to revisit the interpretations of the past, however painful the exercise might prove. The English still debate the nature and extent of progress (as defined in modern terms) in landmark events like 1066 and the ‘Norman yoke’, Iranians deplore the Arab conquest which introduced Islam but destroyed their former civilization, and the French subject the 1789 revolution to repeated analyses and reconstructions.

 

Among the key elements in the formation of national identity is a sense of the achievements of a shared past, not necessarily of a literal past but often one that is at times selective and structured to serve a purpose. In such renderings, each new era sees itself as a reflection of the active mythology of the past. History written with this purpose is teleological and constructed with a view to invoking patriotism and continuity, which are its main themes. There is sadly a long tradition in the subcontinent of leaders rallying followers around historical symbols that unify adherents of one group in order to set them in opposition against another. To such leaders, political consensus resides in a shared and unquestioning sense of history, which lies at the core of allegiance. The BJP would have been more than happy if Jaswant Singh had stuck to this script.

 

As is the custom with myth and legend, our attitude to history is Manichean; the heroes are unblemished and the villains are irredeemable. So our political hero can do no wrong. To impugn his qualities is to commit heresy and betray the ideology. To show any sympathy for his antithesis is unacceptable. Indians associate political power with kingship, divine right and absolute authority, leading to infallibility and the hereditary principle. How else can one explain the legions of followers and hangers-on who wait patiently in corridors and lobbies for a glimpse of the neta, wishing for nothing except a namaskar or just a glance in their direction or not even as much as that. Just to be in the presence is sufficient; to participate in a darshan. Our politicos know better than to turn them away. That is why there is no popular outrage and, on the contrary, perhaps some political mileage to be made by the Maharashtra government by its decision to build a giant statue of Shivaji at a cost of Rs 350 crore and taller than the Statue of Liberty during a time of critical drought and farmer suicides,

 

The line between history and mythology in India is drawn too fine. The past is consciously invoked to legitimize aspects of the present and to strengthen the forces of cultural nationalism. History is used to promote ideology and the more the ideology is in the service of myth-making, the less relevant becomes the scientific approach. Totalitarian instincts need to harness history in their support, and to rewrite it according to the canon to serve their purposes. Non-specialists and politicians have intervened in a field that should be purely academic, not understanding that there is no such thing as ‘correct history’. There are only opinions based on evidence and analysis. History should not be written in the context of narrow nationalism; it is not intended to teach patriotism, loyalty or morality. If historiography in India is to be a rational study, its status must break free from hagiography and the malign influence of political interference.

 

History has to be contestable, but not in political party conclaves nor the law courts. Nor should it ever be determined or influenced by State violence, mob assault or government bans. Arbitrarily closing down proper historical debate is tantamount to closing down the mind. What would be the public reaction if the characters and careers of iconic figures like Rabindranath Tagore, Maulana Azad or Subhas Chandra Bose were to be deconstructed and demolished? Will India be forever prone to emotional convulsions, and could our enemies be tempted deliberately to use historical biography to divide our society?

The author is former foreign secretary of India

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

COLUMN

TO FIND FRESH PASTURES

SUMANTA SEN

 

Reports from Guwahati say that Assam is about to make Hindi compulsory at the school level. This is likely to happen within the next couple of years, as the infrastructure is put in place. The ruling Congress should not face much problem on this score as neither the Opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, nor the Leftists would be against the move in principle although they may have a thing or two to say about the manner of implementation. The Asom Gana Parishad too cannot be seen as being chauvinistic on the issue in the manner of the Dravidians of Tamil Nadu, as the state government is not seeking to impose Hindi as the official language. Reportedly, students are also happy because learning Hindi will remove the language barrier that they often come across in north India and also in the western parts. Some, of course, have said that they would like to learn the language to appreciate Hindi film songs better but many others are more serious.

 

There is today a change in the mindset. Gone are the days in the Fifties and Sixties when the average Assamese felt that life began and ended with the Brahmaputra Valley. They chose to remain insular, happy with the rich yield of the soil. This insularism, however, slowly gave birth to the feeling that the outside world was the enemy and, with time, slogans such as “Assam oil belongs to Assam” caught the popular imagination. The appearance of the United Liberation Front of Asom was a natural outcome of such parochialism. Today, the reported welcome to the teaching of Hindi should indicate that such forces are on the backfoot. The realization that for their own good, the Assamese have to be one with the rest of the country seems to have ultimately dawned. It should have come much earlier as the state’s economy is almost wholly in the hands of the non-Assamese now.

 

The Assamese must find a space for themselves in the rest of the nation. The Brahmaputra Valley may shudder at the suggestion but in this it can take a cue from Bengalis. In the days to come, the Assamese will be in a more advantageous position as the state government itself helps them to overcome the language barrier. Bengalis, for the most part, have to pick up Hindi on their own.

 

OPEN UP

Talking of mindset, no transformation will be complete without a change in outlook towards the Barak Valley. The history of Assam since Independence is marked by violent intolerance towards the Bengali language and the Bengalis. The last expression of such intolerance was in the Nineties when every attempt had been made to stall the opening of a Central university at Silchar. On this issue, the educated Assamese have always chosen to project themselves in a poor light even though they insisted that it was their identity they were fighting for. They never bothered to explain how the identity of the majority could face any threat from the minority. Unless this attitude changes, the Assamese will never be able to claim freedom from chauvinism.

 

Tripura in the Northeast presents a similar picture. The Bengalis there, who comprise the majority of the population, have always, like the Assamese, been happy to live in isolation, dependent wholly on government jobs which include those in educational institutions. Naturally, Hindi, and often also English were not needed to earn a livelihood. Now, the chief minister, Manik Sarkar, is seeking to open up the state and he would do well to ensure that the traffic moves two ways. Even a working acquaintance with Hindi will help young men and women from Tripura seek fresh pastures in distant states.

 

The Northeast as a whole needs opening up. For that, easy communication between the people is a must. And as a vehicle of communication, the importance of Hindi cannot be ignored.

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

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

DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

THE BBC’S DISGRACEFUL BNP STUNT

‘QT’ IS NOT ABOUT RATIONAL DEBATE BUT A PING-PONG OF POINT-SCORING AND GIMMICKS FOR CHEAP APPLAUSE.

BY DENIS MACSHANE,THE GUARDIAN

 

The BBC whose lavish salaries and expenses paid for by the poorest of the land are obsessed with media stunts as they watch ratings slump. Last week, it was Adam Boulton announcing he would “empty chair” Gordon Brown if he refused Sky’s pompous demand to debate on Boulton’s terms with other party leaders. Now it is the BBC that has staged its publicity coup by inviting Holocaust denier Nick Griffin on to its flagship Question Time Programme.

Is there outrage? No, the liberal world slumps deeper into its armchair having a little moan about how nasty the BNP is, while the mainstream parties meekly agree to appear with Griffin.

Inviting the BNP’s Nick Griffin as if he were the same as a senior politician from a democratic party is a stunt too far. The only full-length written work by Griffin — ‘Who are the Mindbenders?’ — plays on old Nazi propaganda that Jews are the secret controllers of the media. As with Griffin’s denial of the Holocaust and the BNP’s ideology of hate against Muslim citizens, the core ideas are directly descended from the pre-war fascist era.

EFFECTS ON ELECTION

Yes, they get votes in low turnout elections from folk concerned about immigration. But not one in 10,000 voters knows Griffin’s record. The argument advanced by Peter Preston in the ‘Guardian’ and Matthew Seyd in the ‘Times’, as well as the Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander in the ‘Daily Mirror’, is that debating with Griffin somehow exposes him and his loathsome ideology.

If only. ‘Question Time’ is not about rational debate but a ping-pong of point-scoring and gimmicks for cheap applause. Some of the audience will snarl at Griffin, some will cheer, when he denounces the number of foreigners in Britain or damns the EU. Sunny Hundal has advanced cogent arguments demolishing the myth that this is about a free exchange of views from which the BNP will emerge the loser.

In fact, the only winner will be the BNP vote-bank. French TV journalists went through the same arguments as Jean-Marie Le Pen rose in the 1980s. He and other National Front politicians were elected to Strasbourg, the French national assembly and local town hall. They had MEPs, deputies and mayors. Like Griffin, Le Pen was obsessed with Jewish questions though his main focus was Muslims, other immigrants and pulling out of the EU. But each time he appeared on the French equivalent of ‘Question Time’, his votes went up and the other party leaders spent their hour abusing each other as Le Pen just smiled at their political antics.

Today, French TV journalism is wiser. Yes, as an elected politician leading a legal party, Le Pen is reported and awarded a share of time on the election news, just as Griffin has the right to. But given the undemocratic core of his views on Jews, Muslims and immigrants, French TV does not treat Le Pen and the National Front as just another party. British broadcasters should follow suit.

If the argument is made that an electoral mandate confers the right to be boosted by the BBC on ‘Question Time’, why not the hundreds of independent councillors, or the other small parties who win seats?

BALANCE AND INTEGRITY

This is not about democracy but about the BBC losing its sense of moral balance and editorial integrity. The BBC, rather than the ‘Daily Mirror’ and ‘Searchlight’, should be exposing Griffin — not boosting his insatiable ego. As he enters his eighth decade (old enough to have been born during Hitler’s Reich), David Dimblely should refuse to provide a platform for British fascism.

Gordon Brown should make clear that no Labour minister or MP will appear on ‘Question Time’ to validate this disgraceful BBC stunt. Alan Johnson has spoken for most, if not all, Labour MPs and activists by making clear he will not help Griffin up the political status scale by appearing with him. Labour MPs will discuss this at the party conference and Labour’s high command should listen to those who fight hand-to-hand with the BNP on the doorstep before caving in to the BBC.

David Cameron, too, should remember that when Enoch Powell made a racist speech in 1968, the Tory leader Ted Heath ended Powell’s career as a front-rank Tory MP. Heath went on to become prime minister. Cameron and Nick Clegg should be as brave today. All democratic parties should make clear that if Griffin appears on ‘Question Time’, David Dimbleby can have him to himself.

 

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

 

DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

OF DOGGIES THAT GO TO HEAVEN

LOVE FOR ANIMALS FOR SOME IS LIMITLESS AND UNCONDITIONAL.

BY JANARDHAN ROYE

 

Do little doggies go to heaven when their day is done? The thought came up as my little niece and I were walking the dog. As was her habit, the pooch stopped to sniff and smell things every now and then. To tease the young dog lover I wondered why. The chubby bright spark said, “Uncle J, dogs do that to find out who’s been around here. It’s like getting the news from the papers for them. After they’ve done reading, they leave their own message for the next dog that may come along.” About then the pet bent and watered the lamp-post. “Oh!” I said, glad to be enlightened.

As we watched the girl grow, we noticed she had much fondness and understanding of dogs. Of course this amused everyone in the family. It also caused some concern as all manner of street pups and dogs arrived outside the house gate. The girl entertained them with biscuits, chapathis, and stuff. And to grandma’s horror, she often mussed with their coats. The strays had been given names too — Tramp, Scamp, Tripod. The later was a scrawny pup with three legs. One rear limb was lost in an accident, hence the tag ‘Tripod’. “He can run as fast as the other dogs,” we were informed.

“Just as she adores them, the dogs seem to adore her,” observed grandma from behind the curtain. “But I can’t help I worrying that these dogs may be carrying fleas and disease.” The little girl, however, was dismissive of such fears. “Come on, grammie. I wash my hands every time I touch them. And please don’t complain about my friends.”

Then the unexpected happened to the little dog-lover. Coming out of school one wet morning, an irate stray leapt out of the storm-water drain, and bit her calf. Shocked passers-by quickly came to the girl’s rescue. She was rushed to the hospital for treatment. That’s where the full story unfolded.

The attacker had recently littered in a storm-water drain near the school. Overnight heavy rains swept away the new-borns. The distraught mother couldn’t save the babies and was in a blind rage when she attacked the unsuspecting little dog lover.

“And those sad little puppies, I am sure they’ll go to heaven,” said the sympathetic girl. When the talk turned to the ‘biter’, she rushed to its defence: “Just because one dog bit me doesn’t make all dogs bad!”

 

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

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

THE NEWYORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

‘CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF FRAUD’

 

No one ever expected Afghanistan’s presidential election — the country’s second — to be squeaky clean. But the charges of official fraud are now so widespread and so disturbing that we fear many Afghans may never accept the results. That in turn will play right into the hands of the Taliban and other extremists.

 

On Tuesday, the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission — the Afghan and international panel that is the ultimate arbiter of the election — said that it had found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations” in the southern and eastern provinces. It correctly ordered Afghan election officials to recount results from all polling stations where one candidate received more than 95 percent of the vote or where more votes were cast than the expected maximum of 600.

 

The commission isn’t the only one raising the alarm. Western and Afghan officials have charged that Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of bogus polling sites where no one voted but thousands of ballots were still recorded in favor of Mr. Karzai’s re-election. International officials and observers also said that safeguards built into the computerized counting system to weed out fraud were not used properly.

 

Despite all of the questions, Afghan government officials said on Tuesday that Mr. Karzai had won 54.1 percent of the vote versus 28.3 percent for his nearest challenger, Abdullah Abdullah. That would be enough for Mr. Karzai to avoid a runoff. Afghan authorities should refrain from declaring a formal winner until the recount is finished and the Elections Complaints Commission rules.

 

Afghans have long grown weary of Mr. Karzai’s weak leadership and his government’s rampant corruption. Even then, pre-election polls showed that Mr. Karzai would likely still have won in a fair vote. But he and his supporters apparently weren’t willing to leave anything to chance. The United Nations, the United States and NATO allies must now closely monitor the recount and make sure it is rigorously clean and accurate.

 

If enough fraudulent ballots are found and discarded, Mr. Karzai’s tally could drop below 50 percent, triggering a runoff election with Mr. Abdullah. If so, both Washington and the United Nations will have to make clear to Mr. Karzai and his supporters that any further abuses will not be tolerated — and that continued American and international support is truly on the line.

 

President Obama will have to deal with whoever wins. To resist the Taliban’s terror, Afghans must know that they can depend on their government to provide basic services and a minimum level of security. Afghanistan’s Army and police need more training and better equipment; corrupt politicians — including members of Mr. Karzai’s family and inner circle — must be purged.

 

If Mr. Karzai wins, it will require particularly deft American diplomacy to persuade Mr. Abdullah and his allies to play a constructive role as the loyal opposition — and to persuade Mr. Karzai to let them.

 

The most immediate challenge is to get the recount right. There is even less hope of stabilizing the country and defeating the Taliban if Afghans don’t believe their government, for all of its weaknesses, was fairly elected.

 

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

THE NEWYORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE CRISIS, A YEAR LATER

 

With the one-year anniversary of the financial collapse now at hand, there is general agreement that the government’s bailouts and other interventions prevented a bad situation from becoming much worse.

 

The form and scale of the various rescues is still a matter of legitimate debate. But there is no doubt that the government has, for now, stabilized the financial system. Though credit remains seriously impaired, it is slowly becoming more plentiful and less expensive — a hopeful sign that the worst of the recession may be over.

 

Still, the results are nothing to crow about. Despite recent reports that the government is making money on the bank bailout, there is, as yet, nothing to suggest that the financial system is ready to function without vast government intervention — or that the costs to taxpayers will be anything but enormous.

 

Calculations compiled for The New York Times show that the government has collected profits of $4 billion from eight of the biggest banks that have fully repaid their obligations under the Treasury’s main bailout program — a return of about 15 percent annually. Calculations reported in The Wall Street Journal showed that the Treasury made $5 billion from 34 firms that repaid bailout money, for a 7 percent annualized rate of return.

 

That’s better than losing money on any given transaction. But the big picture is bleak. Estimates by Moody’s Economy.com, presented in recent Congressional testimony, suggest that of the $12 trillion the government has committed to fight the financial crisis and recession, the final tab to taxpayers will approach $1.2 trillion. That is equal to about 8 percent of the size of the economy. For comparison, the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s ultimately cost taxpayers some $250 billion in today’s dollars, or about 3 percent of the size of the economy.

 

Worse, there is still much that the public does not know about the rescues. The Treasury still does not require banks to specify how they are using their bailout dollars, despite recommendations from the bailout’s special inspector general that the government demand a periodic accounting. Lawmakers and the public have no precise information about the roughly $300 billion in Citigroup assets that the government has guaranteed. Nor has there been an airing of the terms of the derivatives contracts that the government paid off in the bailout of the American International Group.

 

Without such data, it’s impossible to truly assess the bailouts’ efficacy or to be confident that the right reforms will be put in place to ensure this disaster doesn’t recur. And while it’s possible to say, in the moment, that conditions in the financial system have improved, it is hard to believe that there is anything ahead for the economy other than a very long, hard road to recovery.

 

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

                

                

THE NEWYORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

FREE MAZIAR BAHARI

 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is preparing to come to the United Nations this month where he will enjoy the freedom to speak his mind. Back home, far too many people are denied their basic rights and are deprived of their freedom. Since fraudulent presidential elections in June, and a harsh government crackdown that followed, at least 100 people, including politicians, lawyers and journalists have been jailed.

 

There are horrifying reports of prisoners being raped and tortured. Show trials, complete with obviously coerced confessions, have only reminded the Iranian people, and the world, of the government’s illegitimacy.

 

Among those unjustly detained is Maziar Bahari, a respected documentary filmmaker and correspondent for Newsweek who has been in prison since June 21. A native Iranian who is now a Canadian citizen, Mr. Bahari has not been officially charged and has not been allowed to see a lawyer. Yet he was forced to confess that he and others took part in a “velvet coup” engineered by the West to oust Mr. Ahmadinejad. Such charges are blatantly false.

 

Mr. Bahari’s work as a journalist and a filmmaker is internationally recognized. As he endures Tehran’s grim Evin prison, he is a finalist this week for Spain’s coveted Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, given to groups or individuals for encouraging and promoting the “scientific, cultural and humanistic values that form part of mankind’s universal heritage.” He was nominated by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

 

The Harvard Film Archives says Mr. Bahari’s depiction of contemporary Iranian culture reveals "the human element behind the headlines.” His documentary “Muhammad and the Matchmaker” tells the story of a former heroin addict in Iran trying to rebuild his life. His reporting for Newsweek and Britain’s Channel 4 has also offered important insights into the way ordinary people struggle to survive.

 

Mr. Bahari and the rest of the detainees must be released immediately and allowed to do their work and freely speak their minds.

 

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

 

THE NEWYORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

JUSTICE ON THE FARM

 

When the New York State Senate reconvenes on Thursday, it can strike a powerful blow for equal rights and justice by passing the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act. The bill guarantees farmworkers basic protections — like overtime pay, a day of rest and the right to collective bargaining — that have been denied them for generations.

 

The legislation has repeatedly passed the Assembly but always stalled in the Senate. It is now being pushed by the Senate majority leader, Pedro Espada Jr., but don’t hold that against it.

 

Mr. Espada, a living embodiment of Albany cronyism and self-dealing, has recently attached himself to this cause, perhaps in hope of expiating his past sins or at least diverting attention from them. No matter. The bill deserves to pass on its own overwhelming merits.

 

It may still surprise workers in other industries that the labor rights they have enjoyed since the days of the New Deal are a distant dream to farmworkers. The vulnerability of these men and women has bred appalling conditions and indecent treatment. Mr. Espada highlighted some of these in a recent visit to a duck farm in Sullivan County where workers toil through exhausting shifts to force feed poultry for foie gras.

 

After his role in the legislative coup that paralyzed Albany for weeks, the campaign violations, misuse of funds and murky issue of residency, Mr. Espada will need more than one righteous bill to right his reputation. But we are counting on him — and the powerful Democratic conference leader, Senator John Sampson, a co-sponsor of the bill — to get this measure passed. If Mr. Espada, with all his obsession with power, helps bring about a historic victory for New York’s powerless farmworkers, that is an Albany irony worth celebrating.

 

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

 

THE NEWYORK TIMES

OPED

OBAMA’S AUDIENCE SPEAKS FIRST

BY ANNA DEAVERE SMITH

 

Over the last few years, in preparation for a new play, I interviewed doctors, patients and healers about the human body, its resilience and its vulnerability. Although our conversations were not primarily about the health care debate, they do reveal many of the feelings and thoughts of the people in the audience President Obama will address tonight.

 

The unruliness that now animates the conversation stems from our passions, hopes and discomforts — about life, death, who should (or should not) take care of us and whom we should take care of. The president’s audience has a million and one perspectives, some of them clumping together like blood platelets under one political roof or another. The following excerpts (not all of which are in my play) reflect the range of views.

 

I personally think we need to go to a deal like when I broke my back and I went to the military hospital ... Brooke Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Tex. Cost me a flat rate, $1,200 a day, and I spent the first six days in I.C.U. Everyone, everyone pays a flat rate, no matter what it is. I got hung up by a bull [that] weighed over a ton. ...When I hit the ground, I was on my side and he stepped on my left side with two back feet, broke four ribs, L2, L3 [lumbar vertebrae], and lost half my kidney. And them doctors, I felt, like — well, they told me, if I’d have went to the other hospital in San Antone, they’d have just taken my kidney out. They tried a new deal. They put a stent in there. But them guys get paid a flat rate; it’s not like they’re trying to rape me to make more money to pay their Mercedes-Benz bills or whatever they got.

 

Phil Pizzo, the dean of the Stanford School of Medicine

 

We can’t afford to have a system like this. The cultural expectation is that we are in a community where the public — every individual — believes that she or he should get the most advanced health care kind of on demand. And the notion that it wouldn’t be, that is sort of anathema and we’ve grown toward that over the years.

 

I can remember as a child — so this was growing up in the 1950s when doctors made house calls — when the doctor came to my house and did an examination, if the doctor didn’t do something, you know, give a shot or give the medication ... it was as if they’d never come. Why did we call you if you didn’t do something? What are our expectations as individuals and as society about what constitutes reasonable care?

 

Anonymous nurse, Western United States

 

When you come to the West, you have a different mentality. There’s an independence and an individuality here that you don’t get anyplace else, because when you’re in the city, you’re kind of like part of the hive. You know, people that take the light rail in to work and come back and live in these big apartment buildings and have restaurants and things and they’re fine with that.

 

Here, people are really, really proud, and they cherish their independence. And they cherish the fact that we are all individuals. And that’s what we’re afraid of, is that we’re going to lose our individuality and we’re just going to be part of the hive. If you’re just part of the hive, then what are you going to do? You’re going to cull out the weak links. You’re going to cull out the lady that’s on crutches and got diabetes, because she may be a good grandmother and she may be a good person, she lives by herself, and her house is paid for, but you know, her medicines cost a lot.

 

Adam, a “patriot” from Grand Junction, Colo.

 

Our founding fathers went to war to throw out tyranny, to overthrow a tyrannical government without proper representation. We are about at that point now. We’re here to say we want our country back. Health care ... is socialism. And socialism is not an American value. ... No, I do not have health insurance. I’ve never had insurance. [If I need medical care] I should pay for it. I’ve been to the doctor one time since I was 12 years old. I paid the full bill. ... If I truly needed, had a medical need, I have a catastrophic plan that I bought. But it just covers something that’s truly catastrophic. Has a huge deductible. And if that came about I would pay that. You know, you don’t look for a handout.

 

Asghar Rastegar, a nephrologist at Yale-New Haven Hospital

 

We have become much better in diagnosis. We can look inside cells. We can look inside genes. We could never do that 20 years ago. We can define diseases with such power. But [we lack] the — it’s the realization that there is a human being, fully developed, sitting across who has his or her own dreams, has his or her own beliefs, wishes, desires. And they’re being ravaged by disease. It’s not the disease. And so we often are caught [up] with technology and miss the fact that there is an individual who has his own wishes, hopes, dreams, that plays into their ability to defend themselves against the illness and recover.

