EDITORIAL 22.09.09

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 22,  edition 000304 , 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. THE HANGMAN WAITS
2. BACK TO THE PAST IN NEPAL
3. AN OPAQUE JUDICIARY-A SURYA PRAKASH
4. CORRUPTION THRIVES IN OUR SYSTEM-KUNAL SAHA
5. CHINA’S NUKE BAZAAR
6. CHINA MUST BE ASKED TO EXPLAIN-B RAMAN
7. AMERICAN PARANOIA-GWYNNE DYER
8. SPECULATION DRIVING FOOD PRICES-SHIVAJI SARKAR

 

TIMES OF INDIA

1. BIGGER ISN'T BETTER
2. BABY STEPS TO PROGRESS
3. THE GAME'S NOT OVER-BORIA MAJUMDAR
4. BOLLYWOOD IS VALID CINEMA
5. IT CHURNS OUT BILGE
6. GET DOWN TO EARTH-RUPA SENGUPTA
7. MEMORIES OF DAYS PAST-R EDWIN SUDHIR

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. ABERRATIONS AS THE NORM

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

2. PRESS CHARGES
3. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
4. WATCH HIM
5. G-20 HOPE AND PRAYER-SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI
6. URBAN LIMITS-Y P RAJESH
7. HOW CAN THE CONGRESS MAKE IT ON ITS OWN?-ADAM ZIEGFELD
8. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME-SHAILAJA BAJPAI

 

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. THE CHINESE WORKERS ISSUE
2. SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT
3. WHO ACCOUNTS FOR THE ACCOUNTANTS?-KRISHNAMURTHY V SUBRAMANIAN
4. ARE WE DECOUPLING YET AGAIN?-AMITENDU PALIT
5. STRIKE ONE, STRIKE TWO-MG ARUN

 

THE HINDU

1. TOWARDS EFFECTIVE H1N1 VACCINE
2. FROM BAD TO WORSE
3. THE IMMINENT DEMISE OF NEW LABOUR -HASAN SUROOR
4. BRING BACK JAGANNATH AZAD’S PAKISTAN ANTHEM -BEENA SARWAR
5. HUMOUR AND HERESY -VALSON THAMPU
6. DEVELOPMENT OF A(H1N1) VACCINE ON TRACK: WHO CHIEF

 

THE ASIAN AGE

1. FIGHT NAXALS WITH GUNS AND BUTTER
2. MISSED POLICY OPPORTUNITY-JAYATI GHOSH
3. DECODING H1N1-ARIF ALI
4. ON CHINA, TALK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG STICK-SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY

 

THE TRIBUNE

1. INDIA’S N-CAPABILITY
2. PAKISTAN DID IT!
3. WORTHY DIRECTIVE
4. THAROOR’S TWITTER-BY S. NIHAL SINGH
5. TWEET, TWEET-BY ROOPINDER SINGH
6. INTER-LINKING OF RIVERS-BY ARABINDA GHOSE
7. US RETHINKING AFGHAN STRATEGY-BY RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN AND KAREN DEYOUNG
8. MAMATA BEGINS AUSTERITY DRIVE

 

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

1. BORDER ROW
2. MAYAWATI AND STATUES
3. PROTECTING ENVIRONMENT
4. DECLARATION OF ASSETS AND HIGHER JUDICIARY-ARUP BORBORA
5. NE COAL FIELDS: SILVER LINING AND SHADOWS-HITENDRA NATH SARMA

 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. IDIOMATIC IDYLLS: ENGLISH IS IN CRISIS
2. KUDOS, JAIRAM: ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY TO CEDE POWER
3. INSURANCE NEEDS CAPITAL-RUBBERY INSTINCTS
4. TIME TO TIGHTEN FISCAL BELTS AROUND THE WORLD-ABHEEK BARMAN
5. LOCKED-IN IS AS LOCKED-IN DOES

 

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. FIGHT NAXALS WITH GUNS AND BUTTER -BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
2. ON CHINA, TALK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG STICK -BY SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY
3. CRACK THE WHIP, TAKE THE BANKERS HEAD-ON -BY PAUL KRUGMAN
4. MISSED POLICY OPPORTUNITY -BY JAYATI GHOSH
5. OF POLISH ANGST & NATO’S RELEVANCE -BY ROGER COHEN
6. DECODING H1N1 -BY ARIF ALI

THE STATESMAN

1. ASTRONOMERS ‘SPOT’ METEORITE ON VAST NULLABOR PLAIN
2. MOVES IN MAHARASHTRA
3. MERCY POLITICS
4. GUBERNATORIAL INTERVENTION
5. NIRMALENDU BIKASH RAKSHIT
6. CAUGHT NAPPING

 

THE TELEGRAPH

1. POOR COUNT
2. ALL ABOUT EVE
3. SURPRISINGLY GOOD NEWS -ASHOK V. DESAI
4. A FESTIVAL UNIQUELY ITS OWN
5. FEELINGS AND FLIGHT
6. THOU SHALL NOT HAVE FUN

 

DECCAN HERALD

1. CLIMATE CHANGE MEET FACES DAUNTING TASK-BY NEIL MCFARQUHAR
2. CONSPICUOUS AUSTERITY-BY H N ANANDA

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

1. WOBBLING WASHINGTON
2. GETTING BEHIND OBAMA-DAVID NEWMAN
3. NO HOLDS BARRED: OUR DREAM: A NATIONAL FAMILY DINNER NIGHT-SHMULEY BOTEACH
4. THE REGION: MEET THE NEXT PALESTINIAN LEADER-BARRY RUBIN
5. WHO'S BEING UNFAIR?-RICHARD GOLDSTONE
6. ENCOURAGING THE PERPETRATORS-YORAM DORI
7. WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME-YAGIL HENKIN

 

HAARETZ

1. RESPONSIBILITY MEANS JOBS -BY HAARETZ EDITORIAL
2. AN EDUCATIONAL INTROSPECTION -BY NEHEMIA SHTRASLER
3. TOO BIG TO IGNORE -BY MOSHE ARENS
4. LIVNI'S CHANCE -BY NIVA LANIR
5. A REFERENDUM WON'T HELP -BY CHAIM GANS

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. THE RIGHTS OF CORPORATIONS
2. MS. SMITH AND THE WASHINGTON GAME
3. BORDER FANTASIES
4. WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
5. THE HARD AND BITTER TRUTH -BY BOB HERBERT
6. THREE CHEERS FOR IRVING -BY DAVID BROOKS
7. WHAT OBAMA SAID TO PATERSON, MAYBE -BY JOHN KENNEY
8. MALADIES OF INTERPRETERS -BY JOSHUA FOUST

 

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. INFERIORITY OF ANY LIFE LIVED ONLINE
2. POLICY BEFORE POLITICS
3. A NEW PUSH FOR PEACE

 

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. TELL THE DRIVER: CHANGE NEEDED
2. NAME IT TO TAME IT
3. RUDD NEEDS ONE STORY HERE AND IN THE WIDER WORLD
4. MISSING MUMBAI MISSES THE POINT, PREMIER

 

THE GURDIAN

1. UNIVERSITY FINANCE: THE DEBATE THAT ISN'T
2. FRANCE: TRIAL OF THE DECADE
3. IN PRAISE OF… REFORMING THE WEATHER FORECAST

 

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. LESS THAN STERLING DEMOCRACY
2. IS EARTH'S METHANE A TIME BOMB?-BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON
3. FACE UP TO CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN GAZA-BY CESAR CHELALA

 

THE KOREA HERALD

1. DETAINED IN SINGAPORE
2. SMOKING SOLDIERS
3. THE POST-CHEN HEALING OF TAIWAN -SIN-MING SHAW

 

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

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

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

THE HANGMAN WAITS

GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT DELAY JUSTICE

There is nothing pleasant about capital punishment or the act of carrying it out — execution is by definition horrifying. Yet, it is precisely because of this reason that individuals who commit gruesome crimes or seek to wage war on the state by indulging in terrorism are sentenced to death. It is both fitting punishment for their criminal deed as well as a deterrent for those who may be tempted to follow in their footsteps. But neither purpose is served if the state fails to carry out the sentence swiftly — without, of course, short-circuiting the judicial process as well as the system to appeal for clemency. As of now, there are 26 criminals lodged in various jails who have been sentenced to death for a variety of offences ranging from mass murder to terrorism. Among them is Mohammed Afzal Guru, the mastermind behind the 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament House: He was tried and found guilty by the courts; in 2006 the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence given to him by the lower courts. Three years later, he continues to spend time in a ‘condemned cell’ as the Union Government sits on his mercy petition, refusing to take a view either way. We have heard specious reasons trotted out by the Government for the seemingly inexplicable delay: That it takes time to deal with each mercy petition; that there are others ahead of Afzal Guru in the queue, waiting for their mercy petitions to be upheld or turned down; and, that such decisions can’t just be rushed. All this and more, of course, is balderdash. If the Government is dilly-dallying, it is entirely because it feels Afzal Guru’s execution would have a negative political impact and upset the Congress’s Muslim vote-bank. Nothing could be farther from the truth; indeed, such thinking is an insult to India’s Muslims as it casts aspersions on an entire community’s loyalty to the nation. The Supreme Court has rightly criticised the treatment of condemned prisoners as “chattel and pawns” for political objectives.

There are other aspects to inordinate delays in dealing with mercy petitions of those who have been sentenced to death: They live from day to day in a wretched condition; their families equally suffer on account of an uncertain future. It could be argued that there is no reason why we should feel kindly towards those who have committed ghastly crimes. After all, they did not allow human feelings to intervene and prevent them from acting in the most inhuman manner. But that would in no manner mitigate the state’s responsibility in taking an early view on whether or not to commute a condemned person’s death sentence. The Supreme Court has highlighted this obligation of the state in its recent judgement upholding the death penalty given to a man who murdered his family in cold blood. It has also underscored the relevance of Article 72 and Article 161 of the Constitution which respectively make the Governor and the President responsible for taking a prompt decision. The decision, really, is taken by the Government and endorsed by either the Governor or the President who act according to the advice proffered to them by the Council of Ministers. In Afzal Guru’s case, it is the Union Cabinet which has to take a view and the sooner it does so, the better it shall be for the cause of justice.

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

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

BACK TO THE PAST IN NEPAL

PRACHANDA IS HELPING NOBODY

The recent statement of Nepal’s Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal — or Prachanda as he is popularly known — that there is going to be another round of “decisive protests” if the country’s political parties fail to break the current impasse is highly irresponsible to say the least. That the Maoists in Nepal are contemplating sponsoring yet another ‘people’s revolution’ not only shows how power-hungry they are but also the kind of responsibility they feel they have towards the development of that country and the welfare of its people. For, Nepal can ill-afford another period of instability, political or otherwise. It is imperative that all political forces in Kathmandu realise this and channelise their energies towards more pressing issues such as the evolution of a new Nepali Constitution. It is clear that the Maoists are smarting at having been made to sit in the Opposition benches in the Constituent Assembly. But this is something that the Left-wing extremists have brought upon themselves. Had they not seen their electoral performance in 2008 as a mandate to implement policies as they pleased without consulting the other political parties, and sincerely worked towards fully integrating their cadre with the democratic mainstream, the Maoists could have still been in power.

It is quite apparent that the Maoists’ vision of Nepal is one that gives them unbridled power to run the country as they please. It is from this that their demand of sacking Nepali Army chief Gen Rukmangad Katawal stemmed. It is also because of their dream of converting Nepal into a one-party state that the Maoists want to make the judiciary subservient to the Government. It is ironical that so far all the proposals of the CPN(Maoists) have been in contradiction to a healthy democratic republic, which the Maoists had promised to usher in when they signed the peace agreement that ended the decade-long insurgency in Nepal. Therefore, for Prachanda to claim that the Maoists still represent the will of the people and that their demands and policies are in consonance with the electorate is disingenuous. Ever since they decided to join the political process, every time the Maoists have not had the final say, they have threatened to go back to their violent ways or let loose their Young Communist League goons on the streets of Kathmandu. This is highly deplorable and does Nepal no good whatsoever. If the Maoists are to truly contribute to the development of Nepal, they must refrain from such strong-arm tactics. They must help create conditions that are conducive for growth and stability. Threatening the peace will only delay the formation and adoption of a new Nepali Constitution and keep the political process in a limbo. Nepal’s Maoists must learn the art of dialogue and negotiations and shun the path of violence.

 

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

            THE PIONEER

COLUMN

AN OPAQUE JUDICIARY

A SURYA PRAKASH

The ugly controversy that has erupted over the proposed elevation of Chief Justice PD Dinakaran of the Karnataka High Court to the Supreme Court is illustrative of the wide-ranging dissatisfaction across institutions and professions over the present system of appointment of members of the higher judiciary. It is indeed rare to see so many Bar Associations (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and the Supreme Court) raise their voice against an appointment and to press for a system of selection of judges that is transparent and fair.

The frustration that is visible in the reactions of lawyers via these fora is understandable given the inaction in judicial and executive quarters even to the weighty opinions of important national commissions, standing committees of Parliament, eminent jurists and professional bodies, all of whom have been pleading for a more broad-based system to select judges.

While under the law as it exists today, it is entirely up to the collegium of judges to take a call on the allegations levelled against this particular judge, the hullabaloo over Justice Dinakaran’s elevation only highlights the inadequacy of the procedure that is in vogue ever since the Supreme Court accorded primacy to the opinion of the Chief Justice of India and the collegium of judges in choosing members of the higher judiciary.

The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, which was headed by former Chief Justice of India MN Venkatachalaiah, declared in 2002 that it was not satisfied with the present arrangement in regard to judicial appointments in which the opinion of the collegium of Supreme Court judges would have primacy over the opinions of others, including that of the President. It called for a more participatory mode which would ensure effective participation of both the executive and the judiciary. It noted that on a plain reading of Article 124 of the Constitution, the power of appointment of judges vests in the President and the President is expected to perform this function “after” consultation and not “in” consultation with the Chief Justice of India.

The Commission recalled how the law in regard to judicial appointments had undergone change over the years. For example, Article 217(1) of the Constitution requires the President to consult the Chief Justice of India, the Governor and the Chief Justice of the High Court while appointing judges to the High Courts. In SP Gupta’s case (First Judges Case), the question arose as to whether among the three judges to be consulted, the Chief Justice of India had primacy. The court said that Article 217(1) placed all the three functionaries on the same pedestal.

In the Second Judges Case (1993), the court said the Chief Justice of India must take into account the opinion of two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court to ensure that the opinion is not merely his individual opinion but is in fact “the collective opinion of the body of men at the apex level in the judiciary”. Also, the opinion of the Chief Justice of India so formed “should be determinative and almost binding on the President”. The court favoured an “integrated participatory consultative process” for selecting the best and most suitable persons available for appointment. However, in case of a disagreement between the President and the Chief Justice of India, “the opinion of the latter must prevail”. Later in 1998, the court described the collegium as the Chief Justice of India and four senior-most judges when this issue came up yet again via a presidential reference under Article 143.

The NCRWC felt that the post-1993 arrangement for appointment of judges needed improvement. It said that a National Judicial Commission headed by the Chief Justice of India and comprising two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, the Union Law Minister and an eminent person nominated by the President in consultation with the Chief Justice of India should select judges. The NCRWC said, “It would be worthwhile to have a participatory mode with the participation of both the executive and the judiciary in making such recommendations.” In other words, it wanted the consultative process to be more broad-based.

Parliament has been exercised over the complete monopoly of the judiciary in regard to appointment of judges ever since the Second Judges Case. In 2006, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice expressed its dissatisfaction with the procedure adopted since 1993. It urged the Government to come up with an alternative mechanism which would ensure the involvement of both the executive and the judiciary in the process of selecting judges.

More recently, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission has come out strongly in favour of a National Judicial Council to select judges. Though the Second ARC differed from the MN Venkatachalaiah Commission on the composition of this body, the central theme remained the same. It said the NJC should be headed by the Vice-President and comprise the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the Chief Justice of India, the Union Law Minister and the Leaders of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. It said the appointment of judges should be a bipartisan process above day-to-day politics.

However, all these suggestions and the unanimous opinion against the present system of appointment of judges have just not been acted upon. Apart from the commission headed by Mr Venkatachalaiah, committees of Parliament, the Administrative Reforms Commission, the Forum for Judicial Accountability, eminent jurists and legal luminaries like Mr Shanti Bhushan, Mr Fali Nariman and Mr Ram Jethmalani, and Bar Associations are seeking a more transparent and credible system to appoint judges.

The judiciary, however, seems unwilling to shed its insular approach to judicial appointments and the executive appears to lack the moral courage to make law on the lines suggested by Mr Venkatachalaiah and others to overcome the limitations imposed by the Supreme Court in the Second Judges Case. By resisting change, the higher judiciary is giving the impression that it is still not ready to apply the principles of transparency and accountability which it enforces in other organs of the state. If this impasse continues, we can be certain that the current rumpus over a judge’s elevation to the Supreme Court will not be the last. Over to the Chief Justice of India.

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

THE PIONEER

COLUMN

CORRUPTION THRIVES IN OUR SYSTEM

KUNAL SAHA

There can be no argument that the single most important factor halting India’s progress is the pervasive corruption in the country, especially in the public sector. Despite impressive showing in overall economy and trade in the recent times, India is still considered as one of the most corrupt nations in the world.

Petty corrupt practices like a police constable demanding bribe from a traffic violator are unmistakable on the street. But the abundance of corruption that truly impedes development of a nation is rooted to a much deeper level. Reports of brazen corruption by high ranking officials in almost every important division of public services, including the judiciary, have hit the headlines.

Recently while suggesting that the hunt for the corrupt had so far bypassed the top, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged the CBI to go after the “big fish”. Even Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan recently called for seizure of the assets of public officials convicted in corruption cases. There are more reasons than one for the unabated growth of corruption in India. As the CJI has indicated, inordinate delay to prosecute the corrupt individuals plays a vital role in the proliferation of corruption. Even the corruption cases charged by the CBI are routinely kept pending for months before a trial could actually begin. The decision of the CBI court can then be appealed which may further linger for years in the higher court.

The Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court has recently calculated that it could take another 466 years to clear the backlog of cases. This absurd number underscores a critical reason for failure to curb corruption in India.

The confiscation of the property of unscrupulous officials convicted for corruption under the Prevention of Corruption Act, as suggested by the CJI, may prove to be effective. However, public servants, who have accumulated colossal amount of wealth through corrupt practices while in the office, should receive exemplary punishment that must also include significant time in jail as it is unlikely that they would save illicit wealth in their own names.

The purpose of any punishment by the judicial system must include its role as a deterrent for similar crimes in the future. While the call from the CJI for more stringent action against corruption is laudable, a complete overhaul of the entire judicial as well as political system are essential to bring down the stiffly climbing graph of corruption in India. Without an expeditious justice delivery system, the problem of corruption cannot be removed from India.

 

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

THE PIONEER

OPED

CHINA’S NUKE BAZAAR

IT’S NOW OFFICIAL. AQ KHAN PASSED ON THE KNOW-HOW OF MAKING NUCLEAR BOMBS TO IRAN AND LIBYA. BUT IT WAS CHINA WHICH SUPPLIED PAKISTAN WITH BLUEPRINTS AND FUEL TO MAKE THE ISLAMIC BOMB FOR USE AGAINST INDIA. CHINA MUST BE ASKED TO EXPLAIN

B RAMAN

It was known in 2004 that AQ Khan, Pakistan’s rogue nuclear scientist, who is wanted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, for interrogation in connection with his nuclear proliferation to North Korea, Iran and Libya, had left a letter with his wife Henny, who is of Dutch origin, and their daughter, giving some details of his proliferation activities with the knowledge of the political and military leadership. The reported purpose of the letter was to tell his people that whatever he did, he did at the instance of the political and military leadership of the country and that he was not acting as a rogue proliferator as was sought to be made out by Pakistan’s leaders.

He reportedly wanted his wife to make the letter public if any harm came his way. People close to him had also leaked to sections of the Pakistani media information about the letter and his instructions for its release. He feared that he might be prosecuted and jailed on the basis of confessions extracted under duress, or that he would be handed over to the IAEA for interrogation and prosecution under US pressure.

Neither of these contingencies happened. The Pervez Musharraf Government pressured him to admit those proliferation activities, which had already come to the notice of the US and the IAEA, and project them as carried out by him on his own independent initiative without the knowledge of the political and military leadership. In return, he was promised that he would be merely kept under house arrest to satisfy the US and not prosecuted or handed over to the IAEA for interrogation. He agreed to this deal.

After the Pakistan People’s Party-led Government headed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani came to power in March last year, it removed some of the restrictions on his meeting others in his house. He took advantage of this to tell some Japanese correspondents that his contacts with North Korea were within the knowledge of Gen Musharraf. Mr Gilani’s Government denied his allegations and reimposed the restrictions on his interaction with journalists and others. On an appeal filed on his behalf, he was released from house arrest by a court, but was told that he could not travel inside the country without the prior permission of the Government. The restrictions on his meeting journalists remained.

He again took up the matter before the Lahore High Court, which ordered the removal of all restrictions on his movements inside the country. These restrictions have been re-imposed by the Government through a fresh order.

Apparently angered by the continuing restrictions on him, his wife or daughter seems to have released the letter written by him to them in December 2003, giving some details of his proliferation activities undertaken, according to him, at the instance of the Benazir Bhutto Government in the case of Iran and an unnamed Army General in the case of North Korea. It also gives details of the assistance received by Pakistan from China for the development of a nuclear bomb.

The letter has reached the hands of a journalist, Simon Henderson, who received the letter, has published a story based on it in the Sunday Times of London dated September 20, 2009. Henderson has sought to give the impression that he got hold of the letter independently through his contacts unconnected to the Khan family and that it has been in his possession since 2007.

It is to be noted that he has not published the entire letter which, according to him, ran into two pages. He has published only three or four paragraphs. He has given some details of what the letter contained about China, North Korea and Iran. He says that the letter also refers to Libya, without giving any details. Is there an attempt by him to potect Libya? If so, why?

The Sunday Times article gives only details of Khan’s proliferation activities undertaken with the knowledge, if not at the instance, of the political and/or military leadership of Pakistan. It is silent on the proliferation activities undertaken by him at his own instance, such as the supply of nuclear equipment to Libya and the setting up of facilities in Malaysia with the help of a Muslim of Indian/Sri Lankan origin for the manufacture of enrichment centrifuges for supply to Iran and Libya.

The article is also silent on Khan’s missile proliferation activities. The details given by Khan are meant to implicate his political and military leadership without enabling the IAEA and the US to have a full idea of the nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea. Khan has taken care to see that scanty details given by him could not be used by the US and the IAEA against Iran and North Korea.

Puzzlingly, the maximum details given by him in his letter are regarding the assistance received by Pakistan from China for the development of a military nuclear capability. According to Khan’s letter, “We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong (250 km south-west of Xian). The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50 kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and five tons of UF6 (three per cent).”

The role of China in helping Pakistan develop a military nuclear capability, including the supply of the drawings of the first Chinese atomic bomb, were known earlier through human and technical intelligence reports, but this is the first time such authentic details have come from the scientist who developed Pakistan’s military nuclear programme. The details from the letter do greater damage to China than to Iran and North Korea.

While there has been considerable international focus on Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation activities through Khan, a similar focus on China’s role in nuclear proliferation has not been there so far. There have been many congressional inquiries in the US on China’s missile proliferation activities, but not on its nuclear proliferation activities. It is the copies of the atomic bomb drawings passed on by China to Pakistan which were subsequently passed on by Khan to Iran and Libya. India and Israel have been the worst sufferers of the Chinese nuclear proliferation in favour of Pakistan — India directly and Israel indirectly.

Apart from reviving the demand for the interrogation of Khan outside Pakistan by an independent IAEA team of experts, the IAEA should also ask for a full disclosure by China of its nuclear proliferation. An inquiry into this should also be taken up by the relevant US Congressional committees.

At a time when efforts are being made by the Government of India to discourage the anti-Chinese hysteria in our media, the disclosures in Khan’s letter of details of the Chinese assistance in developing an atomic bomb for possible use against India would add to the suspicions and fears in our civil society over what is seen as China’s malevolent attitude towards India.

If China really values improved relations with India, it should volunteer a full disclosure of its nuclear supply relationship with Pakistan and give credible assurances to the Indian people that such instances will not recur in future. Unless and until this is done the trust deficit between the two countries will continue to remain wide.

The writer is director of the Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai.

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

THE PIONEER

OPED

AMERICAN PARANOIA

THAT’S WHAT PROMPTED MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEM

GWYNNE DYER

Some experts have doubts about the missile shield concept,” as the more cautious reporters put it. (That example comes from the BBC website.) A franker journalist would say that the ballistic missile defence system that the Bush Administration planned to put into Poland and the Czech Republic, and that US President Barack Obama has just cancelled, has never worked and shows few signs of ever doing so.

Mr Obama has done the right thing. It saves money that would have been wasted, and it repairs relations with Russia, which was paranoid about the system being so close to its borders. And the cancellation also signals a significant decline in the paranoia in Washington about Iran.

‘Paranoia’ is the right word in both cases. Iran doesn’t have any missiles that could even come within range of the BMD system that was to go into Poland and the Czech Republic, let alone nuclear warheads to put on them. According to US intelligence assessments, Iran is not working on nuclear weapons, nor on missiles that could reach Europe, let alone the United States. Washington’s decision to deploy the system anyway was so irrational that it drove the Russians into paranoia as well.

Their intelligence services told them the same thing that the US intelligence community told the Bush Administration: That Iran had no nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles, nor any possibility of getting them within less than five to 10 years. So what was the US really up to, siting the system so close to Russia’s borders?

The intelligence people in Moscow also told Russian leaders that the US system was useless junk that had never managed to intercept an incoming missile in an honest operational test. (All the tests were shamelessly rigged to make it easy for the intercepting missiles to strike their targets, and still they failed most of the time.) Besides, although the planned BMD base in Poland was close to Russia, it was in the wrong place to intercept Russian missiles.

So why did the Russians get paranoid about it? Because although they knew how the military-industrial complex worked in the US (and they have similar problems with their own domestic version), they simply could not believe that the US would spend so much money on something so stupid and pointless. Surely there was something they were missing; some secret American strategy that would put them at a disadvantage.

No, there wasn’t, and almost everybody (except some Poles and Czechs who want US troops on their soil as a guarantee against Russian misbehaviour, and some people on the American right) was pleased by Mr Obama’s decision to pull the plug on the project. As Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to Nato, said: “It’s like having a decomposing corpse in your flat (apartment) and then the undertaker comes and takes it away.”

But why did the Bush Administration choose to deploy this non-functioning weapons system in eastern Europe? Indeed, the same BMD system has already been installed in California and Alaska (to intercept North Korean missiles that cannot actually reach the US either). It’s as if Ford or GM designed a car with faulty steering, and decided to put it on the market anyway.

The answer lies in another weapons project that began in 1946: The nuclear-powered airplane. It could stay airborne for months and fly around the world without refueling, its boosters promised, and that would give America a huge strategic advantage. There was only one problem. The nuclear reactor needed a lot of shielding, because the aircrew would be only feet (metres) away. The shields had to be made of lead. And lead-filled airplanes cannot fly.

Fifteen years and about 10 billion dollars (in today’s money) later, there was still no viable design for a nuclear-powered bomber, let alone a flyable prototype. Ballistic missiles were taking over the job of delivering nuclear weapons anyway. But when Robert McNamara became defence secretary in the Kennedy Administration in 1961, he was astonished to discover that the nuclear-powered aircraft was still in the defence budget.

It was, he said, “as if I came down to breakfast in the morning and found a dead walrus on the dining-room table.” It took McNamara two more years to kill the programme, against fierce opposition from the Air Force and defence industry. The fact that the nuclear-powered aircraft did not and could not work was irrelevant.

Former General Dwight D Eisenhower’s presidency is perhaps best remembered for his warning against what he named the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell speech in 1960, but he actually gave two warnings. The other was that “public policy could become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” These were the lobbies that kept the nuclear airplane going for 17 years, and they have kept the BMD system going for more than a quarter-century already.

President Obama has killed the most pointlessly provocative of the BMD deployments, but he still cannot take the political risk of admitting that the system doesn’t work (though he twice explained in his speech that the US needed missile defence systems that were “proven and cost-effective.”) It is the grandchild of Star Wars, a sacred relic blessed by Saint Ronald Reagan himself, and it will keep appearing on various dining-room tables for years to come.

The writer is a London-based independent journalist.

 

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

THE PIONEER

                                                        OPED

SPECULATION DRIVING FOOD PRICES

A NEW UN REPORT SLAMS THE PROFIT MOTIVES OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS

SHIVAJI SARKAR

 

Food prices are rising globally not because of demand-supply mismatch but due to activities of financial speculators and trans-national corporations’ profiteering moves, two successive reports of UN Conference on Trade and Development have warned.

The World Investment Report on TNCs, Agricultural Production and Development 2009 does not see recovery in 2010 but raises hope for positive trends in 2011.

The UNCTAD report on Trade and Development 2009 says that when the financial sector is allowed to grow too much, a country lands in trouble. Many financial institutions have no social utility. The report calls for strong regulations to prevent damage to economies. It says it requires new capital management techniques.

Globally foreign direct investment declined by 14 per cent from $ 1.97 trillion to $ 1.69 trillion in 2008. Investments in developed countries have declined by 29 per cent, though cumulatively it remained high at $ 962 billion.

Overall FDI flow fell to 46 per cent to developed countries and 39 per cent to developing countries in early 2009. Particular concern has been expressed on divestments — that is largely transferring assets of subsidiaries working in different countries to the parent company.

Foreign investments to South Asia, East Asia and South-East Asia rose by 17 per cent to $ 298 billion. Investments in Africa, West Asia and Latin America also recorded increases at different levels.

The FDI in India increased from $ 25 billion in 2007 to $ 42 billion in 2008. But the first quarter of 2009 depicts a decline in the trend. China is also a beneficiary of FDI but investment outflows to other countries were more significant at $ 52 billion.

Preliminary data for over 90 countries reveals that FDI inflows plummeted in all regions in early-2009 and recovery as yet has not been noticed.

TNCs have been investing in agriculture through direct and indirect methods and FDI in agriculture is on the rise. It has triplled to $ three billion annually between 1989 and 2007, when it touched $ 32 billion.

The WIR says TNC participation in agriculture “can have negative impacts”. It can result in job losses, restrictive business practices or excessive dependence among farmers on TNCs to supply inputs or buy produce. There are concerns about “land grabbing” — a tendency that has separately been described as building up of corporate zamindars. It expresses concern over the practice of contract farming resorted to by TNCs.

The WIR says that available evidence indicates that TNCs are mostly involved in the production of cash crops. Their involvement in staple food crops — whose harvests are vital for feeding developing country populations — is significant. “This implies that there is no simple equation between food security and TNC participation in a host country’s agriculture”.

Food security, it says, includes a range of elements such as food safety and affordability. It is a sober way of saying that TNC activities are affecting food securities and raising prices. The UNCTAD calls upon the TNCs to contribute to price stability and food security. However, the report indicates without policy interventions by host countries this is unlikely to happen.

The Government has involved TNCs in agriculture in India since liberalisation in 1991, in seed imports and majority foreign ownership of seed companies. It resulted in a number of foreign seed companies entering the market and undertaking R&D. Though it does not state clearly, obliquely it links them to the plight of farmers raising cash crops like Bt cotton and other seedless genetically-mutilated corps.

For farmers who fail to meet the requirements of agribusiness firms, market conditions could become extremely difficult, the report states citing the experience in Latin America — Brazil and Argentina in particular. Supermarkets and specialised procurement agents are increasingly dominating the food marketing industry.

 The writer is a senior economic affairs journalist.

 

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

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

TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

BIGGER ISN'T BETTER

 

The brouhaha over the success or lack thereof of the thermonuclear device tested at Pokhran II is working its way up the food chain. The latest to enter the fray has been national security advisor M K Narayanan, citing the independent Atomic Energy Commission's satisfaction with the test to counter former DRDO scientist K Santhanam's claim that it was a failure. In a sense, the entire acrimonious debate has missed the point. The wrong questions are being asked, conflating the political dynamics surrounding the tests with the credibility of India's nuclear posture. Conclusions shaped by this false assumption are likely not just to be wrong, but also detrimental to Indian interests.

There is unlikely to be absolute clarity on the issue of the thermonuclear test. But that has little to do with India's no first use policy or its moratorium on further testing. A strategic position of nuclear deterrence is not founded on the quantum of damage that can be caused by a single device. It is based on an assured second-strike capability and the adversary's perception of what constitutes unacceptable retaliatory damage. And as various analysts have pointed out and as has been overlooked in the ghoulish calculus of how many casualties a thermonuclear device can cause as opposed to a fission one the threshold for such damage was shown to be extremely low during the Cold War and subsequently.

India's nuclear capabilities, then, are adequate to the task with or without thermonuclear devices. The questions that should have been asked are those relating to delivery systems and second-strike capabilities. Are the Agni III intermediate range ballistic missile user trials on track? What of the Agni-3SL, the submarine launched variant that will enable the third leg of India's nuclear triad? Are our simulation capabilities up to par? Is the survivability of India's nuclear capability, guaranteeing a retaliatory strike, assured?

With renewed impetus for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, we can re-examine our options. But the international context is very different now from what it was in 1998. Global dynamics have changed, as has India's position. It serves New Delhi far better now to join the global nuclear establishment if the major powers, for instance, ratify the CTBT. A Q Khan's revelations have highlighted just how important it is to establish a non-proliferation regime with teeth. To let such a crucial debate be hijacked by an irrelevant sideshow about a thermonuclear device would be short-sightedness of the highest magnitude.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

BABY STEPS TO PROGRESS

 

In a landmark judgement, the Bombay high court has helped the cause of those who advocate making adoption a less cumbersome process in India. The court has ruled that a Hindu couple who already have a biological daughter can adopt a girl child. For the record, the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act (HAMA) does not allow couples to adopt children who are of the same gender as their existing child. Ostensibly, this provision is in place to encourage gender parity in the realm of adoption but it does not hold much water. It also denies choice in the matter to those who want to adopt.

Adoption laws in this country are unnecessarily complicated. Further, there is a multiplicity of laws governing adoption depending on the religion to which those who want to adopt belong making the process confusing and long-drawn-out. For instance, Muslims, Christians and Parsis cannot become adoptive parents. They can only be legal guardians. However, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 (JJ Act), which is less than a decade old, supersedes personal laws. Under it, couples can become adoptive parents irrespective of the religion they belong to in the interest of rehabilitating "a narrow sub-class of children who are orphaned, abandoned or surrendered''.

Some time ago, a Delhi district judge invoked the JJ Act to allow a Muslim couple to adopt a child. It is this same Act that the Bombay high court judge has used to overrule the HAMA and allow the couple in question to go through with same-gender adoption. Unfortunately, the JJ Act is not widely known, because of which people do not benefit from it as much as they could. It has also been contested by some religious groups and governing bodies, which allege that it is an infringement on minority rights. In fact, it is a progressive step and does not undermine minority rights enshrined in our Constitution.

A society that makes it difficult for orphaned or abandoned children to find adoptive homes and parents cannot lay claim to put humanity above other considerations. Indian laws still have a lot of catching up to do in terms of addressing the rights of women and children. The sooner this is done, the brighter the chances of our society, as a whole, turning more equitable and enhancing our collective prospects.

 

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

 

TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

THE GAME'S NOT OVER

BORIA MAJUMDAR

 

Much has been written about the one-day 50-over game being in peril. Innovative ideas like splitting the game into two halves of 25 overs each, likely to revive flagging interest in this once popular innovation, are doing the rounds. The Champions Trophy in South Africa, involving the world's best, offers the sternest test for the format. If the South African organisers and International Cricket Council can deliver near full stadiums, the format will breathe easy. Else, the 2011 World Cup in the subcontinent might well turn out its epitaph.

What is lost in such speculation, of course, is that the recent one-day series between England and Australia was played to near packed houses. The India-Sri Lanka games in the Compaq Cup in Sri Lanka also attracted sizeable crowds. However, other games in the Sri Lanka tri-series involving New Zealand were played to less than half empty stadiums. Even the Indians, world cricket's biggest draw by some distance, failed to make much difference to attendance in their opening game against the Kiwis. This helps highlight the main issue concerning the 50-over format's plight: administrative inefficiency, stimulated by greed to make a fast buck. While pedigreed contests continue to draw spectators, hurriedly put together competitions fall by the wayside. In doing so, they add to the murmurs about the threats to the one-day game.

The downward curve for the 50-over format started with the World Cup in the Caribbean in 2007. A far too lengthy competition, testing people's patience, was followed by a slick two-week T20 extravaganza in South Africa, highlighting their difference in intensity and passion. It was forgotten that the Caribbean misadventure was as much an administrative blunder as anything else. Had the World Cup been a month-long affair instead of a seven-week curse, it wouldn't have turned into a drag. With the Indian Premier League capturing the world's imagination the very next year, the contrast was all the more evident. Suddenly the one-day game was in acute need of innovation.

From a serious cricket fan's perspective, the 50-over format is a perfect foil for Test cricket and the T20. It draws on skills needed in both and helps develop cricketers capable of thriving in all formats. It equips bowlers, T20 cricket's poor second cousin, offering them the opportunity to perfect skills needed in the real connoisseurs' variety: the Test match.

Perhaps the best comparison is with the 200 metres race in athletics. While the 100 metres race is considered more glamorous and throws up the fastest man or woman of the meet, the 400 metres version is considered a real test of strength and stamina. The 200 metres race, on its part, is one that tests skill, stamina and strategy all at the same time. That is one reason Usain Bolt was ecstatic after breaking his own 200-metre record in Berlin. Running around the bend at such speed, knowing how to start and finish a race, requires skills not many can master. Similarly, in the 50-over format, one needs to be technically sound to weather a storm, tackle conditions not conducive for stroke play and grind one's way out of a crisis. Unlike in T20, a fast bowler can't simply go flat out for four overs knowing that's all he has to do. Rather, bowling at the start and again at the death is a challenge only the very talented can rise to.

Given room for innovations and adjustments, doing away with the format altogether isn't prudent. While the 50-over format has thrived for over three decades, in this day and age of incessant action chances are that the T20 will outlive its charm in far shorter time. With 10-over contests already making a buzz, it is time to take stock. Trying to turn any game into a hyper-spectacle isn't always the way forward. T20 cricket, unless prudently managed, runs this risk.

It is up to the administrators to manage the three formats efficiently with sufficient intervals between them. Proper spacing out will expose spectators to different varieties of skills on display. This is essential for the harmonious coexistence of all formats of cricket. Just as the 200 metres race will always hold its special place in the Olympics, so can the 50-over format maintain its uniqueness if properly managed and nurtured.

With a few weeks left for an India-Australia seven-match 50-over one-day series, it is time we take stock. If this series is a sold out affair as expected, the current debate over the future of the format will be put to rest, albeit for the time being. It will prove that pedigreed contests still attract crowds. The debate will restart when tournaments lacking focus and purpose, like the Board of Control for Cricket in India Corporate Cup or the Sri Lanka tri-series, are hastily organised by short-sighted administrators.

The writer is senior research fellow, University of Central Lancashire.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

VIEW

BOLLYWOOD IS VALID CINEMA

 

One of India's most revered artists has delivered the ultimate putdown to its prolific film industry. In an interview M F Husain, responsible for the controversial Madhuri Dixit paintings, has called the films produced by the Hindi film industry no better than nautanki (street theatre). Husain is entitled to his opinion, of course. But we do think he is being unduly harsh on the popular Hindi film industry.

Bollywood is an incredibly successful film industry, one that outsells even Hollywood in terms of ticket sales. It has its own aesthetic and it would be wrong to judge popular Hindi cinema by international conventions. The song and dance routine might seem ridiculous to western audiences, but it appeals to the millions of Indians for whom the movie is made. Indeed, even cinema-goers abroad have learnt to appreciate Bollywood for what it is overblown sets, larger-than-life characters, strong dose of sentiment et al.

To equate good cinema with so-called meaningful cinema is to miss the wood for the trees. Just because a movie is unconventional doesn't mean it is also good. A 'serious' theme doesn't excuse bad production values, acting or direction. A typical Bollywood production can be enormous fun, from its catchy songs to the attractive leads and slickly edited action sequences. And Hindi film stars can emote with the best of them when given the chance and the script to do so. Contrary to what Husain seems to believe, a film being entertaining and making lots of money at the box office doesn't make it an artistic abomination. Husain's own experience with film-making has been less than successful, a good example that 'offbeat' doesn't translate into cinematic excellence.

Husain has also erroneously accused Bollywood of not having any influence on Indian culture. Whether it is short-term fashion trends ranging from Sadhana's famous hairstyle to Deepika Padukone's look in Love Aaj Kal, or more lasting effects on language and even wedding rituals, Bollywood not only reflects the Indian experience but also shapes it in many ways.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

COUNTERVIEW

IT CHURNS OUT BILGE

 

M F Husain might be 94 but still remains provocative. Sample what he had to say about Bollywood: it is merely a machine that churns our entertainment. He believes that besides a handful of films, Bollywood usually turns out bilge. He's quite right.

Let's accept Bollywood for what it is: an industry that is good at making formulaic films that usually appeal to the lowest common denominator. How many times have we seen the same themes being replayed over and over again? Girl falls in love with a boy whom the girl's father hates, twins get separated at birth and rags to riches stories. There may be nothing wrong with that so long as the audience is lapping it up. But we shouldn't try and credit Bollywood with producing great or even good films.

There are some who would argue that Bollywood has turned a new leaf, and there are plenty of interesting movies being made over the past few years. Yes, that's true to some extent. There has been a spate of 'crossover' films that aspire to break the shackles of formula and appeal to a sensible audience. But let's not give them more credit than due. Many of these are lifted from Hollywood and world cinema, including the songs that are the defining characteristic of Bollywood films. It's just that we've been used so long to seeing trash that even a half-decent plot seems like manna from heaven.

Ever since the first feature film in Hindi was made in 1913, Bollywood has grown by leaps and bounds. It now produces many more movies than any other film industry, including Hollywood. But what have we to show for it by way of awards? No Bollywood film has ever won an Oscar. In so many years, only three Indian films have made it to the best foreign film shortlist. That's why we had the pathetic spectacle of the country going gaga over the multiple Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, as if it were an Indian film.

 

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

 

 

TIMES OF INDIA

GET DOWN TO EARTH

RUPA SENGUPTA

 

In human imagination, the sun once circled a planet housing man's soul, locus of a cosmic tug-of-war between good and evil. Over time, man was disabused. The Copernican revolution dethroned earth as the universe's centre. The Darwinian revolution toppled humans as God's elect. Truth turned out relative. Reality's fundamental units, subatomic particles, acted playful, shifty, ungraspable. Insight into the earth's fine ecological balance wrecked the notion of nature as a backdrop, and of history as a man-centric Grand Narrative. Now genes research is unveiling needling likenesses between man and worm. Yet humans navel-gaze. They refuse to accept that they could be a transitional species like any other, that their existence is a contingent fact, not a cosmic necessity.

Blessed with formidable intelligence, man dreams of brain-powered survival: technological advance, space colonisation, even a radical alteration of his own nature as future man-machine. Sadly, from this heroic optimism, it's but a short step to narcissistic pessimism. Haunted by life's intrinsic fragility, humans obsess about calamities. Yet even when panicking about Hiroshima repeats or global warming, man exults in his own mastery: destroyed or self-destructing, he thinks he'll take the world down with him.

The ecosystem, similarly, is viewed only in terms of its capacity to sustain human life. Natural disasters are seen in terms of human casualties and damage to property. It's as if human life and all that's living on a planet cradling millions of species were one and the same. The conflation is in keeping with an anthropocentric concept of divinity: God is made in man's image, His grace denied other life forms. Man doesn't bother with a scientifically valid question a poet once asked: if fish dreamed of heaven, wouldn't their god resemble a fish?

Shedding political correctness, some scientists wonder aloud if puzzlingly destructive humans aren't an evolutionary aberration on a planet that's billions of years old. More, if their ceasing to be might not be a blessing for biodiversity. Arguing from the other end, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said the earth survivor of ice ages, meteorite hits and mass extinctions had enormous capacity to withstand man's assaults. When disaster strikes, humans could be discarded by a planetary shrug.

For most people though, it's unthinkable humanity's extinction can be a cosmic non-event. How can earth survive the moral calamity of man's absence? This illusion has a long intellectual lineage. Philosophers have said the world is Will and Idea, both human monopolies. They've claimed reality consists of phenomena as perceived by consciousness. The world, called into being by the mind, cannot exist independently of it. Only, taken to its logical end, that's to argue that the fact the earth predates human life is itself an embedded mental construct!

As humanity builds knowledge, philosophy, religion and science seem to converge at one point: reality as 'thing-in-itself' is elusive. So far, quantum physics, probing the quirky subatomic world, endorses that. Macro-reality has reference points but it's a question of scale. As Pascal wrote, the vast and the infinitesimal both escape the intellect, which is capable of grasping the 'part', not the 'totality' which can only be apprehended spiritually.

Can the natural order, then, be tamed by meanings imposed by men? The nature of its sovereignty, its resistance to forced penetration, is radical. Just as the nature of human freedom, in the existential sense, is radical. The one reinforces the other. Accepting the universe's indifference to human concerns requires intellectual courage. And apprehending its cosmic force demands a liberating intuition that helps overcome the limits of human understanding. Both efforts are necessary if man is to spare the earth thoughtless depredations.

If man thinks he alone is the measure of all things, he can know neither reality's true measure nor his own possibilities of transcendence. When such a man ceases to be, no wiser dead than living, the sun will go on shining. Distant stars will still be born and decay. Nearer home, creatures big and small will regain a terrestrial heaven from which they had been banished. And the earth may even be better off for it.

 

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

TIMES OF INDIA

ON THE ROAD

MEMORIES OF DAYS PAST

R EDWIN SUDHIR

 

National Highway 4 ran through Nasik, linking Mumbai and Agra, two great cities. For four people who sat down recently to lunch, it was a memory so dear that those who revisited the city said it was better not to return, for the change was deeply unsettling. We went there as children and some of us were even born there. The economic boom was still about 30 years away and the small town's fame, such as it was, rested largely on the legend of an epic exile. The common thread was fathers who worked for a German MNC whose unit there was headed by a quick-to-temper German, whose impatience with mediocrity was matched only by his pursuit of perfection. The highway was critical for the 12 houses of a bank colony that the company had requisitioned for families from all over the country. Several people from Bangalore stayed there in forced conviviality. A small corner of a Bangalore field represented a shield against the all-pervasive Marathi influence. Over the years, we too became Maharashtrian in many ways, assimilating culinary and cultural inputs with unnoticed, and eventually welcome, ease.

The highway was interesting for children. A left took us to Green View restaurant, which was really a dhaba; a right to Hotel Dwaraka, a traffic junction so busy for a small town that it became a landmark. For us in the colony, the dhaba was a place we could walk to for birthdays and sundry other celebrations. On the highway, we kids waited for buses that ferried us to schools. Huge trucks roared by on their way to somewhere, laden with goods. By the highway were the vineyards where famous grapes grew, which, in times to come, would be globally marketed as wine. So, as we four exchanged notes on how life, and time, had treated us, it became increasingly clear that often the past is best left undisturbed, even by nostalgia. We have become global souls in many ways, living thousands of miles apart. The bonds are more in memory, stretched by the pressures of modern-day life and Bangalore traffic. But distance is not really a big deal two connecting flights and we're in the new place we call home. The next generation will perhaps go to new frontiers and call new communities their home. For us, though, the colony by the highway will always be a cherished home.

 

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

 

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

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

ABERRATIONS AS THE NORM

 

There wasn’t any real need for more evidence, but recent events underline again how increasingly divergent the political trajectories of India and Pakistan are. Indians could never conceive of a situation where, say, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam would feel the need to leave tell-all letters about his activities with relatives as an insurance against being imprisoned or, worse, by his own government. Indians also could never imagine a situation where a former military chief and ex-president would threaten to spill State secrets to force New Delhi to end his overseas exile. Yet this was the fate of the ‘father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb,’ A.Q. Khan, and is the present situation of President Pervez Musharraf.

 

These are only symptoms of a deeper malaise. Because of its obsession with maintaining parity with a much larger India, Pakistan has repeatedly allowed its internal structure to be tampered — and remodelled — by forces broadly indifferent to its development as a democratic society. These have included repeatedly exchanging Pakistan’s foreign policy for arms and money from the United States and China; providing a home to militant Sunni ideologues in the belief that they would overrun Kashmir; and making the Pakistani State sponsors of a nuclear mafia to achieve strategic parity with India. All countries do a bit of dirty on the side. For most, such acts are infrequent and sensible ones try to take corrective measures. Only in Pakistan are such aberrations the norm. And only in Pakistan is so much of the wrong stuff ultimately at the behest of others — whether Washington, Riyadh or Mohammad Hafiz Saeed.

 

What A.Q. Khan’s “insurance” letters against his own government reveal is how the lack of a stable political culture means that even those inside the establishment cannot be certain what their country will to do to them. This explains the short-term mindset common to all Pakistani leaders. Fully expecting their moment in the sun to end prematurely in exile or worse, their only interest while in power is to accumulate money or win support from foreign governments or Islamicist groups. The final result is a nation whose polity and society are not merely dysfunctional, but whose rules and leaders change with seasons.

 

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

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

PRESS CHARGES

 

It is one thing for the Indian government to be embarrassed about the media’s loud and tactless China chant in recent days, which has ratcheted up unnecessary tension in neighbourly relations. It is another thing altogether to take a cue from the Chinese playbook and threaten punitive action against journalists for inconvenient reports.

 

Certainly, some sections of the media have exploited our simmering and unspoken China paranoia, pointing attention to repeated military incursions into Indian territory. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, these rumours gained force and momentum as talking heads on television and newspaper reports touched on the repressed trauma of 1962 and issued dire warnings. It was left to the prime minister himself to tamp down the anxiety, and assure the country that all was well on the Chinese front. As the matter threatened to destabilise a delicate diplomatic balance, the foreign secretary, the army chief and the national security advisor all stressed that while a low-level military back and forth is routine for a porous and contested boundary, there has been no significant increase in Chinese incursions along the entire 4000-plus kilometres of the border.

 

Now, the government is contemplating more serious action, threatening to file FIRs against those who reported on Chinese firing across the border. After a complaint by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, debunking a report that two Indian soldiers were injured in firing by the Chinese in northern Sikkim, there is an attempt to address such “wrong” reporting with punishing consequences. But why allow things to come to this pass? Inaccurate reporting must be fixed with facts — why did the government’s information establishment simply sit by as the stories swirled, instead of providing the correct context and data? Instead of handling the scare-mongering with calmly presented facts, such punitive action would suggest that the government now wants to paper over its own inadequacies by launching this harsh and unusual action against the media. The cold fact remains that the Indian state needs to reorient its own placatory, fearful relationship with China and compete openly, with our own aggressive infrastructure projects. Perhaps if our official bilateral relations were robust and clear, these mutterings in the media would not appear quite so threatening.

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

 

What may be innocuous for some can be immensely intimidating for others. Take steps — those simplest of concrete blocks which most children take two at a time. For a wheelchair-bound child, however, those very steps could separate her from a decent education. Barriers such as these had threatened to make the right to education legislation fall short of its noble aim: the promise that every child, regardless of circumstance, would get a decent primary education. But serious questions about the insensitivity of the original draft to disabled children came up just as it was set to being passed in Parliament. Amidst an agitation by activists and the prime minister’s intervention, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal promised Parliament that these concerns would be taken care of. Now that the dust has settled and the law passed, will Sibal deliver?

 

Reports that the HRD ministry is planning to amend the mint-fresh law to make it more disabled-friendly suggest that he will. Specifically, disabled children are to be included in the category of “children of disadvantage”. Legalese matters. Disadvantaged children get a 25 per cent quota in private schools; currently disabled children cannot benefit from this. The other change the HRD ministry is proposing is in the definition of “disabled”. There is some ambiguity on whether the current definition includes children with mental disabilities such as cerebral palsy. By clearly stating that the definition includes children covered under the National Trust Act and other laws for the disabled, this controversy would be put to rest.

 

Activists have a third complaint: the need to mandate disabled-friendly infrastructure in schools. So far, the Right to Education Act mandates “barrier-free access” in all schools. But this must include not just ramps for those unable to walk, but Braille books for the visually challenged and special teachers for those with special needs. This is a work in progress; no law can exhaustively enumerate such infrastructure. A lot depends on the perseverance of the HRD ministry and other implementing agencies. But if first moves are anything to go by, the HRD ministry seems headed in the right direction. Intimidating staircases might just become negotiable.

 

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

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WATCH HIM

 

The likes of Pramod Muthalik, founder of the Sri Ram Sene that attacked women in a Mangalore pub in January, find their sustenance in the civic outrage they cause. As such, adverse publicity does not harm them; in fact, any publicity is better than no publicity as far as they are concerned. That is why it may seem that it makes sense to deny him precisely that publicity. Yet, there is an equally good case for tracking his moves and public utterances in a sustained manner. Even now, so many months later, the atmosphere of fear created by his followers in Mangalore is palpable.

 

In a feared extension of his reach, Muthalik came to Delhi on Saturday, addressed “delegates” of sundry organisations over a two-day meet, and slipped out. (Incidentally, the deputy commissioner of police in whose jurisdiction the meet lay, claimed ignorance of Muthalik’s presence in the national capital.) It has been learnt from the “delegates” that Muthalik had come to promote his “Hindu agenda” — apart from haunting pubs, terrorising youth on Valentine’s Day and imposing a “dress code” on women university students, it appears the agenda will also include the “plight of the Hindus in countries like Sri Lanka and Malaysia”.

 

The danger posed by agendas like Muthalik’s is greatly magnified by the kind of discourse they wreak upon even those unaffected directly by their violence. In most societies there often exists, amongst a handful, a socially regressive instinct that’s silenced by the more rational, and carefree, consensus of the rest. Agitations like Muthalik’s spark that regressiveness and feed on it. And they put normal, law-abiding folks in fear of the consequences of running into his goons. Ignoring him is not an option.

 

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

 

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

G-20 HOPE AND PRAYER

SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI

 

America consumes less, exports more. China consumes more, exports less. The US dollar smoothly transits from being a strong currency that reassures foreign holders of American public debt to a relatively weaker currency that allows American exports to grow. The Chinese renminbi transits from being a weak currency that pushes Chinese exports to a relatively stronger one that becomes part of a strategy of pushing up domestic demand. Such, in broad strokes, is the economists’ vision of an ideal post-crisis world and economists have urged G-20 leaders to begin consultations on this at their Pittsburgh summit this week.

 

Economists are right to say this rebalancing of the global economy is at the heart of any global economic reform. It makes both America and China more stable economies. It reduces the supply of cheap cash to American finance (the cheap cash came from China financing America’s current account deficit). It makes America explicitly acknowledge that its public debt cannot keep indefinitely growing. It makes China explicitly acknowledge that aggressive currency manipulation cannot indefinitely be the choice for a future economic superpower. If all of this happens, the global economy will be better and safer.

 

So, yes, rebalancing is more important than new financial regulation, which gets the most media attention. Also, on regulation, a G-20-wide consensus is probably impossible to achieve; it is probably undesirable, too. The most basic regulation reform will be a formula that makes banks keep aside more capital as a boom begins. But this formula will depend on every country’s specific economic-political-financial structure and the internal negotiations it produces. The G-20 can at best talk up the need for such prudence. The rule of finance, as clearly seen in the aftermath of the crisis, is that each country buries its own dead. Therefore, efforts to make finance firms lead a less adventurous life should be country-specific as well.

 

Other supposed Pittsburgh agenda items like reforming the IMF and World Bank are also sideshows. Yes, the Bank and Fund need change. But that is not a crucial condition for a better, safer global economy. There are some great ideas about Bank-Fund reform. Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute has argued for turning the Bank into a supplier of global public good, say, smart strategies on what is called clean development; the Bank’s traditional lending having been demonstrated as being ineffective. But desirable as it is, a smarter world need not presuppose a smarter World Bank.

 

Hopefully, therefore, G-20 leaders will spend quality time talking about rebalancing. But here is a poser: rebalancing is really a G-2 thing (America and China), what can the other 18 countries contribute, especially since America and China are not quite in the habit of taking advice. There are three things they can do. One, hope. Two, pray. Three, if the hopes and prayers work, get their own strategies right in the wake of America and China changing theirs.

 

Hoping and praying are crucial because rebalancing is fraught with political issues. The most important of them is whether China’s political leadership will agree to a different currency regime and to an internal structural shift where domestic consumption is no longer small compared to exports and investment. China’s pride and China’s fear both come into play here. As does the question of managing the domestic social consequences of such a strategy shift in a country not fitted with a democracy’s safety valve.

 

America needs to play it really smart. Hectoring will not work with China. Unilateral tariff action, like the one on China-made tyres recently, will not help at all. Also, America has its own difficult transition to manage — the dollar going from being a strong to weaker currency without creating a major disruption. Frankly, any number of things can go wrong. And some almost certainly will before we can confidently say rebalancing is beginning to happen.

 

But if America and China do manage the change, other major economies will have to change as well. For example, Germany, a major exporter and an economic power house, will have to look at a more domestic consumption-driven strategy. India? India, which already works on the assumption that its domestic aggregate demand is the key to its economic transformation, needs to do just one key thing in response: not over-manage the rupee. This sounds simple. And it is.

 

Rebalancing will mean a depreciating dollar. That means an appreciating rupee. If India decides it is comfortable with a stronger rupee, its economic strategy will fit into a rebalancing global economy.

 

Interestingly and importantly, the RBI let the rupee more or less be and let it fall after the financial crisis when the dollar rose as flight to safety (US treasury bonds) became the rule in global capital movements. This was a hugely smart move by the RBI and helped India weather the crisis much better. But in a previous episode, during the boom time, the RBI had aggressively worked against rupee appreciation.

 

Therefore, the question is whether the RBI will let the rupee be and let it move up as and when rebalancing pulls the dollar down. Inflation fighting becomes easier if the rupee is not managed. (If you fight against rupee appreciation you buy up dollars; that means putting more rupee liquidity in the system.) There is also less pressure to raise interest rates if the rupee is not over-managed. Therefore, this policy has its own attraction, separate from the rebalancing issue.

 

If the RBI takes the post-crisis approach to rupee movement, India should have little difficulty in a rebalancing world. So, hope and pray that America, China and the RBI do the right thing.

 

saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com

 

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

URBAN LIMITS

Y P RAJESH

 

Over the last five years, Mumbai has been in the news more for all the wrong reasons than the right ones. The two horrific terror attacks — one on the city’s lifeline commuter trains in 2006 and the other on the heart of the financial capital last year — the violent campaign against north Indians unleashed by Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the deluge of 2005 that drowned the sprawling suburbs, and the constantly creaking or deteriorating infrastructure have given Maharashtra’s capital the image of being under siege from within and without. The one bright spot amid this picture of gloom, the magnificent Bandra-Worli Sea Link, is as much a symbol of the chronic delays and inefficiencies that have come to plague ambitious projects planned for the city as it is an engineering and architectural marvel.

 

But when Mumbaikars go to vote with the rest of the state on October 13, a largely different set of political considerations are expected to be at play and influence the outcome of the polls in the city, and the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region which, after delimitation, will contribute 60 MLAs to an assembly of 288 members. Of the 60, Mumbai accounts for 36 seats while neighbouring Thane has 24, up from 34 and 13, respectively in 2004.

 

The increase and the changed contours of constituencies are in themselves indicators of how the megapolis has grown north and taken political power with it while the island city has remained a vestige of the elite with equally selective concerns.

 

There is hardly any difference of opinion among thinking Mumbaikars that the two successive terms of the Congress-NCP alliance government have done little to the city of 17 million people. Slogans of promising to convert Mumbai into Shanghai seem more like a cruel joke on a city which many of its residents would prefer to call “Slumbai”, what with an estimated 50-60 per cent of its population living in the filth and squalor of slums, whose depiction gave the city another moment of misplaced glory through the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. So it would not seem ironic that in a city whose well-off urban voters are known for their apathy to political processes such as elections, the outcome of the October 13 contest is expected to be decided in its shanties and chawls.

 

Ahead of the elections in 2004, the Congress-NCP alliance had promised that if voted to power, it would regularise all slums in the city that came up before 2000, a five-year increase from the previous cut-off of 1995 set by the predecessor Shiv Sena-BJP government. Over the last five years, the government has managed to get Supreme Court clearances for such regularisation in a piecemeal manner for specific areas and projects after the Bombay High Court had drawn a line against raising the 1995 cut-off. However, there is no word yet on a blanket extension until 2000 being approved and the Congress-NCP are expected to dangle this carrot yet again in the coming weeks. Such is the emotive appeal of this populist move that the Third Front, a conglomeration of various factions of the Republican Party of India, the CPM, CPI, Janata Dal(S), Samajwadi Party and some local parties, have gone ahead and promised to regularise slums until 2009 in the highly unlikely event of them winning power.

 

The issue of slums and the migrants that they are home to is linked, albeit in a roundabout manner, to the other emotive issue that is expected to hold sway during these elections. The high-pitched cries of Raj Thackeray and the violent antics of his lumpen supporters have ensured that the pride of Marathi and the primacy of the sons-of-the-soil will be central themes for all major parties even though the Maharashtrian population of the city is estimated to be only around 25-30 per cent. Some politicians are arguing that Thackeray’s MNS is not expected to meet with the same kind of success as it did in the Lok Sabha elections as the regional focus of assembly polls would dilute identity politics as all four main parties — Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena and BJP — have strong roots in the state with well-known local names leading them. With even the Congress-NCP dispensation resorting to a shamelessly extravagant move such as erecting a giant Shivaji statue in the Arabian Sea off the Queen’s Necklace, Maharashtrians in Mumbai could be spoilt for choice. But even the most doubtful of rivals admit that the MNS will certainly open its account in the assembly but would struggle to touch double digits.

 

The other key aam aadmi talking points, bijli, sadak, pani or infrastructure and security, are expected to have some traction with the opposition parties slamming the government record, but few are willing to bet on the kind of momentum they can generate to carry the polls. Which is perhaps why Mumbai has to continue to draw from its famed resilience and indomitable spirit to keep its wheels moving.

 

yp.rajesh@expressindia.com

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

HOW CAN THE CONGRESS MAKE IT ON ITS OWN?

ADAM ZIEGFELD

 

After weeks of indecision, last week the Congress party got serious about sewing up its alliance with the NCP ahead of next month’s Maharashtra polls. But, even after the Grand Old Party finally put to rest the notion of contesting alone, the Congress has continued to wrangle with its ally first over the number of seats and now, over which seats it will contest. Meanwhile, the BJP faces an open rebellion in the aftermath of its seat-sharing pact with the Shiv Sena. The heartburn election alliances have caused in recent days reflects the importance of these negotiations. A well-devised seat-sharing agreement can go a long way in determining the winner on election day. But the ongoing events in Maharashtra have the potential to tell us not just about the shape of Maharashtra’s next government but also about the future of politics in the country as a whole.

 

For the Congress, the Maharashtra polls are a first test of the lessons the party has (or has not) learned from spring’s national elections. The party’s initial indecision about whether to ally with the NCP and its continued talk of possibly eschewing alliances in the coming elections in Bihar and Jharkhand has intimated the possibility that the Congress had become overconfident and misread the results of Elections 2009. However, the Congress’ ultimate posture in Maharashtra suggests something different. The party is driving a hard bargain with the NCP, but appears willing to compromise for the sake of the alliance. Such a strategy may be an ideal one in this and future assembly elections.

 

On the one hand, the Congress is right to have decided on a tie-up with the NCP. Even though the Congress’ performance was better than expected in the Lok Sabha polls, these same elections underlined the fact that the Congress cannot win alone at the national level or in many of the states. Had the party broken ties with allies in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and consequently been routed in those states, the UPA’s tally could easily have been 50 seats less than what it is now. The elections also showed how much hinges on factors beyond the Congress’ control. For instance, positive results in Maharashtra depended crucially on Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which split the non-Congress vote, especially in Mumbai. Had the MNS not emerged on the scene, the Congress-NCP combine might not be asking voters for a repeat of the Lok Sabha polls. Since much remains outside the Congress’s control, its best bet is to be cautious when dealing with those factors it can control.

 

On the other hand, Congress sabre-rattling may not be entirely misplaced. The Congress’ insistence on increasing its seat allocation and driving a hard bargain about which seats to contest may have its own logic. Alliance politics pose a legitimate danger that the party may wish to heed. Though the Congress’ success depends on its alliance partners, its future can also be limited by them. Certain types of seat-sharing agreements can be particularly problematic, namely those in which a party routinely cedes the same seats to its allies. Doing so over successive elections can lead to a genuine atrophy in a party’s support base. How does a party recruit workers, followers, and future leaders in places where it never contests elections? Lingering in the back of many Congressmens’ minds may be Tamil Nadu and the fear that the party’s trajectory in other states will follow a similar path. In retrospect, observers have overstated the Congress’ weakness in Tamil Nadu in the 1970s. It was still a potent political force after the Emergency. But, thanks to its willingness in the 1980s to become an overly-accommodating junior partner to the Dravidian parties, Congress’ base has shrunk and it is now dependent on the state’s larger parties. Congress is right to want to avoid a similar situation elsewhere. For this reason, Congress does not want to appear to be a pushover. The BJP’s current troubles in Maharashtra likely reflect a similar set of concerns that the BJP may become entirely dependent on the Shiv Sena to the detriment of the party’s long-term health in the state.

Maharashtra provides important clues about the Congress’ future attitude towards its allies. But, the final chapter is not yet written. Bihar and Jharkhand will tell us even more. There has, after all, always been a segment of the Congress that has never fully accepted the realities of alliance politics. And the Congress may have, in fact, read too much into its Lok Sabha victory and be trying to script a return to an earlier era when it could come to power at the Centre on its own. If that is indeed the plan, then the Congress cannot continue to rely on allies indefinitely. Expanding its base will undoubtedly require going it alone at some point. Jharkhand and Bihar may yet be first steps in that direction. But, this strategy is incompatible with short-term success. If the Congress’ eye is on the long-run, then it has to ignore costs in the short-run and be willing to accept losing elections in which it faces a consolidated opposition. Furthermore, the Congress must aggressively invest in strengthening its grassroots — a strategy that may take time to bear fruit. Ultimately, no party likes to invite defeat, and proof of the Congress’ commitment to organisational revival is weak. So, the future of electoral politics may depend on the party’s attitude toward its allies. The biggest boon for India’s opposition will be if the Congress party wishes to eat its proverbial cake and have it too — to go it alone at the polls, while assuming that it can continue to win elections and conduct business as usual. If Congress adopts a more truculent attitude in Jharkhand and Bihar than it has in Maharashtra, then there may be hope for the BJP and others that Congress will eventually bring about its own defeat.

 

The writer is a postdoctoral prize research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

 

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

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME

SHAILAJA BAJPAI

 

This is a Slumdog Millionaire quiz. Who asked Satyajit Ray to make a film for them? Who got Ravi Shankar to compose their signature tune? Who launched the acting career of Shah Rukh Khan? Who persuaded Khushwant Singh to appear in fancy dress on New Year’s Eve? Who had Sonal Mansingh dance for them and Jagjit Singh to sing for them and Bismillah Khan hold a concert for them? Who got Edward Said and Marlon Brando to talk to them? And who brought you those unforgettable black and white images of Kapil’s Devils lifting the World Cup in 1984?

 

If you had watched Doordarshan last Monday night, you would know the answers to these oddball questions. You would also know that there is only one and the same answer: why, Doordarshan of course, who else? The battle-scarred, much reviled, often maligned and too often ignored national broadcaster celebrated 50 years in broadcasting with a one-hour special that reminded us that it wasn’t always so scarred, reviled, maligned or ignored.

 

The documentary renewed our acquaintance with old friends; Salma ‘flower’ Sultan and Neethi Ravindran newsreading, Dr Narottam Puri sports quizzing, Tabussum presenting Phool Khilein Hain Gulshan Gulshan for a mere Rs 75, Girish Karnad on Turning Point, Naseeruddin Shah in Jagjit Singh’s voice singing Mirza Ghalib, Lajo weeping over Nanhe in Hum Log... Oh, how you longed to reach out and say, “Hey, hold on a sec, don’t go away just yet!”

 

We have made many new TV friends since, but no one can ever take the place of the Nukkad gang, no one can crunch a carrot quite like Karamchand and no one else has ever bothered to bring a National Programme of Music and Dance into our homes so that children who now Bollywood on Boogie Woogie (Sony), for example, know there’s more to dance than swivelling their hips like office chairs.

 

The mid-eighties and early nineties were the golden years of TV in India. It has never got better than that in terms of quality — and thank DD for that. No commercial TV channel will ever bring you the galaxy of talent Doordarshan commanded. Why, even NDTV and Aaj Tak owe themselves to slots on DD.

 

Remember the thrill of anticipation creep up your spine as Chitrahaar began its half an hour of film songs, every Wednesday evening. Now with 24x7 media and communications, there’s nothing left to anticipate unless it’s what Breaking News will serve up next and as to that, there’s no telling.

 

News channels discussed the future of Doordarshan and it was all pretty bleak house stuff. Nobody had a formula to rejuvenate Doordarshan, bring it back on everyone’s evening schedule — at least in cable/satellite homes. For non-satellite homes DD is still synonymous with TV. The only time you watch DD, now, is when you’re fed up of news anchors yelling at you and want a calm recitation of the day’s events. That’s it. Otherwise, it’s lost the plot: it copies private channels in its entertainment shows and everywhere else, looks like it’s still wearing clothes it bought in the eighties. It’s stuck in a time warp. Why, even that old DD loyalist, the Davis Cup, just played out on Neo Sports. Who’s going to clock it into the present? For starters, maybe A.R. Rehman could compose a new signature tune?

 

Keith Floyd died last week. He was the one to teach us how food could be cooked on television, first. Well, not exactly first, but certainly the first colourful character to wave a spoon before us and hey presto, a five course meal was ours for everything but the tasting. Just recently saw Floyd in India marinate chicken and shove it into an old fashioned tandoor while he sipped, what else but wine. Raise a toast to the guy — and DD — and eat some tandoori chicken.

 

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com

 

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

 

           

 

 

 

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE CHINESE WORKERS ISSUE

 

India has always had it easy when it comes to the debate on immigration and international labour mobility. After all, given the fact that we are a labour-surplus country, we are always more likely to export migrants rather than absorb migrants from abroad. So, unsurprisingly, we have traditionally been in favour of liberal rules for immigration. The first real challenge in some time to the liberal position on immigration comes from the presence of a significant number of Chinese workers in the country. Until the recent issue over Chinese workers, we would not have expected immigration to become a major policy issue since we are still a relatively poor, emerging economy—international migration tends to centre on rich countries where employment opportunities are more abundant. To the extent that we have had a problem with immigration, it has been restricted to the issue of illegal immigration, largely from Bangladesh in eastern and northeastern India.

 

There are a number of issues surrounding the particular problem of an estimated 30,000 Chinese nationals working on 14 power projects across India. The least complex issue relates to technical details. It is reported that a number of these workers entered India on business visas, not employment visas, which allows the Indian government to order their repatriation. That may be doable on technical grounds, but what happens if they reapply for an employment visa? It’s a tricky policy matter for the Indian government. For one, these power projects are crucial to the development of medium-term infrastructure in India. Surely, companies that are responsible for the building of these projects should have the freedom to complete them in the fastest and most cost-efficient manner, even if that means importing workers from outside India. Economics dictates that free labour mobility is as sound a virtue as free trade. However, like in many other parts of the world, politics often settles the boundaries of labour mobility, and in a labour-surplus country where a lot of people don’t have jobs, it is difficult for the government to be seen encouraging low-skill Chinese workers getting jobs in India. Still, the government would be better advised to adopt a liberal line on this. If we push a protectionist stance with Chinese workers, we have no ground to stand on when we argue with the US on H-1B or with the Europeans on their Europeans-first labour policies. And, of course, in economic terms, if Chinese workers are more efficient, then the benefits are the Indian economy’s. Instead of worrying about Chinese workers, the government should focus on upgrading the skills and efficiency of local workers so that, given a free choice, firms would rather employ Indians than Chinese.

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT

 

Here's an unconventional but insightful way to judge how the economy weathered the Great Recession—let’s compare festival season 2008 to festival season 2009, which is just kicking off. Last year, the festival season was caught smack in the middle of the global financial crisis. A very good indicator, one ignored by sophisticated economists, but perfectly understood by those in the vital business of selling products, was that consumer durables companies had not offered 0% financing in the festival season last year. Zero per cent financing—the manufacturer bears the interest cost and consumer pays interest-free easy instalments—is a festival season marketing must and on average, more than a third of annual consumer durables sales comes from it. That 2008 didn’t see 0% financing offers and that 2009 has seen them reinstituted is, therefore, excellent proof of how much better everyone’s feeling. Another indicator that speaks for aam economic agents is also up—in the last festival season, gold was globally seen as a second option to the dollar, as assets took flight to quality amid the panic. This year, gold is back to its more traditional role as a hedge against inflation and, also, against stock market volatility. Demand is up, so are prices and sales. Gold is now ruling at Rs 16,000 per 10 gm, compared with Rs 12,000 per 10 gram the last festival season. Year-on-year sales are up by 20%. Auto sales—an indicator with plenty of vroom—have changed gears between the two festive seasons. August sales for 2009 are up 25% compared with the same month last year and there is every indication that the sales graph will go up. Which is why several new launches are in the pipeline and the one big launch that has taken place—the Nano—is a success already despite the limited rollout in its early production schedule. The picture is fuzzier in real estate. There was a price correction, there was plenty of talk of low-cost housing, and real estate companies and funds are being heard from again, advertising this, that or the other. But it’s hard to pin all this down as genuine, retail buyer-based recovery.

 

Much of the positive change has been reflected in company results, of course. Net profits of BSE-500 companies started tanking from October last year and growth became negative in the quarter ended March. The quarter ended June saw surprisingly quick recovery and more of the same is expected when results for the quarter ending September come out. It is, of course, too early to celebrate a full recovery. Macro data suggests the same thing. And hastily raising interest rates can produce a nasty shock. But it is far easier being cheerful this festival season.

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WHO ACCOUNTS FOR THE ACCOUNTANTS?

KRISHNAMURTHY V SUBRAMANIAN

 

As the ministry of finance evaluates a proposal to create a Financial Stability and Development Authority, as India Inc. prepares to adopt the IFRS, and as G-20 puts more focus on financial reform, one issue straddles these three events. This issue relates to the effect of financial accounting practices on financial stability. In particular, does mark-to-market accounting accentuate financial crises vis-à-vis the traditional practice of accounting at historical cost? More generally, given the significant impact that accounting standards can have on financial markets and the macro economy, can accounting standards be left solely to the accountants?

 

The market value of an asset or liability is more relevant than its historical cost because the market value reflects the price at which that asset could be bought or sold in a current transaction between willing parties. In fact, in light of the several accounting scandals in recent times, good corporate governance and mark-to-market accounting represent two sides of the same coin. Sunlight is supposed to be the best disinfectant! Similarly, mark-to-market accounting can light up the dark corners of a firm’s accounts. Since market prices reflect all the consequences of a firm’s actions, market-to-market accounting can be beneficial in precluding the dubious practices of corporate managers. Yet, requiring mark-to-market accounting for financial assets or liabilities, in general, and financial firms, in particular, is fraught with perils and needs careful consideration.

 

To comprehend relevant issues, consider an example outside the world of finance and accounting. The Millennium Bridge in London, which is a bridge built for pedestrians, uses an innovative lateral suspension design; it does not contain the tall supporting columns that characterise other suspension bridges. On the day it opened for use, the bridge began to shake violently within moments of the bridge’s opening; pedestrians fearing for their dear lives clung on to the side-rails. This violent swaying of the Millennium Bridge offers important clues to the way financial markets operate. The principle of diversification—which is one of the bedrocks of finance—suggests that having many people on the bridge offers the best way of cancelling out the sideways movements on the bridge. However, what is crucial to understanding financial markets is the way humans react to their environment. Pedestrians on the bridge react to how the bridge is moving. When the bridge moves from under your feet, each person adjusts his or her stance to regain balance.

 

The catch here is that everyone adjusts his or her stance at the same time. This synchronised movement makes the bridge move even more. A greater movement of the bridge, in turn, forces people to adjust their stance more drastically setting off a spiraling effect where the wobble of the bridge feeds on itself through the coordinated actions of the pedestrians. So, the violent swaying continues and gets stronger even though the initial shock—a small gust of wind—has long passed.

 

Financial markets mirror this phenomenon. As with the bridge’s movements, financial prices play a dual and symbiotic role—not only do they reflect underlying economic fundamentals but are also imperative to action. Mark-to-market accounting ensures that any price change shows up immediately on the balance sheet. So, when prices change, banks adjust their stance more than they used to, and marking to market ensures that they all do so at the same time. Such coordinated actions feed into themselves to generate a downward spiral of rising volatility.

 

When the incentives offered to market participants lead them to behave myopically, i.e. pursue actions that generate value in the short run but destroy value in the long run, mark-to-market accounting can have a pernicious effect on financial stability. Absence of liquidity only adds to this deadly mix since in illiquid markets, prices reflect panic substantially more than underlying economic fundamentals.

 

Despite such overarching impact of accounting practices on financial markets and the macro economy, accounting standard setters—domestic ones as well as the International Accounting Standards Board—view their remit as being restricted to ensuring that accounting values reflect current terms of trade between willing parties. However, as witnessed in the recent financial crisis, accounting standards have far-reaching consequences for the working of financial markets and for the amplification of financial cycles. The constituency that is affected by accounting standard changes is far wider than the ones the standard setters have in mind. This raises an obvious question: Isn’t accounting too important to be left solely to the accountants?

 

Existing research resoundingly answers “yes” to this question. Accounting has all the attributes of an area of public policy, intimately linked to financial regulation and the conduct of macroeconomic policy. As such, accounting rules must be a crucial component in the overall public policy response to the financial crisis. To account for the intricate issues that are involved, the IFRS standard setting exercise needs the expertise of financial economists apart from that of accountants.

 

The author is an assistant professor of finance at Emory University, Atlanta, and a visiting scholar at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

ARE WE DECOUPLING YET AGAIN?

AMITENDU PALIT

 

A year after the Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the jury is still out on whether the world economy has actually ‘decoupled’ or not. The decoupling paradigm had gained considerable strength before the manifestation of the financial crisis. The paradigm proposes that business cycles in major emerging markets such as those in India and China had become independent of those in the developed country markets and the US economy in particular.

 

The months following the Lehman collapse highlighted two features. First, the rapid erosion in the credibility of the decoupling notion. Second, the inability of global institutions to gauge the depth of the financial crisis. In retrospect, it appears that faith in the decoupling theory had initially encouraged institutions to accept the financial crisis as essentially a Trans-Atlantic phenomenon with limited impact on emerging markets. The IMF’s periodic assessments of the world economic outlook are the best examples.

 

The initial response of the IMF to the crisis was relatively muted. In its first assessment of the post-Lehman world economy released in October 2008, the Fund mentioned that the world economy was experiencing a major downturn due to “...the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s”. However, the shock was clearly expected to be confined to mature markets. The IMF projected world GDP growth at 3.9 per cent and 3.0 per cent respectively for 2008 and 2009.

 

The next assessment in November 2008 reduced global growth to 3.7 per cent and 2.2 per cent for 2008 and 2009. But the decoupling notion was yet to give way. The IMF still pinned hopes on emerging economies by expecting them to grow by 5.1 per cent in 2009.

 

In another couple of months, however, the IMF lost hope of the Trans-Atlantic virus not becoming a global pandemic. Its assessment of January 2009 conveyed a distinctly alarmist impression. Global growth for 2009 was projected at only 0.5 per cent making it the worst year for the world economy since the 2nd World War. It is interesting to note that it took the IMF only four months (October 2008-January 2009) to lose faith in a decoupled world. It now expected China and India to grow at much lower rates of 6.7 per cent and 5.1 per cent in 2009.

 

The April 2009 forecast dashed the remaining slender hopes of the decoupling hypothesis. The IMF admitted that despite limited exposure to toxic assets of failed financial institutions in the West, emerging markets were hit hard by developments in Western markets. As the revised estimates pulled down global growth to -1.3 per cent in 2009, growth in emerging markets was projected at only 1.6 per cent. The revisions left little doubt that the spread of the crisis has been unquestionably global though its impact could have varied across regions.

 

The latest assessment of the IMF in July 2009 is a shade brighter than the one in April 2009. The IMF’s periodic assessments and changing forecasts indicate that it took almost three months after the Lehman default to gauge the global dimension of the crisis. Till then, there was hope that decoupled emerging markets led by China and India will maintain global growth albeit at a reduced level. But rapid contractions in external trades in both countries forced the realisation that business cycles in these countries were not entirely desynchronised from those in advanced markets.

 

 

But has the crisis entirely debunked the notion of decoupling? The first nine months after the fall of the Lehman suggest so. The recent months, however, convey a somewhat different impression. Had business cycles across the world been coupled, then the shape and pattern of global recovery would have been uniform. But the growth projections suggest that recovery in China, India and the emerging markets is expected to occur at a much faster pace than in the developed markets. This implies that the business cycles in China and India and some other emerging markets are actually capable of maturing autonomously without relying on stimulus from advanced markets.

 

The independent growth of business cycles in these countries may be due to specific factors such as size of the economy providing room for greater multiplier effect of stimulus packages. It may also be on account of the larger scope of technological advancements and learning resulting in higher productivity gains.

 

But whatever be the reasons, the supposed ‘trend decoupling’ of emerging markets and particularly those of China and India will occupy attentions of economists as the world economy embarks on the painful process of slow recovery.

 

The author is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. These are his personal views

 

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

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

STRIKE ONE, STRIKE TWO

MG ARUN

 

Who the winner is at the end of the pilots’ stir at Jet Airways—the pilots or the management—is debatable. But the losers were clearly the passengers who trusted the airline to move them to their destinations, and the ground staff, especially the ticketing staff of the airline, who struggled to clear up the mess created by their striking colleagues.

 

As someone who booked his tickets on Jet to attend a family function in Kerala, this writer held on to the conviction that the stir will be called off in a day. After all, this is India’s finest private airline, with the least cancellations, a reason why one chose it in the first place. But the strike continued, and there was little the travel agent could do, but advise you to go to the airport on the day of travel, and check out at the booking counter itself. “It’s up to the airline to give you an alternative, so good luck!” She was frustrated at not being able to get through the helplines of the airline. Naturally. Thousands of concerned passengers were calling in from all parts of the country all through the day and night.

 

An early morning call to the airline and an executive is sorry to say that the particular flight to Kochi has been cancelled. “But Jet’s website shows passengers in that flight are being transferred to a Jetlite flight. Can you please check?” I ask. The executive checks, and confirms this. I can fly after all.

 

At Mumbai airport, the Jet Airways counters are a scene of chaos, with people venting their frustration on the booking executives. The staff are, however, patient and helpful, doing their best to manage the crisis. Then comes a shocker. “Jetlite will fly you to Calicut, not Kochi.” For the weary passenger who has travelled miles to reach the airport, anything looked fine, as long as you’re dropped somewhere in Kerala. So, a no-frills flight to Calicut, and a seven-hour dusty, bumpy ride by road to Kochi and finally, when you reach your hometown, dreaming of a shower and home-made hot rice and fish curry, there comes the ultimate shocker. There’s a flash strike in the locality, so there are no vehicles on the roads—no taxis, no auto rickshaws. And it’s a 3-kmwalk home. Simply walk.

 

mg.arun@expressindia.com

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

 

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

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

TOWARDS EFFECTIVE H1N1 VACCINE

 

Preliminary results from two 2009 influenza A(H1N1) vaccine trials in Britain and Australia have shown that the vaccines tested on adults are both safe and effective. Doctors and health workers in some countries had expressed concern over the safety of a fast-tracked vaccine and had reservations about being vaccinated. Although the two vaccines had different dosages, designs, and composition, they were well tolerated by all the volunteers. The most common adverse reaction was tenderness at the site of vaccination. Preliminary analyses of data from two vaccine trials involving 2,800 adult volunteers in the United States have also shown that vaccines are well tolerated. The European Medicines Agency and the U.S. regulatory authority note that the safety and level of protection offered by a vaccine will remain unchanged when a new strain is inserted in an influenza vaccine. In fact, the U.S. approved four vaccines against H1N1 recently on the basis that they were a strain change to each manufacturer’s seasonal influenza vaccine. An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, however, cautions that “any association of uncommon adverse events with the vaccine cannot be ascertained in studies of this size.” Since there are occasional instances of unusual reactions in the case of seasonal influenza, there is a compelling need to conduct post-marketing surveillance.

 

Contrary to earlier predictions that two doses would be required to produce the desired immune response, the trials have provided evidence that a single dose is capable of producing a robust immune response in a majority of the volunteers. Considering the limited vaccine production capacity in the world, achieving protection with one dose will mean a doubling in the number of beneficiaries. Another way of stretching the vaccine supply will be by using an adjuvant — a substance added to a vaccine to improve the body’s response. The World Health Organisation recommends the use of an adjuvant as it reduces the amount of vaccine to be used in every dose. The trial in the U.K using an adjuvant vaccine at half the standard dose was able to achieve a level of immune response comparable to a 15 microgram vaccine after three weeks. The trials have been able to measure the level of immune response. The next vital step will be to assess the duration of antibody response after vaccination. One caveat needs to be entered, although it is unlikely to have made any major difference to the results. Only volunteers uninfected by the virus were enrolled for the trials, which were conducted when the virus was widespread in the community, but the possibility of H1N1 virus infection prior to enrolment and its role in priming the immune system cannot be ruled out.

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

THE HINDU

                                            EDITORIAL

FROM BAD TO WORSE

 

The yet to be settled Afghan presidential election exemplifies the problems the United States and NATO have caused since their forces invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 in the name of a ‘global war on terror.’ The election was conducted by the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) under the oversight of a U.N. Election Complaints Commission (ECC). The final results will not be known for several weeks but evidence has emerged of widespread fraud ̵ 2; eclipsing what happened in Iran. Problems have even been caused by the IEC’s placement of polling stations in remote villages to facilitate voting. In such areas, leaders organised block-voting and field coordinators went unsupervised. In Kunar, voting occurred only because the U.S. military paid a local warlord to defend positions against possible Taliban attacks. In 14 out of 34 provinces, insurgent activity made election monitoring impossible. The ECC, riven by disagreements between its senior-most members, has quarantined the votes from nearly 10 per cent of the 26,300 polling stations. What is clear is that President Hamid Karzai has failed to win 50 per cent of the vote and the question is whether the contest will be allowed to go into a second round. Assuming it will be, the Afghan winter will be a virtually insurmountable obstacle to polling.