 

Bill Tasche, a hiking guide in Big Sur, Calif.

 

We don’t go to doctors. I’m physically strong as an ox, but I’m spiritually strong. We do a lot of herbs and we put them in a Vita-Mix. Everything I see in the woods, horsetail, dandelion, we pull them up. We put them in a Vita-Mix! And we juice them up and we drink it. Pure chlorophyll. We do a lot of that. I do a lot of Vitamin C. I do 10,000 units of C. You know, Linus Pauling used to live here and he’s the one who got me into doing 10,000 units of Vitamin C a day. I do a lot of minerals. You must do minerals. But that chlorophyll drink’s the best I take. Barley green, barley by the handfuls!

 

I walked 20 miles, what, last week? And I wasn’t even fazed, not even fazed. And these guys were, “Bill, this is challenging!” Listen, I’m 67. I can do it, you can do it. I thought they were going to turn back on me. I said, “No, no, no, we got to go forward now! We can’t go back!”

 

Peter Orszag, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget

A key question is how do we move towards a different norm both for providers and for beneficiaries so that when you go to the doctor you’re not just asking for more of everything, if that’s not going to make you better. It’s not just incentives. Norms sound fuzzy, but I think they’re crucial.

 

How do you adjust norms? ... Take seat belts versus speeding. You get a ticket if you don’t use your seat belt or if you’re speeding, and so the pure Econ 101 approach would suggest the penalty for not obeying is similar, and yet adherence to seat belt laws seems much higher, in part because at least for those in the front seat, the norm has changed. When you get in a car, if there’s a passenger in a car, you sort of, at least I do, I kind of look over if a passenger in the front seat doesn’t put on their seat belt. You don’t quite do the same thing if you are in the front seat and the driver is speeding.

 

 

And how does that develop? There was a concerted effort to try to encourage seat belt use. So similarly [in health care] part of what needs to happen is not just public policy ... but an emphasis on healthy living, and helping people do what they say they want to do, which is eat better and exercise more and be healthier. That’s going to be gradual evolution too, but the norm setting I think is important.

 

Jim Logue, a health care rally attendee from Grand Junction, Colo.

 

My wife works at St. Mary’s Hospital here 18 years. I got sicker than a dog last year about this time — 104-degree temperature. I was freezing, go to the hospital, talked to the triage, boy nurse.

 

I said: “Look, buddy, your lobby is full of illegals and park bums. They’re bouncing off the wall. I’m dying here. My wife’s been working here 18 years. I got the same insurance you got.” He said, “Well, you got to wait behind the rest of them.” I said: “Let me get this straight — not only am I buying all their health care, and I got to stand behind them too? There’s something wrong with that.”

 

Bill Robinson, a doctor in Bozeman, Mont.

American culture simply has never been based on caring about what happened to your neighbor. It’s been based on individual freedom and the spirit of, if I work hard I’ll get what I need and I don’t have to worry about [the] fellow that maybe can’t work hard. It’s a pretty cynical view of America.

 

But I honestly think that drives an awful lot of this debate — the notion that I’ve done my job, I’ve worked hard, I’ve gotten what I’m supposed to get. I have what I need and if the other people don’t, then that’s sort of their problem. And unfortunately the big picture — that our nation can’t thrive with such a disparity between the rich and the poor, the access people and the disenfranchised — that hasn’t seemed to really strike a chord with Americans.

 

So your average person actually has fairly good access. They’re happy with their physician and they’re really frightened that something’s going to happen to that, on behalf of people that maybe they don’t think it’s their job to take care of.

 

Fernando Mendoza, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford School of Medicine

Much of what I have done in my professional career is looking at health care in Latino children. Clearly they don’t have health care. Issues of obesity — I had been working with my colleagues on national health surveys. And actually we did some of the surveys that were done in the ’70s and the early ’80s. It was clear from back then that Latino kids had what we call a short plump syndrome, which was they were a little shorter and they were ... heavier than the U.S. population. But African-American kids were also larger. And it was not until 1990 when they sampled enough Mexicans, enough African-Americans to really get numbers. It doesn’t become an issue, unless it becomes an issue in the white kids.

 

Stu Katz, a cardiologist at Yale-New Haven Hospital

When I was at Columbia we had a wealthy Turkish man come to the United States seeking a heart transplant. ... He was just going to pay cash. And so he said, “Well, how much does it cost?” And we told him, you know, $250,000, and he started laughing. And you know, going through a translator. So we said, “Why are you laughing?” And he said, “That’s less than a Ferrari.”

 

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright who is a professor at New York University and who will appear in the forthcoming “Let Me Down Easy.”

 

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

THE NEWYORK TIMES

OPED

LESS SPOCKY, MORE ROCKY

BY MAUREEN DOWD

 

As soon as I started covering Barack Obama, I knew he was going to be trouble.

 

Not Global Trouble, like W. and Dick Cheney. Or Hanky-Panky Trouble, like Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Or Tedious Trouble, like John Kerry and Michael Dukakis.

 

He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust.

 

It’s an irritating pattern. Not as puerile as Bill Clinton’s pattern of wasting time and plunging into personal chaos, or as horrifying as Dick Cheney’s routine of bullying and cutting paper dolls out of the Constitution.

 

But not as reliably uplifting as Jed Bartlet either.

 

After keeping his great powers of persuasion and elucidation under wraps all summer, the president at long last comes forward to explain his health care plan to an utterly confused and increasingly skeptical and wary public.

 

He should have done this speech back in June and conjured up a better glossary. You can’t combat a scintillating term like “death panels” with a somnambulant one like “public option.”

 

President Obama is so wrapped up in his desire to be a different, more conciliatory, beer-summit kind of leader, he ignores some verities.

 

Sometimes, when you’ve got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on your opponent’s neck. When you’re trying to get a Sisyphean agenda passed, it’s good if people in the way — including rebellious elements in your own party — fear you.

 

Civil discourse is fine, but when the other side is fighting dirty, you should get angry. Don’t let the bully kick sand in your face. The White House should have impaled death panel malarkey as soon as it came up.

 

By the time the president got feisty in a speech on Monday, the inmates had taken over cable TV, much like the spooky spirits swarming up over Bald Mountain in “Fantasia.”

 

Even Steve Hildebrand, the strategist who helped shape Obama’s historic win in the Iowa caucuses, complains that his former hero “needs to be more bold in his leadership.” Disenchanted at Obama’s disengaged approach on health care and gay rights, Hildebrand told Politico’s Ben Smith that he was “losing patience.”

 

It was one thing for Obama to delegate freely when he was on the Harvard Law Review, but it’s madness to go play golf and delegate freely to Congress, letting Nancy Pelosi make your case. After signaling that there was nothing he’d fall on his sword for on health care; after dropping Van Jones at the first objection from Glenn Beck — a demagoon who called Obama a “racist” — the president is getting to be seen as an easy mark.

 

 

If Obama didn’t have a knife-thrower like Rahmbo in the Oval, Democrats would be totally convinced that the president would fold in a heartbeat.

 

In the absence of more vivid presidential leadership, the Democrats have reverted to their old DNA — self-destructive scrapping and spending. And the Republicans are sticking to theirs — being mean-spirited and shameless, attacking big government spending while taking no blame for their own.

 

Just as he let Hillary breathe new life into her faltering campaign in New Hampshire, Obama let the moribund Republicans revivify themselves in the slashing image of Limbaugh and Palin. Administration officials have been chortling that Republicans overreached in criticizing the president for giving a speech urging kids to study hard, write their own destiny and wash their hands.

 

It’s true that Republicans who objected looked risible. On MSNBC, Joe Watkins, a G.O.P. strategist, explained the perils of letting “one of the most gifted speakers that the world has ever seen” speak to impressionable children.

 

What if next time, he asked, the president made a strong argument to kids about the Defense of Marriage Act? “What if,” he wondered, “kids come back home and say to their mom and dad, when the president who they like and who they agree with, tells them marriage is not necessarily between a man and a woman?”

 

But if such Republicans seem loco, and the far left looks easily outmaneuvered, the president seems lame, too, for letting the crazies and uglies get on offense all summer, showcased by a superficial media beast. Laura Bush had to ride to Obama’s rescue and explain that he wasn’t a brain-washing alien, that it was a good thing for a president to inspire kids.

 

It shouldn’t take a superhuman effort by the Democrats, with an assist from a Republican former first lady, to beat back the most obviously nutty, stupid things that Republicans say.

 

The president told students on Tuesday that “being successful is hard” and “you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.”

 

He should take his own words to heart. He can live long and prosper by being less Spocky and more Rocky.

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

I.THE NEWS

DITORIAL

 BIG BROTHER

 

The Orwellian notion of a world in which the state keeps an eye on every facet of activity may be about to unfold here. We are informed by a private television channel that the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority has drafted a detailed plan that would allow it, in theory at least, to monitor all telecommunications – including calls over landlines, mobile services and email. In practice, this may not have too much meaning. Agency insiders have in the past spoken of reams of tape containing recorded conversations lying in dusty rooms. Physically it is impossible to scan it. The recordings – most of them made up of trivialities – include phone calls made by politicians, activists, journalists and others whom agencies brought under their radar at various points in time.

But in principle at least the thought of what is planned and the thinking underpinning it is terrifying. The possibility of persons or groups the state wishes to target being singled out for scrutiny is an alarming one. The ability of PTA to block websites has already acted to restrict the right to free expression by washing out Baloch and Sindhi websites from cyber space. Such is the nature of the Internet – a medium that is resistant to many forms of censorship – which such sites can usually be reached through proxy servers. But this is undoubtedly more arduous. It also says a great deal about the mindset of authority. For all the talk about free expression there is an evident unwillingness to genuinely respect this right. The action of course only fuels the feelings of resentment in Balochistan and as such works against the interests of the country to a far greater extent than any website.

A federal minister has been quoted as saying the measures are aimed against 'anti-state' elements. It does not take a study of history to know that this term has the vaguest and widest application. It is thought possible that the Pakistan Electronic Crime Ordinance of September last year may be used to legitimize PTA actions. The ordinance was at the time billed as one intended to tackle Internet fraud – but then any law can be distorted and put to other uses. The interior minister gave away intentions in this respect earlier this year by warning that those sending anti-state messages over SMS services would face action. This announcement of course led to a quite distinct expansion of anti-government messages, some couched as jokes or worded as tongue-in-cheek comments that had exactly the same impact as the more direct messages sent out previously. One of the great advantages of electronic communications is the flexibility it gives users. This means the latest effort will in all likelihood flounder. Saner elements within the government must call for it to be abandoned.

 

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

 

I.THE NEWS

DITORIAL

CANTONMENTS

The chief minister of Balochistan has informed reporters in Quetta that the federal government has accepted a request from the provincial government that the building of military cantonments in the province be stopped. The agreement on this, we are told, has been reached after much deliberation and is aimed at calming sentiments in Balochistan. The decision to establish the cantonments, taken under President Musharraf, had been fiercely opposed by all nationalist and most political forces in Balochistan. It was, for obvious reasons, seen as an effort to clamp down against nationalist elements. It was obviously no coincidence that the cantonments were to be set up in the Dera Bugti and Kohlu areas – where the anti-government uprising of the Musharraf area was concentrated.

Indeed people in Balochistan have made consistent claims of harassment by paramilitary forces posted along highways and they had feared the cantonments would only add to this. The role of the army in Balochistan is of course an issue that draws strong reaction, particularly since the deadly military operation in the 1970s. The scars left by it have not vanished. The actions taken some three decades later under a military dictator have only re-opened the wounds. We must hope the move to abandon the building of the cantonments is not an isolated gesture but an indication of a more sweeping change thinking. The problems of our largest province cannot be solved by the use of force. The government must demonstrate a willingness to win the Baloch heart.

 

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

 

I.THE NEWS

DITORIAL

HUNGER SECURITY

 

There are a lot of people in Pakistan who do not get enough to eat and there are going to be even more in the not-far future. Pakistan has just been put in 11th place on the Food Security Risk Index ranking of 148 nations; meaning that we face extreme or high risk of food shortages. We rank above India and Bangladesh at 20th and 25th respectively. Every household, rich or poor, will have noticed a significant rise in the cost of essential food items over the last two years. Commodity prices rose sharply across south Asia in 2007 and 2008, and they continue to rise in 2009. We should not assume that poverty is the only cause of food insecurity as there are several interlocking factors that make up the whole picture – it is also affected by agricultural development, trade flow, foreign aid and government policies on nutrition; as well as population growth and climate changes. One does not have to be an economist to see that our out-of-control demographic, stumbling economy and crippling power deficits are all contributing to a widening net of food insecurity.

Interestingly, the report also highlights the accelerating food insecurity of our neighbour India. Amid the blizzard of positive publicity that India generates for itself there is the underlying statistic that around two-thirds of the population of 1.1 billion depend on farming as their primary source of income, but farming in India is in a catastrophic decline. The acreage of land currently cultivated has dropped by a fifth in the last year alone and the Indian government is soon to introduce a National Food Security Act in an effort to equalize food distribution. Although we have not suffered the same kind of loss, we do face the same kind of problems – dwindling water resources and desertification coupled with increasing salinity are all going to hit our agricultural productivity. Our own food insecurity is compounded by a failure of long-term planning that survives regime change. We need to be addressing food insecurity as a 25-year programme linked to an energetic campaign to bring our burgeoning birthrate under control. As things stand we can only guarantee the security of hunger for increasing numbers.

 

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

 

I.THE NEWS

COLUMN

A CONSPIRACY AGAINST MY FATHER

PART II

MUHAMMAD IJAZ UL HAQ

 

15. It was a conspiracy and an international one at that. But it could not have been carried out in practical terms without active and acquired assistance through local collusion. The crime could not have been committed without the involvement of local hands.

16. A young officer of the PAF Akram Awan was under interrogation by the ISI for being an agent of Raw and Mossad. This officer was working in collaboration with enemy agencies to plan and execute an air strike on the Kahuta Nuclear Plant by Israel in connivance with India. He was arrested a few months back and did not know any thing about the Bahawalpur crash. Awan was shown a video covering the plane crash. When he came to know that Major General M. H Awan was also among those killed, Awan suffered an emotional breakdown and started crying. General Awan had helped the young officer with his education and career. Upon learning about the death of his benefactor, Awan wept uncontrollably. Experts confirmed that this reaction was not an act. In this instant reaction, he uttered, "Sir, I never knew these bastards would do this!"

17. Awan said that he had been handed over match-box type of device by a Mossad Officer in New Delhi to be delivered to Air Martial (retd) Agha Zulfiqar Ali Khan in Pakistan. The device, once placed in the cockpit, would render the crew unconscious in less than 25 seconds. He said that meetings took place at the residence of said Air Marshal and in which an Indian envoy, a US army colonel and an agent of Mossad, who had traveled to Pakistan on an American passport, were also present. Photographs, videos and other confessional material were handed over by ISI to General Aslam Baig. Awan was eventually imprisoned and is serving his sentence in jail. However, the case with solid leads is pending. Where are these files now? When the person involved is alive and available, why can't the investigations be carried out? Why was the retired Air Marshal not questioned? Instead he was allowed total access to intelligence agencies to further destroy the evidence.

18. The event at Bahawalpur did not require presidential participation. Munitions pieces are put to test before induction in the armed forces. It is normal practice. Why was the Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS) so keen to have invited the president at this particular point in time? Why did General Durrani insist that the president attend the event? Who persuaded the Chairman JCSC to join the presidential entourage? Why were the doctors not allowed to carry out post-mortems? Why were those who knew about details of the incident transferred to far-off places? The then VCOAS insists that an inquiry was ordered and conducted. If so, where are the findings? Who benefited the most is the fundamental question. Those who killed Zia-ul Haq could have done so at any time. Why was this particular moment selected to kill him? Had the dismissed government of Mr Junejo been in place, no one would have gained anything by this crime. Both the ISI and IB had informed in advance about a possible threat and the president was cautious enough not to have left Rawalpindi after dismissal of the Government. Our frequent pleas to the Americans in connection with the investigations irked them to the extent that they blatantly told us that if we are to play a positive role with regard to servicing our country, then we will have to bear with this personal loss. Such countless questions remain unanswered to this day.

19. Disappointed, we contacted a well-known US law firm -- F. Lee Bailey -- for legal assistance. They opined that if we sue Lockheed Inc, the onus will be on them to prove that the crash was not because of any mechanical failure. This, in turn, will strengthen our plea of a conspiracy and terrorist act of subversion and sabotage. The lawyers were thrilled and exclaimed that they had the case of the century. He informed me that the head of the US Civil Aviation Authority had invited him to lunch for discussion over the issue. However, having met the said gentleman, he expressed his inability to further pursue the case for unknown reasons.
20. All through her life Ms Benazir Bhutto had been talking of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to cover and examine our national history. I agree with this. The commission should examine and investigate national disasters, like the deaths of Quaid-e-Azam, Maadar-e-Millat, murder of Liaquat Ali Khan, the Rawalpindi conspiracy, secession of East Pakistan, Ojhri Camp, the conspiracy leading to martyrdom of Shuhada-e-Bahawalpur, Kargil, Lal Masjid and the killings of Nawab Akbar Bugti and Ms Bhutto.

21. It is strange that President Zardari has claimed that he knows who killed his wife. Still millions of US dollars are being spent from the state exchequer by taking her case to the United Nations. Similarly, President Pervez Musharraf is alive and kicking, enjoying his life in London. Those who attempted to kill him are serving time in jail, with at least one of them executed. Interestingly, he himself will not know the exact number of his killers, the names of cities/towns and the types of courts where those accused of his murder are being tried. Similarly, in the case of Shaukat Aziz, his alleged murderers have been tried and stand convicted. Conversely, not a single individual involved in the case of Shuhada-e-Bahawalpur or other such incidents has been caught.

22. I had earlier warned that if the murder of the top military hierarchy is not investigated, such incidents would continue to take place.

23. In my own capacity I do not wish to point fingers. It is up to the government to fulfill its obligations by investigating this national loss.

24. Being son of the shaheed general, I am proud that he died with his boots on and in full military fatigue. I alone do not represent his legacy. There are millions in the country and outside who stand by his ideals, achievements, services and sacrifice. They admire and adore him. He died a hero's death. While embracing shahadat, he was carrying the Quran. His funeral to the final abode was unprecedented in history with millions of fellow countrymen from every stratum of society paying homage and mourning over loss of their hero. The funeral prayer, at two holy mosques as well as Masjid-e-Aqsa, is a rare honour for any Muslim ruler.

25. On behalf of all those people, I demand from the government of the day to bring to book the enemies of Pakistan who by their act of subversion and sabotage have executed the conspiracy. By targeting Zia-ul-Haq, they targeted the spirit of Pakistan. He was a dictator, yes. Dictionary and literary meanings apart, it is the mentality that determines the definition. What is a dictator, democrat, bureaucrat, aristocrat, autocrat, or a theocrat? Anyone can be a dictator. A down-to-earth democrat can turn into a worst dictator. We have already experienced this. People knew that he was a dictator and they also knew that he was a benign dictator. He ruled not only Pakistanis but their hearts and minds as well. He worked very hard for the betterment of his people.

26. Ever since his departure, the country is in constant crisis, slide and siege. The government, with begging bowls held in both hands, is engaged in asking everyone for assistance, alms and charity. Life for an ordinary man is a nightmare. He is unable to earn and arrange for two simple meals for the family. We have lost our national dignity. With Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) not listening and trusting our rulers, IMF is back in business. The country has been denied and deprived of its Islamic identity, sovereignty and statehood.
(Concluded)

The writer is a former minister for religious affairs. Email: ulhaq.ijaz @gmail.com

 

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

I.THE NEWS

COLUMN

WARS OF LIBERATION

RANDOM THOUGHTS

DR A Q KHAN

In my previous column, I wrote about partition, the Kashmir issue and the treacherous role played by Lord Mountbatten and Sir Radcliffe.

On a number of occasions, both General Musharraf and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri have issued statements that gave the impression that India was about to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. Actually, India has always categorically said that Kashmir is an integral part of India. Here I would like to look at how these claims of solving the issue were made and how the Indians were going to give it to us. Let us also not forget Hyderabad, Manavadar and Junagarh also.

Many may disagree but to my mind the bitter truth is that the people of occupied Kashmir have erred in many ways. They have, so far, sacrificed almost a 100,000 people. Thousands of women have been raped by Indian forces while scores of young men are missing. The overall situation is steadily deteriorating. Had their leaders realised what the ground realities were, they would have participated in the elections, won the support of the majority and formed a government. They would have been in a much stronger position to present their case to the world community. Unfortunately, Mir Waiz Umar Farooq, Yaseen Malik, Professor Gilani, etc, are all still day-dreaming that they will be able to liberate Kashmir from Indian occupation and join Pakistan. No struggle for liberation is successful unless a powerful neighbouring country actively helps with money and material. Kashmir will have to stand on its own, form a combined front, win the support of a majority of the people, negotiate for maximum autonomy and serve their people through peace and prosperity.

Here I would like to give a few examples of the making or breaking of liberation movements due to the support, or lack of it, of neighbouring countries.

Kashmir: Since we were neither very powerful nor effectively able to help them, they lost almost 100,000 people. If anyone thinks that Kashmir can be liberated under the present circumstances, he/she is living in a fool's paradise. The Kashmiris lost 95 per cent of their bargaining position after Ayub Khan's folly in 1965. The remaining five per cent was lost after Kargil.

Palestine: If one considers the map of Israel in 1949, one sees that it was about one-fourth of what it is today. Since the Arabs were lazy and not serious about the matter, they suffered ignominious defeats, lost billions of dollars in wars, thousands of lives and huge chunks of land. The Palestinian leaders didn't learn from history. They are still intransigent and unwilling to negotiate, forgetting that they are facing a country that enjoys American and European support. Had the Arabs been pragmatic and come to a compromise in the early 50s, Israel would have remained a small country with no need for the western support it now enjoys.

Sri Lanka: We have just seen the end to the Tamil struggle in Sri Lanka. Initially, they were instigated and supported by India, with whose help they had become a frightening force. More than 100,000 army personnel, civilians and insurgents lost their lives. However, as soon as the international scenario changed, support to the insurgents and terrorists became taboo. India was more or less forced to cut off aid to the Tamils and within a few months, the movement withered away. If the Tamil leader, Vellupai Prabhakaran, had agreed to a peaceful settlement a few years ago, they would now have been ruling their own province.

Spain: The ETA (Basque insurgents) adopted a violent route to gain autonomy, but since no neighbouring country was willing to help them, they lost many people and failed to extract any concessions.

Northern Ireland: The IRA first adopted a violent course of action resulting in many deaths. Initially, Libya and some other countries helped, but it soon became a hopeless affair because there was no major support coming from a neighbouring country. Wisdom ultimately prevailed and they negotiated a peace agreement of which they are now reaping the benefits.

Chechnya: Due to the actions undertaken by some unwise leaders, they lost their almost-won independence. President Yeltsin's Security Advisor, General Lebed, had given them almost full independence over a 10-year period. However, some extremists immediately started subversive activities in neighbouring Ossetia, Ingushetia and Dagestan to bring in the so-called Islamic governments. The result was obvious. President Putin crushed them ruthlessly; cities were destroyed and thousands of people lost their lives. Western powers looked other way as they were too busy murdering innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the leaders of Chechnya had been patient, they would have been an independent country today.