 

Electoral fraud and all-pervasive corruption are not the only problems. The civilian death toll is estimated to exceed 31,000 since the 2001 invasion. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reckons that over 60 per cent of the 33-million population has been directly affected by the conflict. NATO troops have even called on local warlords to pacify angry locals following civilian deaths. U.S. commanders have recently tried using ground troops more; but this has not brought down civilian deaths or the brutality of the occupation. It also means increasing unrest in the U.S.; poorer rural recruits — among the hardest hit by the recession — enrol to get a job but are more exposed in Afghanistan, where their death rate is 60 per cent higher than that of their urban counterparts. Meanwhile the Taliban, by every credible account, have expanded their strength and influence. Attempts by NATO to train the Afghan National Army appear to have had no more success than attempts to build Afghan political institutions. The country that has defied invaders through history has once again proved to be a trap of calamitous proportions.

 

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

THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

THE IMMINENT DEMISE OF NEW LABOUR

SLOWLY, BUT SURELY, BRITAIN IS HEADED FOR A TORY RULE. THE ISSUE IS NO LONGER WHETHER LABOUR WOULD LOSE BUT WHAT WOULD BE THE SCALE OF ITS DEFEAT.

HASAN SUROOR

 

Next week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown will address what arguably is his last Labour Party conference as leader. Despite widespread speculation that he may not survive the conference, the odds are that he would hang on as a lame-duck leader until the general election in June next. It will be a difficult conference not just for Mr. Brown but for the Labour Party itself as it struggles to restore some semblance of unity and sense of direction in the run-up to the election .

 

Judging from successive opinion polls and the party’s own internal polling, a Labour victory is ruled out. Slowly, but surely, the country is headed for a Tory rule with David Cameron being already treated in Whitehall as the Prime Minister-in-waiting. The issue is no longer whether Labour would lose but what would be the scale of its defeat.

 

Headlines in even pro-Labour media (Guardian, Independent, New Statesman) are increasingly tending towards the “Goodbye Gordon, Hello David” variety; and with weekend supplements starting to focus on Samantha Cameron (contrasting the posh “SamCam” with the previous First Ladies), it is not difficult to sense which way the wind is blowing.

 

At a more serious level, however, Labour itself appears to have given up the fight with the normally bullish party leaders describing themselves as the “underdog.” Efforts are now focussed on limiting the damage rather than averting a defeat, prompting criticism that the party has thrown in the towel even before the fight has begun.

 

Until a few months ago, many — within and outside the party — believed that if Mr. Brown was replaced by a more charismatic leader, it still had an outside chance of trumping the Tories and, hence, the failed “coup” attempt back in summer. But since then, the party has slipped further in the polls and all bets are now off on a Labour recovery — with or without Mr. Brown. The prevailing conventional wisdom is that the party is in such dire straits that nobody can save it and tinkering with the leadership at this stage will be like re-arranging the deckchairs on a rapidly sinking ship.

 

Some are still arguing for a leadership change but not on grounds that a new leader would win them the election. Rather, they are hoping that under a more “dynamic” leader, the party may be able to avoid a wholesale slaughter but there seems to be little enthusiasm among wannabe leaders to take the plunge at this juncture for the simple reason that none of them wants to go down in history as the person who led Labour to an electoral disaster. The general sense, therefore, is that Mr. Brown will survive for now by sheer default with the power struggle resuming after the election. The behind-the-scenes jostling for positioning we are seeing now is a rehearsal for the post-election leadership challenge if Mr. Brown does not step down voluntarily.

 

But after Brown, who? It is an issue that will dominate the debate in the party over the coming months. One leading Labour-affiliated trade union leader (as a major source of Labour funding, trade unions will have a big say in who should replace Mr. Brown) said he was not inspired by any of the contenders. “Who do I wake up each morning excited by? Nobody,” said Paul Kenny, general secretary of GMB, one of Britain’s biggest unions. The problem is not that there is a dearth of candidates or even good candidates. In fact, there are too many including Foreign Secretary David Miliband, his brother Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary; Home Secretary Alan Johnson; Justice Secretary Jack Straw; the party’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman; and the influential Left-wing backbencher, Jon Cruddas — to name just a few. What is more, all are substantial figures in their own right.

 

But unlike Tony Blair and Mr. Brown, none of them is sufficiently big enough to be seen as an obvious choice. There is no towering figure who will be acceptable to all factions; someone whose sheer weight will make him “`unchallengeable,” so to speak.

 

Even in its heyday, Labour was never really as tightly knit an organisation as it pretended to be (there were factions even then and tensions went deeper than the more public Blair-Brown rift) but power kept it together. After more than a decade in the Opposition, the fear of losing power again served as an effective glue. But now that the power is ebbing away, the glue is off and factionalism is out in the open. And though personal ambitions have a lot to do with the current turmoil, it is not all about personalities. They are part of a broader struggle for the soul of the party and at stake is the very future of the New Labour project which looks clearly exhausted after 11 years in power.

 

The Left, especially, believes that it is time to bury the Blair-Brown modernisation project and find a new direction for the party. New Labour, it is argued, was conceived with the sole purpose of making the Labour brand electable again after 18 years in political wilderness by spreading its appeal across ideological and class divisions through the simple trick of appearing all things to all people. The Third Way politics which inspired New Labour was simply an exercise in “political marketing” and ideologically as phoney as is Mr. Cameron’s “compassionate Conservatism.” If Mr. Cameron is seen as “heir to Blair,” the brand of Conservatism he is trying to market to win the election is “New Labour, Mark II.”

 

In a sense, history is repeating itself with the roles reversed. In 1997, it was the exhausted and discredited Tories who were on the ropes against a rejuvenated Labour under a young and charismatic leader. Now it is Labour that is all over the place against a young charismatic Tory leader. And just as the Labour grass roots then went into a sulk over what the “modernisers” were doing to the party, today the Tory grass roots are sulking over what their modernisers are doing to the party in pursuit of power.

 

But coming back to Labour, it is revenge time for the Old Labour faction — the so-called Labour “Left.” After being marginalised for 11 years, they have struck back and want to “reclaim” the party, triggering a low-intensity civil war between those who, as The Economist put it, are “keen to bury the Blairite modernisation project, condemning it as apostasy, and [those] arguing that, on the contrary, it was the betrayal of Blairism that caused the debacle.”

 

In a withering attack recently, Mr. Cruddas, who is leading the charge on behalf of the Left, said the party was facing its most serious crisis in 30 years and deserved a “catastrophic” defeat for abandoning its original principles. Tearing the New Labour project limb from limb, as it were, he reminded its architects of what they had done to the party: “We have lost many millions of voters since 1997. We have lost hundreds of thousands of members. We have become reviled by younger generations that view us as the party of the Establishment, war and insecurity. Our orthodoxy has defeated our radicalism. We speak a desiccated language of targets; our story, our essential ethic, has been lost on the altar of the focus group. We have retreated into what is essentially a Hobbesian utilitarianism, which considers self-interest as the only guiding principle.”

 

It was the most significant Left intervention on the state of the party and has since been followed by a concerted attack on New Labour policies from trade unions. Once contemptuously dismissed by Mr. Blair as a spent force and obstacle to progress and modernisation, trade unions are sensing blood as the New Labour project unravels and have intensified pressure on the government to roll back what they regard as its pro-rich and anti-poor policies. More specifically, they want an end to the creeping privatisation of public services, higher taxes on the rich as a means of redistributing resources and an assurance that the proposed cuts in public spending would not lead to job losses. They have threatened to field their own candidates against Labour with one senior trade union leader saying that given what they regard as the party’s “betrayal” of its core support base, “we can’t just sit back and say ‘Vote Labour’.”

 

In all likelihood, the threat will not materialise; and even if it does, it is unlikely to have much of an impact but the row indicates how febrile the mood is. Not surprisingly, the upcoming party conference in Brighton — dubbed Mr Brown’s “last hurrah” — is being likened to a “wake” for New Labour.

 

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

 

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

BRING BACK JAGANNATH AZAD’S PAKISTAN ANTHEM

A SECULAR-MINDED MOHAMMAD ALI JINNAH COMMISSIONED JAGANNATH AZAD, A HINDU, THREE DAYS BEFORE INDEPENDENCE TO WRITE A NATIONAL ANTHEM FOR PAKISTAN.

BEENA SARWAR

 

As children we learnt that Pakistan didn’t have a national anthem until the 1950s. My journalist uncle Zawwar Hasan used to tell us of a reporter friend who visited China soon after Independence. Asked about Pakistan’s national anthem, he sang the nonsensical ‘laralapa laralapa.’

 

If these journalists were unaware that Pakistan had a national anthem — commissioned and approved in 1947 by no less a person than the country’s founder and first Governor General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, long before Hafeez Jullandri’s Persianised lyrics were adopted as the anthem in the 1950s — ordinary citizens may be forgiven for their ignorance.

 

The lyricist of the first national anthem was the poet Jagannath Azad, son of the renowned poet Tilok Chand Mahroom (who won accolades for his rendering of naat at mushairas). Born in Isa Khel (Mianwali), Jagannath Azad was working in Lahore when Mr. Jinnah commissioned him for this task just three days before Independence. He complied, Jinnah approved the lyrics, and the anthem went on air on Radio Pakistan Karachi (then the capital of Pakistan) the day Pakistan was born. Some Pakistanis still remember hearing it. Those who came after 1948 have no memory of it.

 

My own introduction to it was recent, through an unexpected resource. Flying to Karachi from Lahore, I came upon an article on the history of Pakistan’s flag and national anthem in PIA’s monthly ‘Hamsafar’ magazine (‘Pride of Pakistan’ by Khushboo Aziz, August issue).

 

“Quaid-e-Azam being the visionary that he was knew an anthem would also be needed, not only to be used in official capacity but inspire patriotism in the nation. Since he was secular-minded, enlightened, and although very patriotic but not in the least petty Jinnah commissioned a Hindu, Lahore-based writer Jagannath Azad three days before independence to write a national anthem for Pakistan. Jagannath submitted these lyrics:

 

Ae sarzameene paak?

 

Zarray teray haen aaj sitaaron se taabnaak?

 

Roshan hai kehkashaan se kaheen aaj teri khaak?

 

Ae sarzameene paak.”?

 

(“Oh land of Pakistan, the stars themselves illuminate each particle of yours/Rainbows brighten your very dust”).

 

As Jaswant Singh’s forthcoming book on Mr. Jinnah created ripples in mid-August, The Kashmir Times, Jammu, published a short piece, ‘A Hindu wrote Pakistan’s first national anthem – How Jinnah got Urdu-knowing Jagannath Azad to write the song’ (Aug 21, 2009). The reproduction of a front-page report by Luv Puri in The Hindu (June 19, 2005), it drew on Puri’s interview of Azad in Jammu city days before his death. Talking to Puri, Azad recalled how Jinnah asked him to write Pakistan’s national anthem. In the interview, headlined ‘My last wish is to write a song of peace for both India & Pakistan: Azad,’ he said he was in Lahore working in a literary newspaper “when mayhem had struck” the entire country (Special report by Luv Puri, Milli Gazette, New Delhi, Aug 16-31, 2004).

 

“All my relatives had left for India and for me to think of leaving Lahore was painful… My Muslim friends requested me to stay on and took responsibility of my safety. On the morning of August 9, 1947, there was a message from Pakistan’s first Governor-General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was through a friend working in Radio Lahore who called me to his office. He told me ‘Quaid-e-Azam wants you to write a national anthem for Pakistan.’

 

“I told them it would be difficult to pen it in five days and my friend pleaded that as the request has come from the tallest leader of Pakistan, I should consider his request. On much persistence, I agreed.”

 

JINNAH’S SPEECH

Why him? Azad felt that the answer lay in Jinnah’s speech of Aug 11, 1947, stating that if everyone saw themselves “first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations… in the course of time, Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

 

“Even I was surprised when my colleagues in Radio Pakistan, Lahore approached me,” recalled Azad. “…They confided in me that ‘Quaid-e-Azam wanted the anthem to be written by an Urdu-knowing Hindu.’ Through this, I believe Jinnah Sahib wanted to sow the roots of secularism in a Pakistan where intolerance had no place.”

 

Hamsafar terms it “the anthem for Pakistan’s Muslims” — apparently forgetting about the country’s non-Muslim citizens. Even after the forced migrations on either side, West Pakistan still had some 10 per cent, and East Pakistan about 25 per cent non-Muslims — symbolised by the white stripe in Pakistan’s flag.

 

Increasing insecurity forced Azad to migrate to Delhi in mid-September 1947. He returned to Lahore in October, says his son Chander K. Azad in an email to this writer. “However, his friends advised him against staying as they found it difficult to keep him safe… He returned to Delhi with a refugee party.”

 

Azad had a distinguished career in India — eminent Urdu journalist, authority on Allama Iqbal (in the preface of his last manuscript, unpublished, ‘Roodad-e-Iqbal’ he wrote immodestly, “anything on Iqbal after this has no meaning”), author of over 70 books, government servant (retired in 1997), and recipient of numerous awards and honours. (See Chander K. Azad’s email of Sept. 6 in www.beenasarwar.wordpress.com).

 

However, his lyrics survived in Pakistani barely six months beyond Jinnah’s death in September 1948. “The people and the Constitutional bodies of the country wanted to have a more patriotic and more passionate national anthem that depicted their values and identity to the world,” explains Hamsafar (loaded ideological terminology aside, one never read about the Hindu poet Azad’s contribution in any official literature before, ‘enlightened moderation’ notwithstanding.)

 

The National Anthem Committee (NAC), formed in December 1948, took two years to finalise a new anthem. After the Shah of Iran’s impending visit in 1950 made the decision imperative, NAC member Hafeez Jallandri’s poem was chosen from among 723 submissions.

 

The anthem commissioned by Jinnah was just one of his legacies that his successors swept aside, along with the principles he stressed in his address to the Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947 — meant to be his political will and testament according to his official biographer Hector Bolitho (Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, John Murray, London, 1954).

Pakistan’s inherited problems, he said included the maintenance of law and order (the State must fully protect “the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects”), the “curse” of bribery and corruption, the “monster” of black-marketing, and the “great evil” of nepotism. Since Partition had happened, he said, we must “concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor.”

 

This speech, literally censored by “hidden hands” as Zamir Niazi documents in Press in Chains (1986), also contains Jinnah’s famous lines about the “fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State,” where religious identity becomes secondary and where religion, caste or creed “has nothing to do with the business of the State…”

 

A month after his death, the Safety Act Ordinance of 1948, providing for detention without trial — the draft of which Jinnah had in March angrily dismissed as a “black law” — was passed. The following March, the Constituent Assembly passed the ‘Objectives Resolution’ that laid the basis for recognising Pakistan as a state based on an ideology.

 

In all these deviations from Jinnah’s vision, perhaps discarding Azad’s poem appears minuscule. But it is important for its symbolism. It must be restored and given a place of honour, at least as a national song our children can learn — after all, Indian children learn Iqbal’s ‘Saarey jehan se accha.’ Such symbolism is necessary if we are to claim the political spaces for resurrecting Jinnah’s vision about a nation where religion, caste or creed “has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

 

(The writer is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker.)

 

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

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

HUMOUR AND HERESY

WE MUST TOLERATE, INDEED ENCOURAGE AND CELEBRATE, THE SPIRIT OF HUMOUR EVEN IF IT IS LIKELY TO PROVE VEXATIOUS AT TIMES; FOR THE ALTERNATIVES TO HUMOUR ARE CRUELTY AND WEARINESS.

VALSON THAMPU

 

Arthur Koestler, while explaining the logic of laughter, used the following example. An English baron came back home from his hunting expedition and found his wife in the arms of the local Bishop. To this he reacted in a strange way. He opened the window of his bedroom, the scene of the episcopal escapade, and began to bless the passers-by, as a Bishop would. This elicited indignant protests from the Bishop against a baron usurping his function. Thereupon the baron replied : “My Lord, if you are doing my work, shouldn’t I do yours?”

 

We could respond to this joke in two contrary ways. The first is to organise a protest rally of the faithful, labelling it as a scurrilous attack on bishopric and, by implication, on the Christian faith. The other is to chuckle over the prospect of reacting in a ‘heretical’ manner, as opposed to a stereotypical way, to a situation which could, otherwise, result in bloodshed. Those whose minds are conditioned to trudge only on the beaten track, would expect the jilted baron to stick a knife through the Bishop. Others are free to enjoy discovering that there are alternative ways of dealing with any given situation, including those that are grossly provocative.

 

The capacity to laugh at oneself is a sign of an individual’s strength and wholeness. The inclination to discover grievances where none exists, on the other hand, is a sign of emotional or psychological ill-health. What is true of individuals is also true of societies. Indeed the illness of a society can be calibrated on its readiness to be provoked, factored on the flimsiness of the provocations involved. The disposition to be immoderately upset by even innocuous situations or statements should get us all deeply concerned.

 

Humour, however, is not a licence to be frivolous or callous. The very purpose of humour is to enrich, or to add value, and not to trivialise or to devalue. True humour has the touch of Midas. Even if the joke improvised in a given context is of exceptional wit, it will still fail by the canon of humour if it ridicules what is cherished collectively or subverts a shared national pursuit. It would be in bad taste, for example, to crack a joke, even a side-splitting joke, at the expense of the national flag. Such a joke is sure to hurt the sentiments of a nation and cheapen national identity. On the other hand, if one were to create or crack a joke that has the intellectual vigour to provoke the people to re-examine the lip-service they pay to the flag without imbibing its symbolism and meaning, it would pass muster.

 

THAROOR’S TWITTER

Shashi Tharoor’s twitter is marked by the sort of ambivalence that, being rather high-brow, is sure to be lost on the masses. It is hard to disagree with the Prime Minister when he says, “it was just a joke.” It is rather obvious, given the circumstances, that it was indeed meant to be. But there is, arguably, a dissonance between the context and the joke. For that reason one can also sympathise with the indignation that Prithviraj Chauhan and Ashok Gehlot, representing contrary poles of the political spectrum, feel on this count. Austerity measures, as a calculated response to widespread hardships, are no laughing matter. But then, who says ‘serious matters’ are out of bounds for humour? As a matter of fact, laughter is a practical and benign way of negotiating serious matters and harsh realities. It is doubtful if Shashi’s intention was either to belittle the aam aadmi or to ridicule his party’s ‘holy cows’ or cherished ideals. One catches in his characteristic remark, on the contrary, a concern that austerity measures should go beyond tokenism and engage the deeper meaning of ‘austerity.’

 

Austerity is not merely a matter of shaving off, for a period, the superfluities of affluence or indulgence at the expense of the tax payer. Austerity measurers in the end would achieve nothing more than the fleeting mollification of aam aadmi’s sense of under-privilege at a time of unprecedented economic distress — if the sense of identification with his plight betokened by these measures is not woven into the fabric of national consciousness as a principled change in attitude, priorities, and policies.

 

A Minister’s choice to travel by economy class may assuage the grievance of the deprived lot for the time being. But it attains the authentic stamp of austerity only if such a gesture results from a conscious commitment on his part as well as on the part of his government to ensure that the privileges he sheds are translated into an affirmation on the ground of the worth and significance of the common man.

 

That is when ‘austerity’ assumes a positive content. True austerity, or austerity of the Gandhian genre, has an egalitarian genius. Without this, austerity could become a joke in retrospect, which is what Shashi means to allude to — who knows? — by counterpointing ‘cattle class’ with ‘holy cow.’

 

Humour has always had a heretical tang. ‘Heresy’ is a word of Latin origin meaning ‘I choose.’ It denotes an inclination, indeed a determination to think for oneself rather than toe the line or conform unthinkingly. What drives ‘heresy’ is an alert commitment to the integrity of one’s own person and a keenness to pursue and fulfil one’s destiny. Such a stance could easily seem ‘heretical’ to the establishment.

 

According to Peter Berger, the American sociologist, those to whom their sense of self-worth, dignity, and personal authenticity are of paramount significance come under a “heretical imperative” or the duty to be heretical. The alternative is to get assimilated into a faceless collectivity. The heretical imperative could assume either a violent expression, as in the case of various protest movements. Or it could, via humour, stay non-malignant in-house. Whether or not the latter is allowed to be the case depends largely on the robustness of the society or the party concerned. Tolerance towards dissent, and not hyper-allergy to it, is the essence of the democratic culture.

 

We must tolerate, indeed encourage and celebrate, the spirit of humour even if it is likely to prove vexatious at times; for the alternatives to humour are cruelty and weariness. Living as we do in grim and cheerless times, we should not exile the spirit of humour, just because we feel insecure about the irreverence that is germane to it. Humourlessness is a sort of cultural swine flu. Given the epidemic proportion it has now reached, humour needs to be put on a high premium nationally. The gain thereby is sure to be, in the long run, far greater than the loss or harm that could eventuate from it. And that will be the case, even for the aam aadmi.

 

So let us tweet each other: “Humour is dead. Long live humour!”

 

(The author is the Principal of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.)

 

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

THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS

DEVELOPMENT OF A(H1N1) VACCINE ON TRACK: WHO CHIEF

 

The Director-General of the World Heath Organisation (WHO), Margaret Chan, said here on Monday that the production of influenza A(H1N1) vaccine was on track and it would be ideal to produce three billion of them annually.

 

Speaking after the opening ceremony of the Regional Committee Meeting of the Western Pacific Regional Office in Hong Kong, Ms Chan said that many countries and regions were producing vaccines for the new flu.

 

“The development of vaccine is on track, it will take five to six months after the emergence of the new virus before we can start producing vaccines,” she said, adding that China was the first country to report to the WHO about vaccine production and get its people inoculated.

 

Noting that 190 countries and regions had reported cases of influenza A(H1N1), Ms Chan said the majority of them were mild and most patients recovered on their own. However, people who belonged to the risk group such as pregnant women and those suffering from asthma, heart disease and obesity should pay more attention to the disease. — Xinhua

 

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

 

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

FIGHT NAXALS WITH GUNS AND BUTTER

 

The usual media stories about the Naxalites, who go under various acronyms in different parts of the country, are depressing to read. Typically, in central India’s tribal belt, which includes the states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, fringes of Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh, well-armed Naxal brigades kill the innocent (usually the poor who do not join them, or a local notable), attack government property and public institutions, and eliminate policemen, some times in open confrontations or through the use of landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Usually the authorities are found helpless in these situations and little protection can be afforded to ordinary folk residing in Naxalite-ravaged zones. So, there was a bright spot last Friday when in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh CRPF commandos, coordinating with the state police, tactically engaged the so-called Maoists in thick jungles that had hitherto not been penetrated, killed a number of them, unearthed an arms factory, and seized a stockpile of sophisticated weapons.

 

The regions in which Naxals are active are ungoverned spaces, not unlike parts of the world where groups like the Taliban operate. Road and rail links are absent, and signs of development few. Ordinary people live in dread of the desperadoes and generally do their bidding for there is no government to come to their aid. It is therefore in the fitness of things that the parts of the Dantewada forests where the uniformed men took on the so-called Maoists are not relinquished. Indeed, tactics incorporating military means and developmental activity is the long-awaited imperative if these regions have to be freed from the clutches of the "people’s brigade’.

 

The Naxalites of the present generation who terrorise the poor to gain control of territory are not Robin Hoods. They are neither revolutionaries nor bandits of the kind that Hobsbawm wrote about. The fire of idealism and romanticism that drove misguided young men and women — many from backgrounds of privilege — 40 or 50 years ago to take up arms "in defence of the poor", and revolt against an indifferent state power, has ceased to burn. In many cases, Naxalites now are mixed up with destructive elements such as Islamist militants, the LTTE, and the underground operatives of the Northeast. Their stock-in-trade are weapons and drugs. They are terrorists, not political ideologues. A democratic state cannot but take them on — militarily, politically and ideologically. Having said this, the same state also needs to be interrogated for its lethargy and its aversion to drawing the poorest in the country into the arc of development. The Naxalites feed on the poverty syndrome and revel in conditions of underdevelopment which permit them to ply their trade unmolested. In order to contest them convincingly, the state must carry the fruits of progress to the ordinary people. There is a curious absence of a meaningful reference to this in observations made from on high. The Prime Minister and the Union home minister typically refer to the Naxalites as the country’s biggest internal security threat. That in part is not an unrealistic assessment. But it is time our leaders began to articulate a fuller understanding of the problem.

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

MISSED POLICY OPPORTUNITY

JAYATI GHOSH

 

Did we just miss a major opportunity? For short while, it seemed that the global financial crisis would focus minds on what is wrong with the current economic growth model and how we can go about changing it. Unfortunately, that moment seems to have passed, at least until the next crisis comes along (which, in current trends, will not be long, since all the major forces that led to the previous crisis are still in place).

 

The enthusiastic talk of recovery has spread from stock markets to government policymakers, who are already talking of unwinding their stimulus packages. Yet this is not only premature, it is also disheartening because all the major changes that were required to restructure economic relations in a more democratic and sustainable way have simply not been considered.

 

For example, the point seems to have been missed that there is no alternative to systematic state regulation and control of finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of the financial system — banking — must be protected, and this is only possible through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just socialisation of the risks inherent in finance) is also inevitable. In developing countries this is also important because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has industrialised.

 

Second, the obsessively export-oriented model that has dominated the growth strategy of the region for the past few decades needs to be reconsidered. This is not just a desirable shift — it has become a necessity given the obvious fact that the United States can no longer continue to be the engine of world growth through increasing import demand in the near future. Developing countries, particularly those in developing Asia that continue to rely on the US and the European Union as their primary export markets, must seek to redirect their exports to other countries and most of all to redirect their economies towards more domestic demand, towards wage-led growth. This can happen not only through direct redistributive strategies but also through public expenditure to provide more basic goods and services.

 

Third, this means that fiscal policy and public expenditure must be brought back to centrestage. This is not only for countercyclical measures, important though they are. Public expenditure is required to manage the effects of climate change and promote greener technologies, in addition to being crucial to advance the development project.

 

Fourth, we have to recognise the need to reduce inequalities in income and wealth both globally and nationally, and also most significantly in the consumption of natural resources. This is even more complicated than might be imagined, because unsustainable patterns of production and consumption are now deeply entrenched in the richer countries and are aspired to in developing countries. But many millions of citizens of the developing world still have poor or inadequate access to the most basic conditions of decent life, such as minimum physical infrastructure including electricity and transport and communication links, sanitation, health, nutrition and education. Ensuring universal provision of this will inevitably require greater per capita use of natural resources and more carbon-emitting production. So both sustainability and equity require a reduction of the excessive resource use of the rich, especially in developed countries, but also among the elites in the developing world.

 

Fifth, then this requires new patterns of both demand and production. This makes it important to develop new means of measuring genuine progress, well-being and quality of life. Quantitative gross domestic product (GDP) growth targets, that still dominate the thinking of regional policymakers, can be counterproductive. For example, a chaotic, polluting and unpleasant system of privatised urban transport involving many private vehicles and over-congested roads actually generates more GDP than a safe, efficient and affordable system of public transport that reduces vehicular congestion and provides a pleasant living and working environment. So it is not enough to talk about "cleaner, greener technologies" to produce goods that are based on the old and now discredited pattern of consumption. Instead, we must think creatively about such consumption itself, and work out which goods and services are more necessary and desirable for our societies.

 

Sixth, this cannot be left to market forces, since the international demonstration effect and the power of advertising will continue to create undesirable wants and unsustainable consumption and production. But public intervention in the market cannot be knee-jerk responses to constantly changing short-term conditions. Instead, planning — not in the sense of the detailed planning that destroyed the reputation of command regimes, but strategic thinking about the social requirements and goals for the future — is absolutely essential.

 

Seventh, since state involvement in economic activity is now an imperative, we should be thinking of ways to make such involvement more democratic and accountable within our countries and internationally. Large amounts of public money are being used for financial bailouts and to provide fiscal stimuli, and how this is done has huge implications for distribution, access to resources and living conditions of the ordinary people whose taxes pay for this. So states across the world have to become more open and responsive to the needs of the majority of their citizens.

 

Finally, we need an international economic framework that supports all this, which means more than just that capital flows must be controlled and regulated so that they do not destabilise any of these strategies. The global institutions that form the organising framework for international trade, investment and production decisions also need to change and become not just more democratic in structure but more genuinely democratic and people-oriented in spirit, intent and functioning. Financing for development and conservation of global resources must become the top priorities of the global economic institutions, which means in turn that they cannot continue to base their approach on a completely discredited and unbalanced economic model.

 

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

THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

DECODING H1N1

ARIF ALI

 

Swine flu, which has already caused over 230 deaths in India, is an epidemic that began in April 2009 and is caused by a new strain of influenza virus, officially called the "H1N1 flu" by the Centre for Disease Control & Prevention (CDCP), United States. This virus, a subtype of a strain of "influenza A", is referred to as swine flu as several genes in this virus are similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs.

 

The virus genome of H1N1 currently infecting humans is made up of ribonucleic acid (RNA). This RNA, instead of being a thread-like structure as is usual in other RNA-viruses, is split between eight independent pieces of RNA that act like mini chromosomes, allowing pieces of RNA from different viruses to mix together and form a new virus. H1N1 appears to be a result of the "reassortment" of two swine influenza viruses, one from North America and one from Europe. The North American strain was itself the product of previous "reassortments" and carried an "avian PB2" gene for at least 10 years and a "human PB1" gene since 1993. These genes have been passed on to the H1N1 virus. Analysis by CDCP identified its four component strains as one endemic in humans, one endemic in birds, and two endemic in pigs.

 

If a single host (a human, chicken or any other animal) is infected by two different strains of an influenza virus, it is possible that the assembled viral particles will create a new strain which will share properties of both its parental lineages. Influenza viruses mutate constantly and swap genetic material with one another promiscuously. Reassortment is responsible for some of the major genetic shifts in the history of influenza viruses.

 

The 1957 and 1968 pandemic flu strains were caused by reassortment between an avian and a human virus.

 

The single best way to protect oneself against swine flu is to get vaccinated each year. There are two types of vaccines: The "flu shot" — an inactivated vaccine (containing the "killed virus") that is given with a needle, usually in the arm — is approved for use in people older than six months, including people with chronic medical conditions. The second, the nasal-spray flu vaccine — made with live, weakened flu viruses that do not cause the flu — is approved for use in healthy people of 2-49 years of age. It’s not administered to pregnant women.

 

Both these vaccines contain three influenza viruses — one A H3N2 virus, one A H1N1 virus, and one B virus. About two weeks after vaccination, antibodies that provide protection against influenza virus infection develop in the body.

 

New flu strains can spread fast because no one has natural immunity and a vaccine can take at least six months to develop. Scientists do not think that people who received the seasonal flu shot this year have any immunity to H1N1. However, pharmaceutical companies are already examining ways to make a vaccine targeting the H1N1 virus and could have a vaccine ready soon.

 

Ralph Tripp, an influenza expert at the University of Georgia, said that this virus’ protein-making instructions suggest that people exposed to the 1957 flu pandemic — which killed about two million people worldwide — may have some immunity. That may explain why older people have been spared in Mexico, where the swine flu has been most deadly.

 

A flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, killing millions in pandemic years and hundreds of thousands in non-pandemic years. Three influenza pandemics occurred in the 20th century and killed tens of millions of people. Often new strains result from the spread of an existing flu virus to humans from animals. Since it first killed humans in Asia in the 1990s, a deadly avian strain of H5N1 has posed the greatest risk of a new influenza pandemic. Luckily it has not mutated to spread easily between people.

 

"This virus (H1N1) doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to kill like the 1918 virus which claimed an estimated 50 million victims worldwide", said Richard Webby, a leading influenza virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "There are certain characteristics, molecular signatures, which this virus lacks", said Peter Palese, a microbiologist and influenza expert at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. In particular, the swine flu lacks an amino acid that appears to increase the number of virus particles in the lungs, making the disease more deadly.

 

The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to almost every part of the world. A virus strain of subtype H1N1, it was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the Spanish flu, though most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks that predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weak patients.

 

Containing the spread of H1N1 will be a challenge during the winter months because it tends to survive better in cold temperature. But I hope by that time India’s health ministry would be in top gear to combat this menace.

 

Dr Arif Ali, Professor & Head, Department of Biotechnology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

 

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

 

THE ASIAN AGE

COLUMN

ON CHINA, TALK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG STICK

SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY

 

"Trust, but verify." US President Ronald Reagan’s stand on the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War carried military overtones, with a subtext of restraint, but from a position of strength. The same comment repeated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the context of India-Pakistan relations (the Manmohan Singh Doctrine?) gratuitously neuters itself by delinking action on terrorism by Pakistan from resumption of the so-called "composite dialogue" between the two countries, and also unilaterally precludes any military alternatives, whatever the degree of provocation in future. Pakistan is strategically linked to China, India’s other and vastly more powerful neighbour, in the relationship of surrogate and principal. The question that naturally arises next is: How relevant would India’s new doctrine be in the context of China, with whom relations are also under strain at present?

 

India and China both emerged as independent Asian giants at around the same time — 1947 for India and 1949 for the People’s Republic of China — but subsequent events witnessed a much greater degree of hard-headed realpolitik by China in managing its interest and affairs, until the two emerging neighbours ultimately collided in the border war of 1962, in which China’s definitive military victory over India clearly established the leadership order in Asia.

 

The Sino-Indian border war of 1962 was a watershed. In its aftermath, support for India was primarily articulated by the United States and the West, entirely understandable in the context of the Cold War, but nevertheless subtly tinged with more than a trace of ridicule and even contempt that a vast country, which had so far attempted to moralise and preach to the rest of the world, should prove so utterly incompetent in defence of its own heartland. Within the Asian neighbourhood, the silence was deafening. China had arrived with a blast of trumpets, and Asia trod warily. China lost no time in hammering home its regional primacy with a masterstroke of realpolitik, a strategic linkage with India’s traditional opponent —Pakistan — through the Sino-Pak Treaty of Friendship of 1963, followed through with its first nuclear explosion in 1964. That position remains unchanged to this day.

 

The domestic fallout from 1962 impacted the country’s self-esteem and confidence as well, pushing it on a subconscious backfoot with regard to China, and though much water has flowed down the Tsangpo

 

since then, India’s "1962 syndrome" is unaltered. This notwithstanding the Indian Army’s post-1962 successes against Chinese attempts to intrude at Nathu-La in 1967 and Sumdurong Chu in 1989-90. China is well aware of this, and periodically exploits the psychological advantage conceded by India to maintain pressure by various methods.

 

Sino-Indian border issues have been discussed extensively at national, bilateral and international forums, but misperceptions still persist in the public mind regarding the "border" between the two countries. What actually exists is the "Line of Actual Control" in the Indo-Tibet border region, with differing perceptions of its alignment by each country. Both send military patrols upto their respective claim lines, and signal their visit by leaving token indicators of unmistakable national origins like cigarette packets, newspapers and similar debris. Patrol movements generally take place on foot, and often on vehicles in Ladakh where the terrain permits such movement, but the Chinese helicopter reported there recently is certainly a first in its category. In fact, from the Indian side, patrolling along the LAC has been developed into a highly stylised ballet to avoid contact or confrontation between opposing patrols, and a degree of overwatch if it happens in spite of best efforts. So when there are reports in the Indian media of an increase in frequency in Chinese patrolling activity to disputed areas in various sectors in those regions, what is not reported whether Indian patrols too have also conversely increased their own frequency, or whether the Indian government has imposed restrictions on Indian movements to avoid "provocations". This would be a key indicator if India is apprehensive regarding China.

 

But perhaps even more sensitive than Sino-Indian border issues is China’s extreme umbrage to India’s sanctuary to the Dalai Lama, which might conceivably have triggered Chinese ambassador Sun Xi’s spectacularly timed reiteration of China’s claims on Tawang and indeed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh ("Southern Tibet" in Chinese eyes) on the immediate eve of President Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006, though the Indian people did take note of Dr Manmohan Singh’s avoidance of Tawang during his tour of Arunachal Pradesh in 2008. The publication of the Zhong Guo Zhan Lue Chinese think tank’s dissertation on dismembering the "Indian Federation" into 30 or more states with the help of China’s friends and allies, as well as the reported renewal of support and training to anti-Indian militants in Manipur may also form part of a overall pattern of coercive orchestration.

 

India’s responses to all these have been non-confrontational and even passive, sometimes to the point of apparent deference. The psyche of the Han race, who constitute the dominant majority of the Chinese people, is another factor to be understood when interacting with China, irrespective of the political system prevailing, whether Communist as at present, Kuomintang earlier, or Imperial Beijing even earlier still. Xenophobic by natural mindset, the Han consider China as the "middle kingdom" of the world, superior to those countries and peoples on the periphery, which in current perspective includes India. The underlying inflexibility in matters of territory considered national, no matter how long ago in history, has its origins in this perception, and applies to territorial frontiers, whether Taiwan, Vietnam, the South China Sea, or in India’s case the Sino-Indian border in Tibet.

 

Against this background, India’s preferred life insurance policy has to remain unchanged: build up sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear military capabilities and create the long-neglected military infrastructures along the country’s land, sea, and airspace frontiers until a credible level of dissuasion and even deterrence is achieved, whether for China, Pakistan or any one else.

 

In the meanwhile, the "trust, but verify" mantra needs a little modification in the context of China. How about an alternative: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick"?

 

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

 

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

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

INDIA’S N-CAPABILITY

NSA’S STATEMENT SHOULD SET DOUBTS AT REST

 

The categorical assertion by National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan that India has thermonuclear capabilities and that the scientists who questioned the success of the 1998 nuclear tests in Pokharan were guided by personal motives should set at rest the unfortunate controversy about the efficacy of India’s nuclear programme. It is indeed regrettable that a former senior scientist of the Defence Research Development Organisation K. Santhanam woke up 11 years after the Pokharan blasts to create a needless controversy which sought to undermine India’s nuclear status in the eyes of the world. That Mr Santhanam even mocked at the credentials of his universally-respected boss of that time, former President Abdul Kalam, was outrageous. Mr Narayanan’s observation in a TV interview that Mr Santhanam’s sudden statements and the support he drew from some senior nuclear scientists (an apparent reference to former chairmen of the Atomic Energy Commission P.K. Iyengar and H.N. Sethna) could be the result of personal rivalries within the scientific community casts doubt over their sense of professionalism.

 

Mr Narayanan has alluded to Mr Santhanam’s claim that the yield in the thermonuclear device test was much lower than what was claimed, by asserting that it had a yield of 45 kilotons as confirmed by a peer group of researchers recently. He said the claim was supported incontrovertibly by available data. It is vital for India to have an effective nuclear deterrent in the wake of Pakistan’s aggressive designs. Statements like those of Mr Santhanam apart from being preposterous can fuel the impression that India is ill-prepared to take on a nuclear Pakistan. In that context, Mr Narayanan’s observation that even if India is hit by a nuclear device it would have enough “to be able to deliver something” is a welcome statement that should deter any adventurers.

 

With recent reports suggesting that Pakistan has been using U.S. security aid to beef up its military against India by illegally modifying the Harpoon anti-ship missile and maritime surveillance aircraft for land attacks against New Delhi, it is important that India’s nuclear deterrence be strengthened. Though India is committed to no first use of a nuclear device, effective vigilance has to be maintained and in fact stepped up.

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PAKISTAN DID IT!

WHAT MORE PROOF DOES THE WORLD NEED?

 

It was suspected all along and India had been warning the world leaders repeatedly but it just did not register with them that the Pakistani government and military were behind nuclear proliferation. Now no less a person than its disgraced scientist A Q Khan has admitted that he exchanged and passed blueprints and equipment to China, Iran, North Korea and Libya at the behest of the government, and he was later forced to take the rap for it. The 74-year-old father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme who ran the world’s largest nuclear blackmarket reveals that “probably with the blessings of BB (Benazir Bhutto, who became Prime Minister in 1988), General Imtiaz (Benazir’s defence adviser, now dead) asked … me to give a set of drawings and some components to the Iranians … The names and addresses of the suppliers were also given to the Iranians”. These and many other equally damning revelations have been made in a four-page secret letter addressed to his Dutch wife Henny, which was written after his arrest in 2003 and has now been revealed by the Sunday Times.

 

He has taken out his frustrations against the scheming government officials and generals by saying that “the bastards first used us and are now playing dirty games with us”. He has even mentioned that “they might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things they got done by me”.

 

Khan sent a copy of the damning letter to his long-time journalistic contact Simon Henderson in 2007. Henderson says the US and other western powers shoved Islamabad’s rampant proliferation (while blaming it on Khan) under the carpet to get its cooperation in the war on terror. Basically, Washington was slumbering when Pakistan began its nuclear proliferation and winked at it when it was discovered. While Khan has nailed Pakistan’s lie about its nuclear wrong-doings, former President Musharraf has also admitted that the US aid ostensibly meant for fighting terrorism was diverted for use against India. It is strange that despite all this, the US has not declared Pakistan a rogue state. Its continued supping with the perpetrator of such heinous crimes presents America in a poor light.

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

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

WORTHY DIRECTIVE

TIME TO HASTEN ACTION ON MERCY PETITIONS

 

The Supreme Court’s directive to the Union Government to expedite action on petitions filed by convicts sentenced to death for the President’s pardon is apt and timely. Unfortunately, of the 300 people on death row at present, 28 have been waiting for years for the President’s decision on their mercy petitions. A Bench comprising Justice Harjit Singh Bedi and Justice J.M. Panchal has not only pulled up the government for the inordinate delay in disposing of the mercy petitions but also maintained that if it does not intend to grant clemency to them, the convicts should exercise their right to seek commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment. Otherwise, it will be violative of the citizens’ right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution, it said. The ruling is eminently sensible because commutation of a death sentence will end a convict’s period of uncertainty, agony and trauma between life and death once and for all.

 

Though the President exercises her discretionary power to grant pardon under Article 72 of the Constitution (or a state governor under Article 161), in the exercise of this important power, the President has to act on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. It is in this context that the Bench has squarely put the onus on the Union Government for the long delay in disposing of the mercy petitions and said that it is not fulfilling its constitutional duties.

 

The Bench has rightly held that if the government sits on mercy petitions for a long time, it will obliterate the very underlying philosophy of according the death penalty — that it should be retributive as also act as a deterrent. While adjudicating on a condemned drug addict’s petition in Madhya Pradesh who killed his wife and five children four years ago, the Bench dismissed his plea for commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment but took note of the larger point that mercy petitions will have to be cleared expeditiously. The Centre would do well to appreciate the apex court’s concern over the issue from both humanitarian and constitutional angles and hasten action on mercy petitions. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

THAROOR’S TWITTER

POLITICIANS SHOULD CHANGE THEIR MINDSET

BY S. NIHAL SINGH

 

We are witnessing a clash of cultures, rather than civilisations, as Mr Shashi Tharoor is discovering to his cost. In his incredible journey from a long-time United Nations functionary to becoming a political star, he has missed out on the country’s cultural and political mores. They require more than the flaunting of the dress of his home state Kerala.

 

India’s political world has not caught up with the new, predominantly Western, culture of communication well-heeled Indian teenagers have adopted as readily as duck takes to water. Mobiles might have become politicians’ inseparable companions, but their world does not extend to new networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Many of India’s parliamentarians have rural or small town background, in keeping with the complexion of the bulk of the country. And unlike the older generation of leaders, often schooled abroad or in elite institutions at home, most are uncomfortable in English.

 

But more than the composition and language prowess of our politicians, there are no-go areas a Minister of the Central Government enters at his peril. He does not tweet and he does not perform the somewhat comical task of explaining what the idiomatic expression “holy cow” means. Nor can he use, even in affirmation, the expression “cattle class” to denote economy class passengers, quite apart from the charade the economy measures announced by the Government are fast becoming.