East Timor: This movement succeeded in breaking away from Indonesia because they had a mainly Christian population and carried the support of the Western world and the U.N., who forced Indonesia to cede it. (In Palestine, these very same powers are with Israel, so everything is blocked.)

Eriteria: The Eriterians succeeded after a very long struggle because Sudan helped the insurgents, who were also Muslims, while the Ethiopian majority was Christian.

East Pakistan: Here the locals succeeded because they enjoyed the full support of India and the Soviet Union. Our rulers merely provided them with the perfect opportunity.

Sikhs: Despite the fact that they were a majority in East Punjab, the Sikhs were squarely beaten and lost thousands of people because Pakistan was not in a position to provide them with money or weapons. Any provocation from Pakistan would have resulted in an all-out war with India.

Sinkiang: The recent insurgence in Sinkiang is being supported by the US. An opportunist woman, Rabia Ghadir, is being sponsored by the CIA in Washington to create unrest. Almost 200 insurgents have been killed while Rabia is in Washington. Why would the US support Islamic insurgents, one may wonder? Simply to create problems for China, whose rise to power is an eyesore for the former. The Muslims in Sinkiang should realise that they can never break away from China.

Tibet: Another misconceived insurgency was sponsored by India and the western countries in Tibet almost 50 years ago. Thousands of people were killed due to the inflexibility of the Dalai Lama. While his people were living in misery, he enjoyed a good life, travelled all over the world and even received a politically-motivated Nobel Prize. The Chinese mostly treat their minorities well. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. If the Dalai Lama were to return today, he would be welcomed and allowed to look after the affairs of his people.

 

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

I.THE NEWS

COLUMN

PAKISTAN AFGHANISTANISED

MOSHARRAF ZAIDI

 

The point I made in my article last week was simple. When it comes to making use of foreign assistance, Pakistan has shot itself in the feet too many times. Calling out the Americans on administrative expenditure is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Arguing with any donor, American or not, about knowing development better than they do, is a case of selling fairytales. Countries that are net donors tend to be ones that have already sorted some of the deeper, more fundamental issues and challenges of statehood. Pakistan is a net recipient, not a net donor. It doesn't know development, and it shows.

Pakistan's development indicators are terrible. The UNDP's Human Development Index--conceived by a patriotic and proud Pakistani called Dr Mahbubul Haq--is the gold standard for countries' development performance. Where does Pakistan rank on the index? It is 139th out of 179 countries. By some miracle of semantics, it qualifies as a Medium Human Development country. This Medium Human Development "jiggernaut" is sandwiched between Mauritania below it and Yemen above.

Pakistan's life expectancy at birth is 64.9, placing it at number 125. Pakistani nationalists might sleep easier tonight knowing that, at that rank, it ranks two positions above India. Jai Ho. Pakistan's adult literacy rate, at 54.2 per cent places it at the 132nd position, occupying the same neighborhood as Liberia, Bhutan, Togo and Bangladesh.

Pakistan's combined, primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio is 39.3 per cent, only good enough for 169th position. Out of 179. The only countries worse off than Pakistan on enrollment figures are, in order, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Niger, Angola and Djibouti.

Why dig up quantitative proof of just how bad Pakistan is at this whole development thing? Simple. To reinforce that the Pakistani state, and all Pakistani governments, can't claim any expertise in the area, at all.

That does not somehow mean that donors are necessarily any better than Pakistan at development. It simply means that asking donors to give the Pakistani government money to undertake development is a tricky request. Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen and now Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani speak of the need to put money directly into the treasury, because USAID's administrative expenditure rates are too high. But USAID's rates are not dramatically higher than the rates of the any of the other bilateral donors. Some would argue that they are not dramatically higher than the rates of administrative expenditure of even the Government of Pakistan. The only other reason to give aid directly to the Pakistani government would be because the Pakistani governments can do development better. But as these governments have proven over sixty-two years, they cannot.

Moreover, by choosing to constantly beg donors for money, Pakistan has turned itself into a state that cannot choose what donors give it. Its entire argument for getting more money is that it is a weak state. Now it turns around and says, weak shmeak, give us the money, we know what to do with it, and how to do it right. It all seems ridiculously audacious for one reason. It really is.

For Pakistanis to get riled up about the term "Af-Pak" is similarly audacious. We should consider how this train ended up at this station. Af-Pak may be the shorthand used by one of many childlike geniuses working for the deeply misguided Richard Holbrooke. But it has now also become a global shorthand for state dysfunction. This lumping together of Pakistan with Afghanistan is not simply about security and terrorism. It is the result of a deliberate, and distinct, set of strategic choices that have been made by the Pakistani state, and in particular by this government. As a term, Af-Pak transcends security issues. Indeed, Af-Pak now transcends even Afghanistan and Pakistan. Af-Pak countries are countries that cannot survive without large and substantive injections of other countries' money. In the future, when countries go belly-up, they will say, "Whoa, look at them. They just went totally Af-Pak." Pakistan is a member of this club today because it chose to apply for membership. It is the only country in the world that has fought tooth and nail to be a part of this kind of club. It has organised high-profile open house sessions in New York, Tokyo and, most recently, Istanbul, to convince the "Friends of Developing Pakistan" to give it money.

The Pakistani military elite has been playing this game, much to its own detriment, for a long, long time. It has deliberately, and systematically, perpetuated fiscal dependence on American funds--from Ayub Khan's appetite for F-86 Sabres, to Zia-ul-Haq's appetite for Cobras and F-16s, to Pervez Musharraf's appetite for blank-cheque counterinsurgency funds. To its credit, the Pakistani political elite has almost always been a little more circumspect, because realpolitik simply will not allow a country as big as this to be charged off as a business expense for empire--any empire. There is too much ethnic, religious, political, social, and ideological diversity in Pakistan for it to be the kind of poodle that British prime minister Tony Blair bequeathed to the ingloriously incompetent Gordon Brown. Real politicians, like Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, and Mian Nawaz Sharif, know this. That is why their relationship with the Americans was, and always will be, kind of prickly.

This government inherited one of the most disabled and fragile versions of the Pakistani state in history. It did, however, make a conscious decision to pursue money, over and above all other considerations, as its primary foreign policy objective. That choice has had very clear and visible consequences. President Zardari's popularity has tanked not because of economics, or security. It has tanked because he is seen as being responsible for putting Pakistan in this deeply Afghanistanised position. To burrow its way out of this pickle, the new government strategy seems to be to castigate mid-level State Department officials for USAID's administrative expenses. These theatrics are not going to revitalise this government's image.

Luckily for this government (but unluckily for Pakistan), it has found, in Richard Holbrooke, a dance partner as clueless about Pakistan, and development, as the government is. Holbrooke's job was to clear up the mess of an American bureaucracy in this region strewn over multiple agencies, multiple departments, and multiple leaderships. Substative development issues simply don't fit into an agenda for streamlining US military and political interests. Holbrooke would love to hand Pakistan the cheque for Kerry & Lugar's $1.5 billion a year. It would enable getting rid of the bloated USAID bureacuracy, remove USAID paraphernalia from the US policy boardrooms (when it comes to Pakistan), and solve the problem of providing security for thousands of young, inexperienced USAID consultants (as well as some of the very, very good and experienced ones). In short, the whole bogeyman of USAID administrative expenditure is not just what this PPP government wants, it is exactly what Mr Holbrooke wants.

If Mr Holbrooke, or Mr Tarin, were at all interested in development, the conversation would not be about administrative expenditure, which is too high in all cases. The conversation would be about strengthening Parliament, local governments, and the civil service. When prime ministers from Pakistan and presidential envoys from America start talking about schools and hospitals, rather than the institutions that underpin them, you can be sure you are being taken for a ride. The big question is, out of the Pakistani government versus Mr Holbrooke and his elves, who's taking whom for a ride?

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy. He can be reached through his website www.mosharrafzaidi.com

 

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

I.THE NEWS

COLUMN

A CIVIL-MILITARY EQUATION

MASOOD SHARIF KHAN KHATTAK

Musharraf's nine years of misrule have left Pakistan comparable to a ship which finds itself in stormy waters with its engines seized, the rudder broken and the compass out of order. The magnificent two-year-long relentless struggle by the lawyers and the civil society against a well entrenched dictator eventually, became the basis for Musharraf's departure and the emergence of the present political dispensation which must now steer Pakistan out of the stormy waters.

Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Gen Yahya Khan, Gen Zia-ul-Haq and Gen Musharraf caused immense harm to the cause of democracy taking roots. But what has to be seen is how these military rulers sustained themselves in power. Yes, they did take power through the sheer military might of the Pakistan Army that they commanded but what was it that actually sustained them in power? The answer is unscrupulous politicians, a docile civil bureaucracy and an indifferent civil society. Each time, after the takeovers had been brought into effect, the Army withdrew to the barracks leaving their commander (COAS) in the company of turncoat politicians, senior civil bureaucrats, dirty rich businessmen and feudal lords to rule the roost. We saw all of this on display during the last nine years.

Pakistanis have to ascertain as to who is to be blamed for the woes that the nation today faces. As far as the Army is concerned it would be wrong to hold the Institution, as a whole, responsible for the ills of the military takeovers of the yesteryears. The Army's weight was misused by the dictators to take power without the actual consent of the Army. The usurpers capitalised upon the instinct of the Army, which is to obey orders. After the initial seizing of political power vice chiefs of the Army Staffs have always commanded the Army in its day-to-day functions with only some key areas being kept directly under the COAS-cum-presidents who would there onwards rule in the name of the military but with the active support of unscrupulous politicians devoid of principles.

For a country like Pakistan which finds itself in an environment of extreme security hazards it is indeed a strong military and a strong intelligence-gathering potential that can guarantee its national security. This is something that cannot be disputed. It is, therefore, of paramount importance that the political and military hierarchy functions in a manner that is truly one of complete harmony and is complimentary to each other's potency. While there is a distinctly visible close cooperation between the top civil and military leadership of the country there is also a need for the next tier of political leadership, both in power and those in opposition, not to make naïve political statements that adversely target the Army as an Institution. The strength of the Army and its intelligence-gathering potential is of an overriding importance for the politicians to take the country out of the woods towards safety.

In today's Pakistan it is a fallacy to think that it is the political structure that is keeping things together. Recently, when political leaders apprehended a bleak situation because the militants were just a hundred miles away from Islamabad they were not wrong. It is the Pakistan Army that stood between the militants and Islamabad. What followed is well known. The Army now stands by to ensure that the political consolidation takes place in all those areas where the state had lost its writ.

Let it be said in so many words that the entire credit for restoring the very adverse situation in the north to a great degree is exclusively that of the Pakistan Army. There is very little that the civil authorities in the NWFP, or the law enforcers of the federation, have done to warrant their stealing any limelight from the Pakistan Army.
This is probably one era when the Army leadership has lent unconditional subordination to the political authority and it is, therefore, absolutely essential that the political leadership capitalises upon the situation and moves forward in a manner so that this new phenomenon becomes a permanent feature of the Pakistani power structure. The one aspect that will guarantee this happening is the ensuring of good governance on the part of the politicians in all spheres of national life and if this does not happen the newfound civil-military equation will succumb to the gradual escalation of tensions caused by the increasing ill-effects of faulty governance.

For Pakistan's sake, and for the sake of the political dispensation taking strong roots, all concerned with the governance of present-day Pakistan must ensure that the present balance in the civil-military relations is not disturbed through rash actions and misguided political statements. The existent civil-military equation must be strengthened to give Pakistan immediate stability because anything to the contrary will quicken the slide towards a gigantic catastrophe which is something that may have the dynamics of disrupting everything. The Army has moved in the right direction. The politician must now grasp the opportunity to consolidate the existing civil-military equation.

The writer is a former director-general of the Intelligence Bureau and former vice-president of the PPP Parliamentarians. Email: masoodsharifkhattak@gmail.com and www.sharifpost.com

 

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

 

I.THE NEWS

COLUMN

CRY OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

THE WRITER IS A FREELANCE JOURNALIST WITH OVER TWENTY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL REPORTING

ANJUM NIAZ

 

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has received yet one more petition praying for justice. The ancient mariner says he was "Illegally" retired from the navy and made to flee the country. The crash of a navy aircraft was the albatross tied around Commodore (retired) Muhammad Anwar. A decade has gone by, but the albatross still hangs around his neck. His case is an open book - literally. The story of betrayal, conspiracy and treachery jumps out from every page of his book Stolen Stripes and Broken Medals published in London in 2006. Anwar, 61, has named everyone who made him "suffer." The list is hair-raising; the allegations libellous; the charges defamatory, the indictment damning.

Not a ripple from Naval Headquarters; not a squeal from the military's disciplinary body asking for Anwar's court martial; not a collective action suit against him by his named chastisers! Instead, his book lies moribund in Islamabad's bookstores. It's gone unnoticed and unsung.

Why didn't his alleged perpetrators take him to court for slander?

"I have not heard anything from anyone of them till today. I am sure they are aware of their offence of misuse of power against me. They are indeed guilty of a grievous conspiracy for hiding the causes that led to the death of 37 highly trained naval officers and sailors who perished in the two air crashes. They are guilty of keeping the families of these shaheeds and indeed the nation in the dark. The naval chief and his top brass should have been held accountable; instead I was removed from the scene for fear that I may spill the beans. I believe someone from amongst them was bought by the adversary (India?). May God save our service and the motherland from white-collar bigots and enemies within our ranks. Their pin-drop silence proves their guilt."

On August 10, 1999, India shot down a Pakistan navy plane killing all the 16 on board. The French made Breguet Atlantique was on a routine training flight to the coastal areas of southern Sindh. Two months later, another navy aircraft crashed killing all 21 officers and sailors on board. The American built P-3C Orion went under sea near the coastal town of Pasni, 90 kilometres west of Karachi. Equipped with submarine detection sensors, the four-engine turboprop was the only anti-submarine and maritime surveillance aircraft of its kind. No heads rolled. And how could they given that the then navy chief had been appointed apparently as a reward for helping the then government of Nawaz Sharif indict a former naval chief.

Still, someone had to take the blame for the P-3C Orion crash. Anwar claims that a string of senior officers began a witch-hunt against him. The author's breathless first-person account (all substantiated claims but which have gone unchallenged so far) could have been the stuff that fits a John le Carré thriller. The former British spymaster-turned-espionage writer with scores of bestsellers under his belt would have drooled at the plot cannon-balled by this former navy officer now living in self-exile in London. But Anwar's story has been lost at sea because it's a one-sided account of the victim who has portrayed himself as the hero and the rest as anti-heroes. (It's an exercise in score-settling.) For a disinterested observer trying to unravel the puzzle about the two navy aircrafts that sank way back in 1999 is like taking a trip to the doldrums. The writer is too full of himself and his adventures too wordy to really make an impact.

Another reason why the book never received notice from the media or the navy is that those named remained in powerful positions long after Anwar's dishonourable exit. No brave heart would have dared to mess with Musharraf's junta in those early days of martial law by raking up Anwar's embers. The writer alleges that he was never asked to testify before a board of inquiry set up to investigate the P-3 C air crash. Instead he claims that he was ordered to go along with the version prepared by the high command for the inquiry board.

"I refused to lie to help save their necks." What exactly was asked of Anwar by the naval head command is not spelt out clearly in the book, only questions. He says: "Why was I hurriedly removed from my destroyer squadron command (for which I was especially chosen by superseding many seniors in the backdrop of the Kargil conflict/then prevailing tension period) without attributing any professional lapse or financial irregularity? It clearly speaks about the anxiety to safeguard those holding the key posts in the navy, most importantly the then naval chief and his vice chief. They forced me out by closing all doors on me and covering up their actions by creating an untenable perception through a concocted story without even providing any evidence till today."

The book may be flawed with the author playing the victim all along and singing hymns of self-praise, it may have a blow-by-blow hype of his own exploits, the kind sailors maintain in their nautical logbooks when out at sea, but the question why the navy chief whom Anwar served under has not challenged the above charge and demanded that Commodore (retd) Anwar be court-martialled raises red flags. Let the former chief rebut Anwar with counter charges – the ones that were cited as grounds for Anwar's removal. Surely they are not classified secrets!

Likewise, a former vice-admiral has been accused of unfair pressure tactics allegedly to get Anwar to sign his retirement papers and quit the service. "I'll go to the highest authority in the land to seek justice," responds Anwar when the vice-admiral calls him up. "Knowing your guts, the chief has already informed General Musharraf about your political affiliation (with Nawaz Sharif) and your asking awkward questions on Kargil during a GHQ meeting," retorts the vice-admiral. If this conversation never occurred, then let the latter come forward with a contradiction.

Another person accused of harassment is a former commander of the Pakistan Fleet. Anwar claims: "He repeatedly asked me to sign a backdated letter of voluntary retirement and if I refused to do so, I'd face serious consequences."

In the final analysis Musharraf must stand trial for protecting his military friends, insists Anwar. "Like myself there may be many in the armed forces that must have been badly bruised, harmed, humiliated and prematurely deprived of their chance to serve their nation for which they sacrificed everything. Will they ever get justice? Will someone investigate their cases?"

Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is already burdened with tangled cases like the NRO, Musharraf's trial and the Mehrangate scandal. Added to this list is Commodore (retd) Anwar's case filed recently. If the case is deemed too frivolous to be admitted in Supreme Court, let those 'defamed' in the book stand up and defend their honour. If the commodore is found to be lying, he must stand trial; if he's telling the truth, let justice prevail and he be compensated.

Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu & www.anjumniaz.com

 

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

I.THE NEWSE

COLUMN

POST-BAITULLAH TTP

SALEEM SAFI

It would be too optimistic to believe that the killing of Baitullah Mehsud has smashed the TTP network. It is a fact that the TTP has been weakened in the past few weeks and months, however, there are some factors which need to be considered.

The major blow to the TTP was caused by the frequent drone attacks which have left many important officials of Al-Qaeda and TTP dead have restricted the mobility of the surviving Al-Qaeda and TTP officials. The drone attacks have also badly affected the communication network of the TTP.

Another major blow to the TTP is that the US and Afghan intelligence agencies have gained major successes in penetrating the TTP among the local tribes. The Swat and Bajaur operations conducted by the Army also proved fatal to the TTP. Meanwhile, the US and Afghan forces are gearing up to wage a final battle to eliminate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. This makes the Pakistani tribal areas as the most significant refuge for the Taliban.

Sensing this possibility, the US has put pressure on Pakistan to flush out militants from its tribal belt. The US is monitoring all the offensives launched by the Pakistani forces against the Taliban. The frequent visits of US special envoy Richard Holbrook to Pakistan and his reduced focus on Afghanistan are also reflective of this strategy.

Even if we repudiate the notion of the presence of US Marines on Pakistani soil, we could easily assess the increasing direct contacts of US officials with Pakistani media persons, civil society organisations, politicians, which are mainly meant to collect information and assess the situation on the ground in Pakistan.

The death of Baitullah, the top strategist of the TTP, has also hit the TTP from so many aspects. It was a reality that he had become a focal point between Al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the TTP and all banned militant and jihadi organisations exploiting his qualities.

Since taking over the TTP, Baitullah had established himself as a serious and farsighted leader due to which he was feared as a dangerous person locally and internationally. This was a distinction, and any other TTP leader will take years to gain such influence among TTP followers.

The death of Baitullah is a huge loss to the TTP keeping in view these factors. However, it would be imprudent to think that his death will abolish thye TTP completely as despite all his capabilities, he was neither a founder nor an architect of the TTP or Talibanisation.

History reveals that there are either founders of some movement or there are some circumstantial leaders. Prior to Baitullah, the militants were led by Naik Mohammed and later Abdullah Mehsud succeeded him after his demise. Whether it was Naik Mohammed, Abdullah or Baitullah – all were shaped up by the Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaeda. So even if Baitullah is no more, whoever is nominated by the Afghan Taliban will gradually get the stature of Baitullah sooner or later.

The militancy in the Pakistani tribal belt is produced by bickering between international forces operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially the Pakhtoon belt on both sides of the border. Talibanisation cannot be abolished from the region until these international powers stop their dirty game in the region.

Regardless of who is dead or alive, if these powers seriously agrees on elimination of insurgents, the militants would be no more visible in the entire area. However, if these states kept playing for implementing their respective agendas, no matter who is alive or dead, the insurgents will rule the region and the Death Game.

The writer works at Geo TV.

 

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

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

EDITORIAL

THE PRICE INDIA HAS TO PAY

 

AFTER a lot of flip-flop, India has finally exited from Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project and it is now quite obvious that Islamabad and Tehran would pursue it as a bilateral project. Indian decision comes in the backdrop of earlier reports that New Delhi was again showing interest in rejoining the pipeline project because of its immense economic benefits.

Indian attitude is quite in line with the track record of its policy-makers who use different issues as a ploy to squeeze other benefits. In this case, India demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm in the initial stages and aggressively participated in bilateral negotiations with Iran and trilateral talks involving Pakistan. These were the times when Indians were negotiating the so-called civil nuclear deal with the United States and New Delhi obviously used its participation in the project as a bargaining chip. But there are also reports that some sections of the Indian policy-making circles saw the pipeline project as of great significance for the energy deficient and rapidly expanding economy. They sincerely wanted their country to join the pipeline plan for secure energy supplies. However, like Pakistan, there was also pressure on India to abandon the deal with Iran as the United States doesn’t want countries and entities to enter into any cooperative arrangement with Tehran. Pakistan has successfully resisted American pressure but Indians have finally succumbed to it, which has also broken the myth that Indians always follow nationalistic and independent policies defying outside pressure. Regrettably, India has also not reciprocated to a number of goodwill gestures from Iran, which tried its best to ensure Indian participation in the project. There were also expectations that the trilateral project would create necessary dependencies and linkages that would serve the cause of peace in the region, which is vital for economic development and prosperity of its people. Indians have abandoned the project for the sake of a deal that many perceive as detrimental to long-term strategic interests of the country. This is because the nuclear accord would put dozens of India’s nuclear installations under the direct inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Anyhow, now that it is clear that Indians are out for good, Pakistan and Iran should not waste further time and start practical measures for realization of the project.

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

EDITORIAL

WHERE ARE OIC, ARAB LEAGUE, ETC

 

AS there is consistent pressure on Arabs and especially on Palestinians to concede more to Israel, the Jewish State is adamant to take steps that are vitiating the atmosphere and adding to the regional tension. In a latest move, Israeli Defence Minister has authorized the construction of nearly 400 new housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has already constructed numerous illegal settlements in occupied territories and is adding many more as part of its policy to consolidate its hold on the areas. Jewish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he would approve a burst of settlement construction before considering a US-demanded halt, despite widespread international criticism that the move could endanger the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians. Going by Israeli attitude, there is no use of insisting on resumption of dialogue, as this would serve no other purpose than to give a formal diplomatic cover to the Jewish state to hoodwink the international community and Palestinian people. Construction of more settlements clearly shows that Tel Aviv has no intention whatsoever to part with its illegal occupation. If Israel is not ready to vacate its aggression, not willing to talk about the final status of Jerusalem and is opposed to the return of Palestinian refugees to their territories then what is left there to negotiate. This also explains why some sections of Palestinians are insisting on armed struggle for realization of their birthright. In this depressing scenario, the question also arises as to what is the function of a host of representative bodies of the Muslims including the white elephant called OIC and otherwise powerful Arab League and GCC. Previously, the OIC used to convene its emergent meetings to discuss such extraordinary situations but lately it has abandoned even this cosmetic practice. Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it could be Syria and Lebanon or any other country. Therefore, we would urge the Muslim leadership to wake up from the deep slumber and play a proactive role in safeguarding interests of the Ummah.