 

It is, of course, not entirely Mr Tharoor’s fault. His rise in the political firmament has been so swift that he has hardly had time to catch his breath since he lost his foolish bid to seek the top United Nations job. Apart from brief family visits, he returned home after some three decades, obtained a Congress ticket to contest elections, won, and was crowned Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs.

 

To begin with, he was rapped on the knuckles for ensconcing himself in a five-star hotel in the capital, but then he was in the company of his superior, Mr S.M. Krishna. It was not a question of paying for luxury out of one’s pocket, but one of his and the party’s image. It did not quite gel that just when India’s Finance Minister was sounding the bugle of austerity, two of the Central ministers were patronising different five-star hotels for extended stay.

 

Although the rubric “Congress culture” has come to acquire pejorative connotations, the sense of outrage in the party over Mr Tharoor’s tweeting is indicative of its feelings. It is perhaps unprecedented that a Congress chief minister and a member of the Central Cabinet should publicly demand his resignation. Admittedly, to Congressmen, the term cattle to describe aam aadmi is impermissible, nor did they take kindly to the supposedly unflattering reference to the holy cow, read literally.

 

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s condemnation of Mr Tharoor’s clever turn of phrase was par for course. At a time of unprecedented churning in the party the BJP had been looking for any opportunity it could for slamming the Congress, and Mr Tharoor provided a tasty morsel.

 

Protecting the cow is among the cherished tasks of the Hindutva brigade.

 

Mr Tharoor’s predicament holds other lessons. If he belongs to the tweetering classes, so do armies of Indian teenagers who have gallantly sprung to his defence. Traditionally, many domestic and foreign observers have railed against the two Indias: the modern and not-so modern or the well fed and the poor. But now a rift is opening up between the tweeterers and the political class distinctly in the non-tweetering category. How will politicians communicate with many of the young in future?

 

One solution would be to train politicians in tweetering. They do not even have to acquire proficiency in English because the web is linguistically versatile and caters to many language streams. The difficulty would be in changing the mindset. It is not a mere mechanical question of tweetering but one of a disinclination to converse with friends and supporters through tweets.

 

And there is the warning of the L.K. Advani election campaign in which he employed all the guiles of the web, to no avail. Many will recall the friendly greeting of Mr A.B. Vajpayee over their mobile telephones in the 2004 general election campaign. It did not yield political dividend.

 

Is there then something inimical about twittering in the Indian political ethos? Perhaps with the introduction of 3 G, mobile telephones, which are becoming an extension of the Indian self, might one day be employed as an effective tool of political communication. The politician’s interest is in communicating with his supporters and potential voters and there is no way Indian masses will respond to tweeting as far as the eye can see.

 

Mr Tharoor forgot another rule of Indian politics and life, propriety. Much of Indian society is basically conservative and believes there is something undignified about an honourable Minister of the Central Government employing his time, even outside office hours, to tweeting for one and all. Their verdict thus far: a precocious boy who has not grown up.

 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has understandably made light of his junior Minister’s frolics, but many in the Congress party are asking the question: Will he survive his indiscretion? Political folly can have a high price if the majority of party men and women feel that their amour propre has been hurt. Whatever the idiomatic uses of the expression holy cow, the symbolism hurts, if only because the Opposition is employing it to blacken the Congress image.

 

Has Mr Tharoor then come to the Indian political scene before it is ready for him? Or is it more a personal inability to adjust to the mores of the party and the country after living abroad for long in the capacity of an international civil service? Or does he delight in being contrary?

 

The jury is still out, but Mr Tharoor will perhaps find consolation in the thought that his political career, however short-lived, will provide him much material for his next book — to add to his already prodigious output.

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

TWEET, TWEET

BY ROOPINDER SINGH

 

Cathryn Donaldson is now following your tweets on Twitter,” said an e-mail recently. I racked my brains, but while the first name did ring a bell, the second did not. Cathryn is not an uncommon name in the US, and during my years there I had known a Cathryn or two ... maybe the Donaldson was acquired after marriage....

 

For the uninitiated, tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters. They are displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

 

Even as the brain was abuzz, the eyes were sending sensory data that broke through my reverie: “A little information about Cathryn Donaldson: 0 followers, 1 tweet, following four people. Ah! This was not a blind follower, just another newbie who had clicked blindly.

 

My exposure to tweets started long before Twitter.com came on the scene. I was a fan of Tweety Bird, a Yellow Canary cartoon character. Like many others, I thought that “tweet” was a typical onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds, but that was before the Internet began changing words and their context.

 

I must confess that I do not twit. My first and only tweet was on April 17 this year, an embarrassingly inane one-liner, and till date I have just discovered that it netted me 18 followers! Now, I thought that political and religious figures had followers, so it was a pretty heady experience, till I realised that these were my friends who were far from being followers, mine or anyone else’s.

 

I have steadfastly refused to include people I don’t know into my online orbit, and this works well on Facebook, where people mutually agree to let one another into their electronic lives. Twitter, on the other hand, by default, lets people share updates and links with anyone who wants to read them. Thankfully, it has an option: “You may follow Cathryn Donaldson as well by clicking on the “follow” button on their profile. You may also block Cathryn Donaldson if you don’t want them to follow you.” Since I don’t know her, I would rather not have Cathryn will follow my tweet, or two (another has been added now).

 

Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide and is used by all — right from the White House to Shashi Tharoor, formerly of the UN and recently of the bovine fame. While some, like Veer Sanghvi, have thousands of followers and interesting tweets like the following: “We like hosting the Games because it gives us a national high for two weeks. Investing in sportsmen would give us a high for decades.” Most of the tweets are, well, just that, chirping notes, exactly what the word has meant since 1768.

 

Most of the tweets are not even cheerful or lively. Do they even have a meaning? Sometimes, I really wonder, ‘Will I tweet?’ Not unless I have something to say, something of some import. Meaningless words, even those well strung together, are just that — meaningless.

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

OPED

INTER-LINKING OF RIVERS

THE PROJECT REQUIRES FASTER IMPLEMENTATION

BY ARABINDA GHOSE

 

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s recent statement in Tamil Nadu opposing the inter-linking of rivers on the ground of environment has drawn criticism from Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who has reminded Rahul that the programme was finalised by his grandmother, Mrs Indira Gandhi, and that Tamil Nadu has undertaken the interlinking of the rivers in the state, pending finalisation of the projects at the national level.

 

Close on the heels of this statement has come one from Mr Ashok Singhal, the international president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad opposing the scheme.

 

A number of eminent engineers too have opposed the scheme. Among them was the late Mr Debesh Mukherjee, Chief Engineer of both the Kosi and Gandak projects in Bihar during the early 1960s and who later built the massive Farakka Barrage across the Ganga in Murshidabad district of West Bengal.

 

During the day-long meeting of the Bihar-Jharkhand Development Council last year in New Delhi in the wake of the Kosi floods in Bihar eminent engineers Kamta Prasad and T. Prasad had expressed reservations about the inter-linking project. “Environmentalists”, of course, oppose all such projects.

 

However, the inter-linking and long-distance transfer of river waters have taken place in India (and elsewhere too) since the 19th century. In 1886 the Secretary of State for India and the Maharaja of Travancore had signed a 999-year-long agreement for the transfer of some volume of water from the Mulla Periyar river in the mountainous area of Travancore to the Vaigai river in the Madras province for providing irrigation waters to Ramnad (Ramanathapuram) and Madura (Madurai) districts for irrigation.

 

This had transformed the people of these two districts, some of whom were being accused of being cattle-lifters, into rich landlords. In gratitude, the Tamil people wrote and sang ballads in praise of the man who built that dam, engineer Pennycot.

 

Just before the river Tungabhadra, flowing through today’s Karnataka state joins the Krishna river in Andhra Pradesh near Kurnool-Alampur, a canal takes off to join about 6,135 kilometres to the south, the river Pennar near Cudappa (Kadapa) in the drought-prone Rayalseema region, in the 1930s. This canal was built by Sir Arthur Cotton. He had also built the Dowlaiswaram Barrage across the Godavari near Rajahmundry, which provides irrigation to the east and west Godavari districts, converting them into granaries. The people of Andhra Pradesh have built a statue to honour Engineer Cotton.

 

Delhi receives its drinking water supply from not only the western Yamuna canal, work on which had begun during Feroze Shah Tughlak’s time, but also from both the Bhakra and Tehri dams.

 

Chennai has been provided with drinking water from the Sri Sailam dam in Andhra Pradesh, 460 kilometres to the north, through what is now known as the Telugu Ganga canal. Bengaluru receives part of its drinking water supply from the Cauvery, a couple of hundred kilometres to the north. Mumbai will also replenish its drinking water supply by transferring waters from the proposed Damangana-Munjal link in Gujarat-Maharashtra.

 

The Grand Anicut across the Cauvery in Tamil Nadu was built about 1,500 years ago by the Chola kings. It is a water transfer project and still operates.

River water disputes are not new. The Shakya and Kolia clans in ancient India, from whom came Lord Buddha and his mother Queen Maya respectively, had nearly gone to war over the sharing of the waters of the river Rohini, on the border of the two republics, according to ancient historical records.

 

India’s river-linking project was envisaged by eminent engineer K. L. Rao, Indira Gandhi’s Irrigation Minister from 1962 to 1971.

 

The project was later modified during 1979-80 as the National Perspective for Water Resources Development in May 1980. This is called the Inter-linking of rivers project.

 

Work had begun in 1982 but had got a boost during 2002 in view of the severe drought that year when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. His proposal to set up a task force was supported, among others, by the then Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. It is, therefore, a national project, not a Congress or BJP project.

 

Thirty river links are proposed under this scheme, 16 of the Peninsular and 14 of the Himalayan components .Widespread consultations were held during the five years of UPA rule from 2004 to 2009 and it is likely there is a consensus on its implementation.

 

The National Commission on Applied Economic Research (NCAER) too has gone into the pros and cons of this scheme and has expressed opinion in its favour. One hopes this scheme will be implemented in the coming years.

 

The writer is a former Special Correspondent of The Hindustan Times and a former member, Communications Core Group, Inter-linking of Rivers

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

THE TRIBUNE

OPED

US RETHINKING AFGHAN STRATEGY

BY RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN AND KAREN DEYOUNG

 

From his headquarters in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal sees one clear path to achieve President Obama's core goal of preventing al-Qaida from reestablishing havens in Afghanistan: "Success," he writes in his assessment, "demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign."

 

Inside the White House, the way forward in Afghanistan is no longer so clear.

 

Although Obama endorsed a strategy document in March that called for "executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy," there have been significant changes in Afghanistan and Washington since then.

 

A disputed presidential election, an erosion in support for the war effort among Democrats in Congress and the American public, and a sharp increase in U.S. casualties have prompted the president and his top advisers to re-examine their assumptions about the U.S. role in defeating the Taliban insurgency.

 

Instead of debating whether to give McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, more troops, the discussion in the White House is now focused on whether, after eight years of war, the United States should vastly expand counterinsurgency efforts along the lines he has proposed — which involve an intensive program to improve security and governance in key population centers — or whether it should begin shifting its approach away from such initiatives and simply target leaders of terrorist groups who try to return to Afghanistan.

 

McChrystal's assessment, in the view of two senior administration officials, is just "one input" in the White House's decision-making process. The president, another senior administration official said, "has embarked on a very, very serious review of all options." The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

 

Obama, appearing on several Sunday-morning television news shows, left little doubt that key assumptions in the earlier White House strategy are now on the table. "The first question is: Are we doing the right thing?" the president said on CNN. "Are we pursuing the right strategy?"

 

"Until I'm satisfied that we've got the right strategy, I'm not going to be sending some young man or woman over there — beyond what we already have," Obama said on NBC's "Meet the Press." If an expanded counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan contributes to the goal of defeating al-Qaida, "then we'll move forward," he said. "But, if it doesn't, then I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan or saving face or ... sending a message that America is here for the duration."

 

National security adviser James Jones said Sunday that McChrystal's assessment "will be analyzed as to whether it is in sync with the strategy that the president announced in March."

 

The assessment "could be accepted in its entirety," Jones said. Alternatively, he added, the White House could seek additional analysis from McChrystal, or Defense Secretary Robert Gates could issue new guidance to him about his mission and strategy.

 

In his 66-page assessment, McChrystal does not address other approaches to combating the Taliban. A senior U.S. military official in Kabul said the general was operating under the assumption that the earlier White House endorsement of a counterinsurgency approach "was a settled issue."

 

McChrystal said he thinks the way to meet the president's relatively narrow objective of denying al-Qaida's return to Afghanistan involves a wide-ranging U.S. and NATO effort to protect civilians from insurgents by improving the Afghan government's effectiveness.

 

That means not only more troops, but also a far more aggressive program to train Afghan security forces, promote good local governance, root out corruption, reform the justice sector, pursue narcotics traffickers, increase reconstruction activities and change the way U.S. troops interact with the Afghan population.

 

The implicit recommendation is that the United States and its NATO partners need to do more nation-building, and they need to do it quickly.

 

Improving the Afghan government, McChrystal says — particularly the effectiveness of its security forces and its ability to deliver basic services to the population — is as critical as offensive actions against insurgents. He defines the defeat of the Taliban not as the moment when the insurgents are vanquished, but when the international community has built a strong enough Afghan government so that "the insurgency no longer threatens the viability of the state."

 

Although McChrystal does not make a request for a specific number of troops in the assessment — he has prepared, but not yet submitted to the Pentagon, another document that outlines his resource requests — senior military officials said they expect him to call for a significant increase in forces to implement the strategy.

 

But senior U.S. officials in Washington contend that much about Afghanistan has changed since March, when Obama stood before a row of flags, flanked by his secretaries of state and defense, and announced the new strategy. The dynamics have even shifted since McChrystal arrived in mid-June and began his assessment.

 

The principal game-changer, in the view of White House officials, was Afghanistan's presidential election last month, which was compromised by fraud, much of it in support of President Hamid Karzai. Although the results have not been certified, he almost certainly will remain in office, but under a cloud of illegitimacy that could complicate U.S. efforts to promote good governance.

 

Congressional Democrats have also expressed new doubts about sending more forces to Afghanistan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said last week that she does not "think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan in the country or the Congress." Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., an influential voice on military matters, said the administration should not send additional forces until more Afghan soldiers have been trained.

 

 By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

 

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

THE TRIBUNE

DELHI DURBAR

MAMATA BEGINS AUSTERITY DRIVE

 

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s instructions for austerity drive in her ministry have had officials worried. Following the UPA government’s move for austerity, which Mamata herself has followed by even refusing ministerial accommodation, she sounded out her officials to follow her instructions.

 

She has taken several cost-cutting measures to reduce additional expenditure. As a first step the Railway Ministry has stopped providing lodging facilities to its officials at five-star hotels. Instructions have also been given to cut other unwanted expenses. With the minister herself following the drive judiciously, there is no option for the officials also but to follow suit.

 

Thieves target scribes covering SC

 

The Supreme Court was one of the places where security was revamped and tightened in the wake of the November 2008 Mumbai blasts.

 

Metal detector gates, microchip readable automated entries, closed circuit (CCTV) surveillance, x-ray machines to scan bulk material and thorough frisking were among the measures introduced since then.

 

Strangely, nothing seems to have deterred petty thieves who go about their business stealthily in crowded places, the Supreme Court being one of these. Media persons had been their targets in the past fortnight.

 

A fax machine installed at the main press lounge went missing two weeks ago following which the officials lodged a police complaint. Even before the baffled security could fathom what had hit them, a laptop bag containing a cell phone and valuable bank and other documents, except the mini-computer the thief was perhaps looking for, vanished, again from the same lounge.

 

The affected scribe sought to take the help of the CCTV department in a bid to trace his bag. But this move turned out to be futile as the cameras near the lounge were facing everywhere except the low-roofed room allotted to the scribes.

 

DGPs not happy with PC’s remarks

 

The meeting of DGPs of all states last week was an event at which the Union Home Minister lambasted the DGPs. Some of the DGPs were surely not happy and wanted a reality-check on matters before the police chiefs are blamed for all ills plaguing the police.

 

The Home Minister had remarked that the “police forces had been reduced to a football to be kicked here and there, from one post to another”. A senior officer remarked that the pitfalls of democracy had to be understood.

 

The political parties have to be sensitised and they have to stop their MLAs from interfering in daily policing and refrain from misusing the police to settle political scores.

 

The Home Minister even asked the DGPs: “Why do you remain silent when arbitrary postings and transfers are made by the state government?” Another officer commented in private that the CM’s office now routinely wants constables “of choice” in certain areas. For how long will the DGPs be put under pressure and blamed when a portion of the blame lies elsewhere?

 

Contributed by Girja S Kaura, R Sedhuraman and Ajay Banerjee

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

BORDER ROW

 

Border disputes with neighbouring States and even with Bangladesh has been a nagging irritant for Assam. The revelation by Land and Revenue Minister Dr Bhumidhar Barman that 499.99 acres of Assam land continue to be under illegal occupation of Bangladesh is disturbing. Most of the encroachments have taken place along the border in Dhubri and Karimganj districts, and the developments are largely attributable to the poor border security mechanism. The fact that there has been no demarcation of the border at places has aggravated things further. Fencing along the porous border too remains incomplete even after the expiry of several deadlines. It merits no surprise that forces inimical to the State’s interest are finding the situation to their advantage – something testified to by the encroachment as well as cross-border infiltration. Maintaining the country’s territorial integrity is a bounden duty of the Government of India and any compromise on foolproof security along the border could have perilous consequences for not just Assam but the entire nation. The Assam Government needs to put constant pressure on the Centre for taking up the matter of border security, infiltration and encroachment with its Bangladesh counterparts.

The Assam Government has cut a sorry figure in thwarting the aggressive agenda by its neighbouring States like Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram. This is despite the fact that the issue is regularly debated upon at the Assembly, with the Government even accusing the Nagaland Government of making a “well-coordinated and planned move” to encroach on Assam land through “illegal means and violent activities.” If this indeed is the case, one can legitimately ask what the State Government has been doing to resolve the border row with its neighbours, and more importantly, to check the ongoing encroachments. It is easy for the Government to say that it is maintaining status quo in view of the Supreme Curt guidelines but its neighbour is not doing the same. When you allow your neighbour to make fresh encroachments – as has been reported in the media so frequently – the situation cannot be equated with status quo. Through its inaction, the Government has only exposed its insincerity in resolving the contentious border issue. We need a more pro-active persuasion of the matter both with the Centre and our neighbours. Even more urgent is the need to check bids at further aggressive encroachment. Alongside that, border area development needs to be accorded priority because the perennial backwardness of the border areas is helping the cause of forces inimical to our interest.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

MAYAWATI AND STATUES

 

Mayawati, the Chief Minister of UP has been spending more than Rs 2000 crore from the State budget in construction of statues and memorial parks in different places in UP to perpetuate the memory of her mentor Kanshiram and her own self as the living legend while the State has been passing through a period of drought resulting in innumerable hardship to the poor cultivators. Such attempts to deification reminds us of the medieval age when Kings and Emperors built their statues for worship by the masses. But continuing such tradition in the present century by a political leader is anachronism of the worst kind and should have been condemned by all the political parties. However, the political parties led by the Left projected Mayawati as the future Prime Minister of India leading an ephemeral third block. The voters rejected the Left Front and the third block outrightly. Undeterred,Mayawati behaved like a dictator and carried on her mission to erect statues of herself and Kanshiram in prime locations in UP at the cost of public exchequer.

A PIL has been filed before the Supreme Court and hearing of the same is in progress. The Divisional Bench ordered the UP government to stop further construction which was not complied with and several news papers and television channels displayed photograph of work being carried on in spite of Supreme Court orders. This led to the Supreme Court to observe that Mayawati was playing with fire.The UP government’s plea that the legislature had sanctioned the amount for construction of statues and memorials, the Supreme Court observed that if the legislature sanctions 80 per cent of budget for such purposes, the matter became justiciable.Now the construction work has stopped but Mayawati had warned of civil war if the statues are ordered to be demolished. The Congress Party has rightly termed the outburst of Mayawati as contempt of court. The Supreme Court was not satisfied with the affidavit filed by the UP Chief Secretary and fixed another date for hearing. People’s only hope is the judiciary and it is expected that the highest court of the land would deliver justice to the people.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PROTECTING ENVIRONMENT

 

Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Environment and Forests has released a discussion paper highlighting a proposal for the creation of a new body tentatively called the National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA). This shall be an autonomous body manned by professionals and shall perform two main functions. One is the grant of environmental clearances currently being done by the Ministry and the second is national stewardship for compliance and enforcement of environmental laws. Alongwith the proposed National Green Tribunal this initiative is a part of a bigger model of effective environmental governance.

The aim of this discussion paper is to initiate a serious exercise for institutional redesign and to invite comment from stakeholders. The paper puts forth the various models that can be used to structure and position the Environment Protection Authority within the environmental regulatory framework of the country.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

DECLARATION OF ASSETS AND HIGHER JUDICIARY

ARUP BORBORA

 

Much has been discussed and debated over the media, in the recent past, about the necessity, propriety etc. behind the latest declaration of assets vis-a-vis financial standing of the judges of the higher and highest judicial institutions. All these have been prompted by a theme or a slogan for judicial accountability and transparency about the socio-economic posture of the judges delivering justice in this huge country. Judiciary on most occasions is the last resort for oppressed, depressed, denied and violated sections of the people with some taking resort to it for asserting their vested interests.

The politicians are not all saints. Questions are raised galore about the executive wing of the republic mainly governed by politically motivated quasi-federal ruling mechanism. The fourth estate too is now being blamed for yellow journalism and commercially guided mottoes in many areas, ( not all), with the print media still withstanding the onslaught from the electronic variety. At this cross road of transition, the judiciary is expected to be the repository of public confidence and trust. It is in this background that the latest development about assets disclosure by judges of the highest judiciary needs to be addressed.

If the purpose is clear, there should not be any gray area left for ambiguities with regard to the mechanism evolved by way of “consensus” or through codified modalities. If things are aimed at creating transparency in the ambit of higher judiciary, all for reposing unquestionable public trust on this institution, there should not be any sedimented dirt in a clear glass of water. One should give credit to Justice D V Shylendra Kumar of the Karnataka High Court for his pioneering steps to publicly declare his assets in his personal website. He has done it without even waiting for any compulsions to do so. If someone comments on Justice Kumar’s speedy action as a media gimmick, even in that case it is for right reasons. Credit further goes to Justice K Kannar of the Punjab and Haryana High Court for his responses.

There is a distinction between a political leadership in the country, normally expected to be led by the elected Prime minister and the judicial leadership by the incumbent Chief Justice of India at any given point of time The first mentioned leadership might be intuited with bias towards the political single party or alliance representing which he is elected, while the judicial leadership is supposed to be free from any sectional compulsion, semblance of any bias and of course, without any pre-emptive mindset, be it about delivering a judgment or declaring assets.

While for any effective implementation of non-statutory moral and principle to be followed by the judiciary, the role of the judiciary led by the Chief Justice of India assumes paramount exercise and the role of the Bar mostly remain as suggestive. This is precisely why the requests and insistence of the Bar vis-a-vis the ‘ Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms’ have always been suggestive rather than confrontationist.

It did not get along well with the aspirations of the transparency seeking intelligentsia when the Supreme Court challenged before the Delhi High Court, albeit as a rarest course of action, a communique or an order of the Central Information commission requiring an information as to whether Supreme and High Court Judges had been declaring their assets to their respective Chief Justices. During the six decades of independence of the country, the undeclared cold war between the Parliament and the Higher Judiciary, somehow gained momentum when the veteran Communist leader Somnath Chatterjee, himself a reputed lawyer of the past, adorned the Chair of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Perhaps, carrying with the upbeat mood of resilience, a hurriedly drafted Bill viz. ‘The Judges (Declaration Of Assets and Liabilities) Bill’ came to be placed before the Parliament with a ridiculous clause incorporated in it. The Clause 6 purportedly contemplating that any declaration by any Judge would not be made public and confined only as an internal communication to the concerned Chief Justices and that there won’t be any query or inquiry about such internal disclosure, backfired in Parliament resulting in the withdrawal of the Bill itself.

Amidst all these developments, the judicial leadership of the Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan has been far less commendable and least assuring, mainly because of his rather hesitant decision-making. Instead of recommending any codification in this regard, even Chief Justice Balakrish evolve only a make-shift arrangement for declaration of judges’ assets through an in-house voluntary resolution by the Supreme Court Judges and leaving the High Court Judges of the country to their own peril of conscience-keeping in this regard.

The requirement of compelling the judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts to declare their assets in fact arose from the Supreme Court’s own embarrassing experiences rather than from the demands from the other pro-transparency voices outside it, the necessity for declaration of assets by judges arose more for the hard exigencies faced by the highest judiciary to keep its own house in order. Hardly had the dust of inconsequential parliamentary exercise regarding impeachment of Justice V Ramaswami settled. Another dark day eclipsed the Indian Judicial skyline when Bombay High Court Chief Justice A-K Bhattacharjee had to resign amidst public controversies regarding illegal foreign exchange earnings by him. It is a pity and a different matter altogether, that all this was for a book authored by Justice Bhattacharjee and purchased by international readership.

The ever growing list of judges marred by controversy does not seem to end and most allegations, over the years, have mostly centered around misusing one's good office in bargain for pecuniary, property or business interests either for such a trained judge himself or for his or her kith and kin. While some allegations have been established, some are not even in the in-house probes'. In some cases the incumbent judge, working or retired, got away from penal prosecution, on legal technicalities like absence of sanction from the Chief Justice of India, etc.

Civilized nations elsewhere in the world and with legacy of deep-rooted judicial system in vogue have, long ago, formulated statutory and codified mechanism for financial disclosure by the judges. Should India still be hesitant? After all, the in-house resolution divulged by the Chief Justice of India cannot compel a Judge to abide by it, without a consequential response for default on part of any Supreme Court or High Court Judge. The Constitutional procedure for impeachment of a judge with the highest degree of misconduct proved to be a failure in case of Justice Ramaswami. Even the “come what may – I will not relinquish” sort of stand taken by Justice Soumitra Sen of Calcutta High Court could not be tamed by such in-house agreed principles. What if some of the judges refuse to declare assets and still go on with the justice delivery exercise concerning the people? Why exclude the hierarchy of Lower Judiciary compounded with a growing number of day to day allegations about being corrupt somewhere in its rank and file? Are not they a part of the over all Indian Judicial System? The lower and the subordinate judiciary are in fact the first judicial contact line with the crore of litigating public and therefore, some mechanism, though in phased manner, would have to be evolved pertaining to this lower hierarchy in near or distant future. The vulnerability of such “ voluntary agreement” in absence of unavoidable codification will at once be exposed if any Supreme Court or High Court Judge under-presents his or her assets and/or financial, disclosure. What would tie the consequence? What about updatings?

All these aspects and clear probabilities must be covered by mandatory codifications or enactments, if at all the real purpose behind all these sensitive exercise is aimed at bringing in non-camouflaged transparency in the most independent and pivotal pillar of democracy. Since it is to keep the judges away from any controversy regarding their integrity and accountability, all of theta should not only volunteer but even welcome any future codification with all rational provisions and no one-upmanship projected between the Legislature and the Judiciary with the public sandwiched in between. The Chief Justice of India’s initiative for a voluntary mechanism for declaration of assets only by the Supreme Court judges while leaving the High Court Judges all over the country to decide for themselves has left a scope for divided opinion amongst the High Court judges in which event such divided stand will only bring in further embarrassment to the Higher Judiciary as a whole.

 

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

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

NE COAL FIELDS: SILVER LINING AND SHADOWS

HITENDRA NATH SARMA

 

The chapter of industrial history of northeastern India began with Assam Railways & Trading Company’s (AR&T) prospecting of coal in the Ledo areas in 1882 and the establishment of Ledo colliery in the same year. New collieries were founded to boost production at Namdung (1896), Ledo New West (1903), trap (1904), Ledo New East (1904), Baragolai (1909), Ti Pongpani – now shortened as Tipong (1924) and Namdang Dip (1940) with centralised headquarters at Margherita.

Coal was the crying need of the hour for the development and expansion of the newly emerging tea industry in this region. The establishment of Ledo colliery gave to the eastern most areas of Assam beyond Makum Jn, railway connectivity and the historic Dehing bridge for both rail and vehicular traffic and the name itself to this new industrial HQ as ‘Margherita’. Harry’s engines then 15 in number to run the locomotives for carrying coal from the mine gates to the depots are yet another fabulous heritage wealth of these mines.

Under AR&T’s management these coal fields were triumphant commercial units. But nationalisation of these mines and merging them under the umbrella organisation of Coal India Ltd yet allowing the distinctive identity of North Eastern Coal Fields affected the efficiency and health of these nines due mostly for weak management policies, dubious practices, leadership crisis and lack of commitment and co-ordination barring of course, some intermittent periods of effective and well meaning periods of concerted efforts to restore the industry back to its health.

One ready-made reply years ago to the sick state of affairs was the less marketability of the coal produced in the NECF due to high sulphur content. But reports of a flourishing market behind the screen posed questions on the validity of such an explanation. Now thanks to change in leadership, there has been remarkable shift from fishy administrative, tenor to transparent cohesive and responsible system of management attended by increased production and a steadily increasing flow of profit. In 2006-07 the NECF made Rs 11.0 crore, in -2007-08 Rs 38.49 crore and in 2008-09 Rs 41.0 crore profit. The coal production has also risen significantly from 6.28 lakh metric tonnes in 2004-05 to 1.0 million metric tonnes in 2008-09.. A great feat of achievement indeed for the present set of management!

A source maintains that there is a huge demand for NECF coal and the present figure stands at 7.8 million metric tonnes against its supply capacity of 1.0 million metric tonnes annually. The high demand is clearly due to its excellent quality. Indeed the NECF coal is of the best quality in the world — A & A category consisting of 7300 kilo calorie energy per kg. It has the advantages of many downstream industries including coal liquefaction plant proposed to be set up by OIL for production of petrol.

The NECF authorities are now making necessary arrangements to start open cast mining in Lekhapni and Jagun areas to meet the increasing demands. They are however, put into difficulties by the discrepancies in the existing prices. Whereas they are offered (A6 Rs. 5500 per metric tonne for their supplies to Punjab and Haryana through e-auction, they get only Rs 2200 per metric tonne for their other to-supplies as per government notified price.

There is however, another side of the story– a side which is even more important than the bright side seen so far. It is the inescapable impact of the coal mining on the environment which has been affecting health, sanitation, water and agriculture of the entire locality. It has been revealed in a study that methane released through coal mining is an important greenhouse gas and it contributes around 15 per cent to the Greenhouse Effect. The CO2, emitted by the combustion of hard coal constitutes around 18 per cent of the Greenhouse Effect, and although NECF authorities try to evade their responsibility on this count saying that they are only producers and not users and further by indicting certain ether agencies like coke bhatta, the fact remains that throughout the locality hard coal is continued to be burnt for making of coke by private hands may be due to connivance of the authorities and thereby covering the entire landscape with a light smog.

Large scale deforestation is the most important factor of Greenhouse Effect and the surface mining in the Margherita, Boragolai, Ledo, Tikok areas have already levelled down several hills once covered with tall trees and canopies of luxuriant sylvan growth. The disappearance of the hills and the forest cover in them destroyed the unique kind of environment that prevailed earlier. Along with the aesthetic glory of the entire locality has vanished. Some new hillocks of brown soil have come because of the dumping of wastes as sores to the eyes of the passers-by. Land degradation and water pollution are two ether evils associated with coal mining. These primal forests and hills forming part of the Patkai range are lost to us forever like the Appalachian mountains in North America because of surface mining.

The NECF authorities have not done much as regards to reforestation in order to arrest the mounting Greenhouse Effect in the area. The government also does not appear to be keen on it and people only wonder what they are doing with the money that they are collecting as Net Proposed Value (NPV) from CIL, NECF at the rate of Rs 7.0 to Rs 10.0 lakh per hectare of surface mining area.

The present chief general manager of NECF has shown some proof of his professional grip and acumen in the managoement areas of production and marketing; and people expect that he and his men will clearly demonstrate their power to control the environmental issues as well.

 

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

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

IDIOMATIC IDYLLS: ENGLISH IS IN CRISIS

 

What is an idiom? Those with but a nodding acquaintance with the English language may well deduce that the word means a silly man. Literal translations of that kind are precisely what led to the kerfuffle over Shashi Tharoor’s indiscreet twitterings, rather than any national lack of a funny bone. Indeed, the controversy only served to highlight the wider malaise that now affects India: unfamiliarity with English idioms - phrases which mean something other than literal definitions of their constituent words.

Chinese and Hindi may be spoken by more people but English is the language of both international commerce and diplomacy, arguably the two forces that move the world. Not only has this made the vocabulary of English swell exponentially, its capacity for nuances and double entendres, has accelerated its acceptance and usage around the world. English’s virtues, however, cut both ways as Tharoor realised to his detriment.

Schoolboy penchants for puns have always been ably accommodated by the English language, but they become infructuous if their subtlety is lost on the audience; and they can cause a national ‘incident’ if they are construed as insolence or derision. Once uttered or twittered, sadly, there is no saying where, and on whom, idiomatic phrases will land with a thud.

Time was when Wren & Martin grammar books and Roget’s Thesaurus were common items on Indian students’ must-have list of books. These arcane repositories of the glorious potential of English have now been jettisoned in favour of more workaday compendiums.

This has left no time or mindspace for comprehension of shades of meaning, irony, sarcasm, self-deprecation or other understated or unstated purpose of articulation. The result is a flattened perception of expression, which is then sought to be masked by umbrage over perceived notions of insult. By letting his urge to pun get the better of him, Tharoor has highlighted the dangers of letting English slide nationally, or dare we say, idiomatically, “go to the dogs”.

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

KUDOS, JAIRAM: ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY TO CEDE POWER

 

There’s a welcome move by the ministry of environment and forests to modernise and revamp environmental clearances and regulatory compliance. A draft note by the ministry calls for a statutory regulatory body, National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA), that would grant clearances and also enforce regulation, under appellate supervision by a National Green Tribunal.

Given the routine opacity and patronage that govern environmental clearances and monitoring of compliance, this is welcome. It’s unusual for a ministry to cede its own arbitrary, ad-hoc powers to an institutional set-up.

There exists no suitable body to effectively oversee implementation of the landmark Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. The note is candid that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the State Pollution Control Boards, with their rather narrow remit, do not have the “capacity or the resources” to enforce the guidelines in the statutes.

The judiciary has, of late, played a major role in actual enforcement of environmental laws. But this is not a sustainable solution. The MoEF note rightly wants multi-disciplinary ‘best-in-class expertise’ for NEPA. What should be the institutional design of NEPA vis-a-vis existing bodies like the CPCB?

The note moots four options. In the first, the MoEF retains its regulatory role. In the second, NEPA completely subsumes the CPCB and manages all regulation and enforcement. In the third, NEPA, the authority for clearance and enforcement, coexists with the CPCB, which would develop standards, do technical studies, etc., and report to the MOEF. In the fourth option, the CPCB would also report to the NEPA.

Option three seems optimal. The ministry would continue to formulate policy, standards would set by CPCB and NEPA, along with state level authorities, would grant clearances, and enforce regulation. Another regulatory body may be necessary but not sufficient for transparency. The way ahead is to have objective, forward-looking criteria for clearances that are research-based and reasonably predictable.

 

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

 

 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

INSURANCE NEEDS CAPITAL

 

The government should consider insurance industry’s demand that it be allowed to raise equity from the public even before completing ten years of operations. The current rules say promoters should not hold more than 26% equity in an Indian insurance company but, in cases where they begin operations with equity in excess of 26%, promoters can bring their stake down to the limit only after a period of ten years from the date of the commencement of business.

India needs insurance companies to expand rapidly to bring more people under cover, but this 10-year rule is creating an artificial scarcity of capital, in tandem with the 26% cap on foreign equity. Insurance requires periodic capital infusion in the early years because of expansion and initial business losses.

Any capital infusion at present has to be in the 74:26 ratio, with the Indian partner taking the bigger share. Most Indian promoters are finding it difficult to bring these extra funds to their ventures, while willing foreign partners are running into the FDI limit.

Allowing insurance companies to raise fresh equity would address both their capital needs and also begin the process of paring the promoter stake to 26%. The expanded equity base would also allow more FDI to flow to the venture even before the FDI limit is hiked to the proposed 49%, as issue of fresh equity would bring down the stake of the foreign partner. The putative ground for prohibiting promoter divestment before completing 10 years of operations, the need to retain commitment in the venture by the promoter, is irrelevant today.

The relaxation should also follow a well thought out set of rules, as insurance companies could still be making losses when they hit the market. But most of them are expected to turn in profits as they build scale, which is not too difficult given the low penetration of insurance products in India.

However, valuing such a loss-making long gestation business is tricky as it must entail financial projections of business for many years ahead. These projections need to be credible, possibly vetted by some independent agency. The insurance regulator IRDA and the stock market watchdog Sebi should sit together and work out a regime that is equitable to all stakeholders.

 

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

 

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

THROUGH THE THIRD EYE

RUBBERY INSTINCTS

Given his track-record of taking some respectable time before doing spectacular U-turns, this one was a real quickie. Unlike the Babri masjid demolition, Gujarat riots and Kandhahar swap incidents, in which L K Advani’s solo acrobatics came years after the ‘actions’, LK took just a month in Jaswant Singh expulsion issue, saying he didn’t approve of the slaughter in Shimla. But stalwarts in the BJP Parliamentary Board don’t remember L K venting his ‘agony’ when party’s brand ambassador to Kandhahar was shown the door. Many BJP leaders say but for M M Joshi’s brief plea that Jaswant be given a chance to explain, the execution was a neat affair with the Advani acolyte Ananth Kumar leading the frenzy with others nodding solemnly. Now BJP leaders worry their iron man’s increasing rubbery ways might make the original Sardar turn in his grave.

HOBSON’S CHOICE

So Lalu Yadav says he will not abandon Soniaji even if the Congressmen do the unthinkable. This post-RJD by-polls victory show of unending loyalty to Congress chief by the very man who made the fatal mistake of offering just three LS seats to GoP has many Congressmen wondering why he doesn’t join the Congress straight away. Meanwhile, the BJP-JD(U) camp, realising the danger of many upper caste voters moving to the Congress, is hoping that GoP will once again shoulder the crippling political baggage of RJD to make its future safe. But the Congress is sure to pursue a UP-like solo show in Bihar and Jharkhand to regain its social base. If 10 Janpath continues to be imperious, Lalu just might be pragmatic enough to try his luck with Mamatadi who is turning the CBI heat on her predecessor at Rail Bhavan.

FIVE-HORSE RACE

The five-member Maharashtra state Congress panel formed by the AICC to frame the poll strategy and hold alliance talks with the NCP presents a story in itself. We have veterans Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde, CM Ashok Chavan, state minister Narayan Rane and PCC chief Manikrao Thackeray acting together to give the Congress a hat-trick victory. But many partymen wonder how the panel will work in harmony given each one of them wants to be the CM. While Deshmukh thinks he is born for a record-stint at CMO, Shinde prays Sonia Gandhi will reward him with the office that was snatched away from in 2004. Ashok Chavan, who rocked Prithviraj Chavan’s mid-day dream, hopes Rahul will continue to bless him. And despite the odds, Rane hopes to finally make it. Thackeray expects he’ll emerge as the dark horse.

CRAFTY INSWINGER

The aftermath of the BJP wresting five Congress seats in Gujarat by-poll showed an interesting twist in an intriguing saffron tale. The victory had come as a much-needed relief for Narendra Modi’s LS poll blues. Given the raging succession war in the BJP and the impact another poor show in Modiland would have had on his in-house standing, the CM understandably played it safe by not campaigning this time. So the surprise victory, many BJP men thought, would give the CM a chance to firm up his mission to project himself as a ‘development messiah’, who moved away from the stigma of Gujarat riots. But then the Delhi-based party spin doctors, by attributing the victory to ‘popular anger’ against the Congress take on the Ishrat Jehan encounter, ensured Modi remains what his critics say he is: a leader who thrives only in politics of polarisation. Hope this is no in-house plot.

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

TIME TO TIGHTEN FISCAL BELTS AROUND THE WORLD

ABHEEK BARMAN

 

Later this month Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will travel to Pittsburgh and meet with the heads of government of the G20 nations. Among other things, they’ll talk about when would be the best time to start tightening fiscal belts around the world.

For over a year now, as rich nations slipped into recession, their governments have thrown money around and dropped interest rates to stem the slide. This seems to have paid off: the global economy is pulling back from the brink. Even Fed boss Ben Bernanke now believes that the US is back on the road to a slow recovery.

Many people believe that all countries should tighten their belts together: a “coordinated exit strategy,” if you like jargon. For India, that would mean keeping interest rates low and money supply trotting along briskly for some more time, maybe for as much as another year, while the west limps back to normalcy.

That would be a big blunder. India’s economy is very different from the developed ones. There’s no reason why India’s policies should move in lockstep with the west. The Great Recession taught us that India’s economy is far, far more resilient to shocks than many supposed. Yes, the contraction in the west hurt some export-oriented industries, but even that shock seems to be easing.

Maruti Suzuki, the 800 kg gorilla of India’s car industry sold 40% more cars in August this year compared to August last year. Exports are a big driver: the west is suddenly discovering the virtues of saving money and small, fuel efficient cars that were made for the thrifty Indian car buyer are now bestsellers overseas.

India’s domestic demand also seems to have held up well. Hero Honda, the market leader in motorcycles, grew August sales by 37%. It didn’t need the export market to get there. All it needed was for lenders to come out of a panicky freeze and start lending to desi motorcycle-buyers once more.

India has an enormous appetite for infrastructure, everything from roads, ports and power to schools and water supply. A research report from Goldman Sachs, published last week, reckons that India will need $1.7 trillion to fund all this over the next 10 years. That’s a huge sum of money, but the report goes on to say that Indians can fund it out of their own pockets.

Unlike the US, where the savings rate was zero in 2008, and has climbed back to about 7% today, Indians save a lot. The savings rate is already over 35% of incomes and Goldman reckons this’ll rise to 40% in another seven years. Don’t be surprised by this high number, it seems to be fairly common in Asia: Singapore’s savings rate has been around 40% for the last 26 years; China’s since 1993 and Malaysia’s from 1996.

Even if 15% of these savings go into funding infrastructure, it’ll add up to about $600 billion. Then, of course, there’s the government, which wants to hike spending on infrastructure to 7% of GDP from today’s less-than 5%. That’ll bring in more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

 

Developed countries have relied on consumption to drive growth. Over the next 10 years or so, India will rely on investment and savings to grow. But to get there, we need policies that protect our own interests, not chase the latest global fad.

The main threat to savings is inflation, rising prices that eat into the value of every rupee saved. And if India stays on its easy money track for much longer, prices are likely to explode. Wholesale, or producers’ inflation, which was supposed to stay negative till October turned positive last week, earlier than expected.

Anyone who shops for food will tell you that there’s only one way that prices have moved in the last one year: northwards. Prices of vegetables are up over 40% in a year. Pulses are about 25% costlier and some varieties like tur (also known as arhar) are up more than 80%. Fish is more expensive, and ilish, the queen of every Bengali table, now costs about 40% more than what it did last year.

For some foods, there are specific reasons for prices to go up. Tur for example, suffered from a bad harvest, but high prices today have encouraged farmers to plant more for the next season, which could see a glut and falling rates. But that doesn’t explain why every single price is shooting up.

It’s not just food that’s getting costlier, all commodities are. From a low of $37 per barrel, crude oil now trades at $71; gold recently hit $1,017 per ounce, a level way above its historical trend of around $300 per ounce. Iron ore, copper and zinc prices are also soaring. The one factor driving this price surge is the tsunami of cash, pumped in by governments to rescue economies, that’s finding its way into speculative markets.

High cost gold affects the jewellery business, but ever-rising food budgets could bankrupt families. No democracy can live with soaring inflation for long and in India, the political tolerance for high inflation is very low.

That’s something Manmohan Singh and his team need to remember when they talk “exit strategy” in Pittsburgh. The US and Europe might need to stay on their easy money fix for much longer. Their banking and financial systems are still digging their way out of rubble. Unemployment continues to increase, though at a slower pace. It could take years to restore jobs already lost and create new ones.

For India, which never went through a recession, the problems are entirely different. We need to invest for the long term. To do that, people need to have the confidence that inflation isn’t going to vapourise their savings. If each family has to spend more for the same meal, savings will shrink. If companies find raw material costs going up alarmingly, they’ll cut back on investments for the future.

India has to start its fight to control inflation. The only question is when? One option is to wait till headline — producers’ inflation — hits 5% or so. But waiting for that to happen could have a huge cost: consumers’ inflation, already at 12%, could surge even higher as policymakers play the fiddle.

The only sensible option is to start right now, without waiting for other nations to start tightening their belts. India’s weathered the global crisis relatively well. It now has to move fast so that prices are tamed before the rest of the world goes into a high-inflation spiral.

(The author is consulting editor, ET Now)

 

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

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

LOCKED-IN IS AS LOCKED-IN DOES

MUKUL SHARMA

 

The closest thing to being buried alive is the medical condition known as ventral pontine syndrome or pseudocoma. Popularly, it’s also known as a being “locked-in” and results from damage to the brain stem. Patients are fully aware of what’s going on but totally paralysed — often they can’t even move their eyes in order to communicate. What is not paralysed, however is their mind and mental faculties which remains intact but unable to manifest in any way to others or the outside world. It also means they have to suffer pain in silence. There is no standard treatment nor is there a cure and the chances of recovery are almost non-existent with over 90% dying within the first four months of onset.

It’s a horrific existential situation, far worse than being trapped in nightmares and not being able to do anything about it or regaining consciousness during surgery yet powerless to move, for the simple reason that locked-ins last long enough to become permanent. Nevertheless, there have been exceptions. The 2008 film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the story of French author and editor of Elle magazine, Dominique Bauby, who suffered a catastrophic stroke in 1996 and woke three weeks later to find he couldn’t move or speak. The only thing he had control over was his left eyelid. Blinking it in a certain way he was able to indicate alphabets and, over a year, managed to dictate a 128 page memoir one letter at a time.

Without detracting from Bauby’s appalling experience, it’s still important to consider sometimes that, in a similar way, most of us are also locked-in in our kind of lifestyles. And that, generally, what we manage to accomplish during our brief existence can also be compared with the blinking of an eye while the rest of our potential lies seemingly paralysed. We too remain dimly away of what’s going on around us but feel helpless to participate or intervene. Fortunately, there have been exceptions again.

Prince Siddhartha Gautama was a locked-in in the suffocating microcosm of the palace of his father, King Suddodhona, living a life of paralysed luxury, hermetically shielded from the outside world and suffering for nearly three decades. But his blinking eyelid realised there was more and wanted out. Thus he was able to escape being buried alive in his pseudocoma and gain enlightenment which opened his eyes to spell out a teaching for a whole world to read.

 

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

 

 

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

                                                                                                               DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

FIGHT NAXALS WITH GUNS AND BUTTER

BY OUR CORRESPONDENT

 

The usual media stories about the Naxalites, who go under various acronyms in different parts of the country, are depressing to read. Typically, in central India’s tribal belt, which includes the states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, fringes of Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh, well-armed Naxal brigades kill the innocent (usually the poor who do not join them, or a local notable), attack government property and public institutions, and eliminate policemen, some times in open confrontations or through the use of landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Usually the authorities are found helpless in these situations and little protection can be afforded to ordinary folk residing in Naxalite-ravaged zones. So, there was a bright spot last Friday when in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh CRPF commandos, coordinating with the state police, tactically engaged the so-called Maoists in thick jungles that had hitherto not been penetrated, killed a number of them, unearthed an arms factory, and seized a stockpile of sophisticated weapons. The regions in which Naxals are active are ungoverned spaces, not unlike parts of the world where groups like the Taliban operate. Road and rail links are absent, and signs of development few. Ordinary people live in dread of the desperadoes and generally do their bidding for there is no government to come to their aid. It is therefore in the fitness of things that the parts of the Dantewada forests where the uniformed men took on the so-called Maoists are not relinquished. Indeed, tactics incorporating military means and developmental activity is the long-awaited imperative if these regions have to be freed from the clutches of the “people’s brigade’. The Naxalites of the present generation who terrorise the poor to gain control of territory are not Robin Hoods. They are neither revolutionaries nor bandits of the kind that Hobsbawm wrote about. The fire of idealism and romanticism that drove misguided young men and women — many from backgrounds of privilege — 40 or 50 years ago to take up arms “in defence of the poor”, and revolt against an indifferent state power, has ceased to burn. In many cases, Naxalites now are mixed up with destructive elements such as Islamist militants, the LTTE, and the underground operatives of the Northeast. Their stock-in-trade are weapons and drugs. They are terrorists, not political ideologues. A democratic state cannot but take them on — militarily, politically and ideologically. Having said this, the same state also needs to be interrogated for its lethargy and its aversion to drawing the poorest in the country into the arc of development. The Naxalites feed on the poverty syndrome and revel in conditions of underdevelopment which permit them to ply their trade unmolested. In order to contest them convincingly, the state must carry the fruits of progress to the ordinary people. There is a curious absence of a meaningful reference to this in observations made from on high. The Prime Minister and the Union home minister typically refer to the Naxalites as the country’s biggest internal security threat. That in part is not an unrealistic assessment. But it is time our leaders began to articulate a fuller understanding of the problem.

           

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

ON CHINA, TALK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY A BIG STICK

BY SHANKAR ROYCHOWDHURY

 

 “Trust, but verify.” US President Ronald Reagan’s stand on the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War carried military overtones, with a subtext of restraint, but from a position of strength. The same comment repeated by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in the context of India-Pakistan relations (the Manmohan Singh Doctrine?) gratuitously neuters itself by delinking action on terrorism by Pakistan from resumption of the so-called “composite dialogue” between the two countries, and also unilaterally precludes any military alternatives, whatever the degree of provocation in future. Pakistan is strategically linked to China, India’s other and vastly more powerful neighbour, in the relationship of surrogate and principal. The question that naturally arises next is: How relevant will India’s new doctrine be in the context of China, with whom relations are also under strain at present?

 

India and China both emerged as independent Asian giants at around the same time — 1947 for India and 1949 for the People’s Republic of China — but subsequent events witnessed a much greater degree of hard-headed realpolitik by China in managing its interest and affairs, until the two emerging neighbours ultimately collided in the border war of 1962, in which China’s definitive military victory over India clearly established the leadership order in Asia.

 

The Sino-Indian border war of 1962 was a watershed. In its aftermath, support for India was primarily articulated by the United States and the West, entirely understandable in the context of the Cold War, but nevertheless subtly tinged with more than a trace of ridicule and even contempt that a vast country, which had so far attempted to moralise and preach to the rest of the world, should prove so utterly incompetent in defence of its own heartland. Within the Asian neighbourhood, the silence was deafening. China had arrived with a blast of trumpets, and Asia trod warily. China lost no time in hammering home its regional primacy with a masterstroke of realpolitik, a strategic linkage with India’s traditional opponent —Pakistan — through the Sino-Pak Treaty of Friendship of 1963, followed through with its first nuclear explosion in 1964. That position remains unchanged to this day.

 

The domestic fallout from 1962 impacted the country’s self-esteem and confidence as well, pushing it on a subconscious backfoot with regard to China, and though much water has flowed down the Tsangpo since then, India’s “1962 syndrome” is unaltered. This notwithstanding the Indian Army’s post-1962 successes against Chinese attempts to intrude at Nathu-La in 1967 and Sumdurong Chu in 1989-90. China is well aware of this, and periodically exploits the psychological advantage conceded by India to maintain pressure by various methods.

 

Sino-Indian border issues have been discussed extensively at national, bilateral and international forums, but misperceptions still persist in the public mind regarding the “border” between the two countries. What actually exists is the “Line of Actual Control” in the Indo-Tibet border region, with differing perceptions of its alignment by each country. Both send military patrols up to their respective claim lines, and signal their visit by leaving token indicators of unmistakable national origins like cigarette packets, newspapers and similar debris. Patrol movements generally take place on foot, and often on vehicles in Ladakh where the terrain permits such movement, but the Chinese helicopter reported there recently is certainly a first in its category. In fact, from the Indian side, patrolling along the LAC has been developed into a highly stylised ballet to avoid contact or confrontation between opposing patrols, and a degree of over-watch if it happens in spite of best efforts. So when there are reports in the Indian media of an increase in frequency in Chinese patrolling activity to disputed areas in various sectors in those regions, what is not reported whether Indian patrols too have also conversely increased their own frequency, or whether the Indian government has imposed restrictions on Indian movements to avoid “provocations”. This will be a key indicator if India is apprehensive regarding China.

But perhaps even more sensitive than Sino-Indian border issues is China’s extreme umbrage to India’s sanctuary to the Dalai Lama, which might conceivably have triggered Chinese ambassador Sun Xi’s spectacularly timed reiteration of China’s claims on Tawang and indeed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh (“Southern Tibet” in Chinese eyes) on the immediate eve of the President, Mr Hu Jintao’s visit to India in 2006, though the Indian people did take note of Dr Manmohan Singh’s avoidance of Tawang during his tour of Arunachal Pradesh in 2008. The publication of the Zhong Guo Zhan Lue Chinese think tank’s dissertation on dismembering the “Indian Federation” into 30 or more states with the help of China’s friends and allies, as well as the reported renewal of support and training to anti-Indian militants in Manipur may also form part of a overall pattern of coercive orchestration.

India’s responses to all these have been non-confrontational and even passive, sometimes to the point of apparent deference. The psyche of the Han race, who constitute the dominant majority of the Chinese people, is another factor to be understood when interacting with China, irrespective of the political system prevailing, whether Communist as at present, Kuomintang earlier, or Imperial Beijing even earlier still. Xenophobic by natural mindset, the Han consider China as the “middle kingdom” of the world, superior to those countries and peoples on the periphery, which in current perspective includes India. The underlying inflexibility in matters of territory considered national, no matter how long ago in history, has its origins in this perception, and applies to territorial frontiers, whether Taiwan, Vietnam, the South China Sea, or in India’s case the Sino-Indian border in Tibet.

Against this background, India’s preferred life insurance policy has to remain unchanged: build up sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear military capabilities and create the long-neglected military infrastructures along the country’s land, sea, and airspace frontiers until a credible level of dissuasion and even deterrence is achieved, whether for China, Pakistan or any one else.

In the meanwhile, the “trust, but verify” mantra needs a little modification in the context of China. How about an alternative: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”?

 

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury (Retd) is a former Chief of Army Staff

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

CRACK THE WHIP, TAKE THE BANKERS HEAD-ON

BY PAUL KRUGMAN

 

In the grim period that followed Lehman’s failure, it seemed inconceivable that bankers would, just a few months later, be going right back to the practices that brought the world’s financial system to the edge of collapse. At the very least, one might have thought, they would show some restraint for fear of creating a public backlash.

 

But now that we’ve stepped back a few paces from the brink — thanks, let’s not forget, to immense, taxpayer-financed rescue packages — the financial sector is rapidly returning to business as usual. Even as the rest of the nation continues to suffer from rising unemployment and severe hardship, Wall Street paycheques are heading back to pre-crisis levels. And the industry is deploying its political clout to block even the most minimal reforms.

 

The good news is that senior officials in the Obama administration and at the US Federal Reserve seem to be losing patience with the industry’s selfishness. The bad news is that it’s not clear whether President Barack Obama himself is ready, even now, to take on the bankers.

 

Credit where credit is due: I was delighted when Mr Lawrence Summers, the administration’s ranking economist, lashed out at the campaign the US Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with financial-industry lobbyists, is running against the proposed creation of an agency to protect consumers against financial abuses, such as loans whose terms they don’t understand. The chamber’s ads, declared Summers, are “the financial-regulatory equivalent of the death-panel ads that are being run with respect to healthcare”.

 

Yet protecting consumers from financial abuse should be only the beginning of reform. If we really want to stop Wall Street from creating another bubble, followed by another bust, we need to change the industry’s incentives — which means, in particular, changing the way bankers are paid.

 

What’s wrong with financial-industry compensation? In a nutshell, bank executives are lavishly rewarded if they deliver big short-term profits — but aren’t correspondingly punished if they later suffer even bigger losses. This encourages excessive risk-taking: Some of the men most responsible for the current crisis walked away immensely rich from the bonuses they earned in the good years, even though the high-risk strategies that led to those bonuses eventually decimated their companies, taking down a large part of the financial system in the process.

 

The Federal Reserve, awakened from its Greenspan-era slumber, understands this problem — and proposes doing something about it. According to recent reports, the Fed’s board is considering imposing new rules on financial-firm compensation, requiring that banks “claw back” bonuses in the face of losses and link pay to long-term rather than short-term performance. The Fed argues that it has the authority to do this as part of its general mandate to oversee banks’ soundness.

But the industry — supported by nearly all Republicans and some Democrats — will fight bitterly against these changes. And while the administration will support some kind of compensation reform, it’s not clear whether it will fully support the Fed’s efforts.

 

 

I was startled last week when Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg News, questioned the case for limiting financial-sector pay: “Why is it”, he asked, “that we’re going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or National Football League (NFL) football players?”

 

That’s an astonishing remark — and not just because the NFL does, in fact, have pay caps. Tech firms don’t crash the whole world’s operating system when they go bankrupt; quarterbacks who make too many risky passes don’t have to be rescued with hundred-billion-dollar bailouts. Banking is a special case — and the President is surely smart enough to know that.

 

All I can think is that this was another example of something we’ve seen before: Mr Obama’s visceral reluctance to engage in anything that resembles populist rhetoric. And that’s something he needs to get over.

 

It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics — although it is: The administration has suffered more than it seems to realise from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the GOP as the party of obscene bonuses.

 

Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.

It’s time for the President to realise that sometimes populism, especially populism that makes bankers angry, is exactly what the economy needs.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

MISSED POLICY OPPORTUNITY

BY JAYATI GHOSH

 

Did we just miss a major opportunity? For a short while, it seemed that the global financial crisis would focus minds on what is wrong with the current economic growth model and how we can go about changing it. Unfortunately, that moment seems to have passed, at least until the next crisis comes along (which, in current trends, will not be long, since all the major forces that led to the previous crisis are still in place).

 

The enthusiastic talk of recovery has spread from stock markets to government policymakers, who are already talking of unwinding their stimulus packages. Yet this is not only premature, it is also disheartening because all the major changes that were required to restructure economic relations in a more democratic and sustainable way have simply not been considered.

 

For example, the point seems to have been missed that there is no alternative to systematic state regulation and control of finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of the financial system — banking — must be protected, and this is only possible through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just socialisation of the risks inherent in finance) is also inevitable. In developing countries this is also important because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has industrialised.

 

Second, the obsessively export-oriented model that has dominated the growth strategy of the region for the past few decades needs to be reconsidered. This is not just a desirable shift — it has become a necessity given the obvious fact that the United States can no longer continue to be the engine of world growth through increasing import demand in the near future. Developing countries, particularly those in developing Asia that continue to rely on the US and the European Union as their primary export markets, must seek to redirect their exports to other countries and most of all to redirect their economies towards more domestic demand, towards wage-led growth. This can happen not only through direct redistributive strategies but also through public expenditure to provide more basic goods and services.

 

Third, this means that fiscal policy and public expenditure must be brought back to centrestage. This is not only for countercyclical measures, important though they are. Public expenditure is required to manage the effects of climate change and promote greener technologies, in addition to being crucial to advance the development project.

 

Fourth, we have to recognise the need to reduce inequalities in income and wealth both globally and nationally,

and also most significantly in the consumption of natural resources. This is even more complicated than might be imagined, because unsustainable patterns of production and consumption are now deeply entrenched in the richer countries and are aspired to in developing countries. But many millions of citizens of the developing world still have poor or inadequate access to the most basic conditions of decent life, such as minimum physical infrastructure including electricity and transport and communication links, sanitation, health, nutrition and education. Ensuring universal provision of this will inevitably require greater per capita use of natural resources and more carbon-emitting production. So both sustainability and equity require a reduction of the excessive resource use of the rich, especially in developed countries, but also among the elites in the developing world.

 

Fifth, then this requires new patterns of both demand and production. This makes it important to develop new means of measuring genuine progress, well-being and quality of life. Quantitative gross domestic product (GDP) growth targets, that still dominate the thinking of regional policymakers, can be counterproductive. For example, a chaotic, polluting and unpleasant system of privatised urban transport involving many private vehicles and over-congested roads actually generates more GDP than a safe, efficient and affordable system of public transport that reduces vehicular congestion and provides a pleasant living and working environment. So it is not enough to talk about “cleaner, greener technologies” to produce goods that are based on the old and now discredited pattern of consumption. Instead, we must think creatively about such consumption itself, and work out which goods and services are more necessary and desirable for our societies.

 

Sixth, this cannot be left to market forces, since the international demonstration effect and the power of advertising will continue to create undesirable wants and unsustainable consumption and production. But public intervention in the market cannot be knee-jerk responses to constantly changing short-term conditions. Instead, planning — not in the sense of the detailed planning that destroyed the reputation of command regimes, but strategic thinking about the social requirements and goals for the future — is absolutely essential.

 

Seventh, since state involvement in economic activity is now an imperative, we should be thinking of ways to make such involvement more democratic and accountable within our countries and internationally. Large amounts of public money are being used for financial bailouts and to provide fiscal stimuli, and how this is done has huge implications for distribution, access to resources and living conditions of the ordinary people whose taxes pay for this. So states across the world have to become more open and responsive to the needs of the majority of their citizens.

 

Finally, we need an international economic framework that supports all this, which means more than just that capital flows must be controlled and regulated so that they do not destabilise any of these strategies. The global institutions that form the organising framework for international trade, investment and production decisions also need to change and become not just more democratic in structure but more genuinely democratic and people-oriented in spirit, intent and functioning. Financing for development and conservation of global resources must become the top priorities of the global economic institutions, which means in turn that they cannot continue to base their approach on a completely discredited and unbalanced economic model.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

OF POLISH ANGST & NATO’S RELEVANCE

BY ROGER COHEN

 

 “How could US President Barack Obama choose such a day?”

 

That was the anguished outburst of a senior Polish officer attending a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) chiefs of defence here when asked what he thought of the US President’s cancellation last week of plans to place missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.

 

The officer was referring to the fact that the announcement came on September 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland. A gesture to Russia on this date — a “brave” decision said Vladimir Putin — was the rough equivalent for the Poles of their announcing concessions to a US foe on 9/11.

 

Poland is now one of the very few places in Europe that prefers former President Bush to Obama.

 

Now I’m sure Obama had no desire to insult Poland, even if the announcement also came as Russia conducted large-scale military manoeuvres with Belarus, an exercise on its western flank that summons the darkest spectres of post-Soviet Polish and Baltic-state angst. As US timing goes, this was pitiful.

 

Strategy is another matter. The new US plan to deploy proven SM-3 interceptor missiles, first at sea and later on land, makes better sense overall. It’s nimbler and saner on the Iranian threat. Why goad the Russian bear for little gain?

 

Even the Polish generals at the conclave of Nato’s military committee accepted some of the strategic arguments for the switch, but their reaction was governed by enduring Soviet trauma: Poles — like Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians — want the United States as visible on their soil as possible to deter Russian prowling.

 

That feeling is not just a Cold War hangover. The Russian incursion into Georgia last year caused central European shivers. Moscow succeeded in relegating the Georgian and Ukrainian bids for Nato membership to a place somewhere backward of the backburner.

 

Gosh, founding alliance members mused, imagine if Georgia had already been in Nato! Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty is clear: “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and will trigger the “use of armed force” in “collective self-defence”. Were boys from Turin and Topeka really ready to die for Tbilisi?

 

For Poland, as for other newer Nato members who joined the West after falling on the totalitarian side of the post-World War II European carve-up, Article 5 is beyond sacred.

 

It is the very foundation and essence of the alliance. Changing it is as unthinkable as disputing the existence of God at the Vatican.

 

That is not the case for the United States and its allies in “old” Europe, who, six decades on from Nato’s foundation, in a transformed world, are as conscious of the shortcomings of Article 5 as they are aware of its iconic status.

 

What of a cyber attack on a Nato member causing lethal damage? Or a biological attack? Or an act that directly threatens energy security?

 

Should the notion of “collective self-defence”, with its old-fashioned basis in defence of territory against Antwerp-bound Soviet tanks, not be replaced by a more flexible formulation like “collective security?” And, in light of the Afghan mission and the global nature of threats, do the geographical limits of Article 5 make sense?

 

All these questions confront Nato as it embarks on an attempt to redefine its “Strategic Concept” for the 21st century.

 

This is a necessary, indeed an overdue, exercise.

 

The power shifts of globalisation (some of them toward new anti-Western poles), the changed nature of modern conflict (unwinnable through force alone), new threats and the traumatic “out-of-area” Afghan experience all demand a radical rethink.

 

But as the splits between new and old Nato members here make clear — differences centered on Russia and alliance priorities — the exercise will not be easy.

 

Afghanistan also has revealed fissures between states ready to put troops in harm’s way and others reluctant to do so.

 

A 12-member group, headed by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, is leading the review, but has made the initial mistake of not including a military figure, active or retired. Strategy is useless unless matched to capacity. Only a soldier can tell you about that.

I remain an Atlanticist convinced of Nato’s relevance. The millions clamouring to get into the Euro-American community from the un-free or less-free world pay tribute to the “normality” (Adam Michnik’s word) underwritten by the alliance. But Nato has failed to level with its citizens and the world about what it has become since 1989. The new Strategic Concept, due in 2010, must fix that.

 

Other recommendations: focus on values (freedom, stability, pluralism, the rule of law); stress partnerships; avoid the arrogant-sounding “global actor” in favour of “actor in a globalised world”; be succinct (the founding treaty was 23 sentences); and reinterpret Article 5 without rewording it (think amendments to the US Constitution).

Oh, yes, and Mr President, about those Poles, grant them visa-free travel to the United States! It’s past time, especially after this latest snub. Don’t forget, your home is in Chicago.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

DECODING H1N1

BY ARIF ALI

 

Swine flu, which has already caused over 230 deaths in India, is an epidemic that began in April 2009 and is caused by a new strain of influenza virus, officially called the “H1N1 flu” by the Centre for Disease Control & Prevention (CDCP), United States. This virus, a subtype of a strain of “influenza A”, is referred to as swine flu as several genes in this virus are similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs.

 

The virus genome of H1N1 currently infecting humans is made up of ribonucleic acid (RNA). This RNA, instead of being a thread-like structure as is usual in other RNA-viruses, is split between eight independent pieces of RNA that act like mini chromosomes, allowing pieces of RNA from different viruses to mix together and form a new virus. H1N1 appears to be a result of the “reassortment” of two swine influenza viruses, one from North America and one from Europe. The North American strain was itself the product of previous “reassortments” and carried an “avian PB2” gene for at least 10 years and a “human PB1” gene since 1993. These genes have been passed on to the H1N1 virus. Analysis by CDCP identified its four component strains as one endemic in humans, one endemic in birds, and two endemic in pigs.

 

If a single host (a human, chicken or any other animal) is infected by two different strains of an influenza virus, it is possible that the assembled viral particles will create a new strain which will share properties of both its parental lineages.

 

Influenza viruses mutate constantly and swap genetic material with one another promiscuously. Reassortment is responsible for some of the major genetic shifts in the history of influenza viruses.

 

The 1957 and 1968 pandemic flu strains were caused by reassortment between an avian and a human virus.

 

The single best way to protect oneself against swine flu is to get vaccinated each year. There are two types of vaccines: The “flu shot” — an inactivated vaccine (containing the “killed virus”) that is given with a needle, usually in the arm — is approved for use in people older than six months, including people with chronic medical conditions. The second, the nasal-spray flu vaccine — made with live, weakened flu viruses that do not cause the flu — is approved for use in healthy people of 2-49 years of age. It’s not administered to pregnant women.

 

Both these vaccines contain three influenza viruses — one A H3N2 virus, one A H1N1 virus, and one B virus. About two weeks after vaccination, antibodies that provide protection against influenza virus infection develop in the body.

 

New flu strains can spread fast because no one has natural immunity and a vaccine can take at least six months to develop. Scientists do not think that people who received the seasonal flu shot this year have any immunity to H1N1. However, pharmaceutical companies are already examining ways to make a vaccine targeting the H1N1 virus and could have a vaccine ready soon.

 

Ralph Tripp, an influenza expert at the University of Georgia, said that this virus’ protein-making instructions suggest that people exposed to the 1957 flu pandemic — which killed about two million people worldwide — may have some immunity. That may explain why older people have been spared in Mexico, where the swine flu has been most deadly.

A flu spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, killing millions in pandemic years and hundreds of thousands in non-pandemic years. Three influenza pandemics occurred in the 20th century and killed tens of millions of people. Often new strains result from the spread of an existing flu virus to humans from animals.

 

Since it first killed humans in Asia in the 1990s, a deadly avian strain of H5N1 has posed the greatest risk of a new influenza pandemic. Luckily it has not mutated to spread easily between people.

 

“This virus (H1N1) doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity to kill like the 1918 virus which claimed an estimated 50 million victims worldwide”, said Richard Webby, a leading influenza virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “There are certain characteristics, molecular signatures, which this virus lacks,” said Peter Palese, a microbiologist and influenza expert at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. In particular, the swine flu lacks an amino acid that appears to increase the number of virus particles in the lungs, making the disease more deadly.

 

The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to almost every part of the world. A virus strain of subtype H1N1, it was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the Spanish flu, though most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks that predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weak patients.

 

Containing the spread of H1N1 will be a challenge during the winter months because it tends to survive better in cold temperature. But I hope by that time India’s health ministry would be in top gear to combat this menace.

 

Dr Arif Ali, Professor & Head, Department of Biotechnology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

 

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

 

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

ASTRONOMERS ‘SPOT’ METEORITE ON VAST NULLABOR PLAIN

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

 

London, 21 SEPT: Astronomers have discovered a specific piece of meteorite on Nullabor Plain, after tracking it from orbit, a rare finding which they claim is a major breakthrough for planetary science.

An international team, led by Dr Phil Bland of Imperial College London, has spotted not only a tiny meteorite on the Nullarbor Plain, but also its orbit and the asteroid it came from, using cameras which capture fireballs streaking across the night sky and mathematics, the Science journal reported. The astronomers deployed three “all sky cameras” on the Nullarbor Plain to form a fireball camera network. The cameras take a single time lapse picture of the sky throughout the entire night to record any fireballs over the Plain.
Combined with some clever mathematics, they were then able to calculate the original orbit of the object and where to search for the meteorite on the ground.

And, the ability to track meteorites back to their asteroid home also means it is an incredibly cheap way of sampling that asteroid, rather than conducting an expensive space mission, the astronomers said.
Team member and CSIRO Exploration & Mining scientist Dr Rob Hough said the search for the meteorite was helped by the fact the Nullarbor Plain is marked by white limestone rocks.

“So a dark meteorite on the white surface is easier to find, however it's very tiny, so the discovery is still really quite amazing. This particular meteorite is very interesting because of its rarity. It is an achondrite ~ a basalt ~ with a composition that suggest an asteroid from the inner asteroid belt,” Dr Hough said. According to the astronomers, the all sky cam network had been an extremely successful project and had spotted many fireballs.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

MOVES IN MAHARASHTRA

PROGRESS OF THE RIGHT

THE 18-party conglomerate, notably of the Left, the Samajwadi Party and Deve Gowda’s JD(S) may at first sight appear to be a faint echo of that fizzle called the Third Front. Sunday’s coming together is at best an alliance of convenience that has been forged with a remarkably limited mandate ~ to contest the Maharashtra assembly elections. As much is apparent from the initial responses of the constituents. It is early days yet to imagine that the alliance will be able to exploit the perceived anti-incumbency wave against the Congress and the NCP after ten years; still less whether this seasonal concert will emerge as a convincing enough secular block against the BJP and the Shiv Sena.  'Given the pre-election flux in Maharashtra, it is the Right that displays a fair measure of unity. The BJP and the Shiv Sena will field what they call “common candidates” through a seat-sharing arrangement that covers all 288 constituencies. That said, there is little doubt that the formula has been worked out to forestall a possible revolt within the two entities. And it would be a mite too presumptuous to state in the manner of Gopinath Munde that Bal and Udhav Thackeray “will address just one rally, the victory celebrations”.

While the other parties have made progress of sorts, it is the Congress and the NCP that have come unstuck. And progress is unlikely without a consensus on the urban areas of Mumbai and Pune, where there has been an increase in the number of assembly seats, post-delimitation. Both parties have staked claim to the maximum number of constituencies in these two regions. And it is an exercise in self-deception when the MPCC president, Manikrao Thakre, claims that while Pune has been settled, the inter-party dispute relates to “barely two or three seats”. Or for that matter when the NCP general secretary, Praful Patel, hedges the contentious issue by claiming that “there is nothing like a dispute”. Without indulging in a semantic quibble, both parties must accept that Mumbai and Pune are the rocks on which the seat-sharing talks have floundered so far.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

MERCY POLITICS

SC PUTS GOVERNMENT TO SHAME

GOING beyond the poetic exhortation that the quality of mercy is not strained, and adding a new strain to the oft-heard refrain about delays militating against justice, the Supreme Court has just confirmed and condemned a long-held widespread suspicion: political factors influence the disposal of mercy petitions. With 26 such petitions pending with the President ~ Rashtrapati Bhavan picking up the tab for the government’s dithering, or worse ~ timely indeed is the observation of the Bench (coram: Bedi and Panchal, JJ) that “We must say with greatest emphasis that human beings are not chattels and should not be used as pawns furthering some larger political or governmental interests”. For a government that regularly swears by aam aadmi that is grave but valid condemnation. Without getting bogged down in detail, suffice it to note that some of the pending petitions are those of Rajiv Gandhi’s killers and a terrorist who attempted a blood bath at the temple of Indian democracy. Their “swinging” could trigger a negative vote swing in the Tamil and Muslim electorate. That apparently weighs more heavily with the government than sending out an unambiguous anti-terrorism signal: inaction that will surely impact the morale of those striving to bring terrorists to book. That the issue has long exercised the apex judiciary is evident from the current judgment citing previous judicial observations and pronouncements, and its in-depth examination of the fundamental issue even as it rejected the immediate petition before it.

Yet the court, unlike the government regardless of its party make-up, has risen above narrow considerations. It has spoken of the mental distress of those (their families too) waiting anxiously for a determination on their mercy petition, and floated the contention that a long delay warrants a death sentence being commuted to life imprisonment. That might add impetus to the argument against capital punishment. The Lordships have also stressed that decisions on mercy petitions cannot be rooted in political caprice, “We, as judges, remain largely unaware as to the reasons that ultimately bear with the government in taking a decision either in favour of the prisoner or against him, but whatever the decision it should be on sound legal principles related to the facts of the case”. A powerful reminder that a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha cannot be construed as licence to corrode the critical facets of democracy. Still, the key question remains unanswered ~ will the government be shamed into acting on principle.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

GUBERNATORIAL INTERVENTION

GANDHI’S TENURE OUGHT TO BE EXTENDED

NIRMALENDU BIKASH RAKSHIT

MR Gopalkrishna Gandhi has gone on record with the statement that he would like to leave West Bengal at the end of his term as Governor. Though the Marxist leaders have gone against him, the vast majority of the people would be happy to see him continue for many more years to come.

According to Article 156(1) of the Constitution, the governor holds office “during the pleasure of the President”. As the term “pleasure” has legal connotations, the President can remove him at any time without indicating the reason (Surya Narayan vs Union 1982). However, Clause(2) stipulates that, normally, the governor will serve for five years. However, the President can retain him in the same state for an indefinite period and can, even, transfer him elsewhere.

In that sense, Mr Gandhi is not required to leave West Bengal if the President thinks that his service is required in the state even after his term ends. But a governor has certain options ~ he can, under Article 156(3), resign. He can even decline to accept an offer of reappointment.

However, Mr Gandhi has, for his own reasons, expressed his desire to leave West Bengal after December. Whether the President will grant him an extension or whether the governor will reconsider his decision can only be speculated upon. There is no constitutional bar on reappointment. However, it appears that the attitude of certain Left leaders has provoked him.

MESSAGE MISINTERPRETED

THE CPI-M has all too often criticised the governor, describing him as partisan and anti-Left. He has even been “advised” to contest the election as an opposition candidate. The rift has widened in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha election amidst the widespread violence, killings, and arson. The governor issued a statement with a message for all parties. “When the leading political formations have the same objective, why should violence not abate? Those who can act, are not doing so.”

He has not held any particular leader or party responsible for the post-election violence and fear-psychosis. Hence, he cannot be accused of partisanship. He has simply reminded all political leaders that they should take steps to restore the peace, urging the government to be more effective in this task. On the contrary, the Marxist leaders have urged him to “exhibit more apparent neutrality while making a statement in public”. They have even criticised him “for not distinguishing between the killers and the killed”.

The governor’s actions and statements are neither partisan nor illogical. The CPI-M leaders are targeting the governor to gain political mileage because circumstances have placed them on the backfoot. 
The governor has on occasion sympathised with the victims of state power. In March 2007, many peasants were killed and several women raped during the joint action of the police and the party cadres for the forcible occupation of agricultural land for a Special Economic Zone in Nandigram. The conscientious governor could not remain a passive onlooker; he condemned the action as “cold horror”. When the state reprisal was repeated in November of that year, he remarked that “all the lamps of Diwali have faded away in the darkness of a lamentable crime”.

Subsequently, he took the initiative to bring about an understanding between the government and the opposition. An agreement was signed at Raj Bhavan, but the government reneged the very next day merely to display the power of the police. In the event, the ruling party insulted the governor. Yet his recent balanced statement was wrongly interpreted as unwarranted criticism of the administration.

Only a misinterpretation of the Constitution explains why some people believe that the governor is a figurehead in the hands of the cabinet.

CRUCIAL ROLE

IT is true that the Indian Constitution has been modelled on the British system, and the governor is expected to act as a nominal head. It bears emphasis nevertheless that under Article 156, he is the head of the province and, as such, he has to play a crucial role in its governance. The gubernatorial office becomes terribly important in the wake of a political crisis. As BR Ambedkar told the Constituent Assembly, “the governor is the friend, philosopher and guide” of his cabinet.

Article 159 illustrates his importance. He is bound by oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and law” and to ensure the “well-being of the people” of his province. He is duty-bound to ensure that the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the law are duly upheld, and that public policy ensures the “well-being” of the citizens.

Significantly, he does not take a pledge to act upon the advice of his cabinet. His obligation is to the Constitution, the law and the people and not to the cabinet or the leaders of the ruling party. So when, in his reckoning, the leaders mislead the people, it is his duty under Article 159 to play a vital role.
The governor is not an elected functionary. Under Article 156, he is nominated by the President and reports to him. The state cabinet can neither appoint him nor remove him. The Centre can penalise him for dereliction of duty.

Mr Gandhi has rightly refused to be a passive onlooker like some of his predecessors, whom the CPI-M had welcomed. Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s tenure ought to be extended.

 

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

THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

CAUGHT NAPPING

SO MUCH FOR MANIPUR’S SECURITY SET-UP

MANIPUR’S police commandos are in a class of their own. They strike fear in the heart of every citizen not because they are trigger-happy but because they do not understand the language of reasoning. Almost every day local newspapers carry reports of someone being killed in an encounter, real or fake. They do not seem to believe in taking prisoners and on the rare occasion they do, the itch to bump off the suspect seems always to remain. As was the case on 23 July. A former People’s Liberation Army activist was killed after his arrest and the police claimed he was shot dead in an encounter. But photographic evidence countered this. And when it comes to VIP security, other states would be hard pressed to upstage Manipur. However, last week the Lanheinba Meitei-led Kanglei Communist Party (Military Council) had reason to congratulate itself and laughed the loudest when it successfully penetrated the seemingly impregnable security at Raj Bhavan. 
Reports suggest that the occupants of a car ~ later found to be loaded with 24 kg of explosives and grenades ~ completed the frisking and security formalities at the main gate and were allowed to proceed towards Raj Bhavan where they were to meet Governor Gurbachan Jagat to submit a memorandum. After an hour, the car was found abandoned on the premises a few metres from the main complex. Mercifully, for those in charge of the security, the car did not blow up. But what boggles the mind is how the explosives managed to escape police scanning since all vehicles entering security zones are thoroughly checked. Even more mysterious was how the occupants managed to leave the heavily guarded premises ~ there is no way they could have scaled the protective walls with watchtowers that surround the premises. All this raises the suspicion of there being a mole in the security set-up. Not surprising because, recently, there was a report that a policeman accepted money from a militant outfit to throw bombs at a crowd. Anything is possible in a state where there is little respect for the rule of law.

 

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

 

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

POOR COUNT

 

To help the poor, there must be one agreed way of identifying them first. If perceptions differ regarding who is poor and, thus, how many poor people there are, it will be difficult to select the right institutional measures and the amount of money to be spent on poverty eradication programmes. The differences between the findings of the N.C. Saxena report and and the Planning Commission’s assessment of the below-the-poverty-line population seem to have created precisely this dilemma for the government. It is not only confusing, it is also embarrassing, since the government itself had appointed the committee to work out new criteria to identify BPL families. The government apparently felt that the earlier criteria were inadequate. Yet, when the Saxena report came up with the new criteria and a count that put the national average of the poor in India at 50 per cent rather than the 28 per cent of the Planning Commission estimate, the government appeared far from pleased. To accept the committee’s estimates would set all earlier fund allocations awry.

 

One example of a different criterion is average per head spending. The Saxena committee uses as exclusion line Rs 1000 a month in urban areas and Rs 700 in rural areas, whereas the Planning Commission’s figures are Rs 539 and Rs 356 for the same categories respectively. It would be pertinent to ask exactly how a person can exist, even in a village, by spending a notional Rs 356 on himself in a month. Obviously, that sum had not satisfied the government either. But it may now look more sensible than revising the BPL list radically, as the Saxena committee findings seem to demand. Yet such a revision is unavoidable if any notice is taken of the other findings. For example, only 49.1 per cent of the poorest quintile in the country possess BPL or Antyodaya Anna Yojana cards, while 17.4 per cent of the richest quintile of the population have them. More, 23 per cent of the poor do not have ration cards at all. According to the Saxena report, the exclusion of some of the poorest people from the BPL list shows that they still have no voice. This bodes ill for a list meant to ensure food security and some kind of work for the most vulnerable and underprivileged. The rights to food, to education and to work, that is, the right to a livable life, are at risk because India has not yet been able to decide who needs help most.

 

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

 

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

ALL ABOUT EVE

 

The Roman Catholic Church in India is standing on the threshold of a potentially revolutionary change. This is evident from the admission of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the highest ecclesiastical body of Catholics in this country, that there has been centuries-long “injustice” against women, and from its first attempts at “redeeming” this by allowing women to have equal representation in the decision-making bodies of the church. This would mean throwing open employment opportunities for women in seminaries and pastoral councils at positions from which they had been barred. It would be unfair to reduce the CBCI’s proposed plan to its pecuniary advantages. Its proposal is unprecedented, given that Catholic orders, throughout the world, have given women minimal decision-making powers, in spite of promoting their participation in fund-raising, education and church maintenance.

 

The justification for this restriction have been found in Christian tradition, which assigns specific roles for men and women in society, and in the fact that Jesus Christ’s apostles were male. While elaborating on the Church’s “lack of authority” to ordain women, these were also the arguments that Pope John Paul II had put forward in 1994. The arguments have persisted, provoking major splits within any order that sought to challenge them. The recent decision of the Church of England to ordain women as bishops prompted a vertical divide within the Anglican Church in Britain, and in the world. But Protestant orders have shown more tolerance towards accommodating women in the higher echelons of power in the Church than Catholic ones. And it is in going against this trend that the CBCI is proving to be something of a pioneer. Its measures could promote a paradigm shift in the way the Catholic order throughout the world looks at the role of women in the Church. Although they have been denied positions of power to which men had unlimited access, the Church has never denied that Christianity gives equal respect to both sexes. Perhaps the CBCI has taken the first step towards revaluating this theory, and by doing so, also questioned the dogmas that guide the Church’s attitude to women. That, hopefully, will not only call for a reassessment of women’s abilities as priests, but also turn the spotlight to other critical areas of empowerment, such as their reproductive rights.

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

SURPRISINGLY GOOD NEWS

INDIA’S GROWTH IS NOT FALLING, ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT AS HIGH AS BEFORE

WRITING ON THE WALL - ASHOK V. DESAI

 

If there is a crisis, there should be economics to deal with it; what use are economists if they are not around to help out when things get bad? And it is not enough to have economics. There was plenty of economics in 1929. As output and employment plummeted, economists said, this is good. It will take the poison out of the body economic. Governments took economists’ word for it, and let the pain persist. Then John Maynard Keynes, who till then was quite well-behaved despite his brilliance, broke ranks and wrote a book which basically said that unemployment was not due to trade union monopolists asking for wages exceeding the marginal product of labour. If wages went down, so did demand for consumer goods and employment in their production. At the macro level, demand was not independent of supply. They went up and down together. Hence unemployment would not disappear through the working of the labour market even if it worked perfectly. To reduce it, he suggested injection of demand from outside — for instance, by increasing government expenditure or reducing government revenue.

 

That was too outré; no one took him seriously. But then came along the World War in 1939. Britain had to fight for its life; its government began to spend far beyond its means on armaments. The United States of America hesitated a while, but it too entered the war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. For the next three years, it ran budget deficits of one-fifth of gross domestic product. In Britain as well as in the US, unemployment declined, and then stayed low for decades. The Keynesian idea of reducing unemployment through deficit finance had worked.

 

That should have made it respectable. And in a certain sense, it did. All who learnt economics after the war read Keynes and imbibed his ideas. When I went to Cambridge in the 1950s, my teachers, Nicholas Kaldor and Joan Robinson, were working on an alternative to marginal cost theory. Piero Sraffa published his long-awaited Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities in 1960. The point of this brief book was that there were two factors of production, labour and capital; land had become unimportant in industrial economies. The two factors earned wages and profits, which together made up national income. Workers spent their wages on consumer goods. Only the rich people earned beyond their needs and saved. Profits were distributed to them in proportion to their investments. Entrepreneurs made investments; if total expenditure was to be equal to total income, their expenditure on investments had to be equal to rich people’s savings, which were their abstinence from expenditure. Thus, if the share of investment in income went up, so would the share of savings have to; and it could do so only if the share of profits went up. In this way, the investment-income ratio determined the distribution of income between wages and profits. This was the Keynesian theory of distribution. After he worked it out, Kaldor thought that he had worked out a substitute for the marginal productivity theory of distribution, which could then be discarded.

 

But it was not thrown away. Economists in both the US and Britain continued to teach the marginal productivity theory; if they did at all, they taught the Cambridge theory of distribution as a curiosum. They could do so because the policy priorities had changed. Instead of chronic unemployment, there were long periods of chronic inflation. This inflation was seen to be caused, or at least exacerbated, by trade unions’ pressure to raise wages. Earlier, inflation was believed to be due to aggregate demand exceeding aggregate supply. Now another type of inflation was seen, where prices were pushed up by wages; there was demand-pull and wage-push inflation. And the remedy for the latter was seen to lie in reducing the demand for labour and thus the bargaining power of trade unions; the way to do it was to have more unemployment. So unemployment came to be accepted as part of anti-inflationary policy; a minimum level of non-inflationary unemployment was considered desirable.