 

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

 

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

EDITORIAL

US ARMING THE WORLD TO TEETH

 

A REPORT published in The New York Times on Sunday stated that the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier clinching more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals. A Congressional study said that the US arms deals valued at $ 37.8 billion during last year, a significant increase over preceding year’s sales of $ 25.4 billion.

This is indeed a success of the all-powerful US arms industry, which plays a significant role in policy making as far as arms sales are concerned. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was thought that the worst sufferer from the end of cold war would be the US arms industry. However it not only survived but continues to increase its research and sale of deadly weapons to all parts of the world. It is a known fact that to shore up the arms industry, conflict zones are created by fanning tension between neighbouring countries. Aggressions against Afghanistan and Iraq are being described by some military analysts as part of the strategy to exhaust massive stockpiles of weapons and pave the way for the US industry to get new orders. The study found that the larger arms deals concluded by the United States with developing nations last year included a $6.5 billion air defence system for the United Arab Emirates, a $2.1 billion jet fighter deal with Morocco and a $2 billion attack helicopter agreement with Taiwan. Other large weapons agreements were reached between the United States and India but specific nature of arms and the amount involved were not mentioned. One shudders what would be the outcome of proliferation of such a massive quantity of lethal weapons. We think that the US, being the biggest economy and only superpower, has a moral responsibility to play a constructive role to resolve contentious issues like Palestine and Kashmir, assist in reducing global warming and poverty and provision of better education and health facilities to the deprived ones rather than arming the world to the teeth with deadly weapons that would have dangerous consequences for not only world peace but itself as well in the long run.

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

COLUMN

CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY — II

MUHAMMAD IJAZ UL HAQ

It was a conspiracy. And it was an International conspiracy too. But certainly it could NOT have been carried out in practical terms without active and acquired assistance through local collusion. The crime could not have been committed without the cooperative involvement of local hands.

A young officer of the PAF arrested in May 1988 – Pilot Officer Akram Awan was under interrogation by the ISI for being an agent of Raw and Mossad. This Officer was working in collaboration with enemy Agencies to plan and execute an air strike on Kahuta Nuclear Plant by Israel in connivance with India. He was arrested a few months back and was in perfect incommunicado custody. He had not known any thing about the Bahawalpur crash. He was shown a movie/ video cassette covering the plane crash. When he came to know that among those killed along with the President was Maj Gen M. H Awan also, he suffered emotional breakdown and started crying. It is mentioned that General Awan had helped Akram Awan in his education and career. He thus developed a deep emotional attachment with General Awan. Upon knowing the death of his benefactor, he wept and cried. It was confirmed by the experts that this reaction was instant, genuine, natural and unfeigned gesture. In this instant reaction, he uttered, “Sir I never knew these bastards would do it.”

Akram Awan stated that he had been handed over some match box looking device of chemical material by a Mossad Officer in New Delhi to be delivered to Air Martial (Retd) Agha Zulfiqar Ali Khan in Pakistan. The device once placed in the cockpit would render the crew incapacitated in less than 25 seconds. He deposed that meetings took place at the residence of said retired Air Marshal and attended by Indian envoy, US Army Colonel and an Agent of Mossad who had traveled to Pakistan on an American passport. Photographic videos and other confessional material was handed over by ISI to General Aslam Baig. Akram Awan was eventually imprisoned and is undergoing sentence in Jail. However, the case with solid leads is pending. Where are these files now? When the person involved is alive and available, why investigations cannot be carried out? Why was the retired Air Marshal not questioned is a mystery. Instead he was allowed total access to intelligence agencies to further destroy the evidence.

The event scheduled at Bahawalpur did not require a Presidential participation. Munitions pieces are put to test and trial before induction in the armed forces. It is a normal practice. Why was VCOAS so keen to have invited the President at this particular point in time? Why Gen Durrani insisted so much almost prevailing on the President to attend the event? Why and who persuaded the Chairman JCSC to join the Presidential entourage? Why the doctors were not allowed to carryout post mortem on the dead bodies? Why were those having an inkling or air about the details of the incident transferred to far off places? Why not a military enquiry was ordered? The then VCOAS insists that an inquiry was ordered and conducted. If so where are the findings and results of such a Military inquiry? What are the results of Punjab Police investigation? Who benefited the most is the fundamental lead to any commission of crime. Those who killed Zia ul Haq could have done so any time much earlier. Why was this moment selected to eliminate him? Had the dismissed government of Mr. Junejo been in place, none could have gained by this crime. Both the ISI and IB had informed in advance of a possible threat to the person of The President and The President was cautious enough not to have left Rawalpindi after 29 May 2009 ie after dismissal of the Government. Our frequent approaching the Americans in connection with the investigations irked them to the extent that they blatantly told us that if we have to play any positive role in the service of our country, then we will have to bear with this personal loss. These all and such other countless questions remain yet un-answered.

Having been disappointed we contacted a well known US Law Firm F. Lee Bailey for legal assistance. They opined that if we sue the Lockheed Inc, the onus will be upon them to prove that the crash was not due to any mechanical failure or any such technical reasons. This in turn will strengthen our plea of a conspiracy and terrorist act of subversion and sabotage. The lawyers were thrilled and exclaimed that they have got a case of the Century. He informed me that the Head of the Civil Aviation of the USA had called and invited him to a Lunch for a discussion over the issue. But having met the said gentleman, he expressed his inability to further pursue the case for unexplained reasons. Another mystery!

All through her life Ms Benazir Bhutto had been talking of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to cover and examine our national history. I agree and join the demand. The Commission should examine and investigate the national disasters, like deaths in misery of Quaid-i-Azam, Maadr-e-Millat, murder of Liaquat Ali Khan, Rawalpindi Conspiracy, Secession of East Pakistan, Ojhri Camp, the Conspiracy leading to martyrdom of Shuhda-e-Bahawalpur, Kargil Crisis, Lal Masjid and killings of Akbar Bugti and Benazir. It is strange that Mr Zardari has claimed that he knows the killers of his wife. Still millions of US dollars are being spent from the State exchequer by taking her case to the United Nations. Similarly President Pervez Musharraf is alive and kicking, enjoying the luxuries of life at London. Still some of his killers have been sentenced to various imprisonments, with at least one executed. Interestingly, he himself would NOT know the exact number of his killers and the names of cities/Towns and the types of courts where those accused of his murder are being tried. Similarly in the case of Mr Shaukat Aziz, his alleged murderers have been tried and stand convicted. Conversely NOT a single individual involved in the case of Shuhda-e-Bahawalur or other such incidents has been caught.

I had much earlier warned that if the murder of top military hierarchy is NOT investigated and its planners and perpetrators not accounted for, such and similar incidents would recur. It has since happened in the case of Benezir while Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz had narrow escape. In my own capacity I would NOT wish to point an accusing finger in any direction. It is for the Government (which otherwise keeps contemplating re-opening of a Court executed case of their leader) to fulfill its obligations by investigating this national loss and broad day light murder of so many senior military leaders. Being son of the Shaheed General, I am proud that he died with his boots on, in full military fatigue and in the performance of his duty to the country. I alone do not represent his legacy. There are millions in the Country and outside who stand by his ideals, achievements, services and sacrifice. They admire and adore him. He died a hero’s death. While embracing Shahadat he was carrying Quran- a rare blessing. His funeral to the final abode was unprecedented in history with millions of fellow country men from every stratum of society paying homage and mourning over loss of their hero. The funeral prayers at two holy mosques and Masjid-e-Aqsa is a rare honour for any Muslim ruler.

On behalf of all those millions, I demand of the Government of the day to bring to book the enemies of Pakistan who by their act of subversion and sabotage have executed the conspiracy. By targeting Zia-ul-Haq, they targeted the soul, spirit and survival of Pakistan. He was a Dictator. Yes, I agree, accede, accept, acknowledge, admit, concede and confess that he was a Dictator. Dictionary or literary meanings apart, it is the mentality or mental attitude that determines the definition. What is a Dictator, Democrat, Bureaucrat, Aristocrat, Autocrat, or a Theocrat. Anyone can be a Dictator. A down to earth Democrat can turn into a worst Dictator. We have already experienced this ourselves. People knew that he was a Dictator. And they also knew that he was a benign Dictator. He ruled not only Pakistanis but ruled their hearts and minds also. He worked very hard for betterment of his people. Burning midnight oil, he could sleep very less to see that his people could sleep well.

Ever since his departure, the country is in constant crisis, slide and siege. The government, with begging bowls held in both hands, is engaged in asking everyone for assistance, alms and charity. Life for an ordinary soul is a night mare. He is unable to earn and arrange two simple square meals for the family. We have lost our national dignity and have destroyed our own selves. With Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) not listening and trusting our rulers, IMF is back in business. The country has been denied and deprived of its Islamic identity, sovereignty and Statehood! —Concluded. —The writer is a former Minister for Religious Affairs.

 

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

COLUMN

TEHREEK-I-TALIBAN PAKISTAN, ULTIMATE FACE

FEYYAZ M PASHA

In a dramatic turn of events, Baitullah Mehsud is no more to lead Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leaving behind an unruly confederation marked by multi-polar power centres. There are 245 religious parties in Pakistan, of these, 28 openly take part in politics, and 104 claim to focus on Jihad and 82 on sectarian concerns. A variant of Taliban Tehreek in Afghanistan, TTP until of late has been the most dynamic and effective militant structure out of these. An amalgam of nearly all groups of the Pakistani Taliban, it was formed into an alliance under the directions of Baitullah Mehsud in December 2007 to facilitate coordination with the Afghan Taliban. The network comprises Deobandi adherents of preeminently pashtun background distinguished by revisionist religious passion channeling an ultraconservative approach to social and political issues. Punjabi Taliban, Tehreek-i-Nifaze Shariat Muhammadi (TSNM), Sipahe Sehaba and Lashkare Jhangwi were harnessed into TTP folds by latter’s feverish anti-shia sentiments, blending a unique ethno-sectarian militant characterization to entire Jihadi collectivity.

Overtime, it evolved into a complex and hefty fraternity projecting a nationwide reach with Baitullah Mehsud articulating strong central governance operationalized by tiered leadership cadre and cell centric organizational sprawl predominantly of Mehsud ethnicity. Foreign fighters mainly Uzbeks numbering into thousands, Al-Qaeda hit teams, explosive experts and suicidal squads formed operational centre of gravity of the militia, totaling an army of nearly 20,000 strong. Sizeable population among maderassa students and local tribal youths provided for key human resource, not to mention scores of foreign funding conduits to keep its political vibrancy. Segments of politico-religious parties and organized crime cartels further afford power potential of TTP. Alliance nonetheless lacked harmonious bondage due to exclusionary power politics and resentment by underdogs against authoritarian style of control by Mehsuds. Perpetual confrontation among subordinate commanders to attain positions exemplified routine competitive internal environment of TTP. Infamous for his brutality, “Baitullah Mehsud was a focal point, a centre of gravity for various Taliban groups”, said Pakistan‘s former interior minister Aftab Sherpao, who held the alliance together by his unruffled cool and inspiring management handiness despite enormity of in-house challenges. The centrifugal prone balance nevertheless caved in following his death, ensuing widespread defections and ferocious struggle for power among leading contenders. After a transient unrest, ‘indications of diminished squabbling’ signify resolution of internal discord with intimate involvement of Mullah Omar as being the main financier cum beneficiary and ideological hub of entire movement.

Hakimullah Mehsud has emerged as the new TTP leader per se, his area of influence virtually remains unchanged - Khyber, Orakzai, Dra Adam Khel retaining NATO’s plunder and a handful of Mehsud fighters to form inner circle having to rely on local clergy and commanders for shura and force formations. His organizational skills will be put to trial in coming days by contestants like Tariq Afridi of Dra Adam Khel and other sectarian and tribal groups dwelling in Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram and FR Peshawar. Mullah Omar who somehow despised Baitullah’s Pakistan centric violence obsession, will more likely feel comfortable to strangulate allies’ logistics to Afghanistan via Khyber, might therefore back Hakimullah to fight local resurrections.

Having suffered decisively in Swat and with Baitullah gone and several important commanders nabbed, evolving structure of TTP insinuates divergent operational preferences. After repeated announcements on Imaret, distancing of Gul Bahadur and Mulvi Nazir from TTP and emergence of parallel commands on regional basis without a central authority leaves much less to guess on state of internal cohesion. Clipped for willing support from South, will enfeeble Hakimullah increasing dependence on non-Mehsud factions, Outcome may be a frustrated Hakimullah prompted to violent campaign for expansion of influence through intimidation and threatening the government’s writ. The leadership quandary has turned TTP, as of now, into an inward looking fractionalized assemblage without a strategic strike prowess.

Contesting the assertion, Saleem Safi, a journalist of repute, says “It‘s true that the Taliban movement in Pakistan will be weakened in the absence of a powerful personality like Mehsud, but he [was] not the main guy,”. Sirajuddin Haqqani and Ustad Yasir are considered to be the actual driving forces in Pakistan’s tribal belt. “They united various Taliban groups and brought them under the leadership of Baitullah Mehsud and they will keep them united after Baitullah‘s death,” added Safi. Sherpao disapprovingly noted, “I am not sure whether the Taliban will manage to reorganize after him [Baitullah],”.

Indians have high stakes in revival of TTP, their consulates in Afghanistan should be contemplating options to preserve this fodder for covert operations by RAW. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda will also endeavor to keep the pot boiling as it will lose the secure operational base in case the TTP gets further diluted. In the short term TPP will survive with its second and third tier of readily available leadership. However, it is no more a cohesive union, infighting for total power among Mehsuds and external nibbling from rivals will further drain it. Lawful persuasion of the new leadership chain in a cyclic manner might accentuate existing imbalance to an extent of eroding its cohesion as an effective anti-state instrument. This will take a little while unless accompanied by an elaborate Maderassa reform policy and crafty strategic campaign to dry up Taliban funds on war footing.

Fostering confidence among the tribal elders for revival of traditional Maliki system to replace mullahs’ hegemony should be next priority. Complete disintegration of TTP is a long haul, till such time its numerous cells are not dealt with in a piecemeal fashion under an ingeniously developed wholesome politico-military strategy and normalcy returns to Afghanistan or Mullah Omar assumes direct control of fractured TTP, eroding its identity forever. For the present, a prudent choice is to wait and see, concurrently creating an enabling environment to sap maximum operational energy of divided TTP through intense engagement and law enforcement actions.

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

COLUMN

ANNUAL CONFIDENTIAL REPORT

PROF LAEEQ A KHAN

One of the instruments used by the Government of Pakistan to evaluate the performance of its employees is the “Annual Confidential Report”, generally known as ACR or “Performance Evaluation Report”. An ACR of each employee is written at the end of each year by a Reporting Officer under whose supervision the employees are working. The ACR is then countersigned by the Officer Incharge of the Reporting Officer.

The Establishment Division has developed a proforma for its employees including the Senior Officer, which is used by most of the Government and Semi-Government Departments with slight changes here and there. The performance of each employee is determined on the basis of his “Personal Qualities” such as “intelligence”, “confidence and will power”, “emotional stability”, “appearance and bearing”; “Attitudes” such as “knowledge of Islam”, “attitudes towards Islamic ideology”, “integrity”, acceptance of responsibility”, “foresight”, “judgment”, “behaviour with public”, “perseverance and devotion to duty” etc.; “Proficiency in Job” such as “power of expression”, “knowledge of work and analytical ability”, “quality” and “output of work”.

The last part includes a “Pen Picture” of the employee, a general assessment of performance, comparing him with other Officers of the same level, and fitness for promotion. The ACRs are normally consulted at the time of promotion of the Officer concerned. Unfortunately, the “Annual Confidential Report” has become an exercise in public relations. The more sycophant you are, the more laudatory will by your ACR. An awkward situation arises when there are differences between the “Reporting Officer” and the “Countersigning Officer”. The situation reminds one of the notorious philosophy of “Chankiya” – an Indian Author who had said that “you should make friends with the enemy of your enemy”. In one of the cases, a person was inducted into service as an Officer in an Institution through direct recruitment. Unfortunately, the Reporting Officer of the newly inducted person did not want him to be employed in that Institution. Not because he was against the person of the newly inducted but because he was interested in someone else who was already working under his supervision. As a result, the first year ACR of the newly inducted Officer stated that his integrity was doubtful, his quality of work was below average, and he was rude and discourteous to those who came to see him in his official capacity. The Countersigning Officer considered the assessment made by the Reporting Officer as “reasonably good”. The same thing happened next year, when he was graded as an Officer of average intelligence and his ability to handle difficult cases was termed as “average” and his sense of duty was categorized as “moderate”. The Countersigning Officer considered this to be “a good report” and also agreed with the Reporting Officer that he was not yet fit for promotion.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the Countersigning Officer fell out with the Reporting Officer and in his remarks as a Countersigning Officer, “he “disagreed with the Reporting Officer”, and considered the newly inducted Officer as “highly dependable” and that his “integrity was beyond doubt” and that the Reporting Officer was scared of him because of his ability, popularity and contacts. Similarly, in some of the cases the Governing Councils/Executive Committees/ Selection Boards have ignored the remarks of the Reporting Officers. The naked truth is that appointments and promotions in Pakistan are normally made on the basis of “Sifarish” or recommendation from the high-ups. Political influence also plays a significant part in appointments, transfers and promotions.

The question one can ask is that how many Reporting Officers can write a “Pen Picture” of an employee. Pen Pictures should include the vision, the foresight, the appreciation of the problems being faced by his Department etc. Perhaps a Journalist may be able to write a better description of an employee but the bureaucrats have no training to do the same. Also, any discussion on politics and religion is discouraged in the Government Offices.

The question can be raised about “attitudes towards Islamic ideology”. Which Islamic ideology is being talked about – is it that of Sufi Muhammad from Malakand or Mr. Pervaiz from Lahore, is it “Deobandi” or “Brelivy” ideologies, or is it “Sunni” or “Shia” ideologies. There are more than 80 sects in Islam and the perceptions about Islam may differ of the employee and their Reporting Officer or the Countersigning Officer.

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

COLUMN

THE 1965 WAR — REVISITED

COL GHULAM SARWAR (R)

It is a truth now being widely acknowledged that the 1965 war was not of Pakistan Army’s making. Rather, it was imposed on Pakistan. Barring a few scores of officers, majority of them were not in favour of creating tension which could end up in a full-fledged war against India .

However, circumstances took such an ugly turn in 1965 that Pakistan Army was left with no option except entering into war with India. India on its part took Pakistan Army by surprise and launched full throated attacks against Lahore and Sialkot. However, they were taken by surprise on seeing the speed and the quality of Pakistan Army’s reaction. Placing the 1965 conflict in proper perspective, it may be difficult to rank it among major wars but within resources, the two nations did manage to wage a ferocious war against each other. Peeping into the past, we see that the seeds of confrontation between India and Pakistan were laid in the tortured and soul-stirring birth of the two states. The mass killings during the process of partition had left a legacy of acrimony and distrust. As will be seen, the tension between the two countries, continued to assume alarming proportion and war clouds started houring over the horizon. Eventually, it so happened that on 6th September, India launched a full throated attack on Lahore . Responding to this, a first reaction, the Chief of General Staff called a meeting of Directors at GHQ. During the course of deliberations, the participants were informed that the Indians had attacked Lahore and Sialkot , without administrating proper warning and without any provocation. Obviously this news upset the audience.

Next to Lahore , Sialkot was the second target. Others to follow were the war theatres of Kasur, Sulemanki, Rann of Kutch (Phase 2nd). The battle of Sialkot was controlled by Lt Gen Bakhtiar Rana, Commander 1 Corps. According to operational plans, the Corps was responsible for controlling operations from river Chenab to Sulemanki in the South, in front of approximately 300 miles. It had the following formations under command: (1) 1st Armoured Division; (2) 6th Armoured Division; (3) 10 Division; (4) 11 Division; (5) 19 Division. In early September, the operational responsibility of 1 Corps were reduced to an area between Chenab and Ravi and the order of battle was reduced to 6 Armoured Division and 15 Division.

Here it may not be amiss to mention that Maj Gen ® Shaukat Reza has given a graphic account of the ’65 War in his well-researched book: The Pakistan Army – War 1965. The present scribe has profesely benefited from his research. According to Gen Shaukat Reza’s account, in the battle of Sialkot , 6 Armoured Division and 15 Division were pitted against India ’s three infantry and one armoured division. India ’s advantage in numbers was reinforced by the surprises, they had achieved in attacking through Charwa. With six artillery brigades available for support they had the mean to break through the Marala-Ravi Link (MRL). However, they did not achieve this goal. After their united advance through 4 FF, Indian thrusts were reduced to squadron level, overly cautious probe.

History is a witness to the fact that until 18th September, 15 Division continued to be responsible for troops in Sialkot, as also from 115 Brigade, 6 Armoured Division, continued to be overburdened with brigades from 1 Armoured Division and any other troop without a parent. Obviously in view of these adhoc and speedy arrangements, the command arrangements did not make for the best employment of available resources. Strangly, the available armour was never used in a decisive role. Here, through out the period of fighting, reports from forward troops were accepted at their face value and led to weakness in decision. They were unable to make a reasonable assessment of enemy opposition. With regard to defence of Lahore , Maj Gen Sarfraz Khan was assigned the responsibility of defending a front of approximately 60,000 yards from Ravi in north to Bedian in South. On the opening day of battle of Lahore , two Indian divisions, two armoured regiments and three artillery brigades were set against 10 Division. Pakistan ’s units were no more than 75 percent of their authorized strength. The major difference in relative strength was in respect of officers. Pakistani units, in some cases, were below 50 percent of their authorization.

Looking back, we see that Pakistan had division commanders with 25 years service and brigade commanders with 23 years service. Most of them had seen action during World War II. Some of them had commanded battalion/company during 1948 in Kashmir . Almost all the officers who commanded brigades and units had been through some excellent training during the years 1952-64. On courses of instruction in USA and UK , they had competed with some of the best in the world and obtained distinction. It is a matter of great satisfaction to note that during the period 1948 to 1965, inspite of involvement in Martial Law and other non-professional commitments, our officers corps, proudly maintained its professionalism. Comparing the performance of the two armies, one come to the conclusion that the advantage of organizational and numerical superiority, the Indian Army had every opportunity to obtain a decision within 48 hours. But, due to excellent performance of Pakistan Army the Indian Army was halted in its tracks. In several places, it was hurled back across the border. The world was surprised. Surely Pakistan Army had something for which it could be justly proud!

 

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

PAKISTAN OBSEVER

COLUMN

HEAVEN ON EARTH..!

ROBERT CLEMENTS

The youngster was smiling as he walked towards me, “You know something, I just discovered heaven!” “Oh you did?” I asked jokingly, “Got a new girlfriend!”

Not yet!” he said, “But yesterday I got a call from my boss telling me to start a new assignment and finish it by the evening!” “Don’t see anything heavenly about that,” I mused. “Yeah! But I did do it, and my boss praised me, and I should have been up in the clouds, but there was still an empty feeling as I came home, then I got a call from my college I’d just passed out from, saying that I’d topped the class!”

That’s terrific!” I said. “I felt good but still the same emptiness deep inside! Then this morning the old lady downstairs called out to me as I passed her window; I was rushing out to work, and I waved to her, but something made me go back, open her door and sit with her and spend time with her. She wanted a wheel chair ordered, so I did that, a ramp to be made, so I got a carpenter onto the job, and then that lady smiled her thanks at me, and it felt like heaven!”