But it is difficult to define this level. It will be low if trade unions are docile; it will be high if they are aggressive. Many European countries brought trade unions and employers together and arranged deals between them; they thus tried to tame inflation through wage policy. It was tried in Britain, but worked badly. So it was given up in the 1980s. It was never seriously tried in the US. These two countries used macroeconomic policy to keep down aggregate demand, and kept down inflation, without being concerned about unemployment.

 

That worked well till the current slowdown. Now the American “recession”, defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in national income, has ended, so on that count the government can stop worrying. But unemployment continues to rise week after week, and is now approaching 10 per cent of the labour force. That brings up the spectre of jobless growth.

 

President Barack Obama long ago announced his intention of spending his way out of the downturn. But he follows a president who was equally spendthrift. Bush sent US troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, but he did not want to raise taxes. So he ran a deficit to finance the additional expenditure, and raised the national debt. Obama will be adding to that debt; conservative estimates project national debt to be touching 70 per cent of GDP by the end of his term. That gives his opponents another argument against his reflation plans.

 

We have had our own depression scare. Industrial growth began to fall from the 12 per cent peak it reached in March 2007, and had fallen close to zero by the beginning of 2009. Our government too increased expenditure enormously. It called it an anti-deflationary measure.

 

I doubt whether it was that; I think it was a ploy to win the general election. But I cannot deny the possibility that it worked. After being close to zero for months, June showed eight per cent industrial growth. I take GDP in the last four quarters, GDP in the four quarters excluding the last one, take their ratio, and exponentiate the ratio by four; that gives me a more stable indicator of growth than the official way of taking growth between the last quarter and the same quarter a year ago. Taken thus, production growth in the last three quarters to mid-2009 has been close to six per cent — much below two years ago, but still, it is not falling.

 

For a while, it was kept up by the spurt in government expenditure. But in the second quarter of 2009, it has been kept up by a fall in imports. As in old days before the reforms, the economy has been furiously replacing imports. The balance of trade has improved dramatically in the second quarter of 2009.

 

This is a welcome development, and one that should be helped. The best way to do so would be to influence the exchange rate. The Reserve Bank of India devalued the rupee for a while in early 2008, and then it stopped doing so. It should now resume downward pressure on the rupee.

 

HUMOUR IN HARD TIMES

MALVIKA SINGH

The political class in India has lost its sense of humour. Recently, when one of its breed, a new recruit and therefore a normal person, said he was travelling “cattle class” in keeping with the “holy cows”, the Congress spokespeople got all miffed and agitated, which was even more hilarious than the statement itself. Economy class is called cattle class because airlines treat passengers flying in that part of the plane with no respect and take no real care of them. And frankly, the many “holy cows” of an India of the past, with all the hypocrisy that goes with those endless posturing, need to be flushed away in this new millennium.

 

The hypocrisy was so overwhelming that the past decades did little to alleviate the horrors that at least 70 per cent of Indians have to live with. Tokenism makes us, ordinary Indians, sick. We know well that this entire ‘austerity’ trip is a passing phenomenon. If the Congress was truly serious about being austere, enlightened and reformist, it would convene a meeting, create a manual after discussion with the members, and adhere to a value system and style of working and living that could influence people across the board. Politicians find endless reasons to justify their extravagance. Their bureaucrats, too, lead lives funded by the tax-payer and silently stall everything that does not hold up the status quo.

 

First, the party needs to ensure with utmost rigidity that its incumbents in government do not stay in free or subsidized housing when they are no longer members of parliament or cabinet ministers. Second, all domestic travel should be by economy, and all overseas travel by business class. Third, politicians should not use the official car (only because it has a red light that clears the path) to do their personal chores, go shopping or attend private dinners. There is so much more that has made our leaders insular from the realities we face today. All the privileges enjoyed by them, including State protection, need restructuring. Austerity comes from within, and individuals must know what it is to be over the top.

 

Sharp divisions

 

More critical than all the superficial austerity is the delivery of goods and services, the alleviation of corruption and poverty, and addressing other important issues such as the freedom to worship, human rights, and transparent governance. The corruption and the commercialization of political decision making that we are witness to each time an election approaches is far more damaging than the utterance of Shashi Tharoor. Sadly, Tharoor ‘tweeted’ in a language that the respondents are unfamiliar with, don’t quite understand its nuances, and therefore got the wrong end of what was said. That in itself was the funniest situation of all.

 

As this farce continues with none of the critical areas of extravagance being confronted and corrected, it rapidly becomes clear that the entire episode is a result of a small cabal, seen to be powerful within the Congress, operating against new incumbents unused to devious politicking. Instead of having briefed the newcomers on what the Congress expects its leaders to live by, groups with vested interest within the party began their insidious campaign. But in the bargain they showed up the Congress factionalism sharp and distinct, loud and clear.

 

The only charitable explanation is that the party is going through the painful process of shedding a top skin as it is forced to allow the layer beneath its rightful exposure. Those who have no other professional discipline or expertise, and who are on the wrong side of 50, are tormented by the fact that their days are numbered in the power game.

 

The present state of denial of the real failures is the extravagance that has destroyed a great deal in India. The ruling party needs to ensure the austerity of transparent governance.

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

A FESTIVAL UNIQUELY ITS OWN

 

To the many communities in the city, the Durga Puja means different things, or may not mean anything at all. Some Calcuttans long to join, others to flee itMy friend Daniel has memories strangely similar to mine of Durga Puja in school — of not doing much. While Daniel would spend time with his family, catching a movie or making a short trip, I remember mostly staying at home too and basically doing anything I would have done during the summer or winter vacations. One of the major grievances of my mother used to be the fact that we could not visit our relatives in Bombay. Durga Puja vacations in Calcutta invariably clashed with the mid-term examinations of my cousins, for whom the holidays would not begin till after Diwali.

 

For Marie, a second generation Armenian in Calcutta, Durga Puja is essentially a time relax, to catch up with friends, and stay at home. No one really minds a short period off from work. “Christmas is our festival,” she says; this one’s just a nice break, one that comes without the baggage of having to entertain a host of relatives and acquaintances within a closely-knit community. She has sampled her share of pandals, about “once or twice”, some couple of decades ago, she recalls. It is the crowd and the noise that keep her off, along with the fact that she does not feel even a part of the enthusiasm that she sees others being carried away by.

 

It is a normal working day for some others. A young businessmen I met at the Calcutta Parsi Club reasoned it was profitable for him to keep his shop open, especially so during the Pujas, when the rest of the market is shut. He gets the entire share of any little activity that takes place in the market, since he is the only one open. Work is light and in the evenings, he goes around the city with friends or family.

 

An elderly member of the club, an ardent pandal-hopper in his younger days, says he wouldn’t dare step out now because of the crowd that has increased manifold since his youth. “You could take your car right up to a pandal, look around and drive off,” he states with incredulity at the situation now. A fellow member sitting beside him, when asked what he does during the Pujas, replied, “What I do everyday” — that is, spend time at the club. Pandal-hopping is on the cards, but never when the crowds are high. “We get back by 9 at the latest.” He used to be fascinated at how his friends could tell the difference in the features of the goddess’s face — the way the eyes were painted differently — while the main attractions for him were the pandals, their majesty, the intricacies in their architecture, and so on.

 

The lights — an enthusiasm I inherited from my father — were the main incentive for us to go out to the pandals in the evenings. After he shut shop early, we would set off, but not before he had said his namaz at sundown, just in time to see the lights come aglow. Like the gentlemen in the Parsi Club, my father would make it a point to return home as early as possible too. On an evening some six years back, we got caught in bad traffic, after which my father vowed never to stay back that late again.

 

No one I spoke to remembers being particularly inconvenienced by the disruption in city life. But what was missing from these accounts was the single-mindedness in the pursuit of the festivities that everyone around them seemed to have. Having lived in Calcutta all my life, I still do not understand it. I know very little about what exactly happens to the lives of all the people engrossed in celebrating the festival, and how their lives are totally transformed during those few days. I know only of what is very difficult not to notice — the crowds, the pandals, the lights and the sales. Why I do not see anything beyond is perhaps because I never really “went the extra mile” like Daniel told me he did. He remembers badgering people with questions in order to know of the myths and stories behind the events. He spends the Pujas with a friend’s family in Chandernagore, participating in their ceremonies at home. He is skipping a family trip to Shankarpur this year just to remain in and around the city. He wouldn’t dream of staying away.

INSIYA POONAWALA

 

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

FEELINGS AND FLIGHT

 

A few years back, we were escaping to Rishap in Darjeeling district during the Pujas when we were waylaid by a group of gaily-dressed revellers at a misty mountain bend. The men reeked of country liquor, and swayed like apparitions as they demanded a donation from our driver for their Navaratri festivities. After some altercation and money changing hands, the matter was settled amicably. We were gifted with sindoor-smeared pedas (which smelt of goats), and suddenly some women materialized out of nowhere to paint our foreheads with a thick pink paste. So the madness of Durga Puja in Calcutta, from which were running away, had followed us to the hills — a realization that grew stronger later when we saw goats, sheep and buffaloes being sacrificed in dozens to the Mother Goddess.

 

But Priyamvada Chhetri (all names changed) from Darjeeling, who has been living in Calcutta for the past three years, says that Durga Puja back home is a “low-key” affair compared to what she witnesses in this city. She was excited at the prospect of participating in the ‘greatest’ festival of the Bengalis in her first year in Calcutta, but anticipation soon gave way to exasperation when she found Puja organizers wasting lakhs on their precious pandals. Now the Pujas leave her mostly unmoved. Priyamvada would rather enjoy the four days of well-earned rest at home than join the clamorous throngs outside. Most of her friends from the hills, who have lived in Calcutta for quite some time, share her feelings. They think that Bengalis are loud by nature, and the Pujas are an extension of their character.

 

The cynicism of Priyamvada is not to be found in Karma Dorjee, who has arrived in Calcutta from Nepal this year to study in a private institute. Had he not been summoned home for Dashain, which is the Nepalese counterpart of Durga Puja, he would have gladly been a part of the carnival in Calcutta. At the same time, he is happy that he is returning since he is already feeling homesick. The frantic pre-Puja shopping going on around him is making him all the more nostalgic by reminding him of the smell of new clothes, which are an integral part of Dashain as well. Karma’s classmate, Aaron Lepcha, does not share his sentiments. Being Christian, he has never participated in the Dashain celebrations in Shillong, where his home is. But he has heard that Durga Puja is a grand festival in Calcutta and in his first year in this city, he is going to watch the drama unfold.

 

The Chinese Christians who have shops all over Bentinck Street are also left non-plussed by the Pujas. If anything, it is a time of increased activity rather than of leisure since business picks up in this season. The shops are open till late at night and it is “work, work and work”. But Durga Puja is “good”, one of the shop-owners adds, perhaps because the extra earnings will ensure greater happiness during the celebrations for the Chinese new year, eagerly awaited in February.

 

Vikas Tamang, who is 65, has been working as a watchman in various apartments all over Calcutta for the last 30 years. He is from Nepal but now that his wife is dead and his sons have families of their own, he no longer feels obliged to go back every year. Settled in Calcutta for good, Vikas looks forward to the Pujas these days because they signal a break from the humdrum. He looks admiringly at the workmen suspending strings of bulbs from the top of the boundary walls of the apartment where he works. “This building will look pretty when it is lit up. Come and see us on Saptami night,” he tells me.

 

The tour to Rishap had marked my first year in the hills during the Pujas. After the initial misgivings, I had been enchanted on Dussehra night when tiny clusters of light twinkled in the darkness and the wind carried the smell of incense. It had suddenly seemed too beautiful to be true and I had wished for the umpteenth time for a home in the hills.

 

Anusua Mukherjee

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

THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

THOU SHALL NOT HAVE FUN

 

As a child born in the mid-Sixties and growing up in Calcutta in an upper-middle-class Brahmo joint family, I was often faced with a puzzling contradiction. How could the funniest, the most colourfully eccentric and affectionate of aunts, grandparents, grand-aunts and grand-uncles subscribe uncritically to a religious ethos that appeared to be so joyless and puritanical? How could people who loved to have fun, and were so much fun, have such a funless relationship with a god whom they chose to worship in a spirit of drear and unrelieved sobriety? And how could they, who were so delightful and unpretentious, believe deep in their hearts that their form of worship was essentially superior to other, idolatrous, expressions of faith?

 

These questions annoyed and embarrassed me throughout my childhood, but most keenly twice every year, during Holi and during the Pujas. It would seem on these two occasions that the entire city was part of the most alluringly riotous Carnival, while it was the greyest Lent in our house. Through its shutters and from its verandahs, I would catch the sights and sounds of universal merrymaking like a boy-Charulata, swinging between indignation and self-pity. Even if Charu’s opera-glasses weren’t actually in my hand, they were permanently lodged within my eyes through the tyranny of refinement that my upbringing would appear to be, at such moments, to myself. The embarrassment was felt at school, or on those rare evenings I would go with our cook to watch the play our neighbours had put up in the pujobari, where I couldn’t help feeling oddly self-conscious.

 

When my classmates discussed their Puja plans, or their new clothes, a whole tradition of festivity would open up behind them, from which I felt boringly excluded. I’d start off by being part of their discussion, but suddenly someone would say, “O baba, tora to abar Brahmo!” and from that moment, I’d be regarded with a mix of caution, awe and derision. But every year, my best friend in class would take my books and keep them at Saraswati’s feet when he and his sister did their own pujo at home. But he assumed that my religious sentiments would be outraged if he invited me to be part of the pujo and feasting. The next day, he’d bring me the half-dry pujo flowers, which I kept in my pencil-box. I did feel a personal disinclination to go to his sacred-thread feast. But this had nothing to do with religion; I wasn’t sure how I felt about caste. Yet I loved to watch his brisk mealtime rituals, which he performed quite unselfconsciously no matter whose table he was eating at.

 

I distinctly remember the combination of a vague, but instinctive, distaste and nervousness that I felt if someone brought me prasad to eat. The distaste had to do with hygiene, but is hygiene ever only about hygiene? The nervousness was more complicated. Did I not have to touch the prasad to my forehead before eating it, and wasn’t the slightest hesitation to eat it a grave disrespect to the deity who had blessed it and also to the devotee who had brought the prasad for me? And if I did touch it to my forehead before eating it, wasn’t I violating the principles of my own religion?

 

Years later, in a beautiful old gurdwara in Haryana, I found myself doing the flat-on-the-floor pranam that the others were doing in front of the Guru Granth Sahib. It was an act of impious piety for me, driven by a surge of emotions that ranged from the joy of transgression to genuine spiritual feeling. Afterwards, when offered the halwa at the altar, in my ignorance of how to do things properly, I took it with just one hand instead of both and without bowing low, provoking a severe reprimand from the elderly and saintly-looking priest that left me feeling deeply ashamed.

 

In Oxford, once, I went for Evensong without realizing that it was a special service during which Holy Communion was going to be administered. There were very few people, and slipping out was impossible. I remember the terror I felt while processing to the altar to receive the Eucharist, the terror of not knowing what to do, and then meekly saying “Thank You!” to the priest, whose eyes widened for a moment with what I had then taken to be shock, but now wonder if it was amusement.

 

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

 

 

 

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

DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

CLIMATE CHANGE MEET FACES DAUNTING TASK

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES AGREE ON THE NEED TO MITIGATE THEIR EMISSIONS BUT REJECT ANY MANDATORY LIMIT.

BY NEIL MCFARQUHAR,NYT :

 

Economists point to powerhouse countries like India to illustrate the hurdles facing some 100 world leaders due to gather in New York this Tuesday for the highest level summit meeting on climate change ever convened.

The Indian government has announced a major commitment to solar power as a renewable means of bringing electricity to more than 400 million people now living without it. Yet the government was pilloried at home last summer for accepting the international goal of preventing a global temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by limiting emissions. Opposition parties accused it of selling out the country’s future development.

While virtually all of the largest developed and developing nations have made domestic commitments toward creating more efficient, renewable sources of energy to cut emissions, none want to take the lead in fighting for significant international emissions reduction targets, lest they be accused at home of selling out future jobs and economic growth.

The negotiations for a new climate change agreement to be signed in Copenhagen in December are badly stalled. With the agreement running more than 200 pages diplomats and negotiators fear that the document is too unwieldy to garner a consensus in the coming months.

NATIONAL INTERESTS

In convening the meeting, the United Nations is hoping that collectively the leaders can summon the will to overcome narrow national interests and give the negotiators the marching orders needed to cut at least the outline of a deal.

On Tuesday, the leaders, including the heads of state or government of most economic powers, are to engage in a series of round-table discussions on outstanding climate change issues that will be less like negotiations than a series of college seminars designed to forge political momentum.

Senior organisers said they had never been involved in such a high-level summit meeting where the outcome was not predetermined. Fundamentally, although limiting the temperature rise to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit is an accepted goal, there is no consensus on how to get there.

The industrialised nations have not agreed on midterm targets. They have made pledges of roughly half the target set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 25 to 40 per cent reduction from 1990 levels by 2020.

Developing countries have agreed on the need to mitigate their emissions but have rejected any mandatory limit, and they demand financial and technical support in exchange. The issue of aid for the poorest countries to adapt to the impact of climate change has been shunted aside.

Finally, there is no agreement on what institutions would verify that targets are being met and supervise the finances.

“The mood in the negotiations has been that I should do as little as possible as late as possible and let the other person go first,” said Kim Carstensen, the director of the Global Climate Initiative of the World Wildlife Fund.

The American position is that such targets be voluntary but verifiable and equally distributed. In the US, a House bill comes close to that target, but the Senate is expected to dilute it. But the chances of a final bill’s clearing Congress by December are increasingly unlikely, so experts are eagerly waiting to hear what President Barack Obama, who made climate change a key issue in his administration, proposes in his speech on Tuesday.

A speech by President Hu Jintao of China is also widely anticipated, with experts hoping he will announce a significant commitment to renewable energy and emissions reductions in China’s next five-year plan. Hu is the first Chinese president ever to attend the annual UN General Assembly, where leaders will convene on Wednesday.

Between them, the US and China account for about 40 per cent of world emissions, split almost evenly, so if the two reach a consensus it will also provide significant impetus for a global agreement.

Blocs of smaller, poorer states have their own agendas. The island states of the Pacific and the Caribbean will be pushing for an even lower temperature ceiling — 1.5 degrees Celsius — because they fear that the rising seas caused by even a 2-degree rise would drown or severely damage them. The Africans are threatening to walk out of the negotiations if they are not promised $300 billion in aid.

Such issues, while parochial, may be no less important in building an agreement that works across the world’s political borders.

 

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

DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

CONSPICUOUS AUSTERITY

HOW MANY OF OUR NETAS WOULD BECOME MINISTERS IF THERE WERE NO PERKS?

BY H N ANANDA

 

Can you lead an austere life and serve the ‘aam admi’ that is you and me? Or, should you lead an austere life to serve the janata? Or, can you not lead a five star life and still serve the people who lead 0.05 star life?

These questions are bothering me ever since Sonia Gandhi cracked the whip and her man Friday Pranab babu asked two netas to vacate their five star nests and lead an austere life.

But what is austerity? What constitutes austerity? The badam may be a luxury item for me but may be an essential item for our netas. For example, Morarji Desai needed badams daily but then did he lead an ostentatious life? Our brand new minister Tharoor needs a gym daily. Is that a luxury?

How many of our ‘netas’ would become ministers if there were no perks that go with the post, besides power? Come to think of it many of our ‘netas’ did lead an austere life in their previous ‘avatar’ and once they started serving the poor they became shockingly rich. It is only now that ‘crorepatis’ are being bitten by the pubic service bug. Can they lead an austere life? Can we expect our mining brothers to abandon the copter ride and instead stick to car/train/air?

Take Sharad Pawar for example. The poor chap says he clears government files while sitting in the business class while flying. He cannot do that if he abides by madam’s dictat and sits in the economy class. After all he is a busy ‘neta’ with cricket and sugar, etc on his plate and should we not give him time to attend to some government work? If he is in the economy class a co-passenger like me might like to drag him into a chat about the BCCI affairs. He won’t be able to clear the files. Too bad.

Of course there are incorrigibles like Mamata ‘didi’ who lead a life that can be called as conspicuous austerity. The ‘didi’ is a sore eye not only to the Marxists in Bengal but to all other ‘netas’ used to a certain style of living or life. ‘Netas’ like Gulzarilal Nanda, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Lakshmisagar were anachronisms during their life time when luxury was not yet this vulgar.

If anybody wants to discuss this further call me to Oberoi or the Taj. I am used to certain lifestyle, you see.

 

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

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

THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

WOBBLING WASHINGTON

 

Forgive us our skepticism at this dawn of a new year, but lately the Obama administration has come to seem like something other than the clear-headed captain at the confident helm of the free world.

 

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week offered a new assessment of the Holocaust - it is a lie - and of Israel's future prospects - it will soon be removed. This came as an unwelcome reminder to the Obama administration, and to the rest of the watching world, that the United States would be sitting down in the coming weeks with a Holocaust denier bent on nuclear weaponization. We trust the Americans will try nobly to convince Mr. Ahmadinejad to do otherwise. But in between his launching of new uranium enrichment centrifuges and the arrest and torture of regime opponents, we sadly doubt the Iranian president will be persuaded.

 

The chief stumbling block to ending Iranian nuclear weaponization is currently Russia, which is refusing all requests to halt the sale of modern high-quality anti-aircraft missiles to Iran and has even rejected the imposition of new sanctions on the recalcitrant despotism in Teheran.

 

Speaking of Russia, the Obama administration has stunned its small but trusting East European allies by deciding to relocate the American missile defense shield - aimed at Teheran but seen by Eastern Europeans as a symbol of American protection against Russian imperial encroachment - from Poland and the Czech Republic to ships and installations closer to Iranian territory.

 

In Afghanistan, Obama may be demonstrating some steely reserve, perhaps forced into it by the harsh reality of American blood on the line. This is commendable. It is less commendable that the administration cannot bring itself to reject outright last week's Goldstone Report, which condemns Israel for military actions both less severe and less numerous than those of American troops in Afghanistan, and does so on the basis of a grave misrepresentation of what unfolded in Gaza at the turn of the year.

 

Faced with the realities of confronting terrorists operating on a massive scale in civilian settings, American troops have done an excellent but imperfect job of avoiding civilian casualties. Less than three weeks ago, on September 4, for example, US forces destroyed two hijacked oil tankers in a populated area on the Kunduz River in northern Afghanistan, killing at least 30 civilians who had gathered to collect oil for their homes. What will Obama do if investigations of the type conducted by Goldstone are launched against American military personnel fighting a similar civilian-embedded enemy? AS REGARDS Israel, the administration's policies to date have seen its popularity and credibility here nosedive over the past eight months.

 

It decimated the initial goodwill and admiration Obama enjoyed among the Israeli public by instigating a diplomatic crisis over something called "a stop to settlements...without exceptions." This absolute demand was always unrealistic and therefore counterproductive. Hundreds of children are born each year in the suburbs of Jerusalem that step over the 1949 Green Line. Was the Jerusalem Municipality being asked to cease construction of kindergartens for them? Until the administration folded on this issue in July, the answer seemed to be yes.

 

By ratcheting up his demands of Israel beyond the point of viable agreement, and then failing to obtain any substantive concessions from Arab leaders or the Palestinians in exchange, Obama actually walked into the most basic of Middle East peacemaking traps - encouraging the instinctive Arab resort to intransigence. After all, how could the Palestinians now demand less of the Israelis than the Americans? And with a full-blown diplomatic crisis apparently under way between Israel and America, what interest could Arab leaders have in ending the crisis through a diplomatic breakthrough?

 

We might well ask why the administration is convinced that peace is being held up by settlements. Dozens of settlements have been dismantled and tens of thousands of settlers have been resettled in the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and Sinai, while Palestinian rejection has only increased in response to apparent Israeli weakness. In a world that is wondering increasingly whether Washington is willing and able to enforce its key values and effectively promote its vital interests, Obama today plays host to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. And they will both be asking themselves a question neither would have anticipated eight months ago: Can America be relied upon and taken seriously?

 

That uncertainty can only further undermine the prospects for a substantive Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough - a breakthrough all three players at today's summit profess to fervently desire.

 

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

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

BORDERLINE VIEW

GETTING BEHIND OBAMA

DAVID NEWMAN

 

Today's summit meeting between US President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas coincides with the circulation of a petition initiated by the Israeli Peace NGO Forum and signed by many Israeli public figures, academics and peace activists. Addressed to pro-peace Jewish organizations in America, the letter requests that the progressive pro-Israel pro-peace groups in North America make their voices heard in support of Obama's policies aimed at bringing Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table.

 

My colleague Dr. Gershon Baskin made an impassioned plea in his Jerusalem Post column last week for the Israeli public to wake up and reinvigorate the vanished pro-peace lobby. But it is not only the domestic lobby which needs to get its act together. Our progressive pro-peace friends abroad also need to work on influencing their respective governments, and the US administration in particular, to exert real pressure on both Israelis and Palestinians to implement difficult compromises.

 

If Israeli and Palestinian leaders have proved one thing, it is that left to their own devices they are totally unable to reach a solution, and that it requires a strong but fair-minded honest broker acting as a third party. Obama has shown that he, unlike his predecessor George W. Bush, is prepared to take on that role.

 

IF WE are to believe the electoral data, some 70 percent of the American Jewish community voted for Obama in the presidential elections last November. They did not buy into the malicious slander disseminated by some lobbyists that "Hussein" (sic) Obama would automatically do a U-turn on all issues relating to Israel and the Jewish community. They came to the correct conclusion that Obama, like all previous presidents, would remain a strong strategic ally of the Jewish State, concerned for its long-term security and well being but, equally recognizing that without a strong move toward further concessions, any form of peace could never be achieved.

 

Bush may have been a strong strategic ally but he did Israel a disfavor by blindly agreeing to almost everything ever proposed to him by Sharon and Olmert. Obama's greater approval rating in some parts of the Middle East grants him the power to exert pressure where necessary, if only because he has a greater chance of being accepted as an honest broker by both sides.

 

For that to happen, Obama needs to hear words of support from the influential Jewish community in the US. For too long, the progressive, liberal, pro-peace lobby outside Israel has played second fiddle to the establishment representatives, most notably AIPAC, which have taken it upon themselves to speak in the name of Israel, as though they were the only bodies that know what is good for the country.

 

It is at this juncture that the pro-peace lobby in the US has an important role to play. It has to show the president that the majority of American Jews support his attempts at peacemaking, and that the vociferous voices that oppose his tougher stance with the Israeli government do not represent the majority. Its belief in a solution based on two states for two people is a practical one, not just a slogan to be uttered by Israeli leaders in an attempt to please the international community. Progressive supporters of Israel adopted a two-state position long before the slogan was taken up by politicians such as Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni.

 

 

The Obama administration made some headway in recognizing the importance of this alternative pro-Israel lobby, recently inviting some of their representatives to a White House discussion, while excluding some of the more intransigent right-of -center lobby groups which have traditionally been invited.

 

AND YET, despite the window of opportunity that has presented itself for progressive Jewish organizations in the US, they have largely remained silent. They have the ear of the new American administration. They must not go the way of the Israeli peace movement and tone down their rhetoric because they mistakenly think the administration will carry out the job on their behalf. Israel's peace movement always made this mistake whenever a Labor government was in power. Rather than continue to exert pressure precisely when such pressure would have met with a friendly response, they folded their banners and went home to wait the signing of a peace agreement which never materialized.

 

Equally, it is time for Israeli governments and embassies throughout the world to work with the pro-peace lobbies instead of ignoring them. It is time to correct the falsity, often promoted by the official community lobbies and their representatives, that the pro-peace lobbies critical of the occupation and Israeli policies in the West Bank are somehow less concerned or less supportive of Israel than those who would follow blindly. They implicitly lump them together with those who would boycott or delegitimize Israel, rather than recognize them for the allies they are. Organizations such as the Friends of Peace Now, New Israel Fund, J-Street, the Israel Policy Forum, to name but a few, want to see a strong, vibrant Israel negotiate its way through this troublesome century.

 

Just as Baskin's call to the domestic peace constituency to wake up is critical, so too must our friends and allies in the American (and European) Jewish communities seize this opportunity. They must not remain silent. They must not let themselves be humbled into submission by an organized community which attempts to portray them negatively. Now is the time for them show their support of Israel by coming together, supporting President Obama and his Middle East envoy, and demonstrating to Israeli governments that there is an alternative way forward.

 

The writer is professor of Political Geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics.

 

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

 

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

NO HOLDS BARRED: OUR DREAM: A NATIONAL FAMILY DINNER NIGHT

SHMULEY BOTEACH

 

This Friday night, NBC will air a one-hour prime-time Dateline hosted by Meredith Vieira, featuring a book I am publishing on my 30 hours of conversations with Michael Jackson. The book, The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Private Conversation, contains the most insightful, raw, painful and authentic conversations for public distribution that Michael ever had. It was Michael's desperate wish that the book be published so his heart might be known to a public he felt was greatly suspicious of him. The searing honesty of the conversations are sure to change the public's perception of Michael forever.

 

The choice to air the TV launch of the book on a Friday night, although it demands that the normally live program will be prerecorded in deference to the laws of the Jewish Sabbath, goes hand-in-hand with a recurring theme in the book. Michael and I dreamed of introducing a national family dinner night - an evening when parents would prioritize their children without distraction.

 

FRIDAY NIGHT was the natural choice since Michael loved the Jewish Sabbath meals he ate at our home with his children. He welcomed the utter serenity of an evening where cell phones and TVs were off and the only sound was that of intimate conversation and gentle laughter.

 

A year ago, this dream became a reality when my organization, This World: The Values Network, unveiled "Turn Friday Night Into Family Night" - a national initiative to have families of every denomination, ethnicity and persuasion adopt Friday night as the time to turn off the noise and focus on their children. NBC kindly agreed to highlight our Friday Night National Family Dinner initiative as a central part of the program, and further agreed to air our public service announcements, featuring leading personalities like Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Kathie Lee Gifford, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor Cory Booker, Rachel Hunter, and others who have recorded 30-second ads promoting our initiative.

 

To be sure, Michael has strong critics and my book and our conversations do not whitewash his shortcomings. But he was extraordinarily eloquent when speaking about how he was scarred by a childhood that, due to incessant touring and performances, lacked the basic staples of regular family dinners and quality time with parents. He wanted to make sure that Moms and Dads understood the risks of shortchanging their children. In one moving comment, which will be played on the NBC special, he told me just how badly he wanted to establish a regular holiday for kids: "I want the holiday so badly, that's my dream. We should mention it to the UN. To me, it's criminal not to acknowledge the children, our greatest asset. If there had been a Children's Day when I was little and I could look at my father, 'Okay, Daddy, Joseph, what are we going to do today?' Do you know what that would have meant for me? He'd go, 'Well, do you want to go to the movies?' That would have meant so much to me. You just need that one moment of attention."

 

Michael, sadly, did not live to see the establishment of a regular day dedicated to parents and children. His tragic life, in which he medicated away his loneliness until it finally consumed him, serves as a morality tale. Our children do not need fame and fortune, but love and attention. We can make a weekly children's holiday a reality in the lives of our kids, today. The Jewish Sabbath leads the way.

 

A day consecrated by the Bible to family and community, it ought to become a universal celebration of conversation, generosity and togetherness. The recipe is simple. We call it "The Triple Two." Every Friday night give your kids two hours uninterrupted by television, movies or video games. Invite two guests, to teach your children hospitality. And prepare two substantive subjects for discussion in order to deepen the family's interests and awaken your child's intellectual curiosity.

 

TIME MAGAZINE reports that the more often families eat meals together, the less likely their children are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words, and know which fork to use.

 

A 2005 study by Columbia University found that family dinners get better with practice. The less often a family eats together, the worse the experience is likely to be, the less healthy the food, and the more meager the talk. Among those families who eat together three or fewer times a week, a staggering 45% say the TV is on during the meals. Just imagine how a child feels when parents sit down to eat dinner and the TV is blaring in the background. The message is clear: 'You're too boring for me to focus only on you for half an hour a day.'

 

Studies show that such kids are also more than twice as likely as those who have frequent family meals to say there is a great deal of tension among family members. They are also much less likely to think their parents are proud of them.

 

The pain of parental neglect affects so many today. This is the perfect time to dedicate ourselves to a campaign like "Turn Friday Night Into Family Night," that would be a step forward to healing the American family.

 

It is my hope that the millions of people who will watch the NBC special will be inspired to join the millions of Jewish families who throughout time have always 'Turned Friday night into family night.' The Jewish Sabbath is our people's greatest treasure, and it is a gift that should be shared.

 

Many will say that given the serious allegations against Michael Jackson he is a poor catalyst for the creation of a national family dinner night. Perhaps. But I have always been moved by the teaching of Judaism's greatest thinker, Maimonides, who said, "Embrace the truth regardless of its source."

 

Rabbi Boteach's new book 'The Michael Jackson Tapes: A Tragic Icon Reveals His Soul in Intimate Conversation' will be published this Friday, and will be available in all book stores and the Sony EBook store.www.shmuley.com

 

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

 

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

THE REGION: MEET THE NEXT PALESTINIAN LEADER

BARRY RUBIN

 

Few subjects get written about more often - and inaccurately - than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest in the politics and ideology governing their behavior. The same situation applies to the man slated to become their next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

 

The fact that an issue that is supposedly the most important, high-priority question in the world is studied so little has a simple explanation. The contemporary narrative is that the Palestinian leaders yearn for a state, an end to the conflict, and peace, while the failure to achieve these can be blamed on Israel. Yet even the slightest real examination shows the exact opposite is true.

 

This point is only underlined by looking at the current candidate for next leader, Muhammad Ghaneim, often known as Abu Mahir. Of all those who might credibly have been considered for the leadership of Fatah - and hence of the PLO and Palestinian Authority (PA) - he is probably the most hardline.

 

WHILE MEDIA coverage of the 2009 Fatah Congress may have stressed the accession of "young" and "more flexible" leaders, the 72-year-old Ghaneim certainly doesn't fit that description.

 

Born in Jerusalem on August 29, 1937, his first political involvement was with the Muslim Brotherhood, but he became a founding member of Fatah in 1959 and has been active ever since, involved mainly in recruitment and organization.

 

It is difficult to say to what extent Ghaneim's early involvement with radical Islam has shaped his thinking, and whether it would make it easier for him to reconcile with the even more radical Hamas. Most Fatah and PLO members came from more secular Arab nationalist or leftist movements. The only prominent leader who seemed to blend an Islamist background with nationalism was Arafat himself.

 

Ghaneim's big career break came in 1968 when, at the age of just 30, Arafat appointed him commander of Fatah's forces in Jordan. Later that year, he was put on Fatah's Central Committee, in charge of organization and recruitment.

 

It is impossible to overstate the importance of these two jobs. At that time, Jordan was a Fatah stronghold and the group constituted a shadow government alongside that of King Hussein, the country's nominal ruler. Fatah guerrillas - and shortly after Arafat took over, the whole PLO - had military bases from which they launched attacks on Israel across the Jordan River. Arafat must have had an extraordinarily high opinion of Ghaneim to appoint him to such a sensitive post.

 

Since so much of this task was involved with military matters, Ghaneim took a short officers' course in China. On his return in 1969, Arafat gave him a third chore, as his deputy for military issues. While the details aren't clear, this means Ghaneim must have played a central role in planning and implementing scores of guerrilla and terrorist attacks. Ghaneim played a central role in selecting those to be given key jobs and just how much authority each had. Of course, everyone was far below Arafat, but Ghaneim was about as essential as a second-tier figure could be.

 

 

In 1970, Fatah overplayed its hand, was defeated by Jordan's army, and had to flee to Lebanon. Ghaneim continued his organizational and military duties there. When the PLO and Fatah were forced out of Lebanon in 1982, Ghaneim accompanied Arafat to Tunis. From 1982 to mid-2009 he remained there, though he may have begun visiting the PA-ruled territories as early as July 2007.

 

Ghaneim didn't return with Arafat in 1994 because, despite serving Arafat closely and loyally for 35 years, Ghaneim rejected the 1993 Oslo accords as too moderate. Only armed struggle, total victory, and Israel's destruction were worthy goals in his eyes.

 

While Arafat sought these things covertly, the compromises involved in such a pretense were too much for Ghaneim. He stayed in Tunisia despite numerous invitations from Arafat, starting in October 1994, to join the PA, and instead insisted Arafat cease all negotiations with Israel.

 

Ghaneim moved closer to the popular Farouq Kaddumi, often referred to as the second most powerful man in Fatah. Kaddumi rejected the Oslo agreement and kept up a close connection with Syria. Arafat undercut him, but Kaddumi was so strong in the movement that he could never be fired altogether.

 

Finally, Ghaneim decided to return and support Mahmoud Abbas. While the details are not clear, this coincided with Abbas naming him as successor. Despite some who claim Ghaneim has moderated his positions, there is absolutely no evidence of this.

 

Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining founders of Fatah, and has wide contacts throughout the movement.

 

IN ADDITION, as someone who has been outside PA politics for 15 years he is seen as a neutral figure in many petty disputes.

 

But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities are making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intend to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle.

 

On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas' personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.

 

At the reception, Ghaneim stated: "The struggle will continue until victory" and that if political means did not achieve Israel's destruction, the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory, and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel.

 

That Ghaneim would give up "the right of return," make any territorial compromise, or end the conflict permanently is extremely unlikely. These are things that even the supposedly less extreme Abbas has rejected.

 

Thereafter, Abbas promoted Ghaneim among the delegates to the meeting. He finished first in the Central Committee elections with 1,338 votes, about two-thirds of those participating and far ahead of every other candidate.

 

Ghaneim's success, and the others elected, show that the old Arafat crowd is still in control. If Ghaneim becomes leader of Fatah the PA and PLO, you can forget about peace.

 

No one should say a word about the Palestinian issue, the peace process, or Israeli policy without analyzing these factors.

 

Unfortunately, there isn't at present a Palestinian partner for peace. Fortunately, there is a Palestinian partner for maintaining a relatively peaceful status quo. But if and when Ghaneim takes over, even this consolation might be gone.

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

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

OPED

WHO'S BEING UNFAIR?

RICHARD GOLDSTONE

 

The responses from the government of Israel to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza have been deeply disappointing. The mission's mandate enabled Israel to bring its concerns and facts relating to Operation Cast Lead publicly before a UN inquiry. It could have been used by Israel to encourage the UN and especially the Human Rights Council to move in a new direction beneficial to the interests of Israel. I repeatedly requested the government of Israel to do that, and to meet with me in Jerusalem to discuss how the Fact-Finding Mission should approach its mandate.

 

Even after that approach was rejected, the mission sent a substantial list of questions to the government requesting information on issues in respect of which we proposed to report. We did not wish to make findings adverse to Israel public without having the benefit of the facts and its views on them. That request for information also fell on deaf ears.

 

So it is hardly fair for Israel to accuse the mission of "getting its facts wrong." In short, the benefits of an even-handed mandate from the Human Rights Council were squandered by Israel.

 

I am also surprised and disappointed that some critics of the Report have dismissed its criticisms of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, who have committed serious war crimes against the civilian population of southern Israel. These have been fully documented and the terror they have caused to so many has been comprehensively described and condemned. There has been criticism of the Report on the basis that it devotes disproportionate attention to the conduct of Israel. That was unavoidable considering the many incidents the mission was obliged to investigate in Gaza. The factual inquiries we were called upon to make relating to a severe three-week military operation from the air, sea and land were far more complex than the comparatively unsophisticated launch of thousands of rockets into Israel as acts of terror.

 

IN ITS report on Operation Cast Lead, the government of Israel acknowledges in unequivocal terms that it considers itself bound by the norms of international humanitarian law. In particular, it recognizes the crucial principle of distinction - the legal requirement to protect civilians consistent with military necessity.

 

It cannot, I suggest, interpret that requirement of proportionality to mean that all members of Hamas are combatants. In that context, the government of Israel has not provided any explanation for the bombing of food factories, egg-producing chicken farms and what was the sole flour factory in Gaza. It has not explained why it destroyed or severely damaged thousands of homes. And it has not explained why the bombing on the first day of the military operations of densely populated civilian areas was timed for the busiest time on a weekday when the streets were full of people going about their business.

 

These and the other serious issues raised in the report call for responses and evaluation. I would add that there appears to be no issue as to the intention of the Israel Defense Forces. They bombed targets that were carefully and deliberately chosen. The sophistication of their weaponry and their careful planning admits of no other conclusion.

 

I still nurture the hope that in the coming days, people of goodwill in Israel and the occupied territories do some soul-searching and come to realize that unaccountability for serious violations of international law creates a barrier to peace.

The recognition of the humanity of all people - the recognition of Israel by Hamas and the recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination - are both pre-requisites for peace. And I still nurture the hope that the facts contained in the Report of the Fact-Finding Mission will assist, even in a small way, to finding a peaceful way forward in the Middle East.

 

The people of the region have waited all too long for that.

 

The writer leads the UN-mandated Gaza Fact-Finding Mission established to investigate alleged crimes committed during Operation Cast lead earlier this year. The Mission released its 575-page report last week.

 

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

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

OPED

ENCOURAGING THE PERPETRATORS

YORAM DORI

 

Hundreds of armed bombers from country A executed thousands of bombing sorties on the capital and on additional important cities of country B. Most of them harmed the civilian population, the governmental institutions and the food and water infrastructure. The armored corps and the infantry invaded the heart of the enemy cities. It was difficult to distinguish between the enemy soldier and the citizen. Most of the soldiers wore and took off their uniforms from time to time, depending on the proximity of the invading forces. One minute they fired and the next they were innocent civilians.

 

The combined attack was a strong reaction to the continued violent activities of the enemy. Millions of people were killed, others were severely wounded. Famine prevailed in the conquered territories. The retreating soldiers were violently pursued. The enormous firepower attained its goal. The enemy surrendered. Its unruly behavior was stopped. The area was quiet.

 

A year passed. The UN established a committee to examine the conduct of the war. From the outset, the mandate given the committee determined that it was to investigate the conduct of the victors. But it was predetermined that they used excessive force. They killed citizens. They destroyed infrastructure. Everything was clear to the investigators in advance. Who the criminals are, what the crimes are. What remained for them to do was to match the testimonies to the verdict, to distort a little, to be a little inaccurate, to exaggerate a little and perhaps even a great deal. The main thing was to prove the guilt of the side that was guilty in advance.

 

The days - not those of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza but those at the end of World War II. The bombed country - Germany. The bombers and the invaders - the Allied forces. The investigation committee with a mandate such as Richard Goldstone's would apparently have determined that there was excessive use of force by the Allied forces. Excessive injury to the civilians and damage to the water, electricity and food infrastructure.

 

Perhaps they were not similar things. But it was clear in Kosovo. Great force was used against non-military fighters. Rightfully, the attacking Serbs were brought to the court in The Hague and not the European and American defenders. Not those who returned fire but those who opened it, without reason, without logic. There was no Goldstone committee there.

 

Also in Afghanistan they do not accuse those fighting terror, but the terrorists. There it is also clear, there is no investigation committee with a strange mandate. The same applies to Iraq.

 

ONLY HERE, with us, it is different.

 

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, dismantled the settlements, evacuated the settlers by force and spent billions of dollars. The area was given to a different government. A terror organization overthrew the government by force, expelled its heads (those who did not succeed in fleeing, were thrown from the rooftops) and took control of the area. Yes there is a paragraph on this in the committee's report but conclusions - none.

 

The State of Israel, like every other country in the UN, is obliged to defend the lives of its citizens. It tried to pass messages to the regime in Gaza and the response was a snicker. It tried to respond by targeted firing at areas without civilians, and the response was more and more missiles and rockets on heavily populated areas. Finally we were coerced into using force against armed militias without uniforms, against rocket-launchers from within schools, against mortar firers from nursing homes, against terrorists whose only wish was to kill.

 

Israel absorbed thousands of missiles before it acted. There is no country which would have abandoned its citizens this way. But with us, morality comes above all. Soldiers were wounded because of their extreme carefulness. Israeli lives were endangered to guard Palestinian civilians.

 

The campaign in Gaza ended. The Palestinians paid a heavy price. We are sorry about the loss of lives but the responsibility lies on those who opened fire, on those who decided to play with the lives of citizens to achieve God knows what. In fact, to achieve nothing.

 

Since then, there has been quiet in the region. There has been no firing on Israeli citizens. The nightmare is over. And suddenly, a so-called investigation committee appears. A committee whose conclusions were already written in the mandate given to it; a committee which turned the victim into the attacker; a committee whose conclusions encourage terror; a committee whose recommendations are likely to bring about the renewal of firing on Israeli citizens.

 

A committee, which by virtue of its common sense would perhaps have accused the Warsaw Ghetto uprisers of using excessive force.

 

The writer serves as an adviser to President Shimon Peres.

 

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

 

THE JERUSALEM POST

OPED

WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME

YAGIL HENKIN

 

It is said that the term "civil war" is an oxymoron; civil war, as T.E. Lawrence famously wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, "Like trying to eat soup with a knife." That is, long, dirty and messy. The same can be said for urban warfare, whether between conventional armies or non-state organizations. Civilians populate the battlefront, the enemy is invisible, and visibility is almost zero. To this day, battles fought in densely populated urban areas have inevitably resulted in heavy collateral damage and civilian deaths.

 

In addition, urban fighting has a tendency to evoke allegations in its aftermath, often unjustified. Sometimes it seems that human rights organizations ignore the complexities of urban warfare; they prefer to see a story of good versus evil - perhaps in hopes of minimizing the suffering of civilians. But by ignoring the complexity of such battles, these organizations tend to bring about unintentional results.

 

LISTENING TO human rights organizations in April 2002, one was convinced that Israel had committed massive war crimes during Operation Defensive Shield. These claims primarily focused on the battle that had taken place in Jenin, where 52 Palestinians were killed, most of them combatants, and an additional 23 IDF soldiers lost their lives. Terje Larsen, the United Nations' envoy to the Middle East, claimed that what had happened in Jenin was "horrific beyond belief... We have expert people here who have been in war zones and earthquakes, and they say they have never seen anything like it." Likewise, in a November 2002 report, Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes.

 

In retrospect, one has to wonder, if the Jenin battle was "horrific beyond belief" despite the very low percentage of civilians killed, what would Larsen say about the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza?

 

In Jenin, the IDF began using tanks only after 40 hours of battle, and employed bulldozers to create safe passageways only after an ambush killed thirteen IDF soldiers. No artillery was used, and no bombs were dropped. In contrast, Cast Lead was a more conventional military operation: the IDF used artillery, smart bombs and other forms of military arsenal. The results, accordingly, were much more devastating. According to the Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi, at least 600 people were killed, with both the IDF and Hamas claiming the number at least twice as much. (The IDF claims most were armed terrorists, while Hamas and some human rights organizations claim most were civilians.) Why the difference in magnitude?

 

First, Gaza was a bigger nut to crack. Hamas was better organized, armed and prepared than the Palestinian fighters in Defensive Shield. Tactics such as swarming (an assault by many small forces moving simultaneously and unpredictably through buildings while avoiding the streets) which had succeeded in Shechem (Nablus) in 2002, had limited success in Gaza. The IDF's decision to instead use heavier weapons was quite logical. Because Hamas used civilian homes and mosques as arms caches and command posts, the collateral damage was significantly higher. International law clearly states that Hamas bears responsibility for this damage.

 

Second, Israel did not control the area around the Gaza battlefield in the same way it did during Defensive Shield. Despite technological advances, intelligence is still hard to gather in urban areas, and Israel's loose grasp of Gaza enabled Hamas to shift its forces around Gaza relatively undetected. Despite Israeli aerial surveillance, isolating the battlefield remained challenging - hence the use of artillery barrages before attacks from infantry forces.

 

Third, during Defensive Shield the IDF made extraordinary efforts to prevent collateral damage. The initial plan for entering Jenin required bulldozers to demolish homes and create two corridors. This plan was rejected; the IDF's upper echelons wanted to minimize collateral damage - even if it meant endangering soldiers' lives. Bulldozers were employed en masse only after a lethal ambush claimed thirteen soldiers' lives.

 

Israel received little credit for the fact that civilian casualties were lower than expected from an urban battle between an army and irregular forces.

 

The "Jenin massacre" lie was refuted, but films like "Jenin, Jenin," or Amnesty's 2002 report "Shielded From Scrutiny: IDF Violations in Jenin and Nablus" created the impression that Israel was responsible for the worst imaginable atrocities. Amnesty, it should be noted, consciously writes reports, as Stathis Kalyvas wrote in The Logic of Violence in Civil War (2006), in a way "such that […] could not yield a document that could be comparative across countries within a single year or by country across the years". In other words, Amnesty does not want to measure human rights violations against each other, thus allowing reports to exaggerate in one country while ignoring another, without any standard way to compare reports. In short, if everything is a crime, then nothing is a crime.

 

ONE THING was clear to the IDF after Defensive Shield: It would getbad press either way. Endangering soldiers was illogical, since the IDF would be blamed one way or another. The wholesale condemnation of the IDF in the wake of Defensive Shield, combined with bereaved families feeling that their sons were sacrificed in order to save face, contributed to the IDF taking a different approach during Cast Lead.

 

While the IDF still caused less collateral damage and civilian casualties than, say, US forces did during the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, the IDF was less prepared to take chances. Tactics such as phoning to warn Hamas leaders to evacuate their families before bombs were dropped on their homes (and arms caches hidden there) were the norm during Cast Lead. In another instance, a missile was diverted from its target after the terrorist ran into a civilian crowd.

 

Yet it remains true that while Israel used firepower in accordance with international law, the number of civilians killed and the collateral damage in Gaza was much greater than in Defensive Shield. Comparing the operations reveals an interesting phenomenon: in some cases, human rights organizations can cause more harm than good to their case, since wild claims and exaggerations after Defensive Shield contributed to Israel's change of tactics in Gaza.

 

If you not only act in accordance with international law but go above and beyond the legal requirements to minimize collateral damage, while paying the price in soldiers' lives, yet are still blamed for "massacres," and treated worse than countries that have committed them, the incentives to make this extra effort are inconsequential. Organizations that blame Israel for "lack of proportionality" should first examine themselves and their claims - since their own lack of proportionality also affects human lives.

 

The writer is a military historian and associate fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center. This article was originally published by the Adelson Institute www.adelsoninstitute.org.il where the full version can be viewed.

 

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

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

HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

RESPONSIBILITY MEANS JOBS

BY HAARETZ EDITORIAL

 

The Employment Service data released yesterday boosts the optimism index another notch. For the first time since May 2008, August saw a small decline in the number of job-seekers at Employment Service branches, and at the same time an impressive increase in the number of positions for which employers are seeking new workers.

After the crash of September 2008, about 20,000 workers a month lost their jobs, and only half of them found new employment. In August this year, however, the trend changed. The number of layoffs is now about 15,000 a month, and there is a rise in the number of people finding new jobs.

The Central Bureau of Statistics also recently published similar data. The bureau found that the rate of unemployment remained stable in July at 7.9 percent, the same as May and June. True, the rate didn't decline, but the upward trend had come to an end. Clearly, the good news is a result of recovery in the economy, which has recently experienced moderate growth. The Bank of Israel also revised its growth forecast upward not long ago. The central bank expects the economy to pull out of the deep slump in which it found itself a year ago, and projects 2.5 percent growth for 2010.

The primary lesson that can be derived from the Israeli economy's rapid recovery from the crisis is that we cannot live beyond our means. One cannot manage an economy in which expenditures are greater than revenues. That is true for the country, and the same rule applies to individual households. Unlike the Americans, who deified consumption, overextended their credit and lived well beyond their means, Israelis demonstrated responsibility and maturity. They did not overextend their credit and didn't inflate the real estate and stock market bubbles to grotesque proportions.

The budget picture is also similar. In recent years, the government of Israel kept budget deficits low and reduced public debt, unlike the conduct of the U.S. administration. The Israeli government has also carried out important reforms, which have strengthened the economy.

The conclusion is clear. Israeli consumers should be encouraged to continue to save, and not to run wild in their consumption habits. It is appropriate to demand of the government, which has greatly increased the deficit for this year and next, that it return to a responsible policy of a low deficit, a restrained budget and the promotion of reforms - and that it move the economy from a 2.5 percent growth rate to 5 percent annual growth. That is the path to improving the employment picture and rapidly reducing unemployment.

 

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

 

HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

AN EDUCATIONAL INTROSPECTION

BY NEHEMIA SHTRASLER

 

This year it happened on exactly the same days. The High Holy Days that began this week fell on the same day that ended the month of Ramadan and marked Eid el Fitr. The Jews use the 10 Days of Repentance for self-examination and repenting their sins. The Muslims use the month of Ramadan, and in particular the last 10 days of it, for the same purpose: introspection and cleansing the soul.

It would be appropriate to examine ourselves and correct our ways in a variety of areas: between ourselves and our fellow man, between man and God, in society, economics, security and public policy. But there is one matter that everyone agrees is where we should start. Everyone says it is the most important for our future, and there is also wide agreement that it is a problematic and sick: education.

The numbers show that the level of education and knowledge we are providing to graduates of our education system has been falling steadily for decades. International tests testify to that, and every one of us can also see it personally.

 

This is not a budgetary problem. The education budget rose by NIS 5 billion in the past few years as part of the New Horizon plan, and a comparison with Western nations reveals that investment per pupil in Israel, relative to GDP, is similar to the average in OECD countries. The problem is in managing the budget.

For years, the demands made of students have shrunk. We have looked for all sorts of reductions and tricks instead of demanding effort: homework, reading books and remembering material. In the same way, we have made the lowest common denominator holy - so now everyone will be satisfied and no one should, God forbid, complain.

Instead of forcing students to behave properly, we allow them to run wild and interfere in class in the name of "students' rights." They have turned into customers, and school teachers have become suppliers who are commanded to find favor with their customers. It is an inverted and distorted world.

The failed management of the education system can be demonstrated by the absurd situation whereby high school classes for all practical purposes end right after the Passover vacation at the end of April or beginning of May. The high schools, which once taught according to a horizon-expanding plan, have turned into schools aimed at only one goal: success in the matriculation (bagrut) exams.

The teachers teach only the material required for the exams and no more, and the minute the Education Ministry announces, based on its new methods, which material will not be on the tests this year, the teachers only concentrate on what is left. Because there is no time. Because the school year was cut by a quarter.

Once the matriculation exams were given only in 12th grade and only during July, at the end of the school year. In those years pupils studied the entire year in 10th, 11th and also 12th grades. But a few years ago the Education Ministry decided to spread the matriculation exams over three years - 10th, 11th and 12th grades - and to give the tests during the school year, starting in May. As a result, in practice no one studies during the final quarter of the school year in each of the three most important years of high school.

So why is it surprising that the level is falling and achievement is so low?

Immediately after Passover the atmosphere of learning disappears from high schools. One day there are the preparatory tests, then the school's own tests, and then later come the matriculation exams themselves. The possibility of a second chance for the tests in English and math expanded the test season even more. And before each of these tests the students are allowed to prepare for them at home over a couple of days of self-study, and there are also various other days off and extra study sessions. In short: No school.

An experienced teacher complained to me about the situation: She cannot allow questions in class, no discussions and no expanding on the topic, "because they have taken away a quarter of the year and I must rush to cover the material," she said.

That is why we have to restore the school year to its proper length, as in the past. We must go back to the days when students learned in high school in May and June too, until the end of the school year. In those days there were no matriculation exams in 10th and 11th grades, only in 12th. Classes in 10th and 11th grade were longer and broader - without the threat of exams hanging overhead. And in 12th grade the exams took place in July, after the school year ended.

This is how the school year can return to being eight months of net learning, and not six months in practice. If we can gain only that from the 10 Days of Repentence, it will suffice.

 

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

 

HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

TOO BIG TO IGNORE

BY MOSHE ARENS

 

It is Napoleon who is supposed to have said "when China awakes, the world will tremble." It took a long time, but for some years now China is fully awake, and the world is not trembling. On the contrary, it watches with amazement the spectacular progress being made by this great country. China's continued growth during the present economic crisis is even credited with helping the rest of the world begin a recovery from the crisis. The Chinese economy is presently only second to that of the United States, and may very well pass it in the years to come. China has become the second superpower, economically and militarily. Its political influence in the world is growing.

 
Those following the comings and goings of Israeli politicians to Washington, London and Paris, might get the impression that the Israeli government is ignoring the giant in the Far East. Is the Chinese leadership being updated by Israel on the political developments in the Middle East, and on the American peace initiative? Is the Israeli government seeking Chinese support for its positions?

Not so long ago, Israel's relations with China could have been likened to a love affair. The attention showered on Israeli leaders who visited Beijing in those days was most impressive. China loved and admired Israel, we were told.

 

The high point of this unusual relationship was the unprecedented seven-day visit of Jiang Zemin, China's president, to Israel in April 2000.

The visit was an opportunity for him to receive a report on the development in Israel of the Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft being developed in Israel for China. The development was close to completion, a substantial part of the billion-dollar cost had already been prepaid by China, and Jiang left for home with the expectation that the aircraft would soon be delivered to China and a series of additional orders for this aircraft would follow.

But it was just at that time that the U.S. administration exerted pressure on Israel to cancel the aircraft's delivery. Although aware of the Phalcon program since its inception, and that Israel was contractually committed to execute the program, the administration in Washington without prior warning, through then secretary of defense William Cohen, peremptorily insisted that Israel back out of its commitment to China. Upon learning of the American pressure on Israel, the Chinese foreign ministry issued the following statement: "The two sides have developed a relationship of friendship and cooperation in various areas which will not be affected by external factors."

But despite this long-standing relationship, and in violation of its contractual obligations, Israel succumbed to American pressure and Jiang learned on returning to China from his visit to Israel that the contract had been unilaterally canceled. That kind of insult is not quickly forgotten in China.

It remains one of the sorriest chapters in Israel's diplomatic history. Instead of insisting to our American friends that Israel could not back out of the contract at this late date, and that in any case the operation of this aircraft by China would not in any way affect the strategic balance between the United States and China, and that China could acquire a similar aircraft from other sources, the Israeli government, without advance warning to China, simply gave in. The result was a sudden deterioration in Israel's relations with one of the world's great powers, the loss of the Chinese market to Israel's defense industry, and subsequently the acceptance by Israel of an American veto on all Israeli defense exports.

The crisis could have been an opportunity for Israel, having a special relationship with both countries, to help bring about a rapprochement between the United States and China, which both suffer from unjustified paranoia regarding the other. But no efforts were exerted by the Israeli government in that direction. It was an opportunity missed, and a net loss for Israel, from which it has not recovered to this day.

It is not too late to attempt to pick up the pieces and reestablish the close relationship between Israel and China that existed in the past. The first step must be the appointment of a leading Israeli personality as ambassador to Beijing, who will do what was done by Ora Namir during her tenure as ambassador there. She endeared herself to the Chinese leadership and the Chinese people. It can be done again, despite the damage done in past years.

 

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

 

HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

LIVNI'S CHANCE

BY NIVA LANIR

 

On assuming her current position as opposition leader, Tzipi Livni enjoyed favorable circumstances - the pushiness, zigzagging and embarrassing behavior of the prime minister and his office, a defense minister who swerved rightward and abandoned the center of the political map to the opposition chair, a functioning Kadima party and a restrained Shaul Mofaz. And more than anything, there was Benjamin Netanyahu, who after announcing his acceptance of the principle of "two states for two peoples" is now busy issuing building permits in the West Bank and continuing to obfuscate about his intentions. Netanyahu, Livni said in contrast to certain media pundits, is toeing the same old line, and has yet to cross it. His words haven't been met with actions, and he is far from taking the steps toward peace made by his predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

What can Livni expect to happen after the holidays? Will the comfortable conditions she once enjoyed become more difficult? First, Israel's opposition can rely on her activity in the Knesset only to a limited degree. Between parliament's recesses, every opposition is liable to be destroyed. Second, Mofaz will again demand that Livni show national responsibility - that is, that she join the governing coalition.

After all, Livni has learned from experience. The cold shoulder she received from Olmert when she was foreign minister in his government is not a pleasant memory for her. Virtually everyone has played a role in a similar drama at one time or another - David Ben-Gurion was the death of Levi Eshkol, Shimon Peres of Yitzhak Rabin, and Rabin of Peres. Peres was the bane of Ehud Barak, who returned the disfavor to Peres. Menachem Begin spared no criticism from Sharon, nor Sharon from Begin or Yitzhak Shamir, but scoffed at Netanyahu, who twisted Silvan Shalom's arm, not that Shalom himself is any stranger to arm-twisting.

 

Prime ministers, cabinet members and MKs from both right and left have a tendency to point their arrows at their colleagues and not their rivals - and Livni and Mofaz are no exceptions to this rule.

But the biggest story to emerge after the holidays will apparently be of the diplomatic variety. In recent months, rumors of negotiations between Israel, the Americans and the Palestinians have had the tendency to begin well, only to drag on later. First, spin is spun about "agreements" and "understandings," then come the explanations about why they didn't work out. And everything comes back to the age-old issue of construction in the settlements. What would happen if both sides returned to talks? After all, decisions are not made based on housing and construction, nor are diplomatic negotiations held in regional building committees.

Livni will have something to work with. She won't even need to deal with the trivialities of Netanyahu's behavior. It would be enough if at the opening of the Knesset, she again asked the prime minister what the nation's borders will be, based on the two-state principle. He may blow a fuse, and he might make some kind of gesture for the sake of the public's right to know where the government's intentions lie. And if Livni takes an interest in the fate of the timetable for evacuating illegal outposts - while it is doubtful she will receive an answer - Netanyahu may yet give the public a chance to evaluate his seriousness about his intentions of talking with Ramallah and Washington.

If Livni reminds Netanyahu of Begin and Sharon, of how far they were prepared to go to move toward an agreement, she will have done exactly what she was required to do. That is, to reveal whether (as she claimed) Netanyahu hasn't yet crossed his old red lines, or has decided on a new path.

Netanyahu is now working for Livni. So many shots have already bounced off the backboard, and it's only the first quarter of the game. If Livni gets a rebound here, and another there, she will fulfill her duty as opposition chair, and will be able to delay a second front from opening with Mofaz.

In the meantime Livni is keeping quiet, perhaps too quiet. After the holidays she will have to raise the volume in response to the ten-cent dramas offered us by the prime minister.

 

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

 

HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

A REFERENDUM WON'T HELP

BY CHAIM GANS

 

Gideon Levy proposed in these pages on September 13 that the fate of the settlements and the occupation should be decided by a referendum. He also proposed the question the referendum should pose: "Do we continue the occupation, all of the occupation, yes or no? If yes, then yes, if no, then no."

Levy claimed this was "razor-sharp." But that question is not at all clear-cut, and it is also one that none of the parties to the dispute over the settlements, neither their supporters nor their opponents, could accept as a legitimate question to be decided by a referendum - not by a referendum and not even by representative democracy.

Levy's question is not razor-sharp because it ignores the dispute in this country over whether our standing in the territories is that of an occupier, and because it binds together in one category both the occupation and the settlements, instead of separating the two.

 

Continuing the occupation could be legitimate on security grounds; the question of whether those grounds justify its continuation is one that reasonable people could disagree about. Therefore, it would be truly legitimate to decide it by democratic means.

In contrast, nobody can think that settlements within the framework of occupation could be legitimate. A state is not entitled to colonize conquered lands, neither from the point of view of international law nor that of international morality. Therefore, a democratic majority cannot legalize such settlements, just as a democratic majority of a condominium's residents cannot legalize the beating up of one of the residents.

The real dispute, which should not be blurred and which Levy's question does blur, is whether this is, in fact, an occupation. Significantly, even the ideological right does not justify settlements within the framework of occupation. It justifies them because it denies this is an occupation. The ideological right (and the ideological left, too, as we have learned in recent days from the document drawn up by Shmuel Hasfari and Eldad Yaniv) believes that by virtue of a biblical title deed, the whole of the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews. And what is ours by definition, we cannot be holding by right of occupation.

For all these reasons, the right can argue that the question Levy wants to put in a referendum, that of ending the occupation, is misleading. The real issue, the right will say, is not whether to end the occupation, but whether to give up our biblical title deed. And here the right will say to Levy what I said to him a second ago, from the left: There are certain matters that are outside the purview of a democratic majority and its decisions. From the right's point of view, this means the people of Israel is neither entitled nor able, not even by a majority vote, to amend the word of the Lord. And even if it had been entitled and able to do so, a vote by all of its generations would be required.

We have come back to the question of the justice of Zionism and its correct interpretation. It is a question whose answer derives its legitimacy, or lack thereof, not from a majority vote, but from whether it is right or wrong. Those on the right have resorted over the past 42 yeas to breaking the law, lying, political chicanery both internal and external and even murder - means that to describe them merely as non-democratic is to falsely dignify them. And the right has created a reality that conforms with what it believed is morally right for all of us. The left has served as the right's dummy, and now the dummy's dead. A referendum can't change that. Perhaps Obama can.

Professor Gans' book "A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State" was published last year by Oxford University Press.

 

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

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE RIGHTS OF CORPORATIONS

 

The question at the heart of one of the biggest Supreme Court cases this year is simple: What constitutional rights should corporations have? To us, as well as many legal scholars, former justices and, indeed, drafters of the Constitution, the answer is that their rights should be quite limited — far less than those of people.

 

This Supreme Court, the John Roberts court, seems to be having trouble with that. It has been on a campaign to increase corporations’ legal rights — based on the conviction of some conservative justices that businesses are, at least legally, not much different than people.

 

Now the court is considering what should be a fairly narrow campaign finance case, involving whether Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, had the right to air a slashing movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary season. There is a real danger that the case will expand corporations’ rights in ways that would undermine the election system.

 

The legal doctrine underlying this debate is known as “corporate personhood.”

 

The courts have long treated corporations as persons in limited ways for some legal purposes. They may own property and have limited rights to free speech. They can sue and be sued. They have the right to enter into contracts and advertise their products. But corporations cannot and should not be allowed to vote, run for office or bear arms. Since 1907, Congress has banned them from contributing to federal political campaigns — a ban the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.

 

In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. “Few of us are only our economic interests,” she said. “We have beliefs. We have convictions.” Corporations, “engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging,” she said.

 

Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: “A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests.” Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are “indistinguishable from the individual who owns them.”

 

The Constitution mentions the rights of the people frequently but does not cite corporations. Indeed, many of the founders were skeptical of corporate influence.

 

John Marshall, the nation’s greatest chief justice, saw a corporation as “an artificial being, invisible, intangible,” he wrote in 1819. “Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.”

 

That does not mean that corporations should have no rights. It is in society’s interest that they are allowed to speak about their products and policies and that they are able to go to court when another company steals their patents. It makes sense that they can be sued, as a person would be, when they pollute or violate labor laws.

 

 

The law also gives corporations special legal status: limited liability, special rules for the accumulation of assets and the ability to live forever. These rules put corporations in a privileged position in producing profits and aggregating wealth. Their influence would be overwhelming with the full array of rights that people have.

 

One of the main areas where corporations’ rights have long been limited is politics. Polls suggest that Americans are worried about the influence that corporations already have with elected officials. The drive to give corporations more rights is coming from the court’s conservative bloc — a curious position given their often-proclaimed devotion to the text of the Constitution.

 

The founders of this nation knew just what they were doing when they drew a line between legally created economic entities and living, breathing human beings. The court should stick to that line.

 

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

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

MS. SMITH AND THE WASHINGTON GAME

 

M. Patricia Smith was a smart choice to be the United States Labor Department’s solicitor, the department’s third-ranking official. As the New York State labor commissioner, she has shown sound and innovative leadership, particularly through her crackdowns on minimum-wage and overtime abuses. If anyone could help Hilda Solis, the labor secretary, re-energize the department at a time of rising unemployment and rampant violations of workers’ rights, it would be Ms. Smith.

 

For those very reasons, some Republicans have been pushing to keep Ms. Smith out of the job. They have unfairly and cynically questioned both her qualifications and her integrity and asked President Obama to withdraw her name.

 

Their ostensible objections focus on a small pilot program that Ms. Smith established to promote compliance with labor laws in New York State. The program, New York Wage Watch, enlists workers in low-wage industries to be the eyes and ears of department investigators. Like a citizen crime watch, it encourages workers to unearth and report off-the-books violations in restaurant kitchens, carwashes, supermarkets and other places where government agencies have little access.

 

Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is considering the nomination, recently wrote to Mr. Obama asking him to withdraw it. Mr. Enzi claimed that Ms. Smith had made misleading statements about the program, which he suggested would turn workers and unions into arms of law enforcement and was a union-organizing tool in disguise.

 

The program does nothing of the sort. Ms. Smith has repeatedly and clearly explained that its role is limited to education, worker outreach and referral of complaints — all vital but neglected needs in the low-wage workplace.

 

Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa recently became chairman of the Senate committee, which had been led by Senator Edward Kennedy. Mr. Harkin should move Ms. Smith’s nomination to a full Senate vote without delay. In case they have forgotten, Mr. Harkin and the Democrats hold a majority on the committee.

 

Ms. Smith is not an enemy of business. She has many letters of support from business leaders, including the Business Council of New York State, which praised her honesty, candor and openness. But she definitely and correctly means to enforce the law. Congress should quickly approve her nomination so the Labor Department can get on with its job.

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

BORDER FANTASIES

 

Members of Congress who voted for the Southwest border fence as the fix for illegal immigration professed shock — shock at the news that the project is running years behind, and billions of dollars ahead, of the Bush administration’s early, rosy projections.

 

Auditors reported last week that the high-tech, 28-mile “virtual” section of the fence was running a mere seven years behind this month’s planned opening. Initially, designers talked of using off-the-shelf technology for the radar, cameras and other sensors, but problems cropped up. (Imagine, discovering that cameras tremble in rough weather.) “I’m trying to figure out why this is so difficult,” said Representative Michael McCaul of Texas. “These are basically cameras on a pole.”

 

The current cost estimate for the Buck Rogers barrier? $1.1 billion. Investigators from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report that the larger, actual fence — covering a 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex. — cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades.

 

Investigators also concluded that there’s no good way of gauging the effectiveness of the fence.

 

The current decline in border arrests could be because of the bad economy as much as the fence (which the innovative have already learned to breach with cutters, torches and ladders). Even then, the fence covers only the more manageable third of the border with Mexico.

 

Members of the House border security subcommittee voiced grave concern but didn’t peer much beyond fencing technology to the more complex reality: the need for Congress to reform the nation’s immigration laws. No fence can keep a determined immigrant out or absolve Congress of that responsibility.

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

 

It is hard to imagine politics getting more dysfunctional in New York State, but President Obama and his political team managed to add to the ineptitudes in Albany by trying to shove Gov. David Paterson out of the governor’s race next year.

 

Bullying from the White House might make sense to a few political insiders who are mainly trying to engineer Democratic wins in the 2010 midterm elections around the country.

 

But for New York, the timing was, at best, amateurish, coming a few days before Mr. Obama and Mr. Paterson met awkwardly Monday in upstate New York. On the trip, Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, said, rather comically, that Mr. Obama “understands the tough job that everyone has and the pressure that they’re under.”

 

This particular bit of pressure was a failure, in that, so far, the governor is saying that he’s still in the running. Most important, whether he runs or not, all New Yorkers are left with a weaker governor trying to deal with a bigger mess than usual in Albany.

 

For some time, a few Democrats have been quietly trying to convince Mr. Paterson, who replaced the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, not to run for a full term next year. His polls are at historic lows, and even the usual ploys like handing out money — stimulus grants that Mr. Paterson announces almost daily — have not helped.

 

These party insiders fear the possibility of a Republican such as Rudolph Giuliani storming the governor’s mansion in 2010 and bringing out Republicans to vote in other races as well. But the deeper concern among Democratic partisans is that 2011 is the year for the next round of redistricting, which is controlled by the Legislature and the governor. And that mapping could make a big difference in how many Democratic seats there are in Congress. They don’t think Mr. Paterson would help that cause.

 

What’s missing in this equation is the welfare of New Yorkers. Mr. Paterson is wrestling with a $2.1 billion-plus budget deficit, as well as one of the least responsible Legislatures in many years. The last thing he needed was the White House publicly hobbling him.

 

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

 

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

THE HARD AND BITTER TRUTH

BY BOB HERBERT

 

President Obama is in the uncomfortable position of staring reality in the face in Afghanistan. Reality is not blinking.

 

The president’s handpicked point man in the war zone, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants more troops and a stepped-up commitment by the United States that would lock us into the conflict indefinitely, with nothing like an exit strategy in sight, or even a conception of what victory might look like.

 

Mr. Obama himself has banged the war drums loudly, having already increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and declaring just last month that the war is absolutely essential to American security, that it “is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

 

Among the many problems for the president on this front is the sobering fact that most ordinary Americans do not seem to agree. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 51 percent of respondents believed the war has not been worth its costs, and only 26 percent favored sending more troops.

 

That does not bode well for an expensive and debilitating conflict that is about to enter its 9th year and would go on for untold years to come if the president decides to double down on America’s military commitment.

 

Senator John McCain gave us a compelling insight into these matters in a foreword that he wrote about Vietnam for David Halberstam’s book, “The Best and the Brightest”:

 

“War is far too horrible a thing to drag out unnecessarily,” he said. “It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay.

 

“No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.”

 

The only thing that needs to be updated about Mr. McCain’s comments is that we now regularly send women as well as men off to war.

 

In the case of Afghanistan, we’re sending them off to fight and possibly die in support of a government that is incompetent and riddled with corruption and narcotics traffickers. We’re putting them in the field with Afghan forces that are ill trained, ill equipped and in all-too-many instances unwilling to fight with the courage and tenacity of the American forces. And we’re sending them off to engage in a mishmash of a mission that alternates incoherently between aggressively fighting insurgents and the admirable but unachievable task of nation-building in a society in which most Americans are clueless about the history, culture, politics and mores.

 

In a confidential assessment of the war prepared for President Obama, General McChrystal wrote: “The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials and [the American-led NATO force’s] own errors have given Afghans little reason to support their government.”

A friend of mine who lives in South Carolina sent me an e-mail about a young serviceman in civilian clothes whom she and her husband noticed as he talked on a public telephone in the Atlanta airport last week. He was 19 or 20 years old and quite thin. His clothes and his shoes were worn, my friend said, but the thing she noticed most “was the sadness in his eyes and his sweet demeanor.”

 

The young man was speaking to his mom in a voice that was quite emotional. My friend recalled him saying, “We’re about to board for Oklahoma for the training before we move out. I didn’t want to bother Amber at work, so please tell her I called if you don’t think it will upset her too much. ... I miss you all so much and love you, and I just don’t know how I’ll get through this.”

 

At the end of the call, the serviceman had tears in his eyes and my friend said she did, too. She wrote in the e-mail: “I stood up and wished him good luck, and he smiled the sweetest smile that has haunted me ever since.”

 

As President Obama tries to decide what to do about Afghanistan, reality is insisting that he take into account the worn-down condition of our military after so many years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the soaring budget deficits and sky-high unemployment numbers here at home in a country that is hurting badly and could use its own dose of nation-building.

 

Mr. Obama, in the face of these daunting realities, is said to be re-thinking his plans to ratchet up American involvement in Afghanistan. One can only hope.

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

THREE CHEERS FOR IRVING

BY DAVID BROOKS

 

Irving Kristol was born into a fanatical century and thrust himself into every ideologically charged battle of his age. In the 1930s, as a young socialist, he fought the Stalinists. In the 1940s, as a soldier, he fought fascism. In the decades beyond, as a writer and intellectual, he engaged with McCarthyism, the cold war, the Great Society, the Woodstock generation, the culture wars of the 1970s, the Reagan revolution and so on.

 

The century was filled with hysterias, all of which he refused to join. There were fanaticisms, none of which he had any part in. Kristol, who died on Friday, seemed to enter life with an intellectual demeanor that he once characterized as “detached attachment.”

 

He would champion certain causes. He could arrive at surprising and radical conclusions. He was unabashedly neoconservative. But he also stood apart, and directed his skeptical gaze even on his own positions, and even on the things to which he was most loyal.

 

“There are no benefits without costs in human affairs,” he once wrote. And so there is no idea so true and no movement so pure that it doesn’t require scrutiny. There was no position in this fallen world without flaws.

 

So while others were marching to barricades, picking out bits of the truth that confirmed their own prejudices, editing contrary evidence and working themselves up a righteous lather, Kristol would adopt an attitude of smiling forbearance. He was able to pick a side without losing his clarity.

 

Kristol championed capitalism and wrote brilliantly about Adam Smith. But like Smith, he could only give two cheers for capitalism, because the system of creative destruction has victims as well as beneficiaries.

 

Kristol championed middle-class virtues like faith, family and responsibility, especially during the 1960s when they were so much under attack. But he acknowledged that bourgeois culture could be boring and spiritually unsatisfying.

 

Kristol championed democracy but understood its limitations. He emphasized that the American founders believed in a democratic system, but were appalled by the democratic faith: the idea that the majority view should be followed in all circumstances. They built a system that was half-democracy and half a republic, designed to acknowledge and also subdue popular will.

 

Kristol embraced the welfare state (one of his great achievements was to reconcile conservatism with the New Deal), but he was skeptical of most individual proposals. Improving society is so intractably hard that all efforts to do so should be subject to the most careful scrutiny.

 

His goal, he wrote, was “not to dismantle the welfare state in the name of free-market economics but rather to reshape it so as to attach it to the conservative predispositions of the people.” He believed that government programs that were not paternalistic, but merely provided social insurance, would “engender larger loyalties,” which is “precisely what the art of government, properly understood, is all about.”

 

Kristol was easily the most influential contemporary writer in my life, and while going over my worn collections, I’ve wondered where this attitude of detached attachment came from.

My first guess is ethnic. Kristol grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn and seems to have absorbed the elemental Jewish commandment: Don’t be a schmuck. Don’t fall for fantastical notions that have nothing to do with the way people really are.

 

My second guess is philosophical. Kristol wrote in a time when intellectuals saw themselves as heirs to the Enlightenment, by which they meant the French Enlightenment. They put their faith in a rational elite and a moral avant-garde that would champion justice, virtue and equality by leading social and political revolutions.

 

But Kristol was drawn to the other Enlightenment: the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment, led by Lord Shaftesbury, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. This was a more prosaic Enlightenment, which was hostile to passionate politics. The leaders of the Scottish environment hoped that progress might come gradually and organically — if individuals were given the liberty to develop their own responsible habits and if they themselves built institutions to guide them on their way.

 

My third guess is moral. In “The Brothers Karamazov,” Dostoyevsky has his Antichrist flaunt a banner that, in modern form, reads: “First make people prosperous, and then ask of them virtue.”

 

Kristol argued that this was the great seduction of modern politics — to believe that problems that were essentially moral and civic could be solved by economic means. They can’t. Political problems, even many economic problems, are, at heart, ethical and cultural problems. And improving the attitudes and virtues of a nation is, at best, a slow, halting process.

 

Kristol pursued this task by being cheerful, patient and realistic — by being at once courageously committed and skeptically detached.

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

WHAT OBAMA SAID TO PATERSON, MAYBE

BY JOHN KENNEY

 

President Obama walked down from Air Force One after his plane landed shortly before 11 a.m. Monday. He and Gov. David A. Paterson exchanged a brief greeting. They shook hands. Mr. Obama gave Mr. Paterson a half-embrace, then whispered into his ear for a few seconds. It was impossible for anyone nearby to hear over the roar of the engines.

NYTimes.com, Sept. 21

 

The tarmac at Albany International Airport.

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA Governor.

 

GOV. DAVID A. PATERSON Why are you trying to ruin my life?

 

MR. OBAMA David. ...

 

MR. PATERSON Joking. Kind of. Do I smell cigarettes?

 

MR. OBAMA We don’t have a lot of time here, so I just want to make clear that the best thing for the party — and you, ultimately — is not to run.

 

MR. PATERSON You know what this reminds me of? Remember the end of “Lost in Translation,” when Bill Murray’s character whispers into Scarlett Johansson’s ear?

 

MR. OBAMA I do, yes.

 

MR. PATERSON No one knows what he said, right? It was a big deal at the time. But I think I know what he said.

 

MR. OBAMA What?

 

MR. PATERSON I think he said, “Scarlett, if you ever change your name to David Paterson, make sure you run for governor.”

 

MR. OBAMA Why are we still hugging?

 

MR. PATERSON It’s nice to hug sometimes. It’s nice to just stand here and sort of hold each other awkwardly. Like the end of a first date. What song’s in your head right now?

 

MR. OBAMA Ahhh. ... I’m not sure. Something by Journey. I forget the name.

 

MR. PATERSON Me, too. That’s so weird. Do you remember your dreams?

 

MR. OBAMA Sometimes.

 

MR. PATERSON Me, too! We have so much in common.

 

Mr. OBAMA Ahhh. ...

 

MR. PATERSON O.K., let’s say hypothetically that I do win the election.

 

MR. OBAMA You’re not going to win the election.

 

MR. PATERSON But hypothetically. ...

 

MR. OBAMA It’s not going to happen because you’re not going to run.

 

MR. PATERSON I’m going to start screaming.

 

MR. OBAMA O.K., hypothetically.

 

MR. PATERSON Hypothetically, what if I came to work for you?

 

MR. OBAMA As what?

 

MR. PATERSON Governor?

 

MR. OBAMA I don’t really have a position like that open.

 

MR. PATERSON Do you feel that I might be a kind of freelancer, simply sitting in on meetings, perhaps speaking to the press, traveling on your plane?

 

MR. OBAMA No. David, at some point you have to stop holding me.

 

MR. PATERSON We’re similar in so many ways, don’t you think?

 

MR. OBAMA Not so much.

 

MR. PATERSON I have the Lionel Ritchie song “Endless Love” in my head now.

 

MR. OBAMA That’s great. Look. David. I have to go. Announce you’re not going to run. We’ll figure something out.

 

MR. PATERSON Give me a sign of what you’re thinking.

 

MR. OBAMA Announce that you’re not going to run.

 

MR. PATERSON I’m hearing you say I should run.

 

MR. OBAMA Let me be very clear. You should not run. I will disavow you and put all the pressure of the Office of the President behind a different candidate.

 

MR. PATERSON Then it’s settled. I’ll run.

 

MR. OBAMA Oh, look! My car’s here.

 

MR. PATERSON What’s it like having your own plane?

 

MR. OBAMA Best of luck to you, David.

 

MR. PATERSON Do you have time for a coffee?

 

John Kenney is a writer.

 

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

THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

MALADIES OF INTERPRETERS

BY JOSHUA FOUST

 

IN counterinsurgency, the most important thing is winning over the local population. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander in charge of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, was right to warn that a “crisis of confidence among Afghans” imperils the effort to rebuild the country. For most American troops, however, the only connection they have to the locals — whether soldiers in the Afghan army or villagers they’re trying to secure — is through their interpreters.

 

United States Army doctrine describes interpreters as “vital,” which is fairly obvious given the bevy of languages spoken in Afghanistan: Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Uzbek and others. Yet the way the military uses translators is too often haphazard and sometimes dangerously negligent. Many units consider interpreters to be necessary evils, and even those who are Americans of Afghan descent are often scorned or mistreated for being too obviously “different.”

 

Mission Essential Personnel, the primary contractor providing interpreters in Afghanistan, has basic guidelines: interpreters need to be given a place to sleep, for example, and fed. But beyond that, how they are treated is often left up to the individual unit. Many times, they are treated the way they should be: as vital members of a team. Sometimes, however, they are shockingly disrespected.

 

Earlier this year, I traveled through central Afghanistan as a civilian member of an American Provincial Reconstruction Team. We had a translator — we called her Brooklyn — who had been born and raised in California. During the initial briefing before our convoy set out, however, the team’s commander, an Air Force colonel, demanded that Brooklyn leave the briefing area, referring to her as “that local woman.”

 

The briefing slides were market “SECRET,” which caused the colonel understandable alarm. Brooklyn, however, had a security clearance allowing her to be present. Perhaps the real problem was that she wore a headscarf, as one would expect a pious Muslim woman to do.

 

The next day, as we were driving between two bases, we ran into a traffic snarl at a bridge, with dozens of Afghan soldiers and police officers milling about. Our colonel, who had left his own translator back at his base, got out of his Humvee and asked Brooklyn to begin translating for him. After discussing the issue with the Afghan forces, she explained that they had found several bombs underneath the bridge, and were waiting for an American bomb disposal team to arrive. They had likely saved our lives, but we got that message only because we had an interpreter, the one the colonel had treated like an enemy spy the night before.

 

“Your interpreter is way more important than your weapon,” Cory Schulz, an Army major who led a tactical team embedded with Afghan troops in Paktika Province, told me. With an interpreter, he explained, you can command hundreds of Afghan soldiers; with a gun, you can only defend yourself.

 

Interpreters do more than talk and listen. Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, United States troops receive only minimal cultural training before they deploy. Thus interpreters often serve as cultural advisors — helping Americans learn the nuances of typical Afghan behavior.

 

Major Schulz said of his “terp,” as they’re often called, “he saved my life more than once.” Once the interpreter helped his unit identify a suicide bomber in a large crowd before the man could activate the explosives in his vest. The would-be bomber was acting nervously in a way that Afghans could recognize but that Americans were oblivious to, and the translator picked up on it.

 

American troops in some isolated parts of Afghanistan have little hope of such guidance. In March I met some officers at Bagram Air Force Base, north of Kabul, who were trying to find an interpreter who spoke Pashai; the Pashai represent only about 1 percent of Afghanistan’s population, but live in some of the most violent and insurgency-ridden areas of the country’s northeast.

 

Mission Essential Personnel couldn’t supply anyone who spoke the language, the officers told me, yet they felt that being able to speak to the Pashai could prove important for the war effort. So they went to the camp on the outskirts of Bagram where many interpreters live and found one who could speak the rare language. (Later I was told that he had been assigned to a battalion in Khost, 100 miles south of any Pashai-speaking areas, because he also spoke Pashto.)

 

American officers and enlisted soldiers repeatedly told me how vital interpreters are. Yet there remains no standardized way for units to use them, which can lead to insulting incidents like the one Brooklyn had to endure.

 

Often, the insults are more subtle, but more personal. In Khost Province, I met an interpreter named Afzal, who worked for a team of Army civilians doing economic and cultural research. Afzal had helped this team for several years, through three rotations of leadership and personnel. He had been trying for a long time to get a visa from the State Department to come to the United States, something many interpreters hope for because of threats to their families. Eventually, extremists began posting threatening letters on his door overnight.

 

Afzal told me that two years earlier, the team’s leader, a lieutenant colonel, had promised to submit the paperwork for the visa and vouch for his status as an interpreter, but he apparently never did. The next team leader, another officer, made the same promise, but also apparently never followed through. It was not until the arrival of the third team leader, a civilian, early this year that Afzal was able to submit his application. The delay has complicated the procedure — for this year the State Department cut the number of available visas for interpreters from Afghanistan and Iraq to 50 from 500.