Reminds me of a story,” I said, “You have time?” “Shoot,” said the boy smiling. “Well,” I said, “A man immediately after his death was having a conversation with the Lord and said, “Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like. The Lord led the dead man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and the dead man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table in the middle of which was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the dead man’s mouth water. However the people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handles were longer than their arms they could not get the spoons back into their mouths.”

The dead man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering The Lord said, “You have seen Hell, now let’s visit Heaven” “They went to the next room and opened the door of heaven. It was exactly the same as hell. There was the large round table with the same large pot of stew. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, longer than their arms, but here the people unlike those in hell, were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The dead man said, “I don’t understand, why this difference”

It is simple,” said the Lord, “It requires but one skill. You see the people in heaven have learned to feed each other! While the selfish people in hell think only of themselves, they are unable to feed themselves.”

I turned to the young fellow and said, “You’ve learned to feed others, and are experiencing heaven here on earth!” The boy smiled, nodded and continued on his way, whistling happily to himself.

 

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

 

 

 

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

THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

 

The arrest of 25 Bangladeshis, among 76 victims of human trafficking, on high seas off the coast of El Salvador is a clear indication of the widespread network engaged in this foul trade. Their destination, however, was the United States via Equador and the sea route their vessel was on is considered highly risky because of the long distance as well as the extensive check carried out by the US Navy. So dangerous is the route that in the face of possible detention, the vessels carrying illegal immigrants are sunk. This, we believe, is not known to the little or not educated workers desperate to get out of the country in search of jobs abroad. Nor are they aware that in the most powerful country they look up as El Dorado, along with other Western countries, unemployment is the highest in decades following the global recession.

Clearly, a local nexus has been engaged for long in this inhuman trade, knowing full well that the young men from poor families, whom it lures with false promises in exchange for fat amount of money, run the risk of drowning in the sea or landing in foreign jails or at best getting menial jobs as illegal immigrants. This latest incident of unlawful migration is a confirmation that the local nexus has international connection up to Latin America.

Despite so many disconsolate stories of harrowing journeys and tragic deaths on seas and in deserts as carried in newspapers and other media, no government has ever been able to bust the dens of the human traffickers. The other day returnees from Andaman jail narrated their ordeal how their fellow travellers perished in the sea. It should not be too difficult to plug the source of illegal immigration if the law enforcement agencies are serious about their duty. How come a large group of young men evade detection when they board a vehicle or vessel? Also, there is no reason to think intelligence agencies have no knowledge of those involved in this abominable trade. We demand action leading up to crackdown on human traffickers.

 

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

 

THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

UGLY TRAFFIC SNARL

 

Urban congestion has taken an ugly turn with urbanologists saying that its cost to the economy has increased from 1.2 billion US dollars in 2007 to 2 billion or Taka 15, 000 crore in 2009. This is roughly two-thirds of the total annual development budget or ADP of the country. But it is a cost that can be cut with proper planning and implementation by the concerned agencies.

Information gleaned from different sources reveals a macabre nexus involving the law enforcers and the traffic violators. Squatters, illegally parked cars, rickshaws and street vendors occupy more than a-third of the paltry road surface of the city. And nothing could be done about them because the much-hyped drives are carried out with an ulterior motive, not to discipline traffic. As it is, Dhaka's traffic system is unscientific. There is no mass rapid transit system. The use of waterways is minimal. And there is no rail or expressway system operating within the city. But some people do benefit from the persistence of traffic anarchy and they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It is inconceivable that an entire city can be held hostage for years without a high degree of institutional support from those in charge!

Roads cover only 8 per cent of Dhaka city. Ideally it should be 25 per cent. Of the little we have, much of it is occupied, leaving little space for vehicular and pedestrian movement. Even the number of buses is inadequate compared to the size of the population. For instance, Colombo has 7,600 buses for a population of 4.6 million, whereas with a population of 15 million, Dhaka has only 2,000 buses. Dhaka has no effective bypass, too. Even a long-talked about opening of one such by-pass in Dhaka, now scheduled for December, this year, could reduce at least 30 per cent of the traffic.

 

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

 

 

THE INDEPENDENT

SOMEONE’S LIL’DAUGHTER...!

"..GUJARAT COPS KILLED MUMBRA GIRL IN COLD BLOOD, FINDS PROBE…" TIMES OF INDIA SEPT 8TH

 

Five years ago when I first saw those sad pictures of Ishrat Jahan lying on the road, killed by policemen, I asked myself; whether we as a people had become so hardened not to see in that still stretched out form; someone's little daughter? Nineteen years old! Think about it; a college going girl, maybe shy, giggly, pretty, maybe conscious of her good looks, yet handling the lewd stares of ogling men and touching perverts everyday to college, just another girl, on her way to becoming a woman but not yet there, keeping thoughts of marriage and children away as with classmates she 'bunks' boring lectures and finds a movie more welcome. Nineteen years old! Someone's lil' daughter! Have we become so cold and callous that there was nary a squeak of a national protest that such child was killed? Killed by brutal policeman who did such acts just to please a man whose reputation for allowing the same isn't too far behind. Just imagine your daughter or mine, going for a picnic, and I'm sure they do, unless you're the type who keeps them locked at home, which maybe isn't too bad an idea considering that gun toting policemen are out to shoot them, so let's suppose your daughter or mine was off for a picnic and we hear a few hours later that they were not only shot dead but were terrorists. And let us also suppose you were not even from the minority community and you shout out, "My name is Kapoor!" or Pillai and the cops laugh and chuckle or do what whatever cops do when they hear a joke and reply, 'He's no more a Kapoor or Pillai, when he became a terrorist he changed it to Abdul or Mohammed!" That's how far the cops have gone!

And for months or years you'll see a lone father or mother running from court to police station trying to convince inspector and judge that it is not so. This is happening throughout the country! For the policeman it is easier to pick up innocent children and put them in jail then to go in search of the real terrorist, and it is time you and I woke up to this. What do we do?

Raise your voice today against the death of this beautiful, innocent lil' girl, start raising questions when you hear about someone being arrested with even a little doubt about their innocence. Open your eyes stop being blind to such acts of sheer savage brutality.

If you don't: The next killing could again be someone's lil' daughter and that someone, horror of horrors, could be yours..!

bobsbanter@gmail.com

 

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

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

POPULAR PM, OR A TRUE REFORMER?

MR RUDD WANTS TO BE A LEADER IN THE MODE OF HAWKE AND KEATING. HE HAS THE ELECTORAL CAPITAL TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

 

KEVIN Rudd's "hard heads and soft hearts" speech in Canberra on Monday could mark a turning point in his administration. A supremely powerful and popular Prime Minister says he is the heir to the great Labor reformers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and stakes his legacy on being remembered as part of that continuum.

 

With a personal popularity rating according to Newspoll of 64 per cent, there is little doubt that Mr Rudd has the electoral capital to cement Australia's prosperity for generations. The question is, whether he has the grit to exploit that advantage, whether he believes change is really needed so that history counts him with Hawke and Keating rather than with another Labor leader, Gough Whitlam.

 

Mr Rudd's speech marking the launch of The March of Patriots, Paul Kelly's history of the Keating-Howard era, launches an economics war to match the history wars of the past decade. Against the evidence, he insists the Howard government was a neo-liberal government and that it is the neo-liberal agenda which was defeated at the 2007 election.

 

This is a revision of political history he has laid out before in essays in The Monthly, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and it allows him to dismiss the Howard years and argue his "soft heart" agenda of intervention. He argues that Mr Howard dropped the ball on reform and that it is the Rudd government which will return to the fray to ensure the policy changes to lock in the gains of the past 25 years.

 

In this he rather disgracefully ignores the fact that the Howard government instituted real reforms, including the GST, waterfront and labour market reforms, securing the independence of the Reserve Bank and introducing the Charter of Budget Honesty.

 

The problem for Mr Rudd is that, rather like the Blairites of Britain in recent years, he seems to think that talking about something is the same as action. The parlous state of Britain's Labour government shows the error of that approach.

 

Almost two years into his government, the big question is whether Mr Rudd will exploit his enormous popularity by making hard choices around competitiveness, infrastructure and labour market reform, or whether he will be content to rely on China and India to create future wealth for the nation.

 

It may be that the Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan have made an astute calculation of economic realities and decided that the mega-booms of both those countries and their demands for energy and raw materials will keep Australians happy for generations. The China-India double act seems very likely to deliver. That is not the issue. Rather it is whether a government with such clout with the Australian people, a government almost certain to be re-endorsed at the next election, possibly with an increased majority, ends up frittering away the opportunity for modernising the economy.

 

So far, the evidence suggests that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan have learnt their lessons rather too well from the searing defeat in 1996 of a reformist government led by Paul Keating and prefer to rely on a resources boom than risk electoral backlash. That may be good for the Labor Party but it will not be good for a nation which should be intent on creating its own future.

 

Let there be no mistake about the position enjoyed by Mr Rudd. Kevin 07 may have been a construction of the internet and prime-time TV news, but it was one which jelled with the electorate. Since then, the Prime Minister has continued to amass support and finds himself arguably the most electorally secure politician in a quarter of a century. The public likes him, the opposition is fragmented, and Mr Rudd is a natural at managing the 24/7 media cycle which dominates modern politics.

 

It ought to give him courage to return to some of the reforming zeal of his early years as a Queensland bureaucrat when he was involved in tough decisions for the Goss government. In recent years, through his essays, Mr Rudd has reinvented himself as a Dietrich Bonhoeffer-inspired social democrat, arguing that this is the moment for a return to such governments. He will need to get back in touch with his inner reformer if he is to make good his promise of bringing a "hard head" to economic policy.

 

So far the ledger is lopsided, although we believe that the government must be given the benefit of the doubt at this point. Inexperienced, with an inexperienced leader, it has made some mistakes (Fuel Watch and Grocery Choice, green cars with fuel guzzling, four-cylinder engines). Almost two years in, there are plenty of ideas, plenty of reports being finalised, much policy in the offing. But the list of achievements is minuscule and the government, in truth, has been saved by the global financial crisis and the imperative to act.

 

The question is not whether the stimulus package boosted the economy -- it did -- but why we needed an injection that is the third-biggest in terms of percentage of GDP of all developed economies. Even on the government's own figures, an absence of stimulus would have left Australia with a 1.3 per cent fall in economic growth this year. That is a shallow recession by anyone's standards. As we have said before, this paper is not against spending money on public facilities. We are against wasting it on unnecessary and unproductive projects.

 

The labour market is one area where the government can claim it has changed the rules -- in accordance, Mr Rudd would say, with the wishes of the Australian people. We accept that Labor was given a mandate at the last election to wind back John Howard's Work Choices.

 

But at a time when Mr Rudd should be cementing labour market flexibilities that date from the Keating years, he seems intent on going back in time. Not only is the government wasting political energy on the minutiae of "awards modernisation", but it is consolidating an industrial relations framework more reminiscent of the 1950s than a modern service economy such as our own.

 

Mr Rudd has promised much in health, yet he is still pondering policy. He claims success on the Murray-Darling, yet the evidence is not there to back the claims. Let us hope that he does not baulk at the hurdle of removing restrictions on imported books -- a small test of his willingness to make a decision which will certainly upset some but which is consistent with his own approach to open trade.

 

What has made the prime minister so parsimonious about spending some of his electoral capital?

 

It cannot be for lack of belief in the need for micro-economic reforms. His own background, not to mention the advice from senior financial ministers such as Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Small Business Minister Craig Emerson in recent days, suggests that he is well aware of the need to fix the chronic weaknesses in the Australian economy. What is needed is productive investment in areas such as education and infrastructure to remove impediments and make the economy more competitive.

Is it then the compromises he was forced to make when he won the Labor leadership? A creature of the Queensland Right, allied with the Beazley Right in Canberra, he shifted to the Centre-Left to forge the alliance with Julia Gillard which brought him to power. It appears his reading of the electorate now is that it is content to take the spoils of a resources boom -- not to mention a $42 billion stimulus -- rather than be fussed about reform, especially in the wake of the global financial crisis.

 

Mr Rudd needs a reality check about the impossibility of a return to the failed social democratic economic model he has touted in recent essays. Those who have so enthusiastically called the end of markets in the wake of the global financial crisis should look back to 1987 when similar circumstances evoked similar dire predictions which did not eventuate.

 

The social democratic model that so appeals to Mr Rudd and some of his advisers is not on the way back, because it has proved too rigid for modern economies. Those shortcomings are dramatically illustrated in the difficulties now being experienced by European economies as the world works towards recovery from the GFC. Mr Rudd will have to learn that lesson if he is to assume the mantle of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

 

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

A LUDICROUS LAW

WILL THE AFP PURSUE MPS AS VIGOROUSLY AS IT DID MR KESSING?

 

IN 2005, when former Customs Department security expert Allan Kessing was suspected of leaking a secret report exposing gaping flaws in Australia's airport security to this newspaper, the Australian Federal Police pursued him up hill and down dale. They reportedly raided Mr Kessing's home and that of his deceased mother. Two AFP officers also visited the Sydney headquarters of The Australian to serve a subpoena on a journalist, and when he did not respond the officers said they were prepared to "wait for (him) at his house."

 

Mr Kessing pleaded not guilty, but was convicted under section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, given a nine-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay a $1000 good behaviour bond. He continues to maintain his innocence.

 

The AFP is now considering whether to prosecute Mr Kessing a second time for leaking the report to Nathan Cureton, the former electorate officer to Anthony Albanese when the Transport Minister was an opposition frontbencher. The revelation that Mr Kessing met Mr Albanese and his staffer also poses a dilemma for the AFP in that it now has another two suspects who might have leaked the information to The Australian. And what about the documents on unrelated matters that Labor staffers and politicians received from Mr Kessing and used? To be consistent, the AFP would need to pursue and question Mr Albanese, Mr Cureton and perhaps a senator, backbencher Arch Bevis, and his staffer Rod Kendall with the same vigour it employed against Mr Kessing four years ago, undoubtedly with the backing of the Howard government.

 

Pursuit of such inquiries would be a ludicrous waste of police resources - but no more ludicrous than the pursuit of a Customs officer who might or might not have acted to protect national security by leaking information that alerted the public to dangerous gaps in security at Sydney airport. The Australian's original story prompted the Howard government to commission British security expert John Wheeler to inquire into airport security. He recommended widespread upgrades, which cost taxpayers $200 million.

 

Should the AFP decline to pursue government figures over the use and sources of their information, it might seem inconsistent and unfair to Mr Kessing, who still owes money for past legal fees. More sensibly, the Rudd government should show real leadership by overturning section 70 and legislating for genuine protection for whistleblowers who alert the public to serious maladministration.

 

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

VIGILANCE IS VITAL

REPORT POINTS TO DIFFICULT DECISIONS IN MEDICAL TESTING

 

THE contentious proposal that would deny free mammograms to tens of thousands of women aged less than 45 and more than 75 reflects an uncomfortable reality that is increasingly confronting our ageing population: taxpayer-funded medical resources are finite, and deploying them to best advantage involves difficult choices.

 

Breast cancer is all too common and deeply frightening for patients and their loved ones. The heart-rending tragedies of younger women, in particular, dying from the disease has greatly increased awareness about the need for early diagnosis.

 

In sharing their stories, such high-profile women as Kylie Minogue, the late Jane McGrath and the late Belinda Emmett have done other women a tremendous service in encouraging them to take advantage of screening programs. But the success of campaigns to screen patients and detect cancers at an earlier, more treatable stage has created a fresh dilemma. An evaluation of BreastScreen Australia has found the program is overstretched and is failing to reach its screening target among women aged 50-69, the group considered most at risk of breast cancer and therefore most likely to benefit from early diagnosis. The logjam is causing delays for women who need recalls to assess any abnormalities picked up or to be screened again within the recommended two-year timeframe. Part of the overload has occurred because the case for breast screening has been so well made in recent years that there has been a big increase in the numbers of younger women using the service.

 

It is understandable that women younger than 45 and older than 75 seeking free screening will resent the recommendation by the BreastScreen Australia Evaluation Advisory Committee that they be excluded from the program, although many would be able to pay for a private mammogram, costing from about $80 upwards. Women under 35 might also wish to ask their doctors about the report's cautionary note on the potentially harmful effects of radiation on younger women.

 

To its credit, the committee has recommended extending the target range for screening to include women aged 70 to 74 and those 45 to 49. It also warns that women at potentially high risk of breast cancer should not use BreastScreen Australia but would be better to undergo more intensive surveillance and monitoring. Medical decisions based on cost benefits are always painful, but in screening millions of women, BreastScreen Australia and its staff are doing outstanding, lifesaving work.

 

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

 

 

 

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

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

STATES GET FLU AS CANBERRA SNIFFS

 

THE NSW Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, believes Canberra is being too stingy in its offer of funding for big health emergencies such as swine flu. His argument at the moment seems more theoretical than real, because swine flu, though it has caused the deaths of 150 Australians - 46 in NSW - has not been the disaster some predicted. The flu season now passing has not been much worse than an ordinary winter.

 

But at some point a pandemic will indeed strike, requiring large-scale government intervention, and then the states will feel real pain. The Commonwealth is demanding that in the event of such a crisis they spend 10 per cent of their health budget - in the case of NSW about $1.4 billion - before it will offer additional help. Canberra is more generous during natural disasters such as flood or drought but, it argues, that is because states have primary responsibility during such events. With a health emergency, both Canberra and the states contribute in roughly equal amounts to managing the situation right from the start.

 

That is true, but requiring $1.4 billion to be taken from the NSW health budget and spent before extra help is forthcoming risks serious disruption.

 

If NSW's finances are precarious, the finances of its health system are parlous. As always, elective surgery will be the first to go: book that hip replacement now. This state needs more federal help in future health crises.

 

The chief constraint here, though, is the federal budget, already under pressure from the global financial crisis. The Rudd Government aims to balance its budget by 2015-16. The federal Treasury, its hand already stretched far down the back of the budgetary sofa scrabbling for pennies, will be most reluctant to make open-ended commitments. In his letter to Mr Roozendaal outlining the proposed-cost sharing arrangements sent last Wednesday, the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, asked that the agreement be signed and returned to his office by last Friday. Therein lies a message: Canberra holds the whip hand.

 

But Mr Roozendaal is right to play hard ball. NSW is the country's most populous state and suffered a third of the nation's swine flu fatalities.

 

More broadly, the treasurers' dispute over this issue shows once again the need for reform of health funding. The enormous energy squandered in the continuing squabble between Canberra and the states over resources would be better directed at furthering that reform. The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission's report, released in July, stopped short of calling for a full federal takeover of hospitals. but it left open the option of the Commonwealth funding 100 per cent of hospital admissions further down the track. A long way down the track, it seems.

 

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

 

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

ON THE LINE AHEAD, ANOTHER BUGABOO

 

IT SHOULD surprise no one that bureaucrats have been keeping dire warnings about the needs of the rail network away from state cabinet because they are politically inconvenient. That, after all, is the way things are done in NSW. The management of public transport here does not involve planning as that term is normally understood. Instead, change happens as a series of nasty surprises sprung on ministers at the last moment as a way to scare them, sheep-like, into approving developments which further the interests of this bureaucracy or that interest group.

 

The need for a new rail tunnel through the city to relieve pressure on the city circle has been known for years. In 2005 the then premier, Bob Carr, announced just such a tunnel (along with new extensions to the north-west and south-west growth areas) for exactly that reason. Since then, his rail plans have been revised, cut back and abandoned. New metros have been mooted, only to be revised and cut back in their turn. None of these projects has ever, since Labor last came to power, formed part of a thorough assessment of Sydney's transport needs - or at least, not one thought worth making public, let alone sticking to.

 

Only now, after the decision to proceed with the enormously expensive, very short CBD Metro has been made, is thought being given to how it might fit in with other transport modes, in a blueprint promised for release later this year. The awkward fact is that it does not fit in its present form and will improve services only fractionally. What is needed, and would improve them substantially, is a new rail line crossing the harbour. Will the blueprint mention that? We shall see.

 

Transport decisions in NSW are determined not by need, or land-use considerations, but by politics of the most depressing kind. The main players are not transport experts or planners, but the state Treasury, implacably opposed to borrowing to build public transport, and the rail and bus union, which has made public transport rigid and excessively costly, and convinced even Labor governments to keep future projects out of public, and hence union, hands. Hence the desperation among the third group running public transport - the spin doctors around the Premier - to start the metro, a public-private, non-union venture, even if the planned service goes nowhere.

 

Transport in NSW is in a crisis of underachievement. The Herald's own inquiry into transport - independent, expert, and with a careful attention to funding - is needed more than ever.

 

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

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

THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

AFGHANISTAN: MAKING THINGS WORSE

 

Hamid Karzai yesterday won the Afghan election, except that he didn't. He was credited with substantially more than the 50% of the votes he needs in order to be deemed to have won in the first round, but the electoral complaints process is at the same time stripping him of votes and could end, perhaps after many weeks, by knocking him back below the halfway mark.The dilemma for Barack Obama and other western leaders is that they could soon face a choice between being complicit in a deeply flawed election or embarking on the dangerous and difficult course of forcing a second round. If the Electoral Complaints Commission gets the backing and resources needed to fully investigate fraud allegations, something which the outside powers can either ensure or choose to neglect, a second round will almost certainly be the result.

 

When America and its allies began to scrape together the extra troops and money needed to conduct a presidential election in Afghanistan, they knew in advance it would be something of a charade. They had succeeded neither in persuading Hamid Karzai to reform his way of governing nor in cultivating politicians from whose ranks a different sort of leader could have emerged to challenge him. Mr Karzai, by using his network of warlord governors, buying up some northern bosses, and drawing on his natural supporters in the south of the country, would prevail in the vote.

 

His rivals would flail away but had no real chance even if there was a second round. The result would be a very expensive foregone conclusion, and the best the outside powers could hope for was to somehow get through it without too much trouble. Then, having performed the necessary, and cursory, obeisance to democratic procedures, they could get on with the war along the lines being plotted by America's new generals and diplomats in the region, tackling Mr Karzai and his many faults afterwards.

 

Their mistake was that, while they expected the voters to be squared, bribed, pressured and marshalled to the polls by local chieftains, they did not expect barefaced rigging and ballot box stuffing on the scale which now seems to have occurred. "This was fraud en masse," one western diplomat told the New York Times, alleging that Mr Karzai's men set up hundreds of fictitious polling stations which registered hundreds of thousands of ballots in his favour. He and other western diplomats and officials also said that the Karzai organisers took over around 800 legitimate stations, kept out citizens and stuffed boxes with fake votes. The elders of one tribal grouping told reporters how they had decided to support Abdullah Abdullah, Mr Karzai's main rival, but when they arrived at the polling station they found it locked and officials inside filling the boxes with "their" votes, all for Mr Karzai. The fraud was so ham-handed that in some provinces the number of votes registered for Mr Karzai was 10 times as many as those who actually voted, whether for Mr Karzai or any of the other candidates.

The Electoral Complaints Commission yesterday discarded 200,000 votes as too dubious to be counted. The trouble is that although more international oversight might limit fraud a second time around, Mr Karzai would still almost certainly win, since few believe that the Pashtun population will vote in any numbers for Abdullah Abdullah, a candidate they regard as a Tajik, in spite of the fact that he is half Pashtun.

 

The most fundamental problem of all is that Mr Karzai could have won without any rigging at all. But he apparently could not bring himself to trust the people or the democratic system to which he is in theory committed. As a matter of principle the outside powers should press for the most thorough investigation of fraud and for a second round if need be. But, with or without that second round, it has to be unhappily concluded that this election has made things worse rather than better in Afghanistan.