 

Brooklyn told me that the occasional grumpy officer wasn’t her only problem. She also complained about Mission Essential Personnel’s sloppy management, saying that the company tended to hire elderly interpreters, unsuited for rough travel in a war zone, just because they passed a language test. She said the contractor was unresponsive to complaints of sexual harassment and mistreatment.

 

There is also a growing number of stories of local interpreters who have been denied medical treatment. According to CorpWatch, a group that monitors military contractors, an interpreter named Basir Ahmed was fired for “failing to show up for work” last year when he was recuperating from shrapnel wounds to his leg received from a homemade bomb that exploded while he was on patrol with American forces near the Pakistani border.

 

In winning hearts and minds, how we treat Afghans as individuals matters more than how many Taliban we kill or how many roads we build. If we cannot treat our military interpreters with basic respect, why should Afghan civilians trust us to help them remake their nation?

 

Joshua Foust, an independent military analyst, writes the blog Registan.net.

 

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

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

INFERIORITY OF ANY LIFE LIVED ONLINE

FACEBOOK FRIENDS AND ONLINE ADVENTURES ARE NOT THE REAL THING

 

BARACK Obama has some excellent advice for young people who live their lives online - prospective employers will check social networking sites such as Facebook, so be careful what you post. And British scientist Susan Greenfield has some alarming information for their parents. Playing computer games, such as shoot-em-ups, for many hours every day may alter the way their brains work. They both point to side-effects of the internet revolution which, if the past 10 years are any indication, can only intensify. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, (owned by News Corporation, publisher of The Australian), instant messaging service Twitter, all-encompassing alternative universes such as Second Life, for example, and engrossing online games exist in a world of relatively slow data transfer speeds. Canberra's national broadband network is intended to make internet access much faster, up to 60 times the speed most domestic users now have. This will intensify the wired world, meaning the challenge is to learn from the environment we are in now for the one that is coming.

 

The US President's warning is easily acted on, and over time people will be. Social networking sites have privacy features designed to protect users from unwelcome attention. While many users ignore them - unable to imagine how what they do now could have consequences in the future - this will change as people begin to understand that their digital diaries and online photos are permanent and public records. But Baroness Greenfield points to problems not solved by commonsense or experience. While she accepts her case is not conclusive, she suggests heavy use of computer games is not only bad for adolescent complexions and social skills, it may be programming their brains. She points to new science showing the hardwiring of our brains can change, depending on how we use them. The intense stimulus of fast-paced high-engagement computer games generates the same sort of reactions as the fight-or-flight situations the human brain was designed to deal with. And so the brains of gamers respond as did those of our ancient ancestors when confronted with risk, pumping a chemical called dopamine, designed to encourage quick reactions, into the system. And dopamine is addictive - which is one of the reasons people are happy hunched over a keyboard duelling with dragons and eviscerating enemies hour upon hour, day in and day out. Equally alarming, as Baroness Greenfield says, is that the more young people are online, the less time they spend in the company of human beings, learning how the real world works.

 

She makes a powerful point. While the science is far from settled, you don't need to be a neurobiologist to know a life lived almost exclusively online is not healthy. Children and adolescents need to see their friends in the flesh, and talk, not tweet. A thousand Facebook friends is an indication of an individual's isolation rather than evidence they are comfortable in a school or social community. And exercise is far better for everybody than obsessively slaying monsters or indulging adolescent interests in online pornography. As a source of information, entertainment and economic development, the internet has changed the world enormously and for the better in the past 15 years. But every revolution brings unanticipated social side-effects. Mr Obama and Baroness Greenfield remind us that the world online is a simulacrum of society, and that Second Life is called that because compared with the real thing, it is.

 

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

POLICY BEFORE POLITICS

MIKE RANN HAS DONE VERY WELL BY STICKING TO HIS STRATEGY

 

THE South Australian Premier's now long-past political honeymoon has settled into a happy marriage, both with his party and apparently the electorate. As he celebrates 15 years leading Labor in the state, half of them as premier, Mike Rann is in good shape - his authority is unchallenged in his party and while there are six months to the next election, the opposition will have to do something dramatic to put him under pressure at the poll. It is a record much fresher Labor leaders can only envy, and wonder how he did it. Despite being a new face this time last year, Nathan Rees has failed to breathe life into the expiring NSW state government. Anna Bligh's recent election win is worth a lot less since questions of cronyism in Queensland Labor became impossible to avoid. But while Mr Rann's record is impressive, his achievement is easy to understand for anybody outside the obsessive culture of modern political parties, of any persuasion.

 

Mr Rann does not lead a faction and because he is in the debt of no party players, he can avoid the toxic squabble over the spoils that have reduced Mr Rees's government to a shambles. While the factional bosses have never liked it, Mr Rann has a Nationals MP in cabinet, Karlene Maywald, who is the Minister for Water Security, demonstrating his ability to appoint those he believes are the best people to serve the state. Mr Rann similarly had a close connection with mining magnate Robert de Crespigny, who served on his long-term planning board. The fact the Premier has a plan that stretches beyond the next election also demonstrates a technocratic focus few state leaders, other than Victoria's John Brumby, understand. And Mr Rann's economic ideas go far beyond the traditional South Australian strategy of demanding ever-more assistance for its carmakers. He has invested in attracting defence industries, in encouraging miners and in turning Adelaide into an education centre, attracting international universities and academics. British scientist Susan Greenfield is one of the stars of the state's thinkers-in-residence scheme. And while Mr Rann's plan to transform the economy will take time, so far so good. The state's unemployment rate was on the national average last month when past slumps hit South Australia's manufacturing base hard. Certainly Mr Rann plays politics to win, humiliating then opposition leader Martin Hamilton-Smith earlier this year over false allegations that the Premier had links to Scientology. And he can refuse to change course when his mind is made up, demonstrated by his refusal to create a state anti-corruption commission. But overall, Mr Rann has a solid policy record to run on at the next election.

 

It is a record he explains every chance he gets. He is an enthusiastic user of social messaging service Twitter, which he uses to demonstrate how busy he is in the state's service. This is another facet of his political professionalism. Like former NSW premier Bob Carr, Mr Rann was a journalist and he understands the importance of selling his message. Unlike Mr Carr, who left the leadership just before the inertia of his government became obvious, Mr Rann focuses on policy as well as politics. At times it appears he thinks that if he explains enough announcements, the electorate will leave him in office indefinitely. Whether it works next March or not, Mr Rann has set a strategy for premiers of all parties: keep the economy expanding and stop party factions taking over. When the choice in state politics is between the Rann and Rees models, there is no doubt which one the voters prefer.

 

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

THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

A NEW PUSH FOR PEACE

TALKS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME

 

IT is impossible to fault Barack Obama for optimism. By inviting Israel and the Palestinians to the conference table, he is seeking to broker the peace his predecessors have sought without success for 30 years. Certainly the circumstances do not look any better this time. In Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure from his coalition allies to stand up to the Americans and keep expanding settlements on the West Bank land the Palestinians claim. And Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas cannot afford to surrender too much if he is to avoid claims from his rivals in the Hamas faction that he is weak.

 

But both sides need a deal. Mr Netanyahu because most Israelis want peace. And after disputes reduced Mr Abbas's Fatah party conference to chaos last month, he needs to restore credibility. Without peace, the economy of the West Bank, which he runs, cannot grow. And without peace Palestinians will be drawn to Hamas, which exists only to attack Israel.

 

Mr Obama also needs a settlement. The major Middle East issue he must address is Iran's push to produce weapons of mass destruction. This worries Israel, and terrifies Arab states, which fear being Tehran's targets and would form a public front with the US if they could. This would be easier if the Arabs could avoid claims from Tehran that they are subservient to the Jewish state, which is why Tehran insists on arming Hamas and wants the talks to fail. This is a peace Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab nations need. The challenge for Mr Obama is to find a price they will all pay.

 

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

 

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

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

TELL THE DRIVER: CHANGE NEEDED

USERS of Sydney taxis know that they are licensed, but they may well wonder why. Taxi passengers have to put up with cabs which are often dirty, and driven by people who with disturbing frequency do not know the most direct route to simple destinations. When booked they can simply fail to arrive. What role, they may ask, does licensing play in maintaining standards in the industry? As readers of Linton Besser's series on the industry have discovered, licensing in effect maintains not standards, but the dominance of one group, Cabcharge, over the entire industry.

 

The company's dominance has been built up over decades to the point where, as the Herald has shown, both sides of politics have been furthering its interests.

 

On Sunday it was revealed that the NSW Taxi Council has refused to fulfil its legal requirement to provide the State Government with statistics on the performance of Sydney's taxi networks. The council is offended that past statistics had found their way to the Herald - even though these statistics were benign. It says a great deal about the relationship between the taxi industry and the State Government that the public is forbidden by a government-licensed industry to know how that industry is performing.

 

Secrecy, in fact, is endemic. The number of licenses is restricted and as a result those licences have great value. The Government keeps secret its list of those who buy and sell taxi plates in a market that is worth up to $2.2 billion.

 

The details of the state's licensees, solicitors and landholders are all on the public record. Until our investigation, who owns the licence plates has not been public information. Why not? What possible public benefit is conferred by this confidentiality?

 

The links between the bureaucracy and the dominant player are deep. Public servants whose job has been to oversee the industry have taken jobs with Cabcharge. The effect of this close relationship has been to stymie competition and produce a second-rate taxi service. A series of inquiries over a decade have recommended that the industry be opened up to new operators, but ferocious resistance from Cabcharge, with its deep links in the bureaucracy, has defeated all attempts at reform.

 

The series shows the regulator has become the captive of the industry. Roles are reversed: the industry regulates the public service, not the other way around, and controls what the public may know of the relationship. Sydney deserves better. It deserves an open industry in which roughly equal competitors vie for custom. The first step must be to open up information on the taxi industry.

 

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

NAME IT TO TAME IT

 

MOST people have at some time worked while ill. Australians take pride in resilience and do not like malingering. But as worthy, or even heroic, as they may feel when toughing it out, the truth is that they are more likely to let down the side they are hoping to boost; and, where infection is involved, there is always an unacceptably high risk of passing it on.

 

The idea that it is best to soldier on appears to be slowly losing favour - where it applies to transmissible disease, at any rate. That is a positive change. The recent swine flu pandemic, and, before it, the well-publicised outbreaks of SARS and avian flu, have helped to make people realise that spreading illness is irresponsible. The healthiest change in perspective has been in the workplace where the informed and sensible management of sickness - that is, protecting the workforce by encouraging sick employees to recover at home - is increasingly regarded as central to optimal productivity.

 

Such an enlightened approach to work and health must be extended to depression and other mental illnesses as well. It is a measure of how distant this notion is that we recognise the decision by the Victorian Liberal MP Andrew Robb to step down from his frontbench position to seek treatment for his depression as not simply sensible, but brave.

 

Depression affects one in six Australian men over their lifetime but only 40 per cent will get effective medication or psychological treatment. An estimated 60 per cent of disability costs in 15- to 34-year-olds stems from poorly treated mental health problems. The majority of middle-aged men who commit suicide have had depressive illnesses. But although there is a greater awareness and acceptance of depression today than ever before - as well as a greater sympathy for those who suffer it - depression nevertheless carries a stigma.

 

Stigmas attach to the little understood. Nick Minchin is right to praise Mr Robb for speaking out about his condition, and bringing it into the light. And Kevin Rudd is right to publicly call for depression to be regarded in the same way as any other medical condition. When dragged into plain sight, that's what depression is: a medical condition.

 

When the former West Australian premier Dr Geoff Gallop stood down because of depression, Jeff Kennett, a campaigner for the anti-depression initiative beyondblue, described Dr Gallop's public statement as a great act of community service. Mr Robb has followed that example, encouraging others to follow.

 

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

 

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

RUDD NEEDS ONE STORY HERE AND IN THE WIDER WORLD

THE PM'S CREDIBILITY ON CLIMATE CHANGE ISN'T QUITE WHAT HE THINKS IT IS.

 

EVERY politician, like every stand-up comedian, plays to the audience. But, just like comedians, politicians need to remember what they might previously have said to any particular audience. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in the US this week, to attend first the opening session of the UN General Assembly, then the G20 leaders summit in Pittsburgh. As part of his UN commitments he will chair a round-table discussion on climate change, a role reportedly offered to him by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in recognition of Australia's stance on global warming. So it is no surprise that Mr Rudd felt obliged to make some comments on the subject when he arrived in New York at the weekend. Australians, however, could be forgiven for wondering whether these remarks were uttered by the man who has been their Prime Minister for the past two years.

 

Referring to the approaching Copenhagen conference on a new climate treaty, Mr Rudd said: ''There is a danger, speaking absolutely frankly, that options for a final decision at Copenhagen are left too late because we are now less than 80 days away. There are big decisions to be made on targets for developed countries and verifiable commitments for developing countries, all of which bring down greenhouse emissions - and also how that is made possible financially, as well as the technologies.''

 

Yes, Prime Minister. The urgency cannot be denied. But can this be the same Kevin Rudd whose Government proposes to introduce a carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) that, with its exemptions and concessions for major industry, will effectively reward the biggest polluters, thereby providing little incentive to change? A scheme that will instead place the initial burden of achieving a 5 per cent cut in emissions from 2000 levels on other businesses, governments and households? A scheme whose goal of a 5 to 15 per cent emissions cut by 2020 is below the 25 per cent that most climate scientists believe is the minimum needed? A scheme that, despite avowals to the contrary, the Government seems more intent on nurturing as an election trigger than as a serious attempt to lower carbon emissions?

 

The Government's CPRS does, of course, hold out the prospect of lifting Australia's 2020 target to 25 per cent if there is general acceptance of such a goal at Copenhagen. A charitable interpretation of Mr Rudd's comments might, therefore, be that he was trying to exhort other heads of government to do just that. The ''compromise proposal'' that Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will present to the UN as a means of obtaining agreement at Copenhagen suggests, however, that charity would be misplaced. Senator Wong's plan would allow developing nations to submit their own schedules of how they might make reductions in carbon emissions, instead of agreeing to a common binding target. The plan might reflect a more realistic assessment of just what will be possible at Copenhagen, but it does not sit easily with Mr Rudd's dire warning that the conference risks becoming ''a wall that is too high to scale''. On the contrary, it is much more in keeping with the approach the Rudd Government has favoured at home, which is to aim at outcomes that might win general agreement even if - or perhaps because - they do not achieve what is needed.

 

When Mr Rudd attends the G20 summit on Thursday he will have more chance of matching his rhetoric on the international stage with his conduct at home. He will be able to cite Australia's achievement in being the only developed economy to avoid recession, in large part because of his Government's stimulus measures but also because prudential regulation of banking has generally been more effective here than elsewhere. He will have grounds for confidence, too, that the G20, a forum that gives middle-ranking Australia a seat at the same table as the leading economic powers, will not shrink any time soon to a G12 or G14. US President Barack Obama has said that he favours continuing to work through the G20. It must be hoped, however, that Mr Rudd will not be content with the way the G20 has so quickly scaled down the expectations that were held of it a year ago, when the global financial crisis began. Then, the leaders talked of reforming capitalism; now, they are arguing about how best to limit bonus payments to bankers.

 

Whatever influence Mr Rudd may wield in the G20 and the UN, he should take care to match word and deed. If he does not, the audience might think he is just taking advantage of having a global stage to strut. But they won't be amused.

 

Source: The Age

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

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

MISSING MUMBAI MISSES THE POINT, PREMIER

 

IF YOU are a backpacker travelling through India and are warned by Australian authorities of possible terrorist strikes at tourist spots in Mumbai, common sense would suggest you think twice about visiting that city, or, if you do, that you keep alert and away from potential trouble spots. But if you are the Premier of Victoria and scheduled to arrive in Mumbai later this week at the start of a brief visit to the subcontinent via Hong Kong, are you entitled to heed the same warning?

 

That is the crux of the question of whether or not Mr Brumby was right to cancel the Mumbai leg of his trip to India. This follows a change in Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade travel advice that, while significant, suggests only that Australians take care when visiting India rather than not travelling there at all; the advice also refers to ''possible threats'' in Delhi, which is still on Mr Brumby's itinerary. An essential element of the Premier's trip, which he says is to help improve Victoria's ''brand'', is to repair the relationship between Victoria and India, which has suffered after a spate of racist attacks in Melbourne. This appears to be causing a drop in the number of Indians applying for student visas, which will inevitably damage Australia's $15 billion international student market.

 

To answer the original question: John Brumby is not a backpacker. In Mumbai, he would surely have had the security and hospitality accorded to any visiting dignitary. Delhi may be India's capital, but the financial capital is Mumbai. To skip it could compromise the reason for Mr Brumby's conciliatory visit. He is trying to assure Indians that the relatively few incidents of violence do not fairly represent Australian attitudes - he will find that difficult if he shuns India's largest city.

 

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

 

 

 

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

THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

UNIVERSITY FINANCE: THE DEBATE THAT ISN'T

 

The storm over student finance blowing over the cliffs of Bournemouth, where the Liberal Democrats are holding their conference, epitomises many of the dilemmas posed by the credit crunch. The first great gust of concern, and the thing that sets the teeth of leader Nick Clegg chattering, is the devastation of the public finances. He proposes to weather it by proving he can restrain public expenditure, through ditching his party's long-standing pledge to scrap tuition fees, at least as far as the term of the next parliament goes. But the bulk of the activists are sent into shivers by a second blast of cold air – unease about record debt for young people, unease that has only been heightened by a year in finance that has provided ample reminders of just how ruinous private debt can be.

 

The effect of the standoff is that the Lib Dems are for now without a clear policy on student finance, a position that poses political few problems because it places them in good company. Both Labour and the Conservatives are saying nothing specific about what they will do with the mishmash of fees, grants and loans, both parties using a pending review as their justification for keeping mum until after the general election. This conspiracy of silence survives even though everyone knows something will soon have to give. As the CBI pointed out in a report on Monday, the government has already asked English universities to make savings of £180m over the next two years, and many are budgeting for cuts of 10%-20% – and this despite the fact that investment in teaching and research are already modest by world standards.

 

The coming review was originally granted to assuage unease about Tony Blair's top-up fee scheme on the Labour left, but the growing expectation is that it will result in an increase in the cap on annual fees from £3,225, perhaps of as much as 100%. That change would be all the more momentous since it would introduce significant variation in fees for the first time, with elite universities charging the full whack, while other institutions provide cut-price courses. Just as happened with the Dearing review – which sat both before and immediately after the 1997 election before proposing the first-ever fees – a strategic choice on universities seems set to be taken at the point in the political cycle where the voters have the least say.

 

That is a scandal, for there is much to debate about how to provide universities with the extra finance they unquestionably need. Raising the fees together with the headline loans is perhaps the worst option, since it could discourage poorer applicants whose families have experienced spiralling debt. Raising the interest rate on the loans to match that paid by the Treasury would avoid this psychological snag, so it is a somewhat better way to raise £1.4bn a year for the sector. But the growing band of graduates finding work hard to come by would find more expensive repayments hard to swallow. A  more appealing option is a graduate tax, which has now found an unlikely champion in the National Union of Students.

 

Setting aside traditional objections to students paying anything, the NUS has concluded that a tariff closely based on earnings is the best way to go. It would only kick in once a decent wage was obtained, but would then continue being paid for many years no matter how high a salary was achieved, thereby allowing students to invest in their education on the understanding that what they pay back will depend on what they get out of it financially. Big questions remain – particularly about financing the transition, since the scheme would do away with the student loan book, whose privatisation has in the past provided the exchequer with handy upfront cash. It is for the politicians, however, to address such difficulties – or else to explain why they necessitate an improved system of loans instead. As things stand, it is the students and not the politicians who are educating the public over university finance.

 

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

THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

FRANCE: TRIAL OF THE DECADE

 

An extraordinary trial opened yesterday before the 11th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris yesterday. It involves two of France's biggest egos and deadliest political rivals. One has vowed to hang the other on a butcher's hook. The other refers to his old rival as "the dwarf" and accuses him of meddling in the justice system by forcing the case to trial. The former is none other than the serving French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter is a former prime minister, and anti-war star of the UN debate which preceded the invasion of Iraq, Dominique de Villepin. Have these politicians taken leave of their senses to settle old scores? Of course they have.

 

The suicidal nature of the proceedings, however, is only one of the trial's many attractions. Top spies and businessmen are lining up to give evidence in a trial which could do to the French political class what the expenses scandal did to ours. Mr Sarkozy is one of 40 plaintiffs in a trial accusing Mr de Villepin and others of running a smear campaign to damage the former's chances of running in the 2007 presidential campaign. Three years earlier, an anonymous source wrote to an investigating judge accusing a list of politicians and businessmen of holding secret accounts at a Luxembourg bank, used for laundering kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The list turned out to be fake and the bank accounts fictitious.

 

Mr de Villepin is accused of "defamation, use of forged documents and possession of goods obtained by theft". The case will turn on the issue of what he knew and when he knew it. The prosecution will allege that the former prime minister prompted his friend and co-accused Jean-Louis Gergorin, an executive of the defence aviation group EADS, to pass the list on to the judge, knowing it to be false. Mr de Villepin denies the charges, saying he is the victim of a grave injustice. But he also alleged on the courtroom steps yesterday that Mr Sarkozy is abusing his presidential powers. This is the first shot of a battle that could go up to the European court of human rights at Strasbourg.

 

Mr Sarkozy appears as a civil plaintiff in this case, while retaining immunity from prosecution as president. This means that if Mr de Villepin is cleared, he cannot countersue. Furthermore, as president, Mr Sarkozy has executive powers over judicial appointments such as magistrates and prosecutors. Hence Mr de Villepin's case that the playing field is far from level. Mr Sarkozy will have real questions to answer if the case falls, for he is playing a high-stakes game. If he wins, he will be firing a powerful warning shot at his political rivals. If he loses, he will complicate what should be a straightforward campaign for re-election.

 

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

THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

IN PRAISE OF… REFORMING THE WEATHER FORECAST

 

"We still await a proper frost and a good gale," Rob McElwee, one of the BBC's weather forecasters, pointed out yesterday, with telling regret. Most of the time Britain's weather is dull (the only drama in the current outlook is "a wet and windy spell at the end of week two") and the clear-voiced experts who read it out do their best to make it interesting, adopting a chatty tone, naturally focusing on those bits of the country where conditions are likely to be most extreme. The west of Scotland and Northern Ireland seem to get a lot of attention – perhaps it's all those Atlantic storms hitting land – but the Midlands, where the weather is rarely exciting, feels overlooked. Listeners, however, unlike forecasters, are not searching for thrills. They want to know what the weather is going to be like where they live, even if it will be much the same as the day before. This is why an experiment on Radio 4's PM programme last week worked so well. Peter Gibbs, one of the Met Office's regular broadcasters, decided to read out the evening's weather in the slow, routine manner of the shipping forecast – "East Anglia, southern England, rain at first, heavy at times, dying out overnight, lowest temperature 11 to 13 degrees, tomorrow dry with sunny intervals". It was a triumph – clear, informative and memorable – and, even if intended as a cheeky, one-off parody, it should herald a quiet reformation of the BBC's forecasts. Listeners, judging by their responses, liked the new factual style. So make it permanent.

 

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

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

THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

LESS THAN STERLING DEMOCRACY

 

A month after the ballot was held, preliminary results for the Afghan presidential election are in. According to that tally — and to the surprise of no one — incumbent President Hamid Karzai has won. With more than 50 percent of the votes counted, his margin of victory allows him to skip a runoff against the top challenger, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah.

 

But reports of fraud throughout the country raise questions about the legitimacy of the results. Failure to respond to those charges and allay doubts will not only taint the results but also undermine international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. No country will make sacrifices for an illegitimate government.

 

Afghanistan held the second democratic election in its history on Aug. 20. While the election did not match the heady atmosphere of the first ballot — when Afghans lined up for hours and defied the Taliban to cast votes — millions still turned out to exercise their right and thus profess their faith in democracy. But five years of violence and inefficiency have taken their toll: Turnout was only 38.7 percent, a little more than half the 70 percent who voted in October 2004.

 

The preliminary results are the same as they were five years ago. The Afghan election commission has concluded that Mr. Karzai won the election with 54.6 percent of the vote, a large enough margin to avoid a runoff against Mr. Abdullah, who received only 27.8 percent of the ballots cast. That result might not be final, though. A commission is looking into charges of fraud and ballot-box stuffing. In some cases, either 100 percent of the votes are for Mr. Karzai or the number of ballots bears no resemblance to the number of people seen during the election or who registered to vote. The commission has started carrying out a partial recount of about 10 percent of the vote. An independent European Union monitoring team has said that as many as 1.5 million of 5.6 million ballots cast may be suspect.

 

EU suspicions are matched by those of a U.N.-sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission, which is investigating fraud complaints at over 2,500 polling places. While there is no chance that the charges will change the standings of the candidates, they could result in the invalidation of enough ballots to drop Mr. Karzai's margin below 50 percent and force a runoff.

 

This presents two possible scenarios, both problematic. The first is if the results stand: Mr. Karzai is re-elected and the new government is installed with a cloud over its legitimacy. Afghanistan depends on foreign support for both security and the funds needed to run the country. Already, domestic debates are intensifying in countries that provide critical assistance, such as the United States and Germany. It will be even harder for them to continue their aid if the government in Kabul is seen as corrupt or illegitimate. The process echoes Vietnam.

 

The other scenario would see the process prolonged, perhaps greatly. Pakistan is already adrift. The election was held a month ago and this month's results are only preliminary. There are fears that a recount and a runoff would leave the country in limbo for months more. By the time the recount is complete it would be winter, with many districts inaccessible. New elections might have to be put off until spring. That could lead to rising levels of civil unrest and provide the Taliban with even greater opportunity to extend its already substantial influence in Afghanistan.

 

The difficulties posed by this situation became apparent when the No. 2 official of the U.N. group abruptly left the country following a disagreement with the mission director. Mr. Peter Galbraith, an American, reportedly believed that fraud had been perpetrated on a scale too large to ignore. His boss, Mr. Kay Eide, reportedly argued that stability was more important and that fraud charges would undermine the government. Mr. Eide, like many others, believed that Mr. Karzai would win the election regardless and that any election "irregularities" would eventually be sorted out.

 

It is a seductive argument and may be factually correct. But that logic is unlikely to motivate donors and other supporters of the Kabul government. Billions of dollars have already been spent in Afghanistan. Foreign militaries are suffering a growing number of casualties: Nearly 350 Western soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year, a 17 percent increase over 2008. The U.S. has nearly doubled its number of troops in Afghanistan to 62,000, and another 6,000 are expected by yearend. Those deployments will be harder, if not impossible, to defend if there is a sense that the government they are protecting is not legitimate.

 

Japan shares those concerns. Tokyo has been instrumental in pushing for aid for Afghanistan. Debate over how Japan can further help Afghanistan with nation building will be contentious in the aftermath of this election. No foreign government would support a local administration that does not command the loyalty of the majority of its people. Mr. Karzai must recognize the precipice he is approaching and take steps to avoid it. Time is running out.

 

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

 

 

THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

IS EARTH'S METHANE A TIME BOMB?

BY MICHAEL RICHARDSON

 

SINGAPORE — Developed and developing countries continue to haggle over terms of a new pact to limit global warming gases. With only 15 full negotiating days scheduled before a climate change summit convenes in Copenhagen at the end of the year, the next round of negotiations in Bangkok (Sept. 28-Oct. 9) looms as a make-or-break effort.

 

On two key issues, the parties are poles apart. The panel of scientists and officials advising the United Nations on climate change says industrialized countries need to take the lead by agreeing to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2020. But so far, pledges from Japan and other advanced economies are below these levels.

 

Meanwhile, their offers of money and technology to help developing countries reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to climate change are a long way short of the U.N. target. Two recent findings underscore the need for action.

 

In 2007, the U.N. advisory panel known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the global cost of adapting to climate change at $40 billion to $170 billion a year. In a report Aug. 27, a group of scientists concluded that the real cost was likely to be two to three times greater, and would be even higher when the full range of climate impacts from human activities was considered.

 

Their report warns that current estimates being used as a basis for the U.N.-sponsored climate negotiations do not include key economic sectors such as energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining, tourism and ecosystems.

 

These scientists should know. Among them is professor Martin Parry, now at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College in London, which published the report with the International Institute for Environment and Development. Until last year, Parry co-chaired the IPCC's working group responsible for assessing climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation.

 

If the cost of adapting to a warmer world and more extreme weather is much greater than initially thought, it will only make contentious negotiations more difficult. Finance is a key to an effective deal in Copenhagen. But with industrialized economies anxious about the burden of rising debt and slow recovery from recession, they are unlikely to be in a generous mood.

 

Much attention has been given to ways of curbing carbon dioxide levels, which are boosted by burning fossil fuels and clearing forests. It is the main greenhouse gas. Less attention has been given to methane, even though it is 25 times more potent.

 

The climate change negotiators should consider the implications of what may happen to the vast stores of methane in frozen deposits on land and under the seabed as the planet heats up.

 

After remaining stable for a decade, atmospheric levels of methane started rising two years ago. It is not clear where the gas came from, or whether it is part of a sustained upward trend as is evidently the case with carbon dioxide. However, some scientists have cautioned that continued increases in sea and land temperatures could unleash the huge stores of methane frozen beneath the sea floor and in the Arctic permafrost soil layer, starting at the shallowest levels.

 

Signs of methane instability have been reported in the relatively shallow waters of the Siberian Shelf, where there is estimated to be 1,400 billion tons of the gas in icelike hydrates, and on land in the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

 

According to research by a multinational team of scientists published last September, the amount of frozen organic carbon material from dead plant and animal matter in the Arctic is double the previous estimate. They said the 1,672 billion tons of carbon stored in the permafrost is over twice the 780 billion tons in the atmosphere today that is blamed for global warming.

 

Scientists worry that if the methane deposits were to thaw, it could trigger abrupt climate change as more methane releases caused further warming. There is evidence this happened in the distant past. Some refer to the methane store as a potential climate change time bomb.

 

The permafrost contains carbon dioxide as well as methane. Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) adds about 8.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Deforestation adds around 1.5 billion tons per year.

 

How much permafrost will add depends on how fast it thaws, but the work of the multinational research team suggests that the figure could be as much as 1.1 billion tons annually — with no more than one-ninth of it likely to be absorbed by shrubs and trees expected to grow on what used to be tundra as surface temperatures rise and the permafrost thaws.

 

Meanwhile, scientists are closely watching seabed methane. In research published in August, a British-German team found over 250 plumes of methane bubbles rising from the seabed off West Spitsbergen, a Norwegian island in the Arctic Ocean, a region of the world where temperatures have been rising the fastest and where sea ice has been thinning and retreating in recent years.

 

Using sonar technology, the researchers discovered the methane seeps at depths of between 150 to 400 meters. The gas is released from methane hydrate. At present, it is stable at water depths greater than 400 meters in the ocean off Spitsbergen. However, 30 years ago it was stable at water depths as shallow as 360 meters.

 

Some scientists have predicted that as ocean temperatures rise as a result of global warming, methane hydrates will begin to dissolve at greater depths. But the fact that the process has already begun surprises the team.

 

"Our survey was designed to work out how much methane might be released by future ocean warming," said professor Tim Minshull, head of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science. "We did not expect to discover such strong evidence that this process has already started."

 

Michael Richardson is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

 

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

THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

FACE UP TO CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN GAZA

BY CESAR CHELALA

 

NEW YORK — The long-awaited United Nations report on the conflict in Gaza is strongly critical of both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups. Both sides are said to have committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The report recommends that Israel start its own investigation into the conflict within three months.

 

If Israel refuses to comply with this recommendation, the investigators have urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court prosecutor within six months. Israel doesn't accept the court's authority, calling the council "a body constantly critical of Israel."

 

The report also said, though, that the firing of rockets and mortars by armed groups from Gaza at Israeli citizens amounted to serious war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.

 

Israeli human rights groups issued a statement calling on "the Government of Israel to respond to the substance of the report's findings and to desist from its current policy of casting doubt upon the credibility of anyone who doesn't adhere to the establishment's narrative."

 

The U.N. report follows an investigation of the Gaza war by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. More than half of the Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza were civilians, states B'Tselem.

 

B'Tselem's assertions, based on exhaustive investigations, should prompt a serious investigation by Israel's judiciary and, if the denunciations are confirmed, the punishment of those guilty. Israel's judiciary cannot afford to appear complicit in gross human rights violations carried out by the Israeli armed forces.

 

Although the IDF has acknowledged "rare mishaps" in the conduct of the war in Gaza, it has steadfastly denied violating international humanitarian law. B'Tselem's investigation does not support the IDF's allegations, and presents a serious accusation against the IDF about its actions in Gaza.

 

According to the IDF, the Gaza Cast Lead operation death toll is 1,166, including 709 combatants and 295 civilians. It has refused to release a list of names or any other evidence. B'Tselem's findings — based on several months of research and visits to the families of victims — claim that 1,387 Gazans were killed. That figure includes 773 civilians and 330 combatants.

 

The IDF claims that B'Tselem's figures are based on flawed research and on reliance on figures reported by Palestinian human rights groups. The Israeli human rights group's figures are similar to those reported by Hamas, which claims that more than 1,350 Gaza residents were killed during the operation, most of them civilians. B'Tselem also claims that the IDF withheld information that would have allowed cross-checking of information.

 

"Behind the statistics lie shocking stories: entire families killed, parents seeing children shot before their eyes, relatives watching loved ones bleed to death, and entire neighborhoods obliterated," states B'Tselem.

 

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, however, has denounced the "extensive rumors that have considerably damaged the IDF's image both at home and abroad."

 

"The failure of the IDF and Israeli government to investigate serious allegations of wrongdoing by its soldiers precedes Operation Cast Lead," states Human Rights Watch. Since 2000 this organization has documented the persistent lack of fair investigations into civilian deaths following the use of lethal force in law enforcement situations as well as in combat situations in the West Bank and Gaza, despite credible allegations that soldiers deliberately harmed civilians. Israel's conduct clashes with its obligations under international law.

 

Following Operation Cast Lead, B'Tselem sent Israel's attorney general and the military's judge advocate general 20 cases that suggest breach of law. Among those cases is the killing of some 90 Palestinians (half of them minors) — who B'Tselem believes didn't take part in the conflict — and Israeli soldiers' use of civilians as human shields. According to B'Tselem, it has received only one serious response: The Judge Advocate General's Office stated that it had ordered a Military Police investigation into the use of civilians as human shields.

 

"The extremely heavy civilian casualties and the massive damage to civilian property require serious introspection on the part of Israeli society," states B'Tselem.

 

Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, recently wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that "Israel's victories are pyrrhic and reveal the limits of Israeli power and our own limitations as a people: Our inability to live a life without barriers. Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the Holocaust?"

 

Cesar Chelala, M.D., is a co-winner of the Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

 

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

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

THE KOREA HERALD

 EDITORIAL

DETAINED IN SINGAPORE

 

Three South Korean nationals are awaiting trial in Singapore after being arrested late last month on suspicion of working as drug couriers, a crime for which conviction would carry the death penalty. According to the Korean mission in Singapore, the three men, who are small-time businessmen from Busan, claim that they were duped into the offense by a Nepalese drug trafficking ring which conspired with another Korean, but it looks unlikely that they will avoid punishment under the harsh narcotics control law of the city state.

 

The Singapore Health Science Authority is now analyzing the substance which was allegedly hidden in the shoes the three men wore when they were arrested at Changi Airport on the early morning of Aug. 30. Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau said the three South Koreans attempted to smuggle out two kilograms of No. 4 grade heroin. Under Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act of Singapore, the death penalty is mandatory for any person found in possession of more than 15 grams of heroin.

 

Korean nationals have been arrested and criminally charged in various countries in growing numbers in recent years with the increase of international travelling and business activities. More than 1,200 Koreans were in foreign jails as of the end of 2008 for involvement in criminal cases. Some 120 Koreans are reported to have been arrested on drug-related charges in as many as 17 foreign countries since 2003. A 41-year-old Korean was executed in Harbin, China, in 2001, after being convicted of drug trafficking. Yet, this is the first time that multiple Koreans were arrested and faced capital punishment for a narcotics offense.

 

According to news reports, a man named Kim, 41, a real estate agent in Busan, was offered by an acquaintance in Thailand a junket through Southeast Asia and Australia in exchange for "a small errand." Kim recruited two friends to join him on the pleasure trip and they were asked to inform the man in Thailand of the sizes of their shoes. Arriving in Singapore on Aug. 28, they met a group of Nepalese who gave them new shoes which they said concealed microchips loaded with some business secrets. They were arrested as they arrived at the airport to catch a plane bound for Sydney. Singaporean authorities also arrested five Nepalese.

 

They will be indicted as soon as the drug analysis is completed, and trials in Singapore's two-tier criminal procedures could last for up to a year. Singapore is well-known for the world's highest per capita execution rate, which reached 13 per 1 million in the late 1990s. About a third of those executed were foreigners or foreign residents, many of whom were convicted of drug-related charges.

 

The last execution of a foreign national in a drug case was that of Nguyen Van Thuong, an Australian citizen of Vietnamese origin who was arrested in 2002 for carrying packages of heroin to be delivered to Melbourne. He was hanged in December 2005 despite appeals from the Australian prime minister, the Vatican, Amnesty International and many other NGOs and prominent individuals.

 

The offense of the three Koreans may be claimed to be less serious considering their assertion of unawareness of the nature of what was hidden in their shoes. The Singaporean law presumes anyone in possession of narcotics to be trafficking it and the defendant bears the burden of proof against this presumption. Korean authorities are asked to help them in whatever means possible, including legal aid. The government should strengthen public education about being involved in criminal offenses during overseas travel, recklessly or inadvertently.

 

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

THE KOREA HERALD

 EDITORIAL

SMOKING SOLDIERS

 

Korean soldiers used to be rationed cigarettes one pack for two days. Then, since 1981, an allowance equivalent to the price of 15 tax-free packs was added to monthly salaries for all soldiers (of compulsory service) regardless of whether they were smokers or non-smokers. The free supply of cigarettes stopped. The new measure was primarily meant to be fair to non-smokers but also aimed to encourage soldiers to quit.

 

The cigarette subsidy has gradually cut back, and from the beginning of this year, the Defense Ministry decided to discontinue supplying tax-free cigarettes. Smokers had to pay the full 2,500 won price to buy a pack. The authorities expected a further reduction in the smoking rate, which had dropped to a little below 50 percent for the first time in 2008 from more than 63 percent in 2003.

 

The result of the virtual raise of cigarette price at Army camps was surprising, but not in the positive sense. The Army Service Support Group reported that cigarette sales at its entire PX network amounted to 18.7 million packs during the first half of this year, a more than 30 percent increase from 14.1 million in the same period last year. Military authorities are baffled by the unexpected figures, which indicated that soldiers were now buying more of the expensive cigarettes and cutting back on other supplies. The sales of cookies and sweet bread conspicuously went down. The Air Force showed a similar rise in cigarette sales on bases.

 

The high price policy for the anti-smoking drive has apparently failed. Out of their meager salaries amounting to about one-10th of civilian minimum salary, soldiers are spending so much to enjoy smoking. The military is now requested to make a close analysis of the trend to see what psychological effect the more expensive cigarettes had on soldiers to lead them toward increased demand. We would like to propose that the increased tax revenues, which will be substantial, be used for a more effective way of realizing "smoke-free" military barracks in the near future.

 

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

THE KOREA HERALD

 EDITORIAL

THE POST-CHEN HEALING OF TAIWAN

SIN-MING SHAW

 

BANGKOK - A few weeks ago, a Taiwanese court sentenced Chen Shui-bien, Taiwan's president from 2000 until 2008, to life imprisonment for corruption.

 

Chen had been caught stealing millions of dollars of public funds. He did not act alone. His wife (who also received a life sentence), children, and other relatives all helped to hide the stolen loot in overseas accounts. Taiwan's former first family turned out to be a den of common thieves.

 

Chen and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party camouflaged their personal and parochial financial interests behind the patriotic mask of ensuring the survival of a democratic Chinese society in an independent Taiwan. For years, Chen was perceived as a brave David fighting the communist Goliath, and attracted many admirers around the world (including me at one point).

 

Presenting himself and his party as champions of democracy, Chen sought to create the impression among Taiwan's voters that their freedom would perish in the hands of the Kuomintang or any party other than his own. But in fact, it was the late President Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who instituted the unprecedented democratic reforms that paved the way for the eventual electoral triumph of Chen's formerly banned DPP.

 

Chen's personal wealth grew conspicuously shortly after he assumed office, but no one could produce hard evidence of his corruption back then. His political supporters initially brushed aside the mushrooming rumors of his self-enrichment as opposition KMT propaganda.

 

But, one by one, most of the DPP's founding fathers all left the party, accusing Chen of corruption and autocratic behavior even within his own party - which Chen dismissed as sour grapes from people who wanted their share of the political spoils.

 

In fact, Chen was always more concerned with consolidating his own power than with defending Taiwan. His most controversial political moves were aimed at his domestic opponents, not the Chinese government on the mainland. He led a vicious campaign to portray all Taiwanese with mainland Chinese roots, even if born and bred in Taiwan, as untrustworthy carpetbaggers - wai shen ren , or "not native people" - as if they were aliens from a different culture.

 

This official effort to portray native "Taiwanese" as a separate ethnic group, with scant relation to Chinese culture, was extended to language, as Chen favored using the Fujian dialect in lieu of the Mandarin spoken by 1.3 billion Chinese and taught all over the world. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education sought to expunge all references to China in school textbooks.

 

So insistent was Chen's campaign that it reminded some people of Mao's Cultural Revolution, a time when Chinese were divided into "us" and "them." Indeed, under Chen's policy, Taiwan nearly became a rigidly divided society, where "local" and "not native" Chinese lived as potential enemies.

 

 

Taiwan's sole aboriginal parliamentarian once provided the logical rebuttal to Chen and the DPP, delivering a speech to a packed Congress entirely in his native tongue, which nobody else in the chamber could understand. The message was obvious: his was the only group with a legitimate claim to being native Taiwanese.

 

In the end, Chen's effort was as futile as it was foolish. The Chinese culture embodied in the daily lives of 23 million Taiwanese of whatever political beliefs was not so easily eliminated by decree. Moreover, the attempt to do so angered the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese, who finally understood the stupidity of Chen's policy, particularly how it led to economic stagnation at a time when mainland China was booming.

 

Indeed, Taiwanese capital and know-how built much of China's hi-tech industries, and well over a half-million Taiwanese live and work near Shanghai in a virtual replica of Hsin Chu, Taiwan's Silicon Valley. But in Chen's Taiwan, domestic squabbles took precedence over economic development. Chen invariably blamed the KMT for blocking sensible economic plans, but even some of his moneyed supporters knew better.

 

When it was finally proved that power had turned Chen into a common criminal, the KMT was voted back into power. But, while Chen's legacy of lies and corruption has ended, the reborn KMT under President Ma Ying-jeou has much to do to convince a cynical public that Chen's ways, reminiscent of KMT's own darker past, have not become embedded in the system.

 

Chen's jail sentence should also serve to remind the DPP that it must become a party for all Taiwanese, "local" or not if it is to have any chance at a revival. Taiwan's people know that they cannot prosper as a democracy if ethnic divisiveness is allowed to hold sway.

 

Sin-ming Shaw is a former visiting scholar of history at Oxford and Harvard. - Ed.

 

(Project Syndicate)

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Jerusalem Post,Haaretz,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