 

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

THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

PUBLIC FINANCES: DEFICIT OF DEBATE

 

After 12, going on 13, years of Labour government, it may be unrealistic to expect the next British general election to rise above a predictable argument between change under the Conservatives versus more of the same under Labour. Yet the campaign certainly ought to be about more than this. In particular, with Britain facing a public spending deficit of £175bn by the end of 2009-10, the heart of the next election needs to be a truthful public argument between options for economic management and government spending priorities.

 

So far, though, the signs have not been encouraging. Gordon Brown's attempt in the early summer to frame the entire debate as a contest between righteous Labour investment and wicked Tory cuts was misleading and insulting. But it was nearly outdone by David Cameron's short-sighted preference for firing off fusillades of personal insults at a blundering prime minister as a way of avoiding saying anything of substance about his own plans for the major spending departments. Yesterday, things got a little better. Both sides inched towards levelling with the voters – but unfortunately not enough. In Cardiff, Alistair Darling gave a lecture which tried to reframe the debate between the two main parties as a clash between nice cost-cutting Labour and the nasty cuts-happy Tories. Meanwhile in London, Mr Cameron gave a speech which started out as an apparently big-picture approach to reining in the level of government debt before morphing into a set of headline-grabbing jabs against the cost of the parliamentary system which even the Tory leader confessed would save "trifling" amounts in comparison with the deficit.

 

Both speeches fell short of the level of honest language and policy clarity that the voters are entitled to demand about such core issues, though they did so in different ways. Mr Darling has at least become a bit bolder in challenging Mr Brown's obfuscatory political instincts. His lecture is explicit that getting the deficit down will be the priority after the election if the recovery kicks in. But he will not be taken seriously unless he talks about what he will cut – "rebuilding our fiscal strength" was yesterday's euphemism du jour. Mr Darling must use the pre-budget report to get specific about real terms cuts in individual budgets and programmes. Anything else would be an evasion. Yet evasive is certainly also the word that describes Mr Cameron's latest announcements. Cutting back on ministerial cars and abolishing the subsidy on a pint of lager in the House of Commons bars gets easy headlines. But it is a pinprick when set alongside the £175bn deficit. Mr Cameron's credibility is undermined by his addiction to such cheap politics.

 

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

 

 

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

THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

SHAPE OF DPJ RULE EMERGING

 

Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama, the prime minister-in-waiting, has moved to fill key party posts and the next Cabinet with political heavyweights. He wants his party as a unit, rather than individual politicians, to play the leading role in developing policy, thus taking the initiative away from bureaucrats.

 

Mr. Hatoyama needs to demonstrate leadership to achieve this goal. He will have to exercise courage to control his political comrades. On their part, DPJ heavyweights should cooperate with Mr. Hatoyama in a constructive manner and refrain from disruptive behavior.

 

Mr. Hatoyama has picked DPJ acting leader Mr. Ichiro Ozawa as secretary general of the party, the No. 2 post. He will appoint Mr. Naoto Kan, another DPJ acting leader, as state minister in charge of the National Strategy Bureau, a policymaking body to be created directly under the prime minister; and DPJ secretary general Katsuya Okada as foreign minister. Mr. Hatoyama will also appoint close aide Hirofumi Hirano as chief Cabinet secretary.

 

Mr. Hirohisa Fujii, a supreme adviser for the party, is a strong candidate for the post of finance minister. He served as finance minister of the Hosokawa and Hata Cabinets — non-Liberal Democratic Party administrations from August 1993 to June 1994.

 

The selection of Mr. Ozawa as party secretary general is logical in view of his achievements and ability. As party chief, Mr. Ozawa led the DPJ to a victory in the July 2007 Upper House election, causing the LDP-Komeito ruling coalition to lose a majority in the chamber. That laid the foundation for the party to prepare to take the helm of government. In the Aug. 30 Lower House election, as election campaign chief, he was credited with having brought a landslide victory to the party, garnering 308 seats and crushing the LDP-Komeito bloc. Mr. Ozawa clearly has made the greatest contribution to ending LDP rule and bringing about a change of government.

 

Next year, the DPJ faces an Upper House election and, as Mr. Hatoyama said, the party must pull out all the stops to win. If the LDP-Komeito bloc wins a majority in the chamber, the DPJ-led government will encounter great difficulty conducting Diet business. If the DPJ, now just short of a majority in the chamber, manages to come out ahead, the DPJ-led government's foundation will be solidified.

 

As early as Oct. 25, there will be Upper House by-elections in Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectures. Defeats in these elections would cast a bad spell on the new government.

 

It is a logical step for Mr. Hatoyama to have Mr. Ozawa carry out strong election campaigns as party secretary general. Mr. Hatoyama also has made it clear that Mr. Ozawa is entrusted with prerogatives over party personnel affairs and operations as well as the party's Diet affairs.

 

Of the 308 DPJ Lower House members, 143 are newcomers, many of whom are expected to join Mr. Ozawa's group. The number of its members is expected to swell to some 150, forming the largest intraparty group. Given his prerogatives as party secretary general and the size of his group, Mr. Ozawa will be able to exert a big influence over the whole party, which now has more than 400 seats in the Diet.

He must ensure that his behavior does not cause friction within the party and with the Cabinet. He also must educate newcomers on behavior that will not undermine the reputation of the party. It will be important that he keep in mind a promise included in the DPJ's election manifesto — centralizing decision-making on policy matters in the Cabinet. When the LDP was in power, the Cabinet was unable to decide on policy matters unless they were approved by party committees. So, if Mr. Ozawa uses his power to influence policy decision-making, the unified approach will be broken.

 

The National Strategy Bureau headed by Mr. Kan will have the responsibility of creating a vision for both domestic policy and diplomacy, prioritizing policy to realize the the vision and working out a budget outline. The problem is that the bureau's organizational setup, power and functions and its relations with the ruling parties — which will include the Social Democratic Party and the New People's Party (Kokumin Shinto) — have yet to be crystallized. These two minor parties are expected to form a coalition government with the DPJ.

 

The SDP has called for creation of a consultative body among the ruling parties. But this will run counter to the DPJ's goal of unifying the policy decision-making process under the Cabinet. Instead of a consultative body, the two minor parties should agree to join the National Strategy Bureau and make adjustments within the Cabinet.

 

The DPJ should stick to the goal of unifying the policy decision-making process under the Cabinet.

 

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

 

 

 

 

THE JAPAN TIMES

OPED

A SPANISH MEDICAL DOCTOR'S AFRICAN EPIPHANY

BY CESAR CHELALA

 

I was visiting Rio Muni, the continental half of Equatorial Guinea with some medical colleagues. We were assessing the health situation in the country and we had arrived at Niefang, a small, sparsely populated, neglected town in the interior. The high humidity made the heat even more oppressive.

 

In the town hospital I met a young Spanish physician, Dr. Ramon Vila. Calm and self-assured, he radiated warmth. That I was born in Argentina, a former Spanish colony, helped establish an immediate rapport between us.

 

He was treating a difficult medical case, an older man whose body was covered by large, irregularly shaped, infected ulcers. The infections, with the heat and lack of hygiene, reeked. Dr. Vila described the health status of the other patients in the ward, and then he led us on a tour of the rest of the hospital.

 

He took us to the delivery room. Ill at ease, he told us that they had to share it with the first aid room, which increased the possibilities for the spread of infections. The hospital's scarce financial resources, he explained, made this unavoidable.

 

We continued our visit. Everywhere we went I received the same impression: crowded facilities, poverty, lack of essential items, run-down services. Dr. Vila did not seem to be affected by these difficulties. I, however, felt discouraged.

 

Soon afterward he took us to his house, located near the hospital. The house was small but well kept. Most of the time, however, it lacked running water and electricity.

 

I asked Dr. Vila about his background. He had graduated from university in Barcelona, he said, where he married Mercedes, a fellow student. Since they were both interested in working in developing countries, they went to Nicaragua.

 

"We chose Nicaragua," he told me, "following a curious circumstance. I was studying a rather unusual case, one of only 211 recorded in the medical literature. Suddenly, I was struck by the irrationality of my study. What was its purpose, I thought, when all over the world millions of human beings are hungry and live in total misery?

 

"So we decided to go to Nicaragua, where I learned to look at death in a new way," he said.

 

"I found the Nicaraguans to be a truly remarkable and stoic people, with a profound sense of friendship and love. When one of them is killed during the war, they quietly bury the dead and continue their struggle for life."

 

After spending some time in Nicaragua, Dr. Vila and his wife decided to go to Africa and, through a Spanish government organization, they went to the rural hospital in Equatorial Guinea where we met. They soon developed a special relationship with the people in the area. When we were visiting the hospital, we saw Mercedes teaching a class of community health workers about nutrition.

 

We had some cold drinks — a rare treat — and continued our chat. We discussed the case of the patient with the ulcers. We agreed on the usefulness of finding and treating diseases frequent in that area. In the industrialized world, one could only see these afflictions in medical textbooks.

 

I assumed that, after having a good professional experience, Dr. Vila would return to Barcelona. It is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and, I thought, he probably would develop a brilliant career in his native city. I asked him about his plans for the future.

 

"I want to remain here," he told me calmly. "You see, there are times when one does things not because of the comfort they bring but for a different reason, a moral call if you wish. And that is the challenge that I found here.

 

"In Barcelona I would be irritated by a temporary lack of electricity or by an unchanging traffic light. Here I fight every day against death, and many times I lose the battle. But here I feel fulfilled. I know that in this place, despite its primitive conditions, my work makes a difference. I wouldn't change it for anything in the world."

 

Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant and a writer on human rights issues.

 

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

THE JAPAN TIMES

OPED

IN HATOYAMA'S 'FRATERNITY,' PEOPLE THE END, NOT MEANS

LDP SERVED PURPOSE, FESTERED; 'GLOBALISM' GUTTED COMMUNITIES

BY YUKIO HATOYAMA

 

An opinion piece by Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama that was originally published in the September edition of the Japanese monthly journal Voice has triggered controversy in the United States for appearing to have an antiglobalization bent.

 

In the piece, part of which was published on The New York Times' Web site and by other newspapers, Hatoyama in part said he feels "that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of the U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end and that we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the U.S. toward an era of multipolarity.''

 

Following is the full text of an official English-language copy of the opinion piece titled "My Political Philosophy," made available to Kyodo News recently:

 

The banner of party politician Ichiro Hatoyama

 

Among Japanese people today, "ai" is a particularly popular word which is usually translated as "love." Therefore, when I speak of "yuai," which is written with the characters for "friendship" and "love," many people seem to picture a concept that is soft and weak. However, when I speak of "yuai," I am referring to a concept that is actually rather different. What I am referring to is fraternity, as in "liberte, egalite, fraternite," the slogan of the French Revolution.

 

When my grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama translated one of the works of Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi into Japanese, he rendered the word fraternity as "yuai" rather than the existing translation of "hakuai." Therefore, when I refer to "yuai," I am not referring to something tender but rather to a strong, combative concept that was a banner of revolution.

 

Eighty-five years ago, in 1923, Coudenhove-Kalergi published his work "Pan-Europa," starting off the Pan-Europa Movement which eventually led to the formation of the European Union. Coudenhove-Kalergi was the son of an Austrian noble, who was posted to Japan as his country's minister, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an antiques dealer from Azabu, Tokyo. One of the count's middle names was the Japanese name Eijiro.

 

In 1935, Coudenhove-Kalergi published "The Totalitarian State against Man." The work includes severe criticisms of Soviet communism and Nazism as well as the reflections on the self-indulgence of capitalism in leaving such ideologies to flourish. Coudenhove-Kalergi believed that freedom forms the foundation of human dignity and that it is therefore unsurpassed in value. In order to guarantee freedom, he advocated a system of private ownership. However, he was despondent at how the severe social inequalities produced by capitalism had helped give rise to communism by creating an environment in which people aspired to equality, and also at how this had resulted in the emergence of national socialism as an alternative to both capitalism and communism. "Freedom without fraternity leads to anarchy. Equality without fraternity leads to tyranny" (translation of the quote in Japanese).

 

Coudenhove-Kalergi discussed how both totalitarianism, which tried to achieve equality at all costs, and capitalism, which had fallen into self-indulgence, resulted in disregard for human dignity and as such resulted in the treatment of human beings as a means instead of an end. Although freedom and equality are important for human beings, if they are followed to fundamentalist extremes, they can both result in immeasurable horrors. Therefore, Coudenhove-Kalergi recognized the necessity of a concept that could achieve a balance and maintain respect for humanity. That is what he sought in the idea of fraternity.

 

"Man is an end and not a means. The state is a means and not an end." These are the first lines of "The Totalitarian State against Man." At the time Coudenhove-Kalergi was putting ideas together for this publication, two different forms of totalitarianism were prominent in Europe, and his home country of Austria was being threatened with annexation by Hitler's Germany.

 

Coudenhove-Kalergi traveled all around Europe advocating the cause of Pan-Europeanism and criticizing Hitler and Stalin. However, his efforts were in vain. Austria fell to the Nazis and Coudenhove-Kalergi was forced to flee in disappointed exile to the United States. The movie "Casablanca" is said to be based on his flight. When Coudenhove-Kalergi talks of a "fraternal revolution," he is referring to the combative philosophy that supported the fierce fight against both the leftwing and rightwing totalitarianism of that age.

 

After the war, Ichiro Hatoyama, who was exiled from public office just as he was at the point of becoming prime minister, read the works of Coudenhove-Kalergi as he was living his enforced life of leisure. He was so struck by "The Totalitarian State against Man" that he took it upon himself to translate it into Japanese. His translation was published under the title "Jiyu to Jinsei" ("Freedom and Life").

 

For Ichiro, who was an ardent critic of both communism and military-led planned economies, "The Totalitarian State against Man" seemed to provide the most appropriate theoretical system for fighting back against the popularity of Marxism that began to swell in postwar Japan (the Socialist Party, Communist Party and labor movements) and for building a healthy parliamentary democracy. While fighting against the growing influence of the Socialist and Communist parties, Ichiro Hatoyama used the word "yuai" (fraternity) as a banner in trying to bring down the bureaucrat-led government of Shigeru Yoshida and replace it with his own administration of party politicians.

 

This was expressed succinctly by Hatoyama in "Yuai Seinen Doshikai Kouryo" ("Young People's Fraternal Association Mission Statement"), which Ichiro Hatoyama wrote in 1953. "Under the banner of liberalism, we will devote ourselves to a Fraternal Revolution, avoid extreme leftwing and rightwing ideologies, and work steadfastly to achieve a healthy and vibrant democratic society and build a free and independent cultural nation."

 

Ichiro Hatoyama's concept of fraternity continued to have influence as an undercurrent within Japan's postwar conservative political parties.

 

Following the revision of the Japan-U.S. security treaty in 1960, the Liberal Democratic Party changed direction significantly and began to prioritize policies of management-labor conciliation. These policies formed the foundation for Japan's period of rapid economic growth and are best symbolized by the LDP Basic Charter, a 1965 document which was written to serve as a kind of mission statement. The first chapter of this charter, which is entitled "Human Dignity," states, "human lives are precious, and are an end in and of themselves. The lives of human beings must never become a means." A similar phrase can be found in the LDP Labor Charter, a document which called for reconciliation with the labor movement. These phrases are clearly borrowed from the work of Coudenhove-Kalergi, and were very likely influenced by Ichiro Hatoyama's thinking on the subject of fraternity. These two charters contributed to the establishment of the Hatoyama and Ishibashi Cabinets, and were both drafted by Hirohide Ishida, a politician who served as labor minister in the Ikeda Cabinet and was responsible for setting Japan on a course toward conciliatory labor-management policies.

 

The end of LDP one-party rule and the announcement of the Democratic Party of Japan

 

In the postwar period, the LDP confronted socialist forces inside and outside Japan and dedicated itself to Japan's reconstruction and the achievement of high economic growth. These were noteworthy achievements which deserve their place in history. However, even after the end of the Cold War, the LDP fell into the trap of "the politics of inertia," and continued to act as if economic growth in itself was Japan's national goal. The party continually failed to adapt to the changing contemporary environment and shift toward policies designed to qualitatively improve people's lives.

 

At the same time, unhealthy ties between politicians, bureaucrats and corporations continually led to political corruption, a long-standing illness of the LDP. When the Cold War came to an end, I strongly felt that the historical role the LDP had played in supporting Japan's rapid economic growth had come to an end, and that the time had come for a new seat of political responsibility.

 

Therefore, I left the LDP, which had been founded by my grandfather, and after participating in the establishment of New Party Sakigake, I eventually became the founding leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. The (former) DPJ was founded Sept. 11, 1996. The following phrases were included in the statement released to mark the founding of the party. "From today onward, we wish to place the spirit of fraternity at the heart of our society. Freedom can often result in an unrestrained environment where the strong prey upon the weak.

 

Equality can easily result in a malevolent form of equality where all differences are criticized. Fraternity is the power that can prevent such extremes of freedom and equality yet over the past 100 or so years the power of fraternity has been marginalized. Modern nations up until the 20th century rushed to mobilize their people and in doing so tended to assess their worth as a single mass (rather than as individuals). . . . We believe that each individual human being has a boundless, diverse individuality and that each human life is irreplaceable. That is why we believe in the principle of 'self-independence' through which each individual has the right to decide upon their own destiny and the obligation to take responsibility for the results of their choices. At the same time, we also stress the importance of the principle of 'coexistence with others' under which people respect each other's mutual independence and differences while also working to understand each other and seek common ground for cooperative action. We believe that we must steadfastly adhere to these principles of independence and coexistence not only in the context of personal relationships within Japanese society but also in the context of the relationships between Japan and other nations and the relationship between humankind and the environment."

 

Author Saneatsu Mushanokoji wrote the famous words "I am me, you are you, yet we are good friends." I think these words truly express the spirit of fraternity. Just as the ideals of freedom and equality evolve with the contemporary environment, in terms of both their expression and their content, the idea of "fraternity," which calls on us to respect individuals, also evolves with the times. When I saw the collapse of the totalitarian regimes that both Coudenhove-Kalergi and my grandfather had opposed, I redefined my understanding of fraternity as "the principle of independence and coexistence."

 

Thirteen years have now passed since we formed the former Democratic Party of Japan. During the time since then, post-Cold War Japan has been continually buffeted by the winds of market fundamentalism in a U.S.-led movement which is more usually called globalization. Freedom is supposed to be the highest of all values, but the fundamentalist pursuit of capitalism, which can be described as "freedom formalized in economic terms," has resulted in people being treated not as an end but as a means. Consequently human dignity has been lost. The recent financial crisis and its aftermath have once again forced us to take note of this reality. How can we put an end to unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism that are void of morals or moderation in order to protect the finances and livelihoods of our citizens? That is the issue we are now facing. In these times, I realized that we must once again remember the role for fraternity identified by Coudenhove-Kalergi as a force for moderating the danger inherent within freedom. I came to a decision that we must once again raise the banner of fraternity. On May 16, 2009, in the runup to the DPJ leadership election, I made the following statement: "I will take the lead in coming together with our friends and colleagues to overcome this difficult situation and ensure that we achieve a change of government in order to bring about a fraternal society based on coexistence." What does fraternity mean to me? It is the compass that determines our political direction, a yardstick for deciding our policies. I believe it is also the spirit that supports our attempts to achieve "an era of independence and coexistence."

 

Restoring the weakened sphere of public service

 

In our present times, fraternity can be described as a principle that aims to adjust to the excesses of the current globalized brand of capitalism and make adjustments to accommodate the local economic practices that have been fostered through our traditions. In other words, it is a means of building an economic society based on coexistence by switching away from the policies of market fundamentalism and toward policies that protect the livelihoods and safety of the people.

 

It goes without saying that the recent worldwide economic crisis was brought about by the collapse of market fundamentalism and financial capitalism that the United States has advocated since the end of the Cold War. This U.S.-led market fundamentalism and financial capitalism went by many names, including the "global economy," "globalization" and "globalism." This way of thinking was based on the principle that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order and that all countries should modify the traditions and regulations governing their own economy in order to reform the structure of their economic society in line with global standards (or rather American standards). In Japan, opinion was divided on how far the trend toward globalization should be taken on board. Some people advocated the active embrace of globalism and supported leaving everything up to the dictates of the market. Others favored a more reticent approach, believing that effort should be made instead to expand the social safety net and protect our traditional economic activities. Since the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the LDP has stressed the former while we in the DPJ have tended toward the latter position.

 

The economic order or local economic activities in any country are built up over long years and reflect the influence of each country's traditions, habits and national lifestyles. Therefore, the economic activities of individual countries are very diverse due to many factors, including the differences of history, tradition, habits, economic scale and stage of development. However, globalism progressed without any regard for various noneconomic values, nor of environmental issues or problems of resource restriction. The economic activities of citizens in small countries were severely damaged, and in some countries globalism has even destroyed traditional industries. Capital and means of production can now be transferred easily across international borders. However, people cannot move so easily. In terms of market theory, people are simply personnel expenses, but in the real world people support the fabric of the local community and are the physical embodiment of its lifestyle, traditions and culture. An individual gains respect as a person by acquiring a job and a role within the local community and being able to maintain their family's livelihood.

 

If we look back on the changes in Japanese society that have occurred since the end of the Cold War, I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the global economy has damaged traditional economic activities and market fundamentalism has destroyed local communities. For example, the decision to privatize Japan's post office placed far too little weight on the institution's long history and the traditional role that its staff held in the local community. It also ignored the noneconomic benefits of the post office and its value in the community. The logic of the market was used to justify taking such a drastic step.

Under the principle of fraternity, we will not implement policies that leave economic activities in areas relating to human lives and safety, such as agriculture, the environment and medicine, at the mercy of the tides of globalism. Rather, we need to strengthen rules governing the safety of human lives and stability of people's livelihoods. Our responsibility as politicians is to refocus our attention on those noneconomic values that have been thrown aside by the march of globalism. We must work on policies that regenerate the ties that bring people together, that take greater account of nature and the environment, that rebuild welfare and medical systems, that provide better education and child rearing support and that address wealth disparities. This is required in order to create an environment in which each individual citizen is able to pursue happiness.

 

Over recent years, Japan's traditional public services have been eroded. The ties that bring people together have become weaker and the spirit of public service has also dimmed. In today's economic society, economic activities can be divided into four sectors: governmental, corporate, nonprofit and household. While the first, second and fourth categories are self-explanatory, by the third category I mean the types of mutual assistance which were once provided by neighborhood associations and which are now also provided through the activities of NPOs. As economic society becomes more advanced and complicated, the scope of services that cannot be provided by the authorities, corporations and family members grows increasingly wide. That is why the more industrialized a country becomes the greater the social role played by NPOs and other nonprofit organizations. This is the foundation of "coexistence." These activities are not recorded in the gross domestic product, but when working to build a society that has truly high standards of living, the scope and depth of such public services, as provided through nonprofit activities, citizens' groups and other social activities, are of great importance. Politics based on "fraternity" would restore strength to Japan's depleted nonprofit (public service) sector. It would expand the nonprofit sector into new areas and provide assistance for the people who support these activities. In this way, we aim to build a society of coexistence in which people can rediscover the ties that bring them together, help each other, and find meaning and fulfillment in performing a useful social role.

 

It is of course true that Japan is currently facing a fiscal crisis. However, "fraternal politics" aims cautiously yet steadily for the path that will achieve both the restructuring of government finances and the rebuilding of our welfare Therefore, I believe that it will be impossible to overcome Japan's fiscal crisis without devolving power to local authorities, implementing thorough administrative reform and restoring public trust in the sustainability of social security systems, particularly pensions. In other words, resolving our fiscal problems is impossible without comprehensively rebuilding Japan's political systems.

 

Empowering local authorities within the nation-state

 

When I made a speech announcing my candidacy for president of the DPJ, I stated, "My first political priority" is "reform to move away from a nation-state based on centralized power structures and create a nation based on devolved regional power." A similar view was incorporated into the inaugural declaration when we formed the former DPJ 13 years ago. Back then, our aim was to achieve a nation based on regional devolution and empowered local authorities. We intended to achieve this by limiting the role of the national executive and legislature and promoting efficient local administrations vested with significant authority. Furthermore, based on this new system of government, we aimed to establish wide-ranging welfare systems based on citizen participation and mutual assistance in the local community while also establishing fiscal, medical and pension systems which do not force debts onto future generations.

 

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi's "The Fraternal Revolution" (Chapter 12 of "The Totalitarian State against Man") contains the following passage: The political requirement of brotherhood is federalism, the natural and organic construction of the state out of its individuals. The path from men to the universe leads through concentric circles: men build families, families communes, communes cantons, cantons states, states continents, continents the planets, the planets the solar system, solar system the universe. In today's language, what Coudenhove-Kalergi described is the principle of "subsidiarity," a modern political approach that has its roots in fraternity.

 

The truth is that in today's age we cannot avoid economic globalization. However, in the European Union, where economic integration is strong, there is also a noticeable trend of localization. Examples of this included the federalization of Belgium and the separation and independence of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Within a globalized economic environment, how can we preserve the autonomy of countries and regions, which serve as foundations of tradition and culture? This is an issue of importance not only for the European Union but also for Japan as well.

 

In response to the conflicting demands of globalism and localization, the European Union has advocated the principle of subsidiarity in the Maastricht Treaty and The European Charter of Local Self-Government. The principle of subsidiarity is not simply a rule that declares that local authorities should always be prioritized, rather it is a principle that can also be invoked to define the relationship between nation-states and supranational institutions. We can interpret the principle of subsidiarity from this perspective as follows: Matters that can be dealt with by the individual should be resolved by the individual. Matters that cannot be resolved by the individual should be resolved with the help of the family. Matters that cannot be resolved by the family should be resolved with the help of the local community and NGOs. It is only when matters cannot be resolved at this level that the authorities should become involved. Then of course, matters that can be dealt with by the local government should be resolved by the local government. Matters that cannot be resolved by the local government should be resolved by the next intermediate level of government. Matters that the next level of government cannot handle, for example diplomacy, defense and decisions on macroeconomic policy, should be dealt with by the central government. Finally, even some elements of national sovereignty, such as the issue of currency, should be transferred to supranational institutions like the EU.

 

The principle of subsidiarity is therefore a policy for devolution which places emphasis on the lowest level of local government. As we search for ways to modernize the concept of fraternity, we find ourselves naturally arriving at the idea of a nation based on regional devolution built upon the principle of subsidiarity. When discussing reform of Japan's local authority system, including the possibility of introducing a system of around 10 or so regional blocs to replace Japan's 47 prefectures, we must not forget to ask the following questions: What is the appropriate size for local authorities (which are embodiments of tradition and culture)? What is the appropriate size of local authorities in terms of their functional efficacy for local residents? During a speech I made at the time of the DPJ presidential election, I made the following comments: "I propose limiting the role of central government to diplomacy, defense, fiscal policy, financial policy, resource, energy and environmental policy. I propose transferring to the lowest level of local government the authority, taxation rights and personnel required to provide services closely related to people's livelihoods. I propose creating a framework that will allow local authorities to bear responsibility for making decisions and have the means to implement them. I propose abolishing the current system of central government subsidies (which can only be used for a particular stated purpose) and instead providing a single payment which the local authorities can use at their own discretion. In other words, I will break down the de facto master-servant relationship which exists between the central government and local authorities and replace it with an equal relationship based on shared responsibilities. This reform will improve the overall efficiency of the whole country and facilitate finely tuned administrative services that take into account local needs and the perspectives of local citizens." The only way for regions to achieve autonomy, self-responsibility and the competence to make their own decisions is to transfer a wide range of resources and significant power to the local authorities which are in closest contact with citizens, an approach which also clarifies the relationship between citizens' burdens and the services they receive. This approach will facilitate the invigoration of local economic activities. It is also a path toward the construction a more distinctive, appealing and beautiful Japan. The establishment of a nation based on empowered local authorities represents the embodiment of a modern politics of fraternity and is highly appropriate as a political goal for our times.

 

Overcoming nationalism through an East Asian community

 

Another national goal that emerges from the concept of fraternity is the creation of an East Asian community. Of course, the Japan-U.S. Security Pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy. Unquestionably, the Japan-U.S. relationship is an important pillar of our diplomacy. However, at the same time, we must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia. I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality in its economic growth and even closer mutual ties, must be recognized as Japan's basic sphere of being. Therefore, we must continue to make efforts to build frameworks for stable economic cooperation and national security across the region.

 

The recent financial crisis has suggested to many people that the era of American unilateralism may come to an end. It has also made people harbor doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency. I also feel that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of the U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end and that we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the U.S. toward an era of multipolarity. However, at present, there is no one country ready to replace the United States as the world's most dominant country. Neither is there a currency ready to replace the dollar as the world's key currency. Therefore, even if we shift from unipolar to multipolar world, our idea of what to expect is at best vague, and we feel anxiety because the new forms to be taken by global politics and economics remain unclear. I think this describes the essence of the crisis we are now facing.

 

Although the influence of the U.S. is declining, the U.S. will remain the world's leading military and economic power for the next two to three decades. Current developments show clearly that China, which has by far the world's largest population, will become one of the world's leading economic nations, while also continuing to expand its military power. The size of China's economy will surpass that of Japan in the not-too-distant future. How should Japan maintain its political and economic independence and protect its national interest when caught between the United States, which is fighting to retain its position as the world's dominant power, and China, which is seeking ways to become one? The future international environment surrounding Japan does not seem to be easy. This is a question of concern not only to Japan but also to the small and medium-sized nations in Asia. They want the military power of the U.S. to function effectively for the stability of the region but want to restrain U.S. political and economic excesses. They also want to reduce the military threat posed by our neighbor China while ensuring that China's expanding economy develops in an orderly fashion. I believe these are the instinctive demands of the various nations in the region. This is also a major factor accelerating regional integration.

 

Today, as the supranational political and economic philosophies of Marxism and globalism have, for better or for worse, stagnated, nationalism is once again starting to have a major influence on policymaking decisions in various countries. As symbolized by the anti-Japanese riots that occurred in China a few years ago, the spread of the Internet has accelerated the integration of nationalism and populism and the emergence of uncontrollable political turbulence is a very real risk. As we maintain an awareness of this environment and seek to build new structures for international cooperation, we must overcome excessive nationalism in each nation and go down the path toward the rule-building for economic cooperation and national security. Unlike Europe, the countries of this region differ in their population size, development stage and political systems, and therefore economic integration cannot be achieved over the short term. However, I believe that we should aspire to the move toward regional currency integration as a natural extension of the path of the rapid economic growth begun by Japan, followed by South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and then achieved by the ASEAN nations and China. We must therefore spare no effort to build the permanent security frameworks essential to underpinning currency integration.

 

ASEAN, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea and Taiwan now account for one-quarter of the world's gross domestic product. The economic power of the East Asian region and the mutually independent relationships within the region have grown wider and deeper, which is unprecedented. As such, the underlying structures required for the formation of a regional economic bloc are already in place. On the other hand, due to the historical and cultural conflicts existing between the countries of this region, in addition to their conflicting national security interests, we must recognize that there are numerous difficult political issues. The problems of increased militarization and territorial disputes, which stand in the way of regional integration, cannot be resolved by bilateral negotiations between, for example, Japan and South Korea or Japan and China. The more these problems are discussed bilaterally, the greater the risk that citizens' emotions in each country will become inflamed and nationalism will be intensified. Therefore, somewhat paradoxically, I would suggest that the issues which stand in the way of regional integration can only really be resolved through the process of moving toward greater regional integration. For example, the experience of the EU shows us how regional integration can defuse territorial disputes.

 

When writing a draft proposal for a new Japanese Constitution in 2005, I put in the preamble the following words on the subject of Japan's national goals for the next half century: We, recognizing the importance of human dignity, seek to enjoy, together with people of the world, the benefits of peace, freedom and democracy, and commit ourselves to work continually and unceasingly toward the goal of establishing a system of permanent and universal economic and social cooperation and a system of collective national security in the international community, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. I believe that not only is this the path we should follow toward realizing the principles of pacifism and multilateral cooperation advocated by the Japanese Constitution, I also believe this is the appropriate path for protecting Japan's political and economic independence and pursuing our national interest from our position between two of the world's great powers, the United States and China. Moreover, this path would represent a contemporary embodiment of the "fraternal revolution" advocated by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi.

 

Based on this awareness of our intended direction, it becomes clear that, for example, our response to the recent global financial crisis should not be simply to provide the kind of limited support measures previously employed by the IMF and the World Bank. Rather, we should be working toward a possible idea of the future common Asian currency. Establishing a common Asian currency will likely take more than 10 years. For such a single currency to bring about political integration will surely take longer still. Due to the seriousness of the ongoing global economic crisis, some people may wonder why I am taking the time to discuss this seemingly extraneous topic. However, I believe that the more chaotic, unclear and uncertain the problems we face, the higher and greater are the goals to which politicians should lead the people.

 

We are currently standing at a turning point in global history, and therefore our resolve and vision are being tested, not only in terms of our ability to formulate policies to stimulate the domestic economy, but also in terms of how we try to build a new global political and economic order. I would like to conclude by quoting the words of Coudenhove-Kalergi, the father of the EU, written 85 years ago, when he published "Pan-Europa."

 

"All great historical ideas started as a utopian dream and ended with reality.

 

"Whether a particular idea remains as a utopian dream or it can become reality depends on the number of people who believe in the ideal and their ability to act upon it."

 

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

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

THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

BANK CENTURY BAILOUT: WAS IT REALLY NECESSARY?

PUTERA SATRIA SAMBIJANTORO

 

When US Congress passed Hank Paulson‘s US$800 billion bailout bill in October 2008, to prevent the US economy from slumping further, several US citizens’ initial response was very much as the treasury chief would have expected: “Are you nuts? We’re the taxpayers and that’s the money we’ve been paying to you for years. And now you’re just going to hand it over to those Wall Street financial institutions?”

 

But as the US treasury chief, surely Paulson was smarter than the average US taxpayer and knew that the money was being put to good use. Shaded with the trauma of the Great Depression of 1929 — when many banks in the United States went bust, and which lead to the severest economic downturn the world has ever witnessed — Paulson made numerous efforts to prevent history from repeating itself. And as an economist he definitely knew the bailout plan was an absolute necessity.

 

And Paulson was not mistaken. Just look at how his bailout plan has swerved the US economy around from an experience similar to the meltdown of 1929. It may be too soon to conclude that the bailout plan has succeeded, but without doubt the US treasury under Paulson performed really well in handling the 2008 financial crisis and deserved a better score than his compatriots of 1929.

 

And thanks to the bailout now the dust has settled – while the US economy in the Great Depression took about 10 years to fully recover, the US economy (now headed by the new treasury secretary, Tim Geithner) has started to show several encouraging signs of recovery and many economists believe it won’t take that long for the whole nation to finally convalesce.

 

It is funny that here in Indonesia we have been dealing with a similar situation. Many people are at odds over the $670-million Bank Century bailout, with one side suggesting it would have been better if the money had been allocated to other sectors.

 

For many Keynesian economists who are taught to throw money around during bad times through aggressive spending, to prevent the economy from entering a dreadful downward spiral, bailing out an insolvent bank is on the list of where money should be spent.

 

There is no doubt that if we do not want to be bumped into another financial fiasco, we should all be Keynesians by now. And basically in Keynesian economics throwing bailout money in this kind of circumstance proved necessary – in other words, if a government really wants to prevent a systemic failure, bailing out an insolvent bank whose collapse could severely damage the economy is never a question.

 

And this left people in the Indonesian treasury in a tight spot. If they didn’t lend Bank Century that huge amount of money and let it fold, the domino effect from the collapse would have been immense and threatened to lead to another 23 financial institutions into bankruptcy as well as triggering a crisis of confidence in the market – eventually having a much bigger impact on Indonesia’s economy than the $670 million the treasury proposed to bail the bank out.

 

With our economy performing really well at the moment and various economic indicators signifying a brighter future for this country, we cannot allow havoc to take over and surely we don’t want to return again to the gloom we experienced during the 1998 financial crisis.

 

Here in economics we face a trade-off: when things don’t work according to an original plan, sometimes we have to sacrifice something to achieve a more desired ending.

 

It is hard being government officials like  Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Hank Paulson these days. Things don’t really work according to their plans, as a catastrophe named the global financial crisis has hit many countries really hard and put many treasury chiefs, including them, in the eye of the storm.

 

It never rains but it pours for our treasury chief — in her attempts to fix the situation, political disputes regarding the bailout proposal have heated up lately. People have questioned whether there was political motivation behind the plan, and do not believe that the size of the bailout was necessary.

 

But instead of wrangling over the political aspects of the bailout instead recognizing its necessity for the Indonesian economy, we should realize Sri Mulyani is the one who made Indonesia an unlikely winner in this global financial crisis, helping us record a positive 4 percent growth amid the current turmoil.

 

She has proven she has the capacity to usher us through the storm, so by putting the $670 million Bank Century bailout proposal forward, she certainly was not that stupid to put all her hard work at risk and put Indonesia’s economy at stake by prioritizing a few politicians’ self interests above the country’s.

 

To put it another way, if you were her would you risk of tarnishing your flawless credibility and previous achievements as treasury secretary?

 

If your answer is negative, then put the political question aside and consider this: appointed as a treasury secretary, in economics she is undeniably smarter than the most of us and comprehends the problem better than we do.

 

With all her impressive accomplishments she has already proven to us her abilities, so why don’t we just end this hassle and simply place our faith in her, just as Americans did with Hank Paulson?

The writer is a student in University of Indonesia’s school of economics.

 

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

THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

DREAMS COME TRUE?

 

Imagine it is 2022, and Indonesia’s national soccer team has reached the World Cup semifinal. The match is being played before a home crowd at the 100,000-seat Bung Karno stadium. The entire nation is behind our players in this David and Goliath struggle, with Indonesia versing a global soccer superpower. The nation is at a standstill, with nearly every set of eyes glued to a television screen watching the match.

 

However, it is just a dream. And dreams remain as dreams until someone actually wakes up and takes some initiative.

 

It is not a mission impossible. It takes commitment and consistency from everybody invested in the vision to make it happen.

 

For this year’s National Sports Day commemoration on Sept. 9, the State Ministry for Sports and Youth Affairs has coined the motto “Let’s create a culture of sport to continue improving our national achievement and people’s welfare”.

 

How to create a culture of sports if only a few people actually play them?

 

Indonesia has been struggling to keep its performance up to scratch at regional and international meets.  For this year’s Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, the country only set a target of finishing third.

 

This is particularly disappointing when you consider that Indonesia has dominated the event since its conception in 1977.  

 

Compared to Malaysia and Thailand, it is obvious we invest very little in sports, despite the fact that it’s a great way to promote Indonesia to the world. Both Malaysia and Thailand understand the important role schools play as a source of new talent for sports development programs. Malaysia has two sports schools in a system similar to the 1970s-Ragunan School project enacted by then Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin. Thailand has taken it a step further, using two universities as the hosts of the 2007 SEA Games and 1998 Asian Games.

 

In Indonesia, you would be hard pressed to find a university equipped with international-standard sports facilities –  from soccer fields, to swimming pools or indoor-basketball stadiums. Indonesia used to rely on sports clubs to train and prepare fresh talent. It was in these places that badminton greats such as Rudy Hartono and Liem Swie King emerged to the forefront of the sport. But these clubs are struggling to survive now, especially soccer clubs that have for so long relied heavily on funding from the regional budget.

 

Regional leaders, be they governors or regents or mayors, should better prioritize the construction of  sports infrastructure and increase public access to these facilities in a bid to identify new talent, particularly in young people, to develop the future of sports in Indonesia. This is a much better idea than allocating billions of rupiah to just one club every season.

 

Calls have been made for the sports ministry, the National Sports Council and National Education Ministry to sit together and discuss what kind of sports policy needs to be devised to promote sports development across the country. The involvement of parents, schools and communities is needed to encourage children to exercise and get involved in their favorite sports. If all our children do sports, they will not only be healthier, but the country will not face a scarcity of talent to represent Indonesia in international games.

 

By having adequate infrastructure and lots of athletes in all regions, the path to host the soccer World Cup and other world class events such as the Formula One or the Olympic Games will become more tangible and real. And our dream of seeing a winning Indonesia may eventually come true.

 

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

 

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

THE KOREA HERALD

 EDITORIAL

MIGRANT WORKERS

 

"EPS Is Slavery," said placards held by protesting migrant workers, referring to the employment permit system. After five years of implementation, the EPS, which authorizes small businesses individually to hire foreign workers for a basic three years, draws contrasting assessments from labor authorities and migrant workers.

 

Officials at the Ministry of Labor assert that job stability of foreign workers here has been considerably increased. However, associations of migrant workers and their Korean advocates claim that the current system, which replaced the "industrial trainee system," has virtually deprived the foreign workers of the freedom to change their employers. Their complaints are centered on the rule prohibiting them from changing workplaces more than three times during the three-year working period in Korea. They also need the consent of their current employer to move to a new job.

 

Citing other positive results of the EPS, the ministry said, the manpower shortage at small-medium businesses in Korea declined from 5.5 percent in 2004 to 3.0 percent in 2008. While the rate of foreign workers deserting their work places reached 53 percent in 2004, desertion cases were rapidly reduced since the adoption of the EPS. The rate was as low as 1.4 percent in 2008, according to the ministry.

 

Unsatisfied foreign workers demand that they be given working visas so that they can independently offer their services in the labor market. Officials say the working visa process will make the migrant workers' entry into this country far more difficult than through the EPS.

 

What is fortunate for the migrant workers here is that Korean enterprises have not cut migrant manpower by any significant extent despite the general economic downturn since a year ago. Some 75,000 workers from 15 countries were newly employed last year under the employment permit system.

 

While the "industrial trainee system" was in practice, foreign "trainees" frequently deserted their work places where their labor rights were not recognized. The new system was introduced to ensure better management of migrant workers while preventing discrimination against them. It also aimed to minimize loss of employment opportunities in the local work force.

 

Only 4.5 percent of migrant workers reported their employers' failure to pay them on time last year compared to 36.8 percent in 2001, according to the Labor Ministry. Notable was that individual expenses for a foreign worker to land a job in Korea, which amounted to an average of $3,509 in 2001, were three times lower at $1,283 on average in 2008. Improvements also included benefits under the Labor Standard Law, the Industrial Insurance Law and the Industrial Safety and Health Law, which were not available for the "industrial trainees."

 

If we should recognize apparent merits of the EPS, there certainly are some drawbacks. The time unemployed migrant workers have to find a new job is limited to two months, after which they become illegal sojourners. Labor officials, however, assert that two months is not a short period considering the fact that demand for migrant labor is four times higher than supply. They cite more rigid practices in other places such as Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

 

 

After over a decade of opening the labor market to foreign workers, Korean society recognizes the foreign men and women who, on average, make 1,160,000 won a month working 10 hours and 58 minutes a day, as an integral part of the nation's economy. They are entitled to share the benefits of the national economy but they should also cooperate in maintaining the nation's social and economic order. Labor authorities, on the other hand, should sincerely listen to the complaints of foreign workers, regarding them as indispensable components in the industrial structure rather than as a possible source of trouble.

 

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

 

 

THE KOREA HERALD

 EDITORIAL

NEW GNP LEADER

 

Rep. Chung Mong-joon is set to meet with President Lee Myung-bak today, the first since he took the helm of the ruling Grand National Party on Monday. Undoubtedly, the issue of bringing the party and the administration closer will be at the top of the agenda.

 

The party-administration relationship has much to be desired. Lawmakers of the ruling party have often complained in the past that they are called on to push for legislation on government policies when they have not been fully briefed by the administration.

 

The administration needs closer cooperation from the party to back President Lee's policy initiatives. Of its immediate concern is the passage of various administration-initiated bills, including the 2010 budget, during the current regular session of the National Assembly. But that is by no means an easy task for Chung, given the obstructionist approach of the opposition.

 

Rep. Chung, a politician with presidential ambitions, took the party's leadership, replacing Park Hee-tae, who resigned from the post of party chairman to run in the coming parliamentary by-elections. That was no small achievement for Chung, who was an outsider less than two years ago.

 

But Chung, who abandoned his status as an independent lawmaker one year and nine months ago to join the Grand National Party, has little time to bask in his accomplishment. Instead, he needs to prove his leadership capacity during the next four months - the former chairman's remaining tenure, which Chung is now serving.

 

A crucial test will come when by-elections are held on Oct. 28. He will have to refurbish the party's image, endear the party to the electorate and increase the 168 seats the party has in the 299-member National Assembly. That is what he needs to do if he wishes to get the party under his control and win the party's presidential nomination in 2012, in competition against party insiders.

 

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

 

 

 

THE KOREA HERALD

COLUMN

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM NEW PREMIER

KIM SEONG-KON

 

The recent nomination of Professor Un-chan Chung as prime minister was perhaps the best thing that happened to the Lee administration. As a highly successful former president of Seoul National University, Chung has already demonstrated his ability to serve as a superb administrator and outstanding leader. He was so competent and popular during his tenure at SNU that he became the first president whom many SNU professors hoped to keep in office term after term. We believe Chung is the best person to steer the country in the right direction during these turbulent times.

 

Chung faces a host of compelling issues once he takes office. First of all, he urgently needs to bridge the seemingly irreducible chasms between progressives and conservatives, radicals and moderates, the left and the right that seriously plague contemporary Korean society. We expect the prime minister designate to patch up the ideologically torn country. We hope, like a healing stone, he can magically cure the gaping wounds inflicted by the ideological warfare instigated by the militant leftists, who have permeated into every nook and cranny of our society. Obviously this is not an easy task. But as a gentle, amiable person who has the capacity of embracing even his political foes, Chung will serve as an effective buffer against the hostile frictions of inimical groups. We all anticipate Chung's efforts to bring peace and unity to our divided nation.

 

Second, we look to Chung to boost our stagnant economy. As a prominent scholar of economics, Chung must diagnose the weaknesses and strengths of our economy and prescribe the right medicines to heal our maladies. Instead of pleading for citizens to simply accept the nationwide suffering caused by the global economic downturn, Chung should create more jobs, expand exports and encourage domestic consumers. The Korean people desperately want to restore the five years lost to the amateurish policy of wealth distribution implemented during the leftist Roh Administration.

 

Third, we expect the new prime minister to reform our education system by improving public education and restructuring the college entrance exam system. In the past, the government has merely whined about the unfairness of private education and hagwon. We hope that Chung will, instead, spearhead government action to significantly upgrade the quality of secondary-school teachers so that they can match, or even surpass, hagwon instructors in enthusiasm, dedication and teaching skills. If schools provide reliable, high-quality education, students will no longer need to spend astronomical amounts of money on hagwon. Furthermore, this will reduce disparities among the privileged and less privileged in access to quality education.

 

Of course, the Ministry of Education and Technology is primarily responsible for the performance of the public education system. Nevertheless, parents will eventually blame the Lee administration for negligence and incompetence unless the government boldly overhauls the college entrance exam system and cures the ultimate malady once and for all. Although people enthusiastically welcomed the newly-implemented admission officers system, many of them already doubt the credibility of the program. Indeed, what true change can be made as long as we hold onto the defunct college entrance exam system? It is likely that admission officers will soon be reduced to mere pen pushers or supervisors simply working in the admissions office. We hope Chung will address these issues and improve education for our children.

 

Fourth, the new prime minster must significantly enhance the image of Korea in the international community. Caught between China and Japan, whose cultures may seem similar to foreigners, Korea has not yet properly presented her unique cultural image to the world. We know hallyu did a splendid job in spreading positive images of Korea to Asian countries. Yet only our transient pop culture, not our perennial traditional culture, has been successfully exposed; our national image should consist of more than just television dramas like "Daejanggeum" or "Jumong." Today Samsung, LG and Hyundai have become internationally renowned brands, just like Sony, Panasonic and Toyota. Unlike the Japanese, however, we have not gained the cultural acknowledgement that should follow the success of our electronics and automobiles overseas. We believe that it is the duty of the prime minister's office to tackle and solve this compelling quandary.

 

Finally, we expect the new prime minister to lead a nationwide campaign in radically altering our consciousness. Changing systems alone will not solve our persistent problems as long as we hold on to our old consciousness. As Korea moves towards becoming a multicultural society, for example, we must alter our consciousness to embrace the cultural differences and contradictions that may arise. Sloughing off old skin can be painful; but without the painful process, we cannot develop a new, lustrous skin.

 

We want our new prime minister to be not only a manager running the nation, but also a magician, physician and surgeon for our country. Some people may think we are expecting too much from a scholar turned politician. Nevertheless, we expect the utmost from our new prime minister. We want to have hope for a bright future.

 

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and director of the Seoul National University Press. - Ed.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

THE BOTTOM LINE

EDITORIAL

FOR WANT OF A PRACTICAL POLICY AND PEOPLE

 

Development warrants change and change is necessary to transit effectively to a realm of growth and expansion. But change must be managed and such efforts not ad hoc so that it impedes the process of advancement of the nation and its key sectors.

Sri Lanka flaunts a history for politically-motivated change, change that slows the wheel of development adding to the cost burden that plagues our public and the nation. In this environment of peace and want of accelerated growth, a politically robust government such as the powers that be, affords space to implement progressive policy, or change, that does not curry favour with politics of power and gain. Sri Lanka it seems has still not aspired for that lofty state and the process of change sits flawed. The best example of late would be the outcomes with the Ministry of Tourism, where divisive appointments and a subsequent clash of ideology and political will have resulted in an industry and action in turmoil.

It is imperative that we identify and facilitate the growth and expansion of sectors that would steer Sri Lanka into the future. Tourism, education, manufacturing, agriculture and infrastructure services are key facets of our development thrust, and government must strengthen their functions with the right human resource, structure and investment. Implement actions that would complement the initiative and efforts of the private sector and encourage further investments. We need men and women with vision; leaders who would guide the country towards the dream what is today a Singapore and Hong Kong. Leaders with recluse political thought cannot lead a nation nor industry into an era of evolution – let us embrace a national vision; a policy and people for the future of the country and its people. Governments with power and place are best fit to lead such transition.
Treading a politically-biased path for development is unsustainable. It leads to economies in constant state of flux. There is more agreement that something needs to be done than on the precise details of what should be done. Policy and people impacts are complex and difficult to evaluate, but their effects can be felt over a long-term. The world economic and political scenario has undergone a plethora of change, we must identify and accept the effects of globalisation and align these realities with our nation’s aspirations.

In this context it is most welcoming that President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday declaring what he described as a “war against inefficiency” within the public sector.

The question over the efficiency of our bureaucracy arises from that it only caters to limited areas of interest – the traditional comfort spheres. Such policy will only restrict the opportunity for gain to a handful of people and there is a growing need to broaden our economic and political scope. It is important to compare our progress with fellow countries. During the 1950s and 1960s countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Malaysia were far below ours. But today, they have surpassed us delivering far better quality of life and success. Their achievement was not merely a result of developments within the sphere of education, investment and policy, but also an outcome of growth in demand for rapid economic development. We need to motivate such sentiment amongst our people, our leaders and business. With the end to conflict, Sri Lanka’s workforce would expand rapidly. Accordingly, government must play a significant role in creating a society of opportunity and equals. We need to build a society that recognises skill and ability and afford the necessary space for development. That is the trend of the world today. Let us be bold enough to take that progressive step.

 

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

THE BOTTOM LINE

COLUMN

UDA’S CORRUPTION AND HARASSMENT TO DEVELOPERS!

BY E.H. PEMARATNE ATTORNEY AT LAW /TOWN PLANNER

 

The Urban Development Authority (UDA) has again amended the set of regulations gazetted on March 10 1986, which is used to test the regularity of development activities carried out within UDA areas and grant or reject approval.

 

The new amendments

Amendments apply to regulations 8, 9, and 61. The numerous errors both in the format and wordings etc of the notification creates doubt as to whether these new regulations have been submitted to the Legal Draughtsman’s Department for advice and formatting. It has introduced the following amendments:

1.   In regulation 8 which deals with categories of buildings, amendments have been made to building categories B and C. In fact in category B only the sub paragraph (ii) has been amended and so to call this an amendment of the total sub-regulation is incorrect. It has been amended by substituting only the words “not more than four floors” for the words “ two or more floors” in the earlier regulations. Therefore as far as this regulation is considered the amendment is partial

2.  Drastic amendments have however been made, to building category-C in the same regulation. Firstly instead of one category consisting of “residential building which does not exceed 300 sq. meters of floor area” in this category, the amendment has introduced three sub-categories. They are:-

a)      Category C-I “any building which is used for residential purposes and shall not exceed five hundred sq. meters in extent and consisting of G+2 floors which does not fall into category B”

b)      Category C-II “any building which is used for purposes other than residential and does not exceed 300 sq. meters in extent and consisting up to G+2 floors which is not covered under category B

c)      Category C-III “any building which is used for:-

i)        Residential purpose and does not exceed 300 hundred sq. meters in extent and consisting up to G+1floor which does not fall under Category B”

ii)      For purposes other than residential and does not exceed one hundred sq. meters in extent and consisting up to G+1 floor which does not fall under category B”

a)      This amendment is unprofessional, careless and funny. The amendment has been made to category C in Regulation 8 of the notification dated March 10, 1986. According to it, category C includes “any residential building which does not exceed three hundred sq. meters in extent which is not covered by Category B. Category B in that gazette included the buildings with one or more of the following elements.

i)  Basement-roofs, foundations, beams and other related parts of the buildings;.

ii) Two or more floors including the ground floor where a wall or column is situated on the property boundary ;

iii)  pile or raft foundations ;or roof span exceeding ten meters;

iv)  a place of public assembly or a public building;

v)   a building which is wind sensitive such as a warehouse or factories;

vi)  and any other category of buildings not covered under categories A and C; .

Earlier regulations

The earlier Regulations though illegal were drafted by Indian experts who were assigned to the UDA by the UNDP. They were at least careful not to make a public authority a laughing stock by avoiding framing of jocular regulations. Under category C I and II of the new regulations all buildings can be up to three floors while category CIII permits only up to two floors including the ground floor and so naturally involve beams and foundations requiring structural plans. But in the partially repealed regulation, only single storey buildings not exceeding 300 meters were permitted under category “C” This permitted the people to have the plan drawn by any person. But as provided in the amendment building plans of category C-I, and C-II need to accompany structural plans only at the discretion of the UDA while in case of C-III it is not necessary at all.
According to the amended Regulation 9 all building plans of category A and B should accompany structural plans while in case of category C I and II such plans need be submitted only if the UDA so requires. Regulation 9(4) and (5) requires the submission of service plans signed by qualified persons relating to water supply, sewerage, drainage, rain water harvesting and electricity supply plans in case of buildings of A and B categories and if the authority requires in case of category C I and II also, while insist on air condition expert plans in case of all buildings under Reg. 9.. The unqualified discretion given to the UDA and the Local authorities to which the UDA planning powers and functions have been devolved is day a light invitation to heavy corruption. Local authorities are the most corrupted public institution in the country though not much known even to the Transparency International.

Local authority

The above regulation seems to be purposely made to satisfy the local authority and UDA Technical Staff and the politicians who are extremely corrupt and have taken law into their own hands. Any person who is in their good books can now draw plans of these three categories regardless of his qualifications. Outside Colombo, category C is the most prevalent. Such a wide discretion is against the legal principle that confines use of the discretion to the four corners of the law by provisos.

Funny schedules

There are two funny schedules given under Reg. 61 which refers to “specifications and other requirements set out in Schedule- VII (Parts-I, II and III).Of the three Part-I gives only the uses and type of buildings Under Uses column uses of residential, commercial, industrial and institutional are given. Against the institutional use in this column government and semi government buildings also have been shown as requiring the submission of plans. Doesn’t the UDA know that in 2000 government and semi government agencies which also were required to adhere to UDA planning requirements under the 1982 Amendment of the Law, were exempted from it. Despite this still the UDA continues to compel public institutions to obtain Planning Clearance. This attempt of the UDA was highlighted in the media when they compelled the Medical Superintendent of Matara Hospital to seek UDA approval for shifting a gate, but later withdrew when the MS explained the law to them.; Schedule titled Part-III gives only a format with headings and blank cages . What can a developer gather from this? Clarity, un- ambiguity and freedom from prejudice are basic attributes of good law. These regulations chronically suffer from them and so are bad in law. It is deplorable that the Minister has chosen to be a laughing stock consequent to the low quality work of the UDA Planners. Doesn’t the Board of Management of the UDA and the Secretary to the Minister who is finally accountable, scrutinise these documents before going for the Minister’s sanction.?

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

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

CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

JUSTICE HOLDS THE KEY

 

With the Supreme People's Court (SPC) inaugurating its training of intermediate and county-level court presidents, the largest ever training program for heads of county-level law enforcement agencies is under way.

 

Prior to the SPC initiative, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and ministries of public security and justice had already started their own training projects.

 

In a year or so, 3,500 court presidents, 3,500 chief procurators, 3,080 police chiefs, and 2,800 justice bureau chiefs from counties or cities across the country will take turns to participate in such training programs. There are even specially tailored training projects for prison janitors, grassroots police stations and detention centers.

 

In spite of differences in accounts of motivations, the parallel training programs share a focus on so-called mass incidents. The SPC program, for instance, incorporates lectures on how to cope with emergencies, mass incidents and other situations, though we do not see an immediate role for the courts in such scenarios. The court presidents will be taught the right way to listen to public opinions.

 

Everything else aside, such training can deliver requirements of the central authorities directly to the grassroots level. Given the universal concern about signal distortion, that might be the only way to make sure Beijing's voices register as they should.

 

From the way such training programs are conducted, one can see Beijing's worries about possible signs of disharmony at the grassroots. Such worries must be conveyed to and shared by the local law enforcement agencies. And, those at the county level have a crucial role to play.

 

Intermediate and grassroots courts handle 80 per cent of all litigation, and account for 80 per cent of judges across the country. And 80 per cent of police officers work at the county level. Their conduct to a considerable extent determines the public image of those engaged in law enforcement. In this sense at least, the training is very much to the point.

 

Teaching leaders of grassroots or intermediate law enforcement agencies correct ways to deal with the press and the public opinion meets a pressing need in the eyes of the authorities in Beijing. In many previous cases of mass protests or other emergencies, awkward ploys adopted by these local units to control information and inappropriate treatment of the media had repeatedly backfired, adding to the problems and tarnishing the image of the law enforcement authorities.

 

So, if the training can help grassroots or intermediate law enforcement personnel see journalists in a different way - no longer as troublemakers at least - all will benefit.But public relation skills alone cannot produce real harmony. Looking back on the mass incidents that China has already experienced, few were the result of mishandling of the media. If local law enforcement has earned a less-than-favorable reputation, it is instead the outcome of their mishandling of matters of public concern. The focus of such training should therefore be on upholding justice.

 

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

CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

PROCESS OVER PERSONS

 

How to select the right officials for the right positions is a hard job. When there have been successive scandals of some buying their way into public office positions, the establishment of a mechanism for selection of competent officials is of utmost importance for better governance.

 

Admitting 160 ordinary residents into the panel for the interviews of 121 candidates for 24 deputy bureau chief positions in Sichuan provincial government on Monday was a good exercise. They included reporters, drivers, village heads, doctors and police officers, and were divided into eight groups along with other panel members. Their votes will account for 20 percent of the total score for interviews.

 

The panelists were not allowed to have their mobile phones on during the interview or discuss with each other before casting their votes. The candidates did not meet panel members before the interview and they drew lots for their interview turn. Panelists knew the candidates only by a number and this made any favoritism impossible.

 

Doubtless, officials selected in such manner should be more competent and reliable than those handpicked by the top leader of a particular department or a government.

 

In most scandals of public office positions being sold or traded for personal favors, top leaders have absolute say about who should be placed in a particular position. Then those corrupt leaders have the opportunity to sell public office positions. In the most notorious such case, a district head in the city of Fuyang in Anhui province sold not just one or two, but many public positions in his government.

 

Lack of a transparent process is obviously part of the problem. It would have been impossible for that district head to sell public office positions had the selection mechanism adopted in Sichuan been implemented in that district in Fuyang.

 

Collective leadership is always supposed to be the way to curtail the absolute power of top leaders. But that is possible only when the other leaders are upright and bold enough to challenge the authority of the top man when it comes to selection of officials. If they can't, then the selling of public offices is only to be expected. The worst may be a compromise between all those in a leadership to give positions to their own favorite subordinates or sell their own share of public offices.

 

The Sichuan provincial government has set a good example by initiating a transparent selection process, in which candidates take written exams and then have interviews with a panel involving 160 members from all walks of life. With hundreds of panel members involved in the process, it is hardly possible for any leader to have his own way.

 

It would be no use telling top leaders at all levels not to sell public jobs. The best course is to do as was done by the Sichuan government, leaving no scope for favoritism.

 

It is hoped that other local governments will follow the example of Sichuan and the central government will take action to help establish similar mechanisms at all levels of government. That will root out the selling of public jobs.

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

CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

VITAL SIGN FOR SECURITIES MARKET

 

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) issued the draft Foreign Exchange Administration Regulations on Domestic Securities Investment of Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) on Sept 4 to solicit opinions, intending to increase the maximum quota for a single QFII from the previous $800 million to $1 billion.

 

SAFE also aims to reduce the shares lock-up period on the investment principal of medium- and long-term QFII on buying pension funds, insurance funds and open-ended Chinese funds - from 12 months to three.

 

The new moves immediately brought about a sharp rise in index futures in later trading in Hong Kong's stock market that day, as most investors believe the quota increase signals that the central government could take effective measures to support the securities market if necessary. This is good news for global stock markets, especially Hong Kong.

 

According to a SAFE official, the main objective of the draft is to improve and standardize the QFII foreign exchange management. This is not only a designated process in opening China's capital account, but also an endeavor to coordinate with the relevant departments to boost the development of the domestic capital market. This is an appropriate time to formulate the new rules. The key to buoying up confidence in China's economy and driving the world economy out of recession is to ensure a sustained and stable rise of the domestic equities market in the current special environment, as the Chinese stock market is a "policy market". The Chinese government has the responsibility and competence to do so.

 

The QFII scheme was introduced in China in 2002 on a trial basis with 86 overseas investors being granted QFII status as of the end of July 2009. A total QFII quota amounting to $12.8 billion has been approved by SAFE until the end of 2008 while at the same time, China has proposed to raise the total QFII investment quota to $30 billion. During the first US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in August, Chinese top officials reiterated that they would hasten the examination and approval of QFII investment quota. It is estimated that the new rules will bring in an incremental capital of $17.2 billion. Some economic analysts, however, pointed out that there is still a large gap between the approved $12.8 billion and the proposed $30 billion.

 

The draft rules will further lay a solid foundation for the opening-up system of China's securities market and facilitate the overseas investors' orderly entry into it, thus promoting its sustained and stable development. We noticed that during the past few years after the introduction of QFII, the overseas investors' enthusiasm was not as high as we expected. There are two reasons for it. On the one hand, foreign investors would not like to enter a high-stake market when China's stock market risk began surging since the second half of 2007. On the other hand, the US subprime crisis was looming since 2007, especially after Sept 2008 when many overseas investment institutions were plunged into difficulties in their domestic markets and could not pay attention to foreign markets. But now with positive changes in China's stock market, foreign investors can invest in China at any moment as long as they are willing to do so. The problem is not whether overseas investors have the desire to invest, but whether China's stock market has good investment opportunities to attract them.

 

Therefore, the Chinese government should undertake the responsibility of safeguarding the sustained and stable development of the domestic securities market in a way as to offer more and better chances for investors both at home and abroad. The new rules show the authority's resolve and competence to maintain a sound development momentum of the stock market.

In addition, we should be fully aware that the recent ups and downs of the domestic stock market were not only incompatible with China's robust economic recovery, but also left negative effects on the international financial markets, leading many markets around the world to follow suit. It is not an exaggeration to say that if China falters, the world recovery, too, will be affected. The large drop in share prices or unstable A-shares market will definitely deal a blow to public confidence in domestic economic recovery and accordingly slacken the recovery step of the world economy.

 

China's stock market has become more influential and correlated with other markets all over the world than ever before. So the central government should adopt effective measures to guarantee the sound development of domestic markets so as to boost public confidence in China's economic recovery and further propel the world economy out of recession. In this regard, the draft rules not only provide convenience for QFII in entering the Chinese market, but also reflect the central government's endeavor and practice in bracing China and benefiting the world.

 

The author is a researcher with Institute of Finance and Banking of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

 

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

 

CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

GROWING DEBT MAKES OBAMA'S ECONOMIC TASK TOUGHER

 

When US President Barack Obama assumed office, he faced the most serious economic and financial crisis of any president since Franklin Roosevelt. In order to address the deep and severe crisis he inherited, Obama started from two main premises.

 

The most immediate priority was "to rescue the economy by restoring confidence and breaking the vicious cycle of economic contraction and financial failure", said Lawrence Summers, Obama's key adviser on economic policy, in July. "Second, the recovery from this crisis would be built not on the flimsy foundation of asset bubbles but on the firm foundation of productive investment and long-term growth."

 

During the past eight months, the Obama administration has resorted to extraordinarily aggressive measures to rescue and begin rebuilding the economy.

 

With its first goal, the administration has achieved significant progress. With its second goal, the future is murkier.

 

The numbers tell the story. According to US Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal budget deficit for 2009 will be $1.6 trillion. At more than 11 percent of GDP, it is the highest since World War II.

 

America's soaring deficit is driven by weak revenues and rising spending associated with the global economic downturn and financial turmoil. It has been boosted by a wide array of federal policies, including the stimulus legislation and aid for the financial, housing, and auto sectors.

 

While most private sector economists now believe that the US recession has ended or will end soon, CBO anticipates a relatively slow and tentative recovery. Economic growth will be restrained by a number of forces, including global economic weakness, continued strains on financial markets, and households' need to rebuild their savings.

 

With recovery, the deficit will shrink but still remain more than $500 billion a year. That is more than 3 percent of GDP through the 2010s, assuming that current laws and policies remain in place.

 

By the same token, public debt will grow. In 2001, the debt was 33 percent of GDP. By the end of this year, it is expected to soar to an estimated 54 percent and grow to 68 percent of GDP by 2019. The deficit is expected to soar, too, to more than $9 trillion.

 

Coupled with rising interest rates, the accumulating federal debt would mean a near tripling of net interest payments (relative to the size of the economy) through the 2010s.

 

The reality may be worse because even these projections are based on a so-called baseline scenario, which implies that many policy adjustments that lawmakers have routinely made in the past will not occur.

 

Assuming that such changes do occur, it is possible to outline a more realistic scenario.

 

 

Under the spending and revenue policies incorporated in this alternative scenario, federal debt is projected to surpass 100 percent of GDP by 2023. CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf has called such fiscal trends potentially explosive.

 

On Aug 21, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that, despite substantial progress, "strains persist" in many markets. The credit is not flowing adequately to ensure a sustainable recovery.

 

While banks are not willing to lend, households are not eager to borrow. The former are coping with a risky economic landscape. The latter are burdened with enormous debt.

 

Despite the presumed recovery, the Fed continues to hold short-term interest rates at 0-0.25 percent - the lowest level in the US history. And in the past year, securities and other assets on the Fed's balance sheet have more than doubled to $2.08 trillion.

 

From Bernanke's standpoint, the priority is to avoid a double-dip recession, whereas the risk of inflation - under the present conditions - is perceived as less of a threat.

 

In the long-term, almost all projected growth in federal spending, other than interest payments on the debt, comes from growth in spending on healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid) and social security.

 

In order to make a strong and sustainable recovery, the Obama administration thus needs to implement a broad change program, which extends from the deficit to healthcare. The question is: Will Americans continue to support the administration in this highly complex balancing act, which requires difficult choices and tradeoffs?

 

For success, Obama needs relatively high favorability and job performance ratings, including the support of the administration's economic policy and the way it is tackling the deficit and healthcare reform.

 

Yet, as the White House has been determinedly rescuing the US economy, its support has been eroding among Americans over the past eight months.

 

When Obama entered the White House in January, three out of four Americans had a favorable opinion of the new president. Today, his favorability rating is about 55 percent, while his unfavorability rating has almost doubled to 40 percent.

 

At the beginning of his term, more than half of all Americans approved the way Obama was handling the federal budget deficit. Today, the administration's deficit policy divides the nation.

 

Obama's plans seek to reduce long-term deficits tied to the soaring costs of the primary entitlement programs. This is vital because federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid combined is projected to double from 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent by the mid-2030s.

 

The current debate on the healthcare reform has divided Americans. Nobody would like to take the political responsibility for difficult economic choices.

 

Obama inherited the worst US economy since the Great Depression but his support has eroded. Still, in order to sustain their leadership, Democrats need strong economic performance in 2010 to win the Congressional elections.

 

 

Significant policy adjustments are needed to put the US budget on a sustainable course. The costs of postponing action are prohibitive.

 

The question facing America is no longer whether to address the issue of rising deficits and debt. The point is to tackle them as soon as possible and to develop a consensus on how to do it. And that's easier said than done.

 

The author is the research director of International Business at the India, China and America Institute

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDITORIAL from The Pioneer, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Financial Express, The Hindu, The Statesman’s, The Tribune, Deccan Chronicle, Deccan Herald, Economic Times, The Telegraph, The Assam Tribune, Pakistan Observer, The Asian Age, The News, The New York Times, China Daily, Japan Times, The Gazette, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Guardian, JakartaPost, The Moscow Times, The Bottom Line and more only on EDITORIAL.

 

 

 

Project By

SAMARTH

a trust – of the people by the people for the people

An Organisation for Rastriya Abhyudaya

(Registered under Registration Act 1908 in Gorakhpur, Regis No – 142- 07/12/2007)

Central Office: Basement, H-136, Shiv Durga Vihar, Lakkarpur, Faridabad – 121009

Cell: - 0091-93131-03060

Email – samarth@samarth.co.in, central.office@samarth.co.in

Registered Office: Rajendra Nagar (East), Near Bhagwati Chowk, Lachchipur

Gorakhnath Road, Gorakhpur – 273 